Paul Stephanus writes:
Dear Living Boat Trust,
I wanted to thank you one last time for your participation at the 2025 Australian Wooden Boat Festival. It was a such a joy to see people from across Australia, the Pacific, and the World come together to celebrate our shared maritime heritage. The atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive and the feedback from the has been the same. 60,000 visitors attended over 4 days, enjoying an expanded culture program, and a range of new projects that brought the Hobart waterfront to its full potential. The support you provide the Festival at Con Dock, the Raid, and other programs is indispensable, and make the event truly special. I am going on leave with my family from April 14 to May 16, and then planning for the 2027 event begins! The theme for the Festival will be ‘Working Boats’. These are the boats that built global civilisation and play a major role in human affairs today through fishing, trade,exploration, research, transport, pilotage, peacekeeping, and much more.Every culture has a proud working boat heritage and at the 2027 Festival we look forward to showcasing a wide range of these vessels and the people who keep them ticking. Until then, if you haven’t had a chance to check out the 2025 Festival wrap up video, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhwP7cHt0D4 And a small selection of the thousands of fantastic images captured at the event: https://australianwoodenboatfestival.com.au/2025-gallery/
For those who don’t know, our major contributions to the Festival were to run the ‘preliminary event’ (Tawe Nunnugah) and to provide the Grebes, so people could actually get on the water rather than just admiring the boats from afar. The sight of Endra O’May navigating Con Dock with a crew which barely knew which end of the oar to hold made it all worthwhile.
