Abarrage of books has filled Mount Gambier’s City Hall for the last time, with the organisers holding the much loved Rotary Book Fair for the final time on the weekend.

The Rotary Club of Mount Gambier filled the venue to the brim with books for two days, with more than 3000 people perusing plenty of pages.

Club president Ian McDougall said Rotary volunteers emptied more than 500 boxes of books in the hall over the two days, selling more than two-thirds of the reading material, with the remaining books purchased by a book shop vendor.

The annual event has raised thousands of dollars for community projects, much to Mr McDougall’s delight.

“We started in 2014, this is our ninth year, and it’s our last one,” Mr McDougall said.

“We had a variety of books, a lot of the fiction was more popular than cooking and things like that.

“Somebody came and bought all the books we had left over.”

Mr McDougall said the club had decided that this year’s event would be its last.

“We are all getting older and it was a big job,” he said.

“It’s been a good fellowship function, I think members will miss it.”

“I think the community may miss it, they might say you need to do it again as it has been popular, but we think we had fewer people this year than last year,” Mr McDougall

said

“The last couple of years we have been giving children’s books away free, there were quite a few families there.

“It’s been lovely to have been able to run this fair for the last nine years, we have enjoyed offering it to the community.”