The History of CountryLink Parkes Elvis Holiday
The first CountryLink Parkes holiday was held on January 1993 in the town of Parkes, Central New South Wales. It is found 365 Kilometers west of Sydney, Australia. Plenty of the 11,000 towns folks are passionate about Elvis Presley but one man in particular is extremely passionate about Elvis.
He was fascinated with the King when he was only 5 years old, after watching’Love Me Tender’ staring Elvis, that was in 1959. He started his Elvis memorabilia collection at this age. But when he turned 16, he became even more keen about Elvis. In 1997, Neville and his better half Debbie made the trip to ‘Graceland’ the famous home of Elvis in Tennessee, USA, they returned home with six suitcases of mementos and Neville ‘deed polled’ his legal name to ‘Elvis’ with his mother’s permission.
Neville and Debbie have a room in their place about the size of a garage that’s set up with nothing but Elvis mementos. Every year in the CountryLink Parkes holiday, the room is open to the general public to view all of the entrancing items he has picked up.
The month of Jan was picked for this holiday because it would coincide with Elvis’ birthday of Jan 8th, and because it was actually the slow tourism time for the town.
the first year the holiday was given, it only lasted one night and over a couple of hundred folks attended. In the 10 years that followed, a few more events had been added and a couple of hundred people attended every year.
In 2004 and 2005, some new committee members stepped in and had new visions and ideas. Now it has grown to 8,000 folk in 2008 that participated in the festival and more than 8,000 attended in 2009. The festival has grown in many ways, now the holiday starts on Wed. and last thru sunday. The Festival has more than 120 individual events during those 5 days.
The event starts in Sydney on the CountryLink Elvis Express train that takes people to Parkes. They are serenaded by Elvis the whole train trip. Most of the major events are scheduled Thu. thru sunday, like the ‘Elvis Concert’ and the’Elvis Gospel Church Service’ and many more.
To keep your memory of the CountryLink Parkes Elvis holiday alive all year, there’s a special calendar you may purchase from www.festivalcalendar.com.au.
Check this out to find out more about Parkes Elvis Festival class and related topics. And we highly recommend this special calendar that comes in handy to keep your memories alive.
