Sophie Conlon
After major success in its inaugural year, Mount Gambier’s Fantasy Medieval Festival has been awarded the 2023 City of Mount Gambier Community Event of the Year.
Treasurer Tammy Flier said the organising committee was incredibly proud to have been recognised in the Australia Day Awards after their first festival.
“It’s really great to be recognised after our first event,” she said.
With more than 3000 people attending the two day event, Ms Flier said it was fantastic to see so many people outside Mount Gambier coming to the region.
“It’s amazing, we had such an awesome response from our local community, but also from interstate and intrastate, we had a lot of people traveling from NSW, QLD, VIC and SA to come to our fist event so that was amazing,” she said.
Inspiration for the event struck when Ms Flier was catching up with fellow committee member Talie Teakle and conversation turned to travelling back in time.
From there the idea evolved and they got to work organising the award-winning event.
“It started from that and then it just grew, we put some feelers out for people that might like to be involved and we had a whole lot of different people from the community put their hand up, that’s how our first committee was born,” she said.
She thought the best part of the festival was seeing everyone get into the spirit of the event, coming in costume and committing to a character.
“We had really great feedback about the horse jousting in 2022, but also we had so many people who came in costume and really got behind the re-enactment group,” she said.
“There was so many different facets to the fair, it was great.”
Ms Flier said the committee was looking forward to making the festival an annual event and planning was already underway for their second year, to be held April 15 and 16.
“This year we’ve got even more performers, entertainers and re-enactors coming from interstate, which we’re really excited about,” she said.
