Report - St Huberts Day Family BBQ
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ALSO SEE -
- IMAGE GALLERY - Photographs of the day
- MOVIE - Residents enjoying the day [BEWARE... an 11MB movie]
- MOVIE - Zorba’s Dance [BEWARE... a 6MB movie]
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After some weather scares courtesy of the Weather Bureau, the annual St Huberts Day Family BBQ was held at Long Arm Reserve on Sunday 1 November - and was it a major success!!
Although it really is just a good excuse to get all the residents of our wonderful community together, the BBQ is also a celebration of St Hubert’s Day, held on the closest Sunday each year to the actual Saint Hubert’s Day celebrated in France on the 6th of November. See more about St Hubert here.
This get-together originated in 1976 as a means of meeting, mixing with and enjoying the company of all Island residents. Initially a simple picnic day, in time it changed into a sausage sizzle organised and run by the Residents Association.
1976 also saw the first of the now traditional St Huberts Day Quiz. The lucky winner of the Quiz each year is awarded the "coveted" St Huberts Day Quiz Plaque - a beaten copper plaque with the raised representation of St Huberts Island on the front, and the names of the previous winners of the Quiz. The lucky winner also gets to create the Quiz questions for the next year’s Quiz.
This year’s BBQ was a delightfully large and successful event. A quick and rough head-count when the sausages were sizzling, suggested there were about 200 Islanders and their families enjoying the delectable Edwards' sausages and onions sautéed in Wellington's brown sugar with Coopers Pale Ale. In fact it was a little too successful - we ran out of sausages and bread, and had to send out for emergency supplies to continue feeding the hoards. This will not happen again now we know how well the changed format for the day was well received. Shade was also at a premium at the BBQ. The Council had just removed two large trees from the Reserve, so residents spread out and grouped around what tree shade there was, or brought their own shade.
This year we wanted our annual BBQ to be more of a family day. The children/grand children/great grand children were wowed by a magic show, had their faces painted - some gruesome others beautiful - and after the final magic trick, descended on the “magic” smarties. The kids were having so much fun, the kid’s entertainers stayed an extra half-hour. When the kids weren’t being entertained they were on the beach - yes… the tides worked for us this day, and we had a beautiful beach for the kids to play on and in the water, with no shortage of parental “life-guards” watching over them. See a video of the bustling Reserve here.
Meanwhile, the grownups were being entertained by the singing duo - the “KAVAMALT DUO - A MUSICAL EXPERIENCE”. New to the Island, the couple offered their services freely, and were much appreciated and impressive. They also were asked to stay back as they were packing up - a request for Zorba’s Dance resulted in an impromptu dance which was captured on video. See it here.
So… summing up, it was a day of beautiful sunshine, lots of buzz, conversation, play and hubbub, plenty of eating (and drink!) and very contented and tired families wending their way home at the end of the day.
There is a gallery of photos taken during the day, and (to really show what the day was like) two videos to view.