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SHMA’s Winter Wonderlights 2018

Sovereign Hill’s Winter Wonderlights.

Greg Gliddon, Sovereign Hill sets Winter Wonderlights records with 95,000 visitors, The Courier, 24 July 2018

JUST short of 100,000 people have walked the golden miles around Sovereign Hill during the Winter Wonderlights event this year.

The three-week, Christmas in July extravaganza transformed the traditionally quiet time of the year into a gold rush with 95,000 visitors making their way to the event to enjoy the festive spirit and the spectacular light show.

The event also included Sovereign Hill’s busiest ever day in its 48 years, on July 15 when more than 10,000 people saw the lights on a perfect winter day.

Ballarat’s accommodation providers also saw a boon with many selling out their rooms over the school holidays.

Take the 360-degree tour of Winter Wonderlights here.

Sovereign Hill director of marketing Jennifer Ganske said this year’s Winter Wonderlights was one of the biggest events ever staged at the outdoor museum.

“We’re so excited to have delivered another spectacular Winter Wonderlights event for our visitors,” Ms Ganske said.

“The past two weeks has seen Sovereign Hill transformed with 250,000 individual fairy lights twinkling across 15 kilometres of the outdoor museum, 161 Christmas themed performances in the Victoria Theatre, 115 faux snow falls along Main Street, and over 46 hours of dazzling light projections at night.”

The event also included 144 gigantic baubles while 46 stars adorned the nine metre Christmas Tree.

The brass band played more than 46 hours of Christmas carols, more than 10,000 toffee apples were made and sold, 10,071 jars of lollies sold while the Amazing Barry performed 69 hours of magic in the Grand Marquee.

“We strive to deliver a highly innovative event each year that brings enormous economic benefit to the city of Ballarat and delights our visitors, and we’re thrilled with the response that has seen us welcome visitors from all over regional Victoria, Australia, and internationally,” Ms Ganske said.

“Our Winter Wonderlights event has established itself as one of the key events in Victoria and we want to thank all of the visitors from both near and far who travelled to Ballarat to attend the event, and look forward to welcoming them back next year.”