General News
18 March, 2025
Booktown festival this weekend
Books are just the beginning of the story this weekend at Clunes’ annual Booktown Festival.
Now in its 19th year, Clunes Booktown Festival is taking the broad theme of cover to cover to highlight the strengths of Clunes and its local community.
The festival has changed a lot since it began in 2007 when a small group of people had a vision which, according to festival director Suzi Cordell, put the town on the map.
“It only ran for a day back then, and over the years it’s morphed and changed in different ways,” she said.
Since then its grown into a mix of author talks and workshops from new and familiar faces.
Among them is TV presenter Costa Georgiadis who’s coming to Clunes to celebrate his children’s book Costa’s Garden: Flowers. He’ll be making some young readers into green thumbs when they make wreaths and posies from flowers donated by the local community.
Although this just scratches the surface traders and their books remain the heart of the festival. Clunes’ streets will be lined with hundreds of traders with thousands of books for those interested in the new, old, and collectible.
But for Ms Cordell, this year also meant a return to putting locals and the community at the heart of the event.
“Clunes itself has an amazing story to tell,” she said.
From a showing of Mad Max where it was partially filmed, to locals scattered throughout the program, the historic gold mining town has something for everyone.
Program manager Angela Crocombe said locals are all throughout the book festival.
“We’re always thinking about Clunes as a town, and what’s best for the town, and keeping people in the town happy,” she said.
Locals are in the programming, to production, not to mention the hundreds of volunteers that make the event possible.
“I’ve been involved peripherally, but this is my first time behind the scenes, and it’s just extraordinary the amount of work that goes on … It’s just mind blowing,” Ms Crocombe said.
It’s that effort which transforms Clunes into a festival of stories for the 10 to 12 thousand attendees Ms Cordell predicts.
“We want people to come into Clunes on the weekend and have it seamless. We don’t want them to see that it’s been a whole lot of work,” she said.
Because in the end it’s not about the work that went into it, but the books and Clunes’ community. It’s for people like one woman in her mid-90s, returning to defend her title in the poetry slam.
Set for March 22 to 23, entry is free for children and locals. For those 16 and over a two day pass is $10 which includes the weekend, all-day music, the hay bale maze and street performances.