Stanthorpe is set to roll the second big weekend of the 2020 Apple and Grape Harvest Festival.
It’s only held once every two years and this year’s festival is tipped to be as big a celebration as seen since the festival first started ‘crushing it’ in 1966, with organisers inviting visitors to ‘Holiday Here This Year’ on a trip to Queensland’s cool Granite Belt.
Known for its messy grape-stomping antics, the 2020 festival program delivers all the favourite harvest events: the fun of grape crushing; a hotly contested apple peeling competition; plus a longer 3-day Heritage Bank Food and Wine Fiesta on Friday 6 to Sunday 8 March. The Food and Wine Fiesta brings together the Granite Belt’s gourmet foods, award-winning wines and craft beer all to one location under the shady trees and picnic tables, all to the tunes of non-stop live entertainment.
Delivering even bigger this year on what has always been a family-friendly festival, there’s much excitement about a new Kids Zone adjoining the Heritage Bank Food and Wine Fiesta, located right next door within Weeroona Park with thanks to new support from Woolworths and the Foundation for Regional Renewal in Partnership with the Australian Government.
Festival entertainment and the party-filled atmosphere will spill out into the streets, on the big finale weekend 6 – 8 March. Crowds will gather for the Channel 7 Grand Parade and the Rebel Breeze FM Street Carnival, which will bring Australia’s #1 whip cracking entertainer, Nathan ‘Whippy’ Griggs’ and an explosive paint and light show to the streets with SoundStruck Percussion drumming.
A big line-up of live bands and an eclectic mix of buskers will fill the air through the finale weekend, though the most impressive musical spectacle belongs to the gathering of hundreds who will gather in brass bands, pipe bands and thunderous marching drum bands who hit the streets en-masse after the street parade on Saturday 7 March.
Festival highlights…
The second weekend (‘the big one’!) Friday 6 – Sunday 8 March
• Three days of food, wine and entertainment at the Heritage Bank Food & Wine Fiesta
• Saturday 7 March – Channel 7 Grand Parade; the very messy Queensland Grape Crush Championship!; Southern Downs Steam Warwick to Wallangarra steam train journey.
• Program and ticket information visit www.appleandgrape.org
