The National Barbeque Championships held in Forbes on Saturday 17th October were hailed a huge success according to committee President and Forbes Councillor, Chris Roylance.

Sixteen teams donned their aprons and tongs to compete for the coveted trophy with the overall winners, Melbourne based team “Natural Born Grillers”. The Melbourne duo of Pan Van Duinen and Andrew Kavanagh were inspired to enter the event when members of the National Barbeque committee attended the Barbeque Festival in Melbourne earlier this year. The pair were very excited with the win and plan to return next year to defend their title.

Many of the teams competing on the day were locals and really got into the spirit with inventive team names, uniforms and decorated workstations. Peter Ashcroft, local chef and regular judge for the championships was impressed with the standard of meats presented for judging. “There has definitely been an improvement over the years, and the variety of flavours experienced this year was exceptional”.

Each team had to prepare and present four different cuts of meat by specific times and winners of each category were spread across many teams. The overall winner was determined after the Last category was judged. The meat was supplied by Bernardi’s IGA and Peter was extremely impressed with the quality.

TV Chef and personality “Fast” Ed Halmagyi, certainly drew a crowd for his cooking demonstrations. “He was a real showman” Peter said and the crowd really enjoyed his simple instructions and his down to earth personality. Peter
liked the way Ed told the crowd there was no need to buy the most expensive ingredients, they just needed to be a good quality. Ed was very impressed with the event and plans to come back next year as a competitor.

The committee are meeting this week to commence preparations and confirm dates for the 2016 Event which they believe will be bigger and better than ever.

As the state-wide Cooee March approaches, towns and villages along the route are now finalising arrangements to welcome the marchers to their communities, commemorating all those who volunteered to service in WWI.

The Central Western portion of the march, the Boomerang March, is a unique part of the history of the region. The March was one of nine snowballing recruiting marches held throughout NSW in late 1915 and early 1916.

In this centenary year of the ANZAC, the 2015 Boomerang March aims to use this history of volunteering to focus on the present day volunteers who serve our communities – the Rural Fire Service, the State Emergency Service, Defence Reserves, the Country Women’s Association, Progress Associations, Rotary, Lions, Apex, sporting and special purpose committees.

“The energy and effort that local groups and individuals are putting into this commemoration continues to amaze me. Some of these communities are very small, yet they are embracing the March with open arms – very much in the spirit of volunteering that we are celebrating,” said March coordinator Kim Templeton.

The March will pass through Forbes, Eugowra, Gooloogong, Canowindra, Billimari, Cowra, Woodstock, Lyndhurst, Mandurama, Carcoar, Blayney, Newbridge and Perthville. The March will leave Parkes on Saturday 31 October and end in Bathurst on Tuesday 10 November where the Boomerangs meet up with the Kookaburra March coming
from Tooraweenah via Mudgee.

March organisers are looking for full-time or part-time marchers to represent their community in this unique opportunity to relive a special part of history. An Expression of Interest form is available on the Boomerang
website www.cooeemarch.org.au/boomerangs.