Festival Previews Video Blog

Each year the Winter Festival of Lights takes place in Ontario at the magnificent Niagara Falls in Canada. The winter festival captures the warmth and magic of the holiday season and runs from 3^rd November to the 7^th January 2008. Spectacular fireworks are held nightly and burst into life over the

It’s summertime in New Zealand and it’s HOT!

Once again the peninsula town of Coromandel in the North Island plays host to the Pōhutukawa Festival which runs for two weeks at the start of summer, (this year its the 23rd November - 9th December). The festival is timed to coincide with the annual flowering of the Pōhutukawa trees and all proceeds from the festival go towards the conservation of these magnificent trees.

The Pōhutukawa tree is a hardy coastal tree known locally as “the New Zealand Christmas Tree”. Early Settlers apparently used these flaming red blossoms (made up of a mass of stamens) to decorate their homes at Christmas time.

This annual flowering celebration is a family event with barbecues, concerts, community coastal walks, music hall entertainment, art exhibitions, local crafters’ works, storytelling, poetry-reading, local food and wine, Santa parades, a golf tournament and glass bottom boat cruises to see all the flowering Pōhutukawa trees from the water.

Have a great festival!

Gummy Bins (and they look like gummy bears) are colourful bins for the public to safely and cleanly dispose of their gum. Each bin has a container unit that can hold up to 500 pieces of gum. Once full the gum can be recycled into useful products such as underlay for running tracks and drainage and construction material. How wonderful, check out their website!