Great Barrier Reef Festival 2024 could be the last amid volunteer, funding crunch
Organisers of a popular Queensland festival have confirmed the 2024 event may be the last, but are still looking to save it from the graveyard of Australia’s embattled festival scene. DETAILS
Whitsunday
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A Queensland festival that has run annually for over two decades may have just taken its last gasp, as organisers say they haven’t given up yet on resuscitating it.
Rumours ran rampant online on Monday that Airlie Beach’s Great Barrier Reef Festival had been cancelled, a day after the 2024 event concluded.
Committee chairperson Margie Murphy said she had worked on the festival for the last 15 years, but the effort to keep it running has reached a turning point.
Between dropping volunteers numbers and juggling various funding sources, Ms Murphy said the death knell came when the event’s grant with Tourism and Events Queensland lapsed last year.
“It would be a massive loss for our community because it is our cultural identity,” she said.
“It’s mostly free to attend and it gives community groups and individuals chances to get involved, like with the street parade or the regatta or in the art installation.
“We know the community would also miss it, it’s the only large celebration that the whole community can get involved with.
“We can’t do it to ourselves and our families again, unless we get further monetary support.”
The Great Barrier Reef Festival has been running since 2001 when Fantasy Cruises started the event, as Ms Murphy recounts, with full funding and an event planner until the company retracted from the region in 2006.
The festival continued, however, when a local organising committee took over with funding and in-kind assistance from Whitsunday Regional Council and a variety of state grants and corporate sponsorships.
Tourism and Events Queensland’s Queensland Destination Events Program (QDEP) has supported the program from 2018 through to last year, but requires events to take a one-year break from the program after five consecutive years of funding to avoid reliance on government funding and allow for reassessment.
Ms Murphy said many might assume the event was council-owned, and emphasised that council were not to blame for the potential shuttering and had been “amazing” to work with over the years.
“People are dissing council and we don’t want that — we just need more of a partnership with them,” she said.
“It was lack of government support on several levels, not just local.”
She said the committee had requested an “urgent meeting” with WRC to discuss the future of the Great Barrier Reef Festival, the growth of which had outpaced even the organisers.
“It’s a whole year in the planning (and) this year there was pretty much the core committee members of four people, with extra hands over the weekend,” Ms Murphy said.
“We’ve been doing our marketing, health and safety, communications, finance, accounting, besides, you know, event planning.
“People give up days or weeks of their work, or do it on top of their work commitments to make it happen.”
Ms Murphy said while she didn’t want “doom and gloom”, she urged fans of the festival and Whitsunday locals to “just not to take it for granted”.
Whitsunday Regional Council and mayor Ry Collins was contacted for comment.
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