Thousands of people flocked to Fringeland at the Mount Gambier Showgrounds on Friday night to celebrate the opening of the city’s week-long Fringe festival.
About 8000 people filled the venue for the Fringe Mount Gambier launch event, which boasted a wide array of performers across numerous genres.
Fringe Mount Gambier marketing coordinator Talie Teakle said the showgrounds were bursting with life across the seven-hour event.
“We had a big turnover, there were a lot of families at the start and younger people at the end of the night,” she said.
“As people were leaving we had comments about it having a Womadelaide vibe, that means we nailed it as that is what we were hoping to achieve.
“There were pockets of entertainment all over the site, for all ages.
“People said it felt like a mixture between the Garden of Unearthly Delights and Womadelaide.”
Ms Teakle said one of the event’s highlights were the artistic projections onto the front of the show hall.
“Those projections on the front of the hall were absolutely stunning and all done by local kids and local artists,” she said.
“It was so beautiful.
“Those artworks were created by Independent Learning Centre kids and artists like April Hague and Pariya Ziakis.
“We involved the community so much in some of those projects.”
Ms Teakle said COVID-19 had played havoc with the program, with 11th hour cancellations and relocations.
“There were a lot of last-minute cancellations between people either having COVID or being close contacts, 90% of the changes were due to people being close contacts,” she said.
“It was not just artists but whole venues, some venues had to shut for a small amount of time because they did not have enough staff so we had to relocate venues.
“There were some lovely stories to come out of it though, Peter Combe’s drummer had COVID, so a call was put out for a local drummer and Mount Gambier’s Giovanni Calandro managed to nail all 13 songs in 24 hours.
“While he was here Peter Combe played for the Gordon Education Centre and he did a special private event for foster carer families.
“We also had Hayley Hoopla do a workshop with foster care kids, we got them to do a variety of different things in aged care facilities and with special needs kids.
“There were a lot of things going on behind the scenes that people do not see.”
