17 days to go to EKKA

For details on EKKA 2008 go to http://www.ekka.com.au/home/default.asp

A little background to this event extracted from Wikipedia.
The Ekka is the annual show of Queensland, Australia. Its formal title is the Royal Queensland Show. It was originally called the Brisbane Exhibition and therefore is now usually known as Ekka, due to the phenomenon in Australian English of shortening lengthy words.
The first Ekka was held in 1876 and created quite a sensation among more than five thousand citizens who were eagerly waiting to enter the grounds. During a time when the Ekka was still young, the main purpose of the agricultural show as its name suggests, was to show off many agricultural and industrial exhibits. It was a chance for people to show off newly invented agricultural and industrial devices such as ultra modern plowing, sowing and harvesting artifacts. Cattle and other farm animals were also exhibited during the show, a practice that remains to this day, the animal nursery is still a place for children and adults alike to go and witness all the baby animals in all their glory. Since its opening, the show has only been cancelled once, in 1919 throughout the time of the Spanish flu pandemic, during this time, the grounds were employed as temporary hospital wards for the sick.
The Ekka is held in Queensland's capital city, Brisbane, for ten days each August at the Brisbane Exhibition Ground.

Brisbane Festival 2008 (July 18th - Aug 3rd)

Brisbane Festival is one of Australia's leading international Arts Festivals.
Held biennially, the Festival places great emphasis on creating new work, accessibility and facilitating exchanges between local, national and international artists and companies. The Festival endeavours to include the entire community in its program of activities by having intellectual and artistic debate, national and international artistic dialogue and extremely broad grassroots support. Acts include Taiwanese kite artists, British comedians and Canadian ballerinas.
Don't miss some of the most acclaimed international productions in the world today, a number of specially commissioned pieces and an abundance of free events at Brisbane Festival 2008.
With more than 900 performances over 17 days, Brisbane Festival 2008 is the most extensive programme to date. Tickets are on sale now. And there are a lot of free shows too.
Whether you head into town for the Albert Street Lunch tomorrow or prefer suburban Hamilton and the teeming annual Racecourse Road street party – or check out the myriad of performers in The Courier-Mail Spiegeltent in Queens Park – you'll have the opportunity to join thousands of others celebrating life and culture in the city itself and throughout 10 suburbs.
It's building a reputation as a world-class festival and we should all be justifiably proud of it. Go out and have fun.

Thousands visiting Brisbane in winter

At least through the internet.
THOUSANDS of visitors are "clicking" into Brisbane to see Picasso, book hotels and bask in our glorious winter weather.The online "Winter in Brisbane" campaign is already being hailed a success by industry, with 14,000 visitors in its first five weeks, and hundreds of thousands in the bank.
The site's co-ordinator, Brisbane Marketing, launched the concept a few years ago and said the extensive "buy-in" from the private sector had made the 2008 winter campaign its most successful. Having the Picasso exhibition, which hosted its 50,000th visitor last Friday, probably doesn't hurt either. And the 34 businesses that have an online presence at the emerging site believe there's more run in it yet.
Continuing or upcoming events such as the Brisbane Festival, Brisbane International Film Festival, Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival, Hilton Masterclass and sporting internationals could yet prove them right.
Hotels, shopping malls, tourist operators, event organisers and venues have received online exposure from more than 61 countries, but it's those within 250km of Brisbane that deliver the most traffic (63 per cent). The events webpages drew the most attention (54 per cent), with the help of the Picasso exhibition, In Stitches at QPAC and State of Play at Museum of Brisbane.
Pages displaying hotel deals (40 per cent), shopping in Brisbane (22 per cent), wining and dining (21 per cent) and urban villages (17 per cent) rounded out the spoils.