OFF WITH A BANG: The Central Western Daily received an overwhelming positive response to the New Year’s Eve event held at Waratah sportsground. Photo: JUDE KEOGH 1231nye26
THE New Year’s Eve event at Waratah sportsground was a huge success according to two families that attended the party.
Now in its second year the family-friendly McCormack Barber Party Under the Stars kicked off at 4pm with music, games, food stalls, live bands and fireworks.
First-timer to the event Karelle Taylor brought along her husband, two children and a friend and said she thoroughly enjoyed it.
“I loved it, I was impressed with how calm, happy and well arranged it was,” she said.
“It was more relaxed than I thought it would be.
“I’m impressed with how organised it was with the police and SES getting everyone out.”
Sandro Tranfaglia, who was also there with his family, said he hadn’t “seen anything like that in years”.
“It was very well organised and a great atmosphere,” he said.
Mr Tranfaglia said it was good for the community to have an event like this and said the traffic problems that plagued visitors exiting the event in 2011 were not repeated in 2012.
“We stayed til the end and when we left it was 10.30pm and we were straight out,” he said.
“I hope it continues and gets bigger and bigger next year.”
Event organiser Peter McCormack said despite a few technical issues with the fireworks’ soundtrack at the beginning of the display, the event went off without a hitch.
“It was really, really good, the support from the community,” he said.
Thankful the traffic issues were sorted for the night, Mr McCormack said many appeared to have taken organisers’ advice to walk to the event.
“A lot of people walked from home but we had a third of the cars compared to last year,” he said.
Mr McCormack hoped to raise around $5000 from gold coin donations on the night to go towards the maternity unit at Orange hospital.