Punters at the entrance to St Anne’s Vineyards, one of the venues along the festival’s trail.
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If you’ve ever wanted to go along to Pop and Pour festival, this is your final chance.
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The celebration of local wine, beer, food and music has been a mainstay of the twin towns’ festival calendar for a decade, but with costs rising across the board, the team behind one of Moama’s busiest days has decided to go all out one last time.
“It’s a very bittersweet feeling,” festival director Jacqui Wegener said.
“Once we made the call, so many memories came flooding back.
“One of our daughters named the festival all those years ago and back then they were too young to help out on the day, now they’re running their own departments and working behind the bar.”
The festival is very much a family affair for the Wegeners, with an army of blood relatives and adopted relatives raring to make the final edition of Pop and Pour the best one yet.
Ms Wegener said the team would be pulling out all the stops for the event, set for later this month, boosting the roaming entertainment, adding Two Lads as a new venue on the trail, and partnering with several new businesses to increase food and beverage options on the day.
Scenes from last year's Pop and Pour.
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“I think around 80 per cent of our attendees are tourists,” she said.
“We really want to highlight all the incredible businesses and accommodation offerings our town has, and they’ve been brilliant in helping us make that happen.”
The American Hotel will be the festival’s unofficial hub for the weekend, hosting a ticket exchange on the Friday, the after-party on the Saturday, and a bottomless brunch for those with a bit of boogie still left in them by Sunday.
“So many incredible people are working so hard to make the day and the weekend more generally unforgettable,” Ms Wegener said.
“We’ve got roaming musicians and magicians, DJs at bus stops, and circus-themed VIP offerings at Three Black Sheep.
“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there’s really something for everyone.”
Ms Wegener wants to make sure the hard work of her crews doesn’t go unnoticed, from long-time graphic designer Jaynika Veitch to bus master Warren Dwyer of Dysons Transport and everyone in between.
Jacqui Wegener said it takes a village to make an event like Pop and Pour happen.
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“More than anything, I want to thank the people who’ve attended over the years,” Ms Wegener said.
“We’ve got a lot of guests who’ve returned every year since the beginning and without having them buy tickets, we wouldn’t have a festival to run.
“I just love the fact people love it, when we started all those years ago, it was ‘oh let’s try this concept’, and see how it goes and to see its growth year-on-year has been so rewarding.”
The festival’s organisers said the guests were the reason they kept turning up for the ‘hard slog’ of a day year after year.
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Though the decision to pull the pin wasn’t an easy one, the Wegeners knew it was the right call to make, refusing to sacrifice guest experience to keep ticket prices down.
Ms Wegener explained the end of the festival was a sign of the times, with Pop and Pour succumbing to the economic pressure which she’d seen affect so many other brilliant events of the past few years.
“I've seen festivals fall down time and time again over the last few years, and I just always thought it wouldn’t be us,” she said.
“But being a smaller-scale event with the cost of everything going up and up and up, here we are.
“We’ve got such a great reputation in the community, and we would hate to go backwards and offer less than what people expect for a higher price, so we’re going to go out on a high.”
She said she’d like the festival to return in a different form one day down the line, but for now, there’s only a single thing on her and the team’s mind ‒ giving guests and the festival itself the most fitting, memorable send-off they possibly can when late November rolls around.
To purchase tickets, find out more, or view the food, venue, and entertainment line-up, visit https://tinyurl.com/ys3pj5ja
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