Thorpdale Potato Festival
The Thorpdale Potato Festival will return on Sunday, 12th March to the Thorpdale Recreation Reserve in the beautiful Strzelecki Ranges, West Gippsland and it’s two weeks until the fun of the festival.
Whatever age you are, there is something for everyone at the festival. For the active, they have sack races, a jumping castle, potato decorating and potato and spoon races (Children’s activities are free) There is also a petting zoo for the children.
The Vin Rowe Spud Run is an exciting event – a 250 metre dash (stagger?) carrying a 25kg sack of potatoes, and there is potato picking and stacking for the hale, healthy and brawny. The Tug-of-War is back again and they are looking forward to seeing some thrills and spills. ‘Hessians on the Field’ attracted a huge amount of interest in 2015 so it’s back and the interest has been phenomenal. The Photography competition will continue to bring out the artistic talents of locals and notso-locals. For the domesticated in all of us, they have so much to offer in the way of potatoes – Two-person mash eating competition, cooking demonstrations and tastings as well as spuds for sale of course.
For just all-round entertainment, they have dancing displays, vintage tractors, machinery and cars, the very popular Quick Shear competition (competitors from all around Australia), Sheep Dog Trials and Wood Chop as well as lots of music and heaps of laughter
A very special highlight will be the appearance of Andrew Taylor who ate only spuds for over a year and has turned his life around, not only losing over 50kg in weight but his health and well-being has benefited greatly. Andrew will be speaking during the day and will also be promoting the sale of his book.
The market stalls have doubled from 2015, in fact they had to close bookings off early such was the interest, so there will be plenty to see, eat and drink and they all add to the festive nature of the day.
Now all that’s left to do is watch the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts and don’t believe a word they say – it will be a sunny glorious day, about 25 degrees with a cool breeze when anyone gets a little warm! It’s not asking for much.
Looking forward to seeing you there.