QLD: Overseas media for croc festival

AAP General News (Australia)
08-02-2000
QLD: Overseas media for croc festival

BRISBANE, Aug 2 AAP - Remote Australia will get international publicity when overseas
media here for the Sydney Olympics visit the Croc Eisteddford Festival in Weipa.

"At least twenty media from Europe, the US and Japan have signified their intention
to attend," a spokesman for the organisers said today.

The Croc Eisteddford Festival returns to the remote bauxite town in far north-west
Queensland this year after starting there in 1997, then moving to outback New South Wales
and Northern Territory centres the following years.

Peter Sjoquist, executive producer of the three-day festival from August 15, said previous
festivals had been attended by Prime Minister John Howard, a number of federal cabinet
ministers and parliamentarians and had won the strong support of premiers Bob Carr and
Peter Beattie.

This year, more than 500 performers from 28 schools across Cape York Peninsula and
the Torres Strait will perform.

"But it's more than song and dance. We have sporting clinics, and career and health
expos and all with the 100 per cent In Control, alcohol and drug free message," Mr Sjoquist
said.

"It's no wonder everyone from the PM to the Cape York Land Council and local Aboriginal
elders agree the festival is a unique event in Australia," he said.

AAP geb/jhm/bdm

KEYWORD: FESTIVAL

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