Worth the Wait

The Hunter Coal Festival has been postponed until next year due to concerns about the ongoing Covid-19 situation.

Organised by the Singleton Business Chamber, the festival was scheduled for October/November this year but will now be held in October 2022.

Singleton Business Chamber Sue Gilroy said the decision to postpone the festival again was difficult but necessary.

“We are sorry to have to postpone the events again but after much consultation with sponsors and other partners, we decided the safest course of action is to delay the festival events until the Covid situation is under better control,” Ms Gilroy said.

“The current unpredictable Covid situation posed a very real risk to the events. Future snap lockdowns could have forced cancellation weeks or days before the events were to take place.

“Even before the current Hunter lockdown, Covid regulations in place would have also greatly limited the scope of festival events.”

Organisers also opted to move the festival to October instead of early 2022 to give more time for Covid mitigation measures to be put in place to allow a bigger and better festival.

“Essentially, we decided it was better to be ‘safe than sorry again’,” Ms Gilroy said.

“Planning and organistion for the festival was well underway but all of the plans are transferrable to 2022,” Ms Gilroy said. “And we will continue to work to make the 2022 festival bigger and better than ever.” 

Ms Gilroy said the festival’s sponsors and partners had been very supportive of the decision to postpone and had pledged their on-going support.

“We are very fortunate to have fantastic support from our sponsors and we are very grateful,” she said. “We are very much looking forward to celebrating with sponsors, partners and the community in 2022.”