General News
10 April, 2026
Charity carnival draws crowds
Brief downpour over the Easter weekend couldn’t dampen the country spirit of this year’s Rheola Charity Carnival.
While it will take the committee months to finalise the day’s entire fundraising, $19,103.80 has already been counted from gate entry alone.
Despite a wet start to Easter Monday, Rheola Charity Carnival committee member Julie Piening was blown away by the number of visitors who arrived with the morning sun.
“From my standing point, it looked bigger than last year... that number may not always be accurate of how many people went through the gate, sometimes a lot of people will throw a donation in when they enter,” she said.
“But I felt there was a bigger crowd than last year, it was good the events were spread out across the grounds.”
The day welcomed the return of the popular sheep dog trials, 19 tractor pulls, race entrants from as far as Swan Hill, Melbourne and Perth, and novelty events including a mystery wine table and sheaf tossing.
However, these events were unmatched to the day’s highlight, a chance for visitors to hold a real gold nugget, found locally and featured on Aussie Gold Hunters.
“We had guess the weight of the gold nugget, and that was really, really, really popular. I was blown away by it, we had people coming up asking ‘when is it going to start?” or “when is it happening?’,” Ms Piening said.
With over 100 entries, guesses varied from 52 to 700 grams, with many of the entries coming extremely close.
However, the winning guess was 152 grams, just half a gram away from the nugget’s actual weight of 152.5 grams, a guess made by a Wedderburn resident who grew up in Rheola.
“But there was someone guessing who was from Perth, that is a fair way to come. There were a few from Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland. There were people from all over Australia, so not just local people,” Ms Piening said.
She said this year’s event was made possible by a group of enthusiastic volunteers who pitched in for hours on end.
“I would just like to give a shout out to our volunteers. I felt this year, more people stepped up and helped out who were the friendliest, awesome-ist, nothing-was-an-issue, group of volunteers. I just loved the enthusiasm. They made my life much easier and we could not hold the event without them,” Ms Piening said.