After five days and more than 120 events at Parkes, Elvis has left the building and certainly left it all shook up!
Located in the central west of New South Wales, Parkes Shire holds the CountryLink Parkes Elvis Festival in January each year.
2009 marked the 17th year of the event, and saw it break record crowds with an estimated 9,500 visitors – quite significant given Parkes’ population of 11,000.
The event is estimated to have injected well over $3.6 million into the local economy, with the surrounding region also benefiting from accommodating the overflow of visitors.
During the festival, visitors and locals lined the main street of Parkes for the Elvis Street Parade, which was followed by the inaugural ‘Cars of the Era’ show.
An Elvis Gospel Church Service also proved a popular event, with an audience of over 2,500 turning out to enjoy Elvis’ first love – gospel music.
Professional Elvis Tribute Artists wowed audiences in clubs and pubs across the town, while amateur Elvises entertained crowds at the festival’s outdoor venue in Cooke Park, along with the many buskers that lined the streets.
The CountryLink Elvis Express Train’s arrival in Parkes on Friday afternoon saw 380 Sydney visitors disembark to a platform full of Elvises and welcoming local Parkes residents.
This year’s train stayed an additional night in Parkes, departing Monday morning instead of Sunday lunchtime, resulting in an additional 380 bed nights.
Parkes Shire Tourism Manager, Kelly Hendry, said the 2010 festival is expected to attract even bigger crowds.
“While having been staged for 17 years, it’s been the last six to seven years that the festival has really boomed and risen to its current level of success,” she said. “This sudden growth continues to generate new challenges and issues for the committee and all involved.
“The event really is quite complex. It involves many aspects, including over 120 individual events, and complicated logistics, such as transport, road closures, security and generating additional accommodation.”
With local accommodation always booking out well ahead of the festival, the festival committee has become creative in the development of new accommodation options.
This year, the ‘Gracelands on the Green’ Tent City sported 110 tents, while the local showground was filled by caravans, motorhomes, campervans and tents. 1,000 additional bed nights were also created through the Home Hosting program, with over 90 homes participating. Other visitors chose to stay in surrounding towns and travel in to Parkes each day.
“So many other towns and festival organisers want to know what Parkes’ secret is, and how to make their event as successful as Elvis has become for us,” Kelly Hendry said. “There is no straightforward answer. We knew that the Elvis Festival had the potential to attract more people, given the interest in this icon.
“Not every event can grow to be as successful as Elvis, you have got to have something unique and quirky to start with. Once you’ve got that, you have to have a strong, passionate and motivated committee to make it work, and ideas and vision on how to grow. Then you need to sell your vision to sponsors, as sponsorship really enables events to reach their goals. Of course the support of Parkes Shire Council has also really helped.”
Festival Coordinator, Ellie Ruffoni, said a volunteer committee of around 20 people work year round to organise the overall event.
“Without them the festival would never get off the ground,” she said.
The next CountryLink Parkes Elvis Festival will be held from 6 to 10 January 2010.
For further information contact Kelly Hendry on (02) 6863 8860.
