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Merbein savours a ‘slice’ of event success

Posted on November 4, 2011

By BEN PISCIONERI

AFTER 14 years in Ouyen, the Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph will move to Merbein next year, and residents are pinning their hopes on it becoming the town’s biggest economic and community driver.

GOOD TASTE: Merbein Development Association president Raywin Jamieson and Mildura Rural City Councillor Mark Eckel celebrate Merbein’s successful application to host the Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph.

Merbein beat 10 other towns for the right to take over the event after Ouyen organisers declared earlier this year it was time for change.

Merbein Development Association president, Raywin Jamieson, said the township has been looking for its own iconic event for years.

“Merbein has actually been looking for the last few years for a signature event that they could call their own, and we’ve thrown around a lot of ideas,” Ms Jamieson said.

She said when the opportunity to vie for the Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph came up, the town saw it as an opportunity too good to ignore.

“This was a way of picking up an event. Ouyen was a small town in the same situation as Merbein and we thought, come on let’s just go for it.”

A public meeting was held in Merbein to gauge the community’s thoughts and there was resounding support for the move, leading to the town’s successful expression of interest to host the event.

Mildura Rural City Councillor Mark Eckel said he was pleased to see the event remain in the Mallee.

“Obviously, being connected to the Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph as the Events portfolio councillor for 10 years, I was pretty motivated to make sure that we jumped on the issue straight away to make sure we held it somewhere in the district,” Cr Eckel said this week.

“Mainly because of the interest that was shown in the event straight away after the national media heard that Ouyen was giving up the opportunity to hold it.”

Cr Eckel said Merbein has close and important links to the district’s formative years, and a plethora of tourism attractions.

He said an event the size of the Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph will bring those tourist attractions to the attention of a potentially massive market.

“When word gets out that the Vanilla Slice Triumph is in Merbein, it’s going to have a ripple effect from a marketing perspective and that will generate a lot of interest in Merbein,” Cr Eckel said.

While pleased to see the event remain in the district, and for Merbein to take over the initiative, Cr Eckel stressed the need for succession planning.

“Ouyen obviously never had that in place, because the people that did the work there, when they stood down, there was no-one to take it up,” he said.

“So what I would impress upon Merbein at the very start is to get young people involved, because they have young ideas and you’ve got a very proactive community here at Merbein.”

Ms Jamieson said while the town was still celebrating its success in attracting the event, there were already plans to ‘tweak’ what has already been a successful formula.

“It will be something that Merbein will do differently than Ouyen, no doubt,” she said.

“We’ll follow a bit of their format, but we’re bandying around the idea of having stalls there as well – our Merbein street markets have been very successful, so we’re hoping to incorporate that into the day.

“It will also be run on a Saturday, as that’s the day the bike (Tour of the Murray cycling race) race normally runs through Merbein.”

Ms Jamieson said while still very early in the planning stages, it’s envisaged the event would be held in Railway Avenue rather than Merbein’s main street – Chaffey Avenue – as Chaffey Avenue will be in use by cyclists in the Tour of the Murray.

She said there were already moves to ensure younger people were involved, including Merbein students studying university courses that could prove useful in running such a large event.

Ms Jamieson said she also hoped the event would be embraced by neighbouring communities including Mildura and Irymple, given it would now be much closer.

Cr Eckel estimated the event weekend would directly inject about $300,000 into the Merbein township.

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