Entertainment
15 June, 2025
Greek festival was a sell-out
DRAWING even bigger crowds than last year, the Cairns Greek Festival held its most successful iteration last Sunday with all food sold out, huge crowds and lots of Greek panache.
The St John’s Orthodox Parish grounds saw its biggest crowd coming through the doors last Sunday, although exact figures haven’t been finalised, it’s expected to have surpassed last year’s 5000 by a fair amount.
People by the thousands visited the Redlynch grounds to celebrate everything Greek with delicious food, which was fully sold out, Greek and multicultural entertainment, fun competitions, a day care for the kids and the fresh Cairns winter.
“It was amazing, we had beautiful weather, the crowds came in early and stayed the day through and it was a great atmosphere, both from the Greek dancing groups and the multicultural dancing groups,” said the festival’s chairman Theo Bacalakis.
“The crowds were so much bigger than last year that we were worried there wouldn’t be enough food to serve them, but every last client was served and all food was sold out.
“People just attended in the thousands, it was great, they were sitting down on the grounds of St John’s eating, enjoying the entertainment and the beautiful weather.”
Mr Bacalakis said events like the olive spitting, honey puff eating and plate smashing remained some of the most popular of the festival.
“The honey puffs were as popular as always, we also had a daycare open day which was very well attended, the olive spitting was a big hit, so was the plate smashing, which is always a lot of fun.
“The weather was on our side and the atmosphere was amazing. It’s been over 30 years since we’ve been holding the festival, so we want to thank our volunteers for making it possible, both for the preparation and for the clean up and organising afterwards.
“The entertainment was a big hit. We had the Cypriot dancers from Brisbane and we had Alistair McLeod from Master Chef. He did a cooking demonstration of traditional lamb chops with tzatziki.
“Everything was amazing and most people stayed the whole afternoon.”
