Yungaburra Festival

Whilst staying with Erwin at his succulent nursery in Walkamin we visited the Yungaburra Folk Festival.
The first folk festival on the Atherton Tablelands was held not far away in Herberton in 1981 but then moved to Yungaburra the following year where it has been held ever since. Organised by local folk clubs for the first eleven years, it is now run by a committee of Tablelanders. The festival celebrates world-wide folk traditions through music, storytelling, circus, dance, and crafts, and features musicians, dancers, circus and fire artists, comedians and festival performers.
Women and children make hats out of palm fronds
We established comms with festival organiser Chenny Cockburn who waived the usual fee and allowed us to set up a stall for free in the market area.
Here we tried to get peoples attention - displaying information about the charity and what we were trying to achieve on the trip. We also offered items of clothing and books that had been donated to us along the way in exchange for small donations to the charity. Erwin on his cacti market stall People enjoying the festival under the amazing purple flowering trees
The night turned out to be quite cold and we waited till most people had left before packing up and leaving. We returned the next day to visit the main weekly market and set the stall up again for a few hours at the festival.

Our stall at the festival
The weekend was a success and we managed to raise a few hundred dollars, together with the money we earned on the nursery, for Bookaid.
Thank you to the committee for granting us a free position and to Erwin for lending us the display equipment. Thank you also to those who donated food to us!
This amazing lady in pink was collecting for breast cancer on her trike. Well done!
We also visited the giant curtained fig tree.
This world famous fig tree is of the species Ficus virens, it is a strangler fig tree with its curtain of aerial roots dropping 15 metres (49 feet) to the ground.