Wunta Fiesta cancelled in 2023 due to dwindling committee member numbers

An event spokeswoman said dwindling numbers of volunteer committee members was behind the decision.

"It's no secret that the past few years have made a huge impact on people's lives, and the Wunta committee members have not been immune to this," the spokeswoman said.

"We had a very small committee already and due to other commitments, health and personal reasons, multiple members and volunteers have had to make the hard decision to step away from Wunta, which has therefore resulted in the committee purely not having the 'manpower' to run the event this February.

"The few remaining members are in the process of recruiting new members/volunteers with the intention of re-launching a new and exciting Wunta for either later in 2023 or early 2024."

It's the third consecutive year the event hasn't run. It was cancelled in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and then last year organisers had to pull the pin due to fears over the growing number of COVID-19 cases.

At that time, an event spokeswoman said no one wanted the event to come to an end.

"We've already had to cancel last year. We don't really want to say we're cancelling. We still want to stay positive that at some point we can do something," she said.

"None of us want to see Wunta fade away. We still want to keep the Wunta banner flying."

The year prior to that the popular jazz in the gardens was cancelled due to poor weather.

The event is traditionally held over three days, but there were plans for it to be scaled back to two days in 2022.

The spokeswoman urged people wanting to get involved to visit the Wunta Facebook page or website.

The long-running community event has drawn large crowds at jazz in the gardens and Sunday live music at Lake Pertobe over the years/

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