MILDURA will be the place to be in March.
And it’s not just for the weather.
Two major events with a host of superstar musical acts are set to draw thousands to Sunraysia, starting with the Back to Base Festival on Saturday, March 12, before the SummerSalt Music Festival also hits Nowingi Place on Saturday, March 26.
Thousands of tickets have already been sold for SummerSalt, which showcases the best of Australia’s home-grown artists with the likes of Missy Higgins, John Butler, Xavier Rudd, Birds of Tokyo, The Waifs, The Dreggs and Tulliah locked in for the Mildura concert.
To understand the enormity of SummerSalt, consider this.
An estimated 8000 turned out at Mount Martha on the Mornington Peninsula in February this year despite social distancing restrictions, while the Hobart SummerSalt concert in February has already sold out.
The Back To Base Festival, which has been announced exclusively in Saturday’s (SD, Dec 4) Sunraysia Daily, will be headlined by the hugely popular Jessica Mauboy, with tickets on sale from Tuesday.
That event will not only be a celebration of music, but also the return of Mildura Base Hospital to public hands and a reunion of all the wonderful staff who have worked there through its 120-year history.
Along with the night concert featuring Mauboy and other Aussie acts such as Busby Marou, the festival will incorporate a free day concert, activities for children, a marquee dinner, market and displays.
The Back to Base Festival, which will raise money for the hospital, is planned to become an annual event for Mildura.
It will also serve as a coming together of the Sunraysia community after two very tough years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For that, we should all be excited.
As we enter the new year, we can look forward with more realistic optimism than was the case at the same time last year.
With vaccination levels now high, and a shift in government thinking to remaining open, the wheel is already starting to turn in Sunraysia.
This weekend, the Honey Bar will open in the Mildura CBD, and the Coffee Palace is back at the Grand Hotel with the Spanish Grill restaurant also set to reopen. The finishing touches are being put on an exciting new pizza restaurant in the Australian Dried Fruit Association building in Deakin Avenue, and another new restaurant, Brother Chris, will soon open in the new apartment complex on the corner of Ninth Street and Deakin Avenue.
It all comes as Feast Street was pumping again this week with full cafes and restaurants after the return of a travelling workforce and tourists.
In January, thousands will converge on Mildura for the Australian Country Swimming Championships, as well as the Victorian Wakeboard Classic and the Ted Hurley Classic ski race.
Mildura Regional Development boss Brett Millington said this week that there was a “degree of confidence” building in the region as the country opened back up.
“Absolutely there is,” he said. “There’s great news stories starting to happen all over the place, which is fantastic.
“The Back to Base concert will be such a great community event. People worked so hard to get the Base (hospital) back into public hands, and you look back before it was privatised and the decades of fundraising that used to be done to support the hospital.
“When any industry becomes privatised it can have a significant impact on not only the workforce but the community, and the community lost some connection to the hospital. But at the end of the day, the Base is now owned by all of us again.”
So bring on March. Get your tickets and join in the fun.
