The Butterfly Festival Family Fun Day was held under overcast skies at the Euroa Arboretum on Saturday 22 November as part of the Strathbogie CMN Wild Strathbogie Festival. Seen in the Arb were a piano-playing platypus, an acrobatic wallaby and a joke-telling kookaburra (courtesy of the kids and their Puppet Theatre). But where were the hosts? There was not a butterfly to be seen!

Proceedings got underway with the Violet Town Primary School Puppet Theatre performing The Big Tree (pictured left). In the show, Australian animals competed in a talent contest…but the sly fox’s trick was to turn a lovable wombat puppet into blood and guts! The happy ending saw the nasty fox get trapped in a cage. All the adults and children alike loved it.

Not to be outdone, the puppets were followed by Carmelina the Connie (right) belting out a song to lament the demise of Melbourne’s tram conductors. I’m sure some of the audience were young enough not to even known what a conductor was. Carmelita continued to entertain throughout the day distributing swap cards featuring Australian fauna and sharing great stories about each of the animals.

For those young or young at heart, there were a variety of activities to try. Jen the Face-painter turned kids of all sizes into the garish and the gruesome. Rod the Kite-man showed us how to build simple kites, and fly them. Kids coloured in nylon butterfly kites, and Rod gave handy hints for how to fly them with almost no wind.

Over in the ‘Hilton’ marquee, Janet, Cathy, helpers and kids bashed bits of pipe of all sizes and materials into wooden boxes to make ‘insect hotels’ to hang in the garden. There will be no shortage of bug accommodation in Euroa’s backyards now.

And there were butterfly nets for catching butterflies! But since all the butterflies stayed at home, catch of the day has to go to William, pictured left, with his prized Anolpognathus (Christmas Scarab).

And for a more scientific look at butterflies, Andrea Canzano presented a very colourful and informative slide show of the species found in our area.

But where had those Euroa butterflies gone? I don’t know, but on the Landscape Discovery (geology) tour run by Bertram Lobert and Neil Phillips the very next day over at Swanpool, there were butterflies galore.