THIS year marks 50 years of Marburg’s Black Snake Creek Festival.
Every year a group of volunteers from the Marburg and District Resident’s Association band together and put on an event that celebrates everything the town has to offer.
Last year’s theme was Back to Our German Heritage, a nod to the town of the same name in Germany.
This year it’s all about the anniversary and the five decades of festivals held in the rural town.
“We are going to have a display in the heritage centre that will be all about what we’ve done over the past 50 years,” the association’s secretary Wendye Gratton said.
“We have been trying to get in touch with some of the original members, mind you some of them are not with us anymore.”
The nod to the town’s German roots will play out again this year with organisers looking for ‘someone of note from the German community’ to open the festival.
“The festival involves the whole community, the SES come and do a bit of a challenge with other emergency services and things like that,” she said.
“There is always an art show and we have music playing and lots of stalls.
“The local school always has a stall as do the Anglican Church and many of the different groups around here become involved.”
She said typically several hundred people attended.
“We’ve only missed one year, it was 2021 and because of Covid,” she said.
“We have had lots of different themes over the years, we had an umbrella theme one year and hung umbrellas up in a net as decoration.”
Wendye has been festival secretary since 2007.
“Because this year centres around the festival’s 50 year history, we wouldn’t mind knowing more about Marburg as it was in 1974,” she said.
“We’d like information about the Marburg residents who ran the festival now that we’re celebrating 50 years as an organisation.
“It’s a great way to bring the community together and I usually organise a display at the Heritage Centre because that’s what I’m really interested in, the history of the place.
“This year I am trying to look back at our German history in a smaller way to see what’s happened in the past 50 years.”
The festival is also a draw for those who lived in Marburg but now live elsewhere.
“People come back to town to catch up with friends and see how their old town’s going,” she said.
“The Historical Society opens up, the Heritage Centre opens up and there are food and all sorts of stalls there.”
The Black Snake Creek Festival is held opposite the Marburg Hotel, where the Heritage Centre and Marburg Community Centre building are situated.
The event opens on the Friday night and the festival happens on Saturday, September 21.
