We're goin' to Bonnie Doon...
The town of Bonnie Doon has seen some hard times in the last decade. As the drought stamped its weighty foot upon the region so too did the reality that this once bustling water ski haven had seen its heyday. With Lake Eildon at a devastatingly low six per cent, local businesses that once thrived began to dry up also.
That’s when Melbourne-based Dave Bowman and a group of his Bonnie Doon-enthusiast mates hatched a harebrained plan to put the town back on the watersports map (and bring in some much needed coin to the local community). They threw a weekend-long party, invited everyone they knew from the wakeboard community, got everyone to bring their boats and their happy pants and kicked off the start of the season with a bang. They called it Doonstock — and quite fittingly.
That was in 2007, and about 200 people turned out to partake in the first ever Doonstock. Fast forward four years and Dave is now potentially looking down the barrel at a crowd of 1000 people for this year’s event at the end of November. Luckily there’s now plenty of water to accommodate them all, with the lovely Lake Eildon demonstrating her resilience and quite literally brimming to capacity.
The event is a casual, grass-roots celebration of the start of the wakeboard season, and an opportunity for the wake community to reconnect and make merry in the name of their sport. It’ll be structured only around performances by bands and DJs, as well as visits to the Monster Energy promo girls for “fuel”. Aside from that, punters are encouraged to ride all day at their own speed with like-minded folk, and just generally enjoy the community vibe that underlines this sport.
The annual Tigé Owners’ Reunion will run in conjunction with Doonstock this year, with Tigé boat owners coming out to chew the fat and ride together over the weekend. The Monster Tigé Tour will also swing by to contribute to the wakeboard extravaganza that is Doonstock 2011.
The event will be hosted by Peppin Point Holiday Park at Bonnie Doon, and punters are invited to camp or stay in cabins or houseboats. Guaranteed to be a ripping good time, Doonstock is well and truly on the Australian wakeboard community’s radar as the event to jumpstart the 2011/2012 wakeboard season.
Visit www.prowake.com.au for info on the Monster Tige Tour.