Perhaps not as we know them, although while Noosa Council deliberated over the lifting (or at least raising the limit) of the 500-people cap on events on public land this week, at least one long-time Noosa favourite, the Festival of Surfing, scheduled for May, was going from strength to strength.
Despite no internationals being able to attend, the surf festival’s amateur divisions were almost full this week, just two weeks after they opened for entries, and new sponsors seemed to be lining up at the door. (See story page xx)
But right now the surf festival is the only major event on the normal Noosa calendar to have applied for a permit. The others, it seems, are waiting until the last minute to ascertain if their event can be viable under whatever restrictions may apply at the time, although, Council’s decisions this week could change all of that.
As Queensland came out of its partial lockdown last August, the State government relaxed many of its restrictions on public gatherings, with outdoor events being capped at 1500 attendees. But Noosa Council, at a special meeting on August 31, unanimously voted to cap them at 500, with Mayor Clare Stewart citing concerns for Noosa’s aged population as the main reason. The ruling was to be reviewed in February. To put this in perspective, every major event in Noosa except the Noosa Triathlon could run at 100 percent with a 1500 cap, although the surf festival would probably lose its wildly popular surfing dogs.
At 500, all of them will struggle, and some will not survive without restructuring both the format and the business model.
In a wide-ranging first interview with local media this week (see Hot Seat on page 31) Tourism Noosa’s new marketing and events manager Adam Townson revealed to Noosa Today that many event organisers, and the tourism body itself, are starting to look at alternatives to traditional events, such as staging a series of smaller events, staggered over time. Hastings Street’s 12 Days of Christmas and Noosa Junction’s Sounds Like Summer were good examples of this, while Noosa Alive and Noosa Eat and Drink festivals were also adopting the model in part.Mr Townson said: “Whether it’s a Covid thing or whether it’s here to stay isn’t clear yet, but it’s a way to change the thought processes away from larger events, and it’s proving very popular.”
Council this week voted to conduct community consultation on the event permit issues, with recommendations to be heard next month. Councillors are said to be divided on the matter, particularly in regard to Category 1 (over 10,000) events.
A cohesive Noosa event strategy was first established by Council’s Noosa Enterprise Group in the early 1990s, in an attempt to level out the fluctuating tourism levels throughout the year by encouraging the creation of sporting and cultural events over the down times. The strategy has been adopted by most councils since, at least in part, although in recent years permits have toughened up in an effort to balance the needs of the tourism sector and the resident population.
Using the corporate-speak of the times, Tourism Noosa’s current 2020-2023 strategy document pledges to “support events aligned to our seasonal and dispersal objectives”, which in plain-speak means that the ones that spread the love through both the downtimes and the hinterland get the dough. You can’t take the beach to Pomona, of course, but you get the drift.
The question now is will our council open the Covid door wide enough to allow events to survive, or will be seeing a popup mini-event every weekend of the year?
