ABASA Autumn events 2012

2012 Stirling Autumn Garden Festival

We have had two major events in the months of April and May. Firstly, at the end of April we had the Stirling Autumn Garden Festival, and then in May we had the Gumeracha Medieval fair.

The Garden Festival was a well planned event on the organizers side of things and we managed quite well, except for a couple of niggles concerning power, space and fire permits.

We were a little unprepared with our advertising and information literature. It all disappeared in a couple of hours. There was probably 30,000 people passing through during the day and we all pulled a few shifts forging and demonstrating our skills. We had a heap of questions and advice thrown at us and we gave out the best we could. Next year, we plan on attending again and we will be better prepared.

Our table of wares was well set up but we will need the members to all pull the stops out and generate some ironwork and thus we will have a greater range of gear for the public to buy. Our current need for finances for the shed is our main priority at the moment, and I hope we have a shed built by next April and then we can hopefully fund a concrete floor and other basics,to get us into a full on professional looking outfit.




Thanks go out to Des Mumme, Kirstie Stewart, Brain Dreyer, Matthew Carr, John Such, Phillip Allen and my own lovely, Jeanette, for womanning the tables and forges from the break of dawn to the end of the day. Thanks also to Andrew and Tricia Hood of FARMWELD for getting us into the show and helping us along through the paperwork process. I should also thank the CFS commander for getting us a fire permit in good time.
I thought we had a fair bit of gear to shuffle around until I saw what Andrew had to set up. Hopefully, they will get a bit of work out of the fair and I hope we get some response through membership and commissions for our own efforts.

2012 Gumeracha Medieval Fair

While we didn't attend with a stall and forging camp, we did get a few ideas about how to set up a forge for next year, if only to put ourselves out to the public eye. We went up on the Sunday and enjoyed a full day of action eating , drinking and being merry( I won't say gay). There was a nice selection of alcoholic bevies and great food, as usual. Don't miss out on this event next year whatever you do.


ABASA member, Andy Hartup, comes down from Whyalla each year and has a successful setup making knives and tools reminiscent of the days of old. A couple of our members were helping Andy out from time to time. The atmosphere is fantastic up there with more people in period costumes than ever before. The crowds were double from last year and I look forward to seeing the organizers report on the weekends activities.
Anyway, we have plenty of intel on these events for next year and I'm looking forward to it already.