Festival has got the cutting edge
BURDEKIN Shire councillors will swap their chambers, ties and business shirts for the cane paddock and a cane knife as the Burdekin’s destination tourism event winds up this week.
The virtual Sweet Days, Hot Nights Festival was held across three weeks after coronavirus forced the 2020 event to be cancelled.
Late rain delayed not only the start of the crushing season, but pushed back the launch of the virtual festival by almost two weeks.
The festival’s first week contained the premiere of the First Fire event and since then the virtual festival has held cultural cooking lessons, showcased a number of growers and gone behind the scenes of the festival.
Tonight will be the video final for the festival, featuring the Councillor’s Cut, in which the recently elected council will compete in their own event.
Burdekin Shire Mayor Lyn Mclaughlin said this year’s virtual festival had reached about 100,000 social media users.
“Over the past three weeks, online viewers have been able to watch a cane fire from start to finish from angles unlike any they would have seen before, been introduced to many of the cultures who call our shire home, and learnt about the steeped history of hand cane
BURDEKIN PET RESCUE PETS OF THE WEEK cutting and its evolution in the Burdekin,” Cr Mclaughlin said.
“The culmination of the festival will be a hand cane cutting showdown this Friday night.
“As we can’t host the Australian Hand Cane Cutting Championships this year, we set the challenge to some of the Burdekin Shire’s new councillors to try their hand at hand cane cutting, guided by past champions Mark Vass and Olivio Pozzebon. Tune in to watch the premiere this Friday (tonight) at 7pm.”
Olivio Pozzebon was one of the oldest competitors in the cane cutting championships in 2018 and returned for a second year last year to compete in the open event as an 86-year-old.