By Mikayla van Loon
Christmas celebrations have returned to Mount Evelyn with the community inspired and focused event along the Warburton Rail Trail.
Discovery Church has once again put on the Mt Evelyn Christmas Trail for the community to enjoy free of charge, with prizes to be won from local businesses and a many number of activities for children, young and old, to enjoy.
One of the organisers Dan Hickingbotham said because the Trail event was so popular last year, the team, including Moriah Weston and Lissy Donovan, decided to go even bigger this year.
“The number one bit of feedback we received was that it was a really good community event and it was great to celebrate our local community,” Dan said.
“We decided this year, we really wanted that to be our focus for the year. So it’s really about how we can celebrate the community and Christmas in Mount Evelyn.”
Involving more local businesses to give away prizes and working in with the activities they were already doing for the festive season, Dan said it has become a lovely collaboration.
“It’s about coming for the trail and staying for all the other things and it’s really about highlighting all those cool, small town things that we’ve got in Mount Evelyn that we’re really blessed with out here.”
Expanding the offerings this year, Dan said aside from the Trail where people can scan a code at each station to enter the competition for daily prizes, there is a scavenger hunt, letters of hope and a directory of what is happening in Mount Evelyn.
“People can download a scavenger hunt off the internet or participate online and that takes people around Mount Evelyn, around the shops to get people, not necessarily on the trail, but more in amongst the shopping area.
“Then we’ve got letters of hope. So that is an installation on the trail in the centre of Mount Evelyn where people can come, have a look at the letter boxes, open the letterbox and take a letter out.
“The purpose of that is it’s just a place to come for the kids to take a letter or for anyone to take a letter, or give a letter, that can be an encouragement at Christmas, because we want it to be the idea of spreading hope and joy at Christmas.”
Students from Mount Evelyn Primary School and St Mary’s Catholic Primary School helped design the letterboxes, as well as writing letters to be placed in the boxes.
The directory shares what each store is doing in the town, like The Trail Cafe trading handmade Christmas decoration packs for treats or the Santa postbox at Nurture Tribe.
Being able to partner with Mount Evelyn Bendigo Bank and Professionals Real Estate this year, Dan said, was an incredible addition to the whole community effort.
Within the first week, Dan said the response had been incredibly positive with over 500 entries into the competitions already.
“The original concept of the Christmas Trail was to be a gift to our community and a gift to our traders.
“So we came up with the idea because we just came out of Covid and lockdowns and so we wanted to give a gift to our community, it’s all free and you can win vouchers, it’s a win win.”
The Christmas Trail started on 1 December and will run until 20 December. To find out more information or download some of the activities, go to www.christmastrail.com.au
