(L to R – Vicki, Amanda and Liz)
“ I was about 3 when we moved to Lismore. I went to Goonellabah Public, Kadina High and onto SCU so I’m well and truly local. Immediately after high school I was desperate to leave and see the city. I’ve lived in other cities but I’ve always come back. There’s always been something about this place that’s the heartland and it’s irreplaceable really.
After uni I did an internship at the QLD music festival which was my first job in events and marketing. I was working with Lyndon Terracini who was the creative director of NORPA. He was the creative director of both the QLD and the Brisbane festival at that time. Lyndon is such an incredible, creative, off the wall kind of human and such an amazing man to work with. That really opened my eyes and I loved it. I’d worked for years living in Melbourne and had 2 terrible jobs, one with insurance and one with Telstra. Both jobs I was on the phones and I couldn’t stand it. Coming back here to uni and getting a job like that with Lyndon was mind blowing. I realised that working with community, doing events, rallying people together is what I love to do.
My sister Jo is a Journalist with the ABC. She did lots of things before as well. She was training Journalists in East Timor then she ran a film festival there as well. Everyone knows Brendon, my brother from doing The Bentley Effect. He had worked on a number of films before too. He’s such a big hearted guy and so passionate about the community and the environment. We are all very close.
The first time I saw the Lantern Parade was in 1994 when I was in Year 12. I remember feeling the same kind of glee as I did when I was a kid and my brother taught me how to climb on the roof so we could see the fireworks all around us or reading the Enchanted Forest and the Faraway tree. It was that kind of magic that was being created in this place that I loved so much. It’s extra special this year because our sister city in Japan are coming over especially for the parade and bringing their own television crew.
It’s been my favourite night of the year ever since and then I found out that Oakes Oval was not available and they were going to lose ticket sales due to those renovations. This was on top of the impact of the flood and having to move and rebuild lanterns. A festival that’s run so close to the bone and run by the love of mostly volunteers, I thought, how will it sustain a blow like that? I didn’t want to see something else lost to the flood so I thought, I’m not having this and I contacted Jyllie. I asked her how many volunteers she usually has and she said about 6. That’s unbelievable because there are 20 to 30,000 people that line the streets on that evening.
I’ve been many times and wanted to donate but haven’t found anyone in the sea of people. Surely there would be 100 people who would come and do this so that was my aim, to create an army of bucketeers and the aim was to go for 100. We have 80 so there’s room for 20 more.
The theme of the whole parade this year is ‘Wonderland’. It could be any wonderland but these particular costumes for the bucketeers are based on Alice in Wonderland. It’s the queen of hearts card army so all the bucketeers will be wearing these fantastic cards with numbers and hearts and on the back is ‘please donate’ We are busy with just this week to go before the parade on Saturday. In terms of being a bucketeer I don’t think it will be a hard sell. We just want people to be joyful and make a bit of noise and get people to donate. If you want to be a bucketeer you can go to the Lantern Parade website and fill out a volunteer form.”
“ I was about 3 when we moved to Lismore. I went to Goonellabah Public, Kadina High and onto SCU so I’m well and truly local. Immediately after high school I was desperate to leave and see the city. I’ve lived in other cities but I’ve always come back. There’s always been something about this place that’s the heartland and it’s irreplaceable really.
After uni I did an internship at the QLD music festival which was my first job in events and marketing. I was working with Lyndon Terracini who was the creative director of NORPA. He was the creative director of both the QLD and the Brisbane festival at that time. Lyndon is such an incredible, creative, off the wall kind of human and such an amazing man to work with. That really opened my eyes and I loved it. I’d worked for years living in Melbourne and had 2 terrible jobs, one with insurance and one with Telstra. Both jobs I was on the phones and I couldn’t stand it. Coming back here to uni and getting a job like that with Lyndon was mind blowing. I realised that working with community, doing events, rallying people together is what I love to do.
My sister Jo is a Journalist with the ABC. She did lots of things before as well. She was training Journalists in East Timor then she ran a film festival there as well. Everyone knows Brendon, my brother from doing The Bentley Effect. He had worked on a number of films before too. He’s such a big hearted guy and so passionate about the community and the environment. We are all very close.
The first time I saw the Lantern Parade was in 1994 when I was in Year 12. I remember feeling the same kind of glee as I did when I was a kid and my brother taught me how to climb on the roof so we could see the fireworks all around us or reading the Enchanted Forest and the Faraway tree. It was that kind of magic that was being created in this place that I loved so much. It’s extra special this year because our sister city in Japan are coming over especially for the parade and bringing their own television crew.
It’s been my favourite night of the year ever since and then I found out that Oakes Oval was not available and they were going to lose ticket sales due to those renovations. This was on top of the impact of the flood and having to move and rebuild lanterns. A festival that’s run so close to the bone and run by the love of mostly volunteers, I thought, how will it sustain a blow like that? I didn’t want to see something else lost to the flood so I thought, I’m not having this and I contacted Jyllie. I asked her how many volunteers she usually has and she said about 6. That’s unbelievable because there are 20 to 30,000 people that line the streets on that evening.
I’ve been many times and wanted to donate but haven’t found anyone in the sea of people. Surely there would be 100 people who would come and do this so that was my aim, to create an army of bucketeers and the aim was to go for 100. We have 80 so there’s room for 20 more.
The theme of the whole parade this year is ‘Wonderland’. It could be any wonderland but these particular costumes for the bucketeers are based on Alice in Wonderland. It’s the queen of hearts card army so all the bucketeers will be wearing these fantastic cards with numbers and hearts and on the back is ‘please donate’ We are busy with just this week to go before the parade on Saturday. In terms of being a bucketeer I don’t think it will be a hard sell. We just want people to be joyful and make a bit of noise and get people to donate. If you want to be a bucketeer you can go to the Lantern Parade website and fill out a volunteer form.”