As reported in this journal last Friday, the time-honoured Wingham Show won’t go ahead this weekend due to problems at the Wingham Showground too complicated to go into here. We would imagine this would also cast a doubt on Wingham’s other major shindigs, the music thingo they have in October and the summer rodeo in January. Both call the showground home.

So as part of our Make Taree Great Again campaign, once we gain this area’s highest office we will ensure all three are shifted to Taree as soon as next year. Our many friends in the Upper Manning will no doubt rejoice at this forward thinking legislation, so shoring up the Wingham vote.

Taree Showground will be the venue for the Wingham Show, or, as it will be known, the West Taree Show. We will ensure a high profile A List celebrity – either Adele or Food Martin - will open the re-branded spectacular next March.

October’s music-fest will move to Taree Recreation Centre. It will also have a new name – Tareestock is already appealing.

We will endeavour to secure Johnny Horton as the headline act for Tareestock 2018. This will be difficult seeing as he died in 1960, but nothing is impossible for Team McDonald. 

Perhaps surprisingly we have encountered some early opposition to our plans from Dead Dog Gully resident and known Wingham sympathiser, Editor Bell (EB). 

“You can’t shift the Akoostic Festival to the recreation centre. How are you going to charge a gate? There’s no fence there,’’ she snarled.

“I started a joke, which started the whole world crying,’’ we replied, for no other reason than we wanted to quote the Bee Gees (another possible headline act for Tareestock 18).

“As part of our policy we will be building a wall around the rec centre to keep deplorables out and the music lovers in,’’ we added.

“You really are a bucking banker (or words similar),’’ EB replied.

We are also investigating ways to move the Wingham Brush (minus the bats) to a more suitable, Taree-centric location. We’ll seek advice from the Friends of Browns Creek (FoBC), for there’s a small reserve in High Street that looks environmentally suitable. The Department of Industry Lands (a silly name if ever there was one) will incur the considerable wrath of Team McDonald should it try to intervene.

However, some things will always remain in Wingham – the abattoirs and the Bonny Scottish Festival for two. In saying that, Taree’s Johnny Martin Oval would be a superb venue for the Scottish Festival.

We must take that up with Warwick Murray.