A festival celebrating melons may not sound all that exciting. But the Chinchilla Melon Festival happens in Australia, so right there you know it’s going to be a little bit weirder than your run-of-the-mill food bash. Chinchilla is the name of the town in Queensland where the event takes place, and because we know you were wondering, it has nothing to do with the delightfully snuggly South American rodent. The reason this town of only around seven thousand people celebrates the glory of all things melon is because it’s where the first commercially grown specimen of that vegetable (yes, it’s a vegetable) was successfully produced in the nation back in the 1950s.
The thing that sets Chinchilla’s festival apart from similar expositions, the kinds that merely present attendees with various dishes and send you home bloated and broke, is the creativity (and total disregard for cleanliness) on display. At this celebration you don’t just eat melons; you also get the opportunity to throw them, race with them, spit their seeds (also known as pips) for distance, and even ski across their pulpy innards. It’s a nice combination of face-stuffing and cardio. It also is only held once every two years, which should give you plenty of time to get your melon-shaped body in shape for the next one.
Better Bring Some Antivenom Just in Case
Gliding across a parking lot filled with melon guts isn’t the only way to enjoy winter sports in Australia. There are places to visit if you don’t have the urge to strap on a pair of skis. Ben Lomond, Tasmania, may not compare with Banff or Sugarloaf, but where else can you go if you want to snowboard down a frozen hill in July? And be relatively free from the threat of deadly poisonous jellyfish, snakes, spiders, crocodiles (and God knows what else) to boot?
Chinchilla has good reason to be grateful for melons (watermelons, specifically). Recognized as Australia’s “melon capital,” the region now grows 25 percent of all watermelons in the country, bringing prosperity to the local farmers and everyone else in the vicinity. The February festival began in 1994, when a drought was ravaging the region, and it helped the people to withstand the economic downturn when they shifted their efforts temporarily toward tourism. The sloppy fun now lasts an entire week, and attendance has grown exponentially in the decades since its beginning. People from all over the country (and the world) show up to take part in wild and crazy events.
If you’re still on the fence about whether you should cancel all other plans in February in order to take part in the next Chinchilla Melon Festival, here are some of the events that we didn’t mention that you’ll be sad you missed out on:
• A melon chariot race, where people construct vehicles out of cardboard packing cartons and pallets, then complete a lap on a course littered with melon rinds without falling off.
• A melon ironman/woman competition, wherein hardy competitors complete grueling challenges and overcome obstacles while holding a melon (which must remain intact).
• The melon bungy, where youngsters attached to elastic ropes pull against one another on a melon-coated mat in an attempt to reach (you guessed it) a melon.
Oh, and there was also a melon rodeo, a melon chef, a melon street parade, and a melon beach party. Also a number of vendors selling all manner of melon-themed apparel. Plus an appearance by “Australia’s Top Poet” Gary Fogarty. Who, we have to assume, made up a bunch of rhymes about melons.
Speed Humps
Now that you’re good and sticky from wallowing in smashed watermelons, it’s time to get nice and stinky. That shouldn’t be hard to accomplish at the Uluru Camel Cup, an annual race held in the Northern Territory of Central Australia. An Outback location sacred to the Aborigines, it’s also home to the world’s largest number of feral camels (you’d assume they’re much more eager to spit on your face than the domesticated versions). The first Uluru Camel Cup was held in 2012 on a Wednesday. Because Wednesday is Hump Day. Get it? Anyway, it was a big success and because we know you won’t be able to sleep tonight without knowing, the winning camel was named Lazy Dazy.
The nearest big city to Chinchilla is Brisbane, which is just three and a half hours away by car in case you don’t want to stay in a campground surrounded by the stench of rotting produce. It’s also within driving distance of the famed Gold Coast and just two hours away from Toowoomba (if you want to send your friends interesting postcards). There’s even a small airfield available for the courageous. Charter flights are available if you’re game for landing on a grass strip that may or may not be infested with aggressive marsupials.
