And that's a wrap for our very first-ever "Townsville Rotary Market Initiative" NQ Field Days.

This is the 1st year the Combined Rotary Clubs have joined to present the NQ Rotary Field Days.

 It has taken 2 years of planning to resurrect this event, which last ran 8 years ago at the Stuart Prison Farm, now owned by Lendlease.

The Townsville City Council were very keen to see it back on the events calendar, as they felt it bought many visitors to our region.

They approached our Rotary Clubs through the Rotary Markets Office, knowing their ability to run successful markets at the Strand & the Willows, to see if we would be interested in taking it on.

The 1st attempt in 2021 was cancelled due to the Covid lock down. A set back at the time but which gave us an extra year to plan & build interest.

Our own Rotary Club of Townsville used the Field Day to launch the 2022 Community Chest Car Art union. Art Union promoter, Gurmit Singh, organized a roster to cover both days with Members selling 341 Tickets at $5 each & raising a total of $1705.00.

Thank you to all our Members who took time out to assist. It was a great result considering the location of our site, which didn’t get the foot traffic that other rows got.

We also thank those Club Members who volunteered to work on site over the 5 days from set up through to pull down of the event. These shifts will be paid at $30 per hour worked to our club, and to all other volunteers from other clubs as well.

The Field Day Board is still wrapping up the event at this stage & we don’t know how successful financially it has been. However, judging by the comments from the crowd, I feel we have created the basics to grow into a much larger event in years to come.

Thank you again to all those Members and Clubs who participated.

Geoff Gelling & Gurmit Singh