MacAulay Members In Strong FORCE At The Australian Celtic Festival 2025

Australian Celtic Festival 2025

There is something about a Celtic Festival in a town with the name of Glen Innes on the northern tablelands of New South Wales in Australia. Surrounded by towns, villages and localities with names like Glencoe, Llangothlin and Ben Lomond, it was the perfect place, set amongst the gum trees and standing stones, to enjoy the 2025 Australian Celtic Festival on 3-4 May. This year it was the year of Wales, Cornwall and Bretagne.

Clan MacAulay once again had a tent, manned by Geoff Derrick, Lyn Worsnop and Kate and Robert Macauley, at the festival, and enjoyed a weekend fielding questions from people enquiring in general about their Scottish and Irish heritage. MacAulays are hard to come by at Australian festivals but we managed to find a couple more this time and encouraged them to join the Clan MacAulay Association!

Away from the clan tents there was never a dull moment with Scottish/Irish/Celtic dance competitions, pipe band competitions in the middle of the standing stones, jousting, heavy games for the diehard enthusiasts, a medieval village and all types of stalls.

We have been watching the Jacaranda Highland Dancers here for four years and, to assist six of them to get to the dance competitions in Scotland in August, Clan Macaulay in Australia made a donation which was warmly received. It was a pleasure to assist such a lovely group of polite and courteous young people with a passion for Scottish dancing.

A feature of the ACF is the Saturday morning parade up and down the main street of Glen Innes and past the town hall where the announcer introduced our Clan with a ringing “DANGER IS SWEET!!”.

Next year, 2026, is the year of Scotland and that promises to be exciting. Everyone is welcome to the ACF but it is so popular all town accommodation gets booked out early. Glen Innes is only about 600km from Sydney and 400km from Brisbane.