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2010 Narooma Oyster Festival |
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great weather - large crowds
Beautiful weather greeted record crowds at the Narooma Oyster Festival from Friday 14 – Sunday 16 May and helped ensure it was an outstanding success.
Organisers estimate there were more than 8,000 people through the gates on Saturday with a postcode sample showing almost half of all visitors came from outside the area.
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MasterChef
Celebrity chef Julie Goodwin was a huge hit – she entertained the crowds in the main cooking marquee for hours, signed copies of her book with unerring patience and soaked up all the elements of the festival – attending everything from the Welcome to Country to the Poet’s Breakfast.
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the flavours of the coast
The finalists in the Betta Electrical recipe competition prepared their oysters in front of a capacity crowd before Julie announced the winners – chef Michael Donovan from Narooma’s The Whale Restaurant taking out the uncooked category with his ‘Oysters with wakame seaweed salad, white miso dressing and freshly shaved wasabi root’ while another local chef, Matt Hoar, won the cooked category for ‘Grilled oysters with pancetta shallots and balsamic glaze’.
The cooking elements were exceptionally strong this year – demonstrations from Julian Lloyd of Rick Stein at Bannisters, Navy and TAFE chefs, indigenous chef Zach Field and Narooma’s excellent Michael Stokes packed out the main marquee throughout the morning.
The new 13-metre-long Oyster Bar was another big success – it sold upwards of 24,000 oysters alongside award-winning local wines and was busy from 9.30am through to mid-afternoon.
The sunshine meant refreshment from the Fosters Beer Truck was highly sought after, too, and staff were kept busy all day serving up the free samples of boutique beers.
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Entertainment all weekend
Sand sculptor extraordinaire Dennis Massoud shivered through Friday evening (long sleeves are a no-no when sculpting) to bring to life a fire-breathing sand dragon and then passed on some of his skills to a legion of admirers at the sculpting workshops and competition on Sunday.
As always, the Welcome to Country from Auntie Noeline and the Ghudjargah dancers on Friday was warm and wonderful and while the emerging artists of Circus Monoxide showed promise, it was their leader Susan Davis who stole the show with an effortlessly elegant display on her spinning aerial hoop.
The fireworks on Friday evening were spectacular and accompanied by the gorgeous sound of a lone didgeridoo played by virtuoso Warren Foster.
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Saturday
Saturday’s main event kicked off with all the sound and colour of the South Coast’s largest and best-organised parade - and that colour was reflected out on the water throughout the day with dragon boat racing and floating sea creature sculptures.
Children enjoyed indigenous art workshops, circus skills workshops, face painting and the ever-popular $5 wristbands allowing them unlimited access to all the festival’s amusement rides.
Narooma Golf Club’s putting competition also proved popular but the $20,000 prize eluded competitors as the final putts slipped past the hole.
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music & poetry
Music throughout the weekend was a highlight – Malumba, Lounge Lizards and all the local stage performers were well received on Saturday, while Beautifully Mad on Sunday morning were just sublime.
And the Poets Breakfast on Sunday morning drew a far larger crowd in 2010, showing that the growing line-up of accomplished performers is delivering quality the Festival should be proud of.
See you next year?
2010 Oyster Festival Survey
If you would like to provide your feedback on this year's Oyster Festival then plase feel free to fill in our short online survey - it only takes a minute or so to fill in and all feedback will help us further develop and improve the Festival next year • click here for survey
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photos courtesy of Jonathan Poyner, Tim Burke and Mark Anderson
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2010 sponsors
The Narooma Chamber of Commerce and Tourism would like to thank all the Sponsors of the 2010 Narooma Oyster Festival - without them it would not be possible. |
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platinum sponsors
bronze sponsors
top supporters
sponsors
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