New Year’s Eve celebrations are set to go off with a bang in the Blue Lake city this year, after a new committee was formed on the weekend to oversee the event.
However, despite a huge community outcry, only eight people attended a community meeting for the Mount Gambier Community Events Management Committee to kick-start planning for 2024.
Last year’s New Year’s Eve Festival at Vansittart Park was cancelled at the last minute due to a lack of support for the committee, with the decision sending Mount Gambier City Council scrambling to pull together a replacement event in the city’s Cave Gardens.
The cancellation of the family friendly event and fireworks displays attracted plenty of criticism from the community across social media.
But that outcry has not translated into people coming forward to volunteer, with event organiser Scott Turner praising those who put their hand up to help.
“Thank you to everyone that has volunteered to join the committee for the year,” Mr Turner said.
“Everybody that came in wants to see the fireworks go ahead and has enjoyed the festival in the past. They did not like the fact that it didn’t happen and were willing to put in the effort to make it happen in the future.
“We were hoping for 15-20 people so that we had a large pool of people to build a committee from, but it was just enough to actually get a committee together.
“It would work much better if we had about 10 so, they are still looking for other people who were interested and did not get to the meeting.
“Most of the volunteers have not sat on any committees before so it is a big learning curve for most of them to get up to speed with how to run a committee and how to get things happening.
“We still need to find more sponsorship to make it happen but at least we have got the people to look for the sponsorship.”
The new Mount Gambier Community Events Management committee will officially meet for the first time on February 3 to discuss further plans for the festival and delegate roles.
Following the confirmation of sponsorships, committee members will apply for approvals, contact support services and book entertainment.
