Exciting new plans for 2016 Festival of the Miner’s Ghost

Last week’s Festival of the Miner’s Ghost planning meeting was well attended by people from various local community and sporting groups.
Last week’s Festival of the Miner’s Ghost planning meeting was well attended by people from various local community and sporting groups.

Some exciting new plans are underway for this year’s Festival of the Miner’s Ghost in October.

At a public meeting last Thursday night at the Cobar Bowling & Golf Club, Cobar Shire Council’s tourism officer John Martin said council had been in negotiation talks to bring the Moorambilla Maxed Out Choir and also the TaikOz Drummers to headline this year’s festival.

“Michelle Leonard and some music composers have just spent a week out at Mt Grenfell getting inspiration to compose some more songs,” Mr Martin said.

He said Ms Leonard was very keen on the idea of bringing the choir and drummers to Cobar.

The meeting decided that some of the very successful events from last year’s festival should also be included in this year’s plans.

It is hoped that Cobar Shire Council’s youth worker Narelle Kriz (who was an apology for the meeting) and members of the youth council will once again organise a Colour Run, which saw over 500 people taking part last year.

Another popular part of last year’s program was museum curator Kay Stingemore’s ANZAC cemetery walks.

Mrs Stingemore was at last week’s meeting and said she would be keen to offer more tours along the same vein and suggested she could also run miner’s memorial tours as well.

President of the Cobar Dust Bowl Fuel Burners Club Mick Haines said their members were planning to hold a “bigger and better” show and shine at this year’s festival which he hopes will attract car enthusiasts from all around the western region.

Back again for this year’s program are the markets in the park, the Hospital Bed Races and the Police Charity Golf Day.

A number of new ideas were discussed and included a shooting demonstration of historic firearms by the Cobar Pistol Club and a ball or murder mystery night.

The group will meet again next month to progress their plans.

Members of the community who would like to be involved with this year’s festival planning and organising are invited to go along to the next meeting.