Summary

The inaugural Townsville Pacific Festival, held in Townsville in June 1970, was a ten-day celebration that focused on cultural, artistic and environmental aspects of life in Pacific countries. One of the main aims of the festival was to create greater friendship and understanding between Australia and other countries in the Pacific region, while at the same time, promoting Townsville on an international stage. The Festival treated locals and visitors to a wide range of activities and events that included open-air music concerts, cultural displays, theatre productions, Mardi Gras, and sporting competitions. The Festival also fostered local artistic talent, and many artists entered their work in the Art Awards, with categories that included painting, pottery, fibre, photography, and gem and jewellery design. The Festival’s signature event was the iconic street procession of elaborately decorated floats that represented local businesses and community organisations. Successive parades were witnessed by thousands of locals who packed the route along The Strand and through the streets of the central business district.

The Townsville Pacific Festival ran until 1991 and remains one of north Queensland's most memorable community festivals. This archive contains minutes, correspondence, festival programmes and ephemera from the 1970s and 1980s, along with scrapbooks of newspaper clippings compiled by Festival committee members and photographs of festival parades and events. It includes information and photographs pertaining to the Townsville Pacific Festival Queen Quest.