Wattle Festival

The Annual Wattle Festival on the first Sunday of September (Fathers’ Day) heralds in the Spring.

This is a great little community festival held in the township of Hurstbridge on the fringes of Melbourne. The whole of the main drag of the town is given over to it, with stuff spilling over into local parks and playing fields. A Steam Train plies between Diamond Creek and Hurstbridge making a connection with the area’s pioneering past. With the bright gold of the wattle trees adding rich colour to the streetscape, even a dull day (eg. last Sunday) is injected with the atmosphere of Spring.

One of the highlights for Allan and myself was the vintage car and motorcycle display in the railway station car park. Wow, those babies are big! Beautifully painted and polished bodywork, shining brass and chrome, and cars the size of trucks.

There were displays of working steam traction engines (never thought I’d be interested in watching that for any length of time), carnival stuff and an animal petting enclosure for the kids, stage coach rides, an art exhibition and sale, antiques and gift shops, market stalls, musical acts scattered throughout the town and of course FOOD.

Hurstbridge is well endowed with food related shops and eateries and these were augmented last Sunday with barbeques everywhere selling everything from shasliks and vegie burgers to the ubiquitous sausage and onions in bread. But my favourite was definitely the Home-made Chocolate Coated Wattle Seed Ice Cream. Oh Yeah!