By Tania Phillips
It may only be early December, but the Stanthorpe and Granite Belt Chamber of Commerce is already caught up in Christmas spirit.
Chamber president Graham Parker said they were bringing the town together to shop, meet up and enjoy the season.
“We have been doing a Christmas market or promotion for quite a few years and the intent is to try and get people to shop locally, spend their money in town with the retailers we have here,” he said.
“We have more than our fair share of amazing people (and retailers).”
And they have had a head start on the Christmas spirit.
“We basically start from the first week in November and at the end of every week we have a draw,” Graham said.
“So, people who go and buy items from one of the retailers in town or even the shops out of town from Wallangarra to Dalveen. If you’ve got a receipt from a shop, you can come and put it into one of the many entry boxes we’ve got dotted throughout the main street of town. Write your phone number and your name on the back of it and we draw that every Friday. Each week it’s some “Why Leave Town” gift cards and as we get closer to Christmas the amount goes up.”
And as in previous years it will all culminate in a free Magical Community Christmas Market on Thursday 21 December from 4pm on the Stanthorpe CBD Footpath.
“In the week leading up to it we’re doing Santa photos as well,” Graham explained.
“Those Santa photos can be booked through Gracious Giving in town. We have the Santa photos and then there are a whole series of events for the market day. There will be lots of market stalls and this year we are doing a sort of a treasure hunt.
“We have a whole pile of different items that will be in shop windows and the kids will have to go and find all those items. Whatever the item is that is listed they must find it and write what shop it is in. We’ve got that and we’re going to have badge making – little button badges for the kids and there’s face painting.”
The whole thing will culminate in a laser light show.
“The market day on the twenty first basically becomes the finale of the Christmas events for November-December,” he said.
The event will include a chance to vote for your favourite decorated shop, decorated hat competitions, roving entertainment, live music, more than 40 market stalls, the Farmer’s Doughnuts, the ever-popular Rotary ham wheel, a chance to get your Lions Christmas cakes, a sausage sizzle, She Hive Ladies Hot Dog Stall and the laser light show.
There will also be a giving tree this year.
“For the people who are members of the Chamber we’ve given them the opportunity to invoice the chamber for $50 and to provide us with an item we can use as a prize or we will be gifting those items to needy families,” Graham said.
“That’s what Stanthorpe is about. It’s about everybody chipping in and doing that little bit. If we all do that little bit and we get very good outcomes. The breadth of businesses around here never ceases to amaze me.”
The Christmas event is just one of a number of things the Chamber has been doing this year.
Graham said the chamber was going well and had new members on the executive.
“Our chamber over the past few years has been very, very focused on bringing Emu Swamp
Dam and that’s been a very big priority for several years but now that’s out of our hands and back in the hands of the Government we will let them do their thing and we will go back to focussing on what we as a chamber need to do,” he said.
“And it’s not just events like this, last year we put on a series of workshops which were very very well received so we are planning on doing some more of those in the same vein in the new year. Again, it’s all of those things. We spent a long time and a chunk of money revisiting the Chamber’s strategic plan a couple of years ago and that gave us a good focus and direction on what our membership wanted and again that’s what we are focussing on this year. And we are getting back into the pre-covid networking meetings.
“We used to have regular networking meetings, but when Covid came that got knocked on the head.
“It’s about getting back into the swing of those things and then organising interesting speakers.”
He said in his time with the chamber he had tried to prioritize working together as a community.
“We actually do a thing with the council every three months called the Granite Belt Alliance,” Graham said.
“It’s a working group between the Chamber of Commerce, Granite Belt Wine and Tourism, representation from the festivals, the sports association, one of the environmental groups, the arts group. There are quite a few of us, we get together every three months and discuss what each group is doing and then the council update us on what they’re doing. We try and find where we’ve got commonality of objectives so we can better together.”
He said from a chamber perspective it was all about the broader community not just their members.
“That’s what I’m passionate about – it doesn’t just have to be our members, we are here for the broader business community as well, whether they are chamber members or not.” Graham said.
He said Christmas Markets were a chance for the whole community to get together and have fun.
