Meet the Parkes Elvis Festival founders as event celebrates 30 years in 2023

Extremely proud.

Two words Anne Steel used to describe how she feels to watch how far the Parkes Elvis Festival has come since those first two nights of rocking and rolling in 1993.

She, her husband Bob and former Parkes Champion Post editor Roel ten Cate have reflected on an incredible 30 years - the 2023 festival marking the 30^th anniversary - and the role they played in its creation and initial push to keep it going.

Gracelands - the function centre, now hotel in Bushman Street - was the birthplace of what was then called the Elvis Revival Festival.

Before that it was a student hostel, which even back then in the 1960s Bob was a part of having worked on the building as a plasterer.

When the building went up for sale, Bob and Anne went on a trip to America and spoke about the possibility of buying it after Anne was taking on a lot of catering jobs at functions.

Upon their return they did just that, in 1980, converting it into a function centre and restaurant. They also lived there with their two children Andrew and Tiffany for seven and a half years.

Anne loves Elvis and Bob - well Anne's managed to convert him. Anne had mentioned to him "it's too bad we didn't get to Graceland" - Elvis' home in Memphis - when they were in America.

"I said 'that's a good name' and we needed a name for the function centre so we called it Gracelands, adding the 's'," Bob said.

The idea for an Elvis festival was ignited on the night of Roel's mother Gay ten Cate's 70^th birthday party at Gracelands at the end of June in 1992.

Elvis music was also a big part of Roel's family's lives and Bob played a heap of Elvis CDs and music from that era that night.

"We did enjoy a party and everyone just responded to it with dancing and a lot of singing," Roel laughed.

"It was a very popular spot."

After the night was over, Bob was cleaning up the bar and Roel sat there, opened a bottle of red and started talking.

"If you put on a party, they'll come," Roel said at the time.

Thirty years later, that's been proven, he said.

The festival's January date wasn't only selected because Elvis' birthday is January 8, and they had considered doing something in August around his death - like they do for Elvis Week in Memphis. But January was a very quiet time of year for Parkes businesses when families would pack up and holiday on the coast.

"We weren't doing much, it was too hot for weddings," Anne said.

Bob said the town would nearly close down for that week in January.

"I said 'you should do an Elvis party' and Bob and Anne went with it," Roel said.

And well, they didn't quite know what to expect and not everything went to plan - like the street parade for which a large crowd had gathered, all to watch six floats toddle down the main street.

"That first parade. That was embarrassing!" Roel laughed, shaking his head.

"There was a good crowd and they were disappointed with what transpired.

"But they persisted with it when most would have given up and now it goes for an hour and a half."

"And I forgot to invite the mayor to it all!" Anne said.

There was dinner at Gracelands with rock 'n' roll music and dancing, and the Elvis look-a-like contest on the Friday night, followed by a memorabilia swap meet Saturday morning and the street parade, Elvis movies at Golden West Cinema and a Sunday breakfast with a district tour.

Even from the first festival, they had a professional Elvis impersonator lined-up for a feature concert on Saturday night - Eddie Youngblood, who was considered among the best of just a few in the world at the time.

Tickets were $12 each.

He returned as the feature concert artist for the 1994 and 1995 festivals. Eddie passed away on March 1, 2021 at 65 years old. His suits will be on display at the 30th anniversary of the festival in 2023.

It may have been small - a few hundred people - but you ask anyone who attended that first festival and they will tell you it was one of the best nights they've ever had.

They reached full capacity that first night and had to turn people away.

Kenny McGrath, who joined the band of festival volunteers not long after and still to this day is involved, missed out on the first year.

"He made sure he wasn't missing it again and was one of the first to get his ticket the second year," Anne laughed.

And 50 per cent of the crowd were visitors, highlighting the fact, Roel said, that Elvis fans will come to the party if there's one.

"What came out of the woodwork for the Elvis memorabilia swap meet was unreal," Anne said.

"And we did the markets at Gracelands for only one year because they all showed up and it fully covered the front garden (where the car park is now), we didn't expect it."

Events were eventually moved to Bushmans Dam with a low-loader truck for the stage.

"[Over the years] Elvis impersonators could actually see they could make money from it, they got their start here," Bob said.

"They started on the stage at Bushmans one year, the next we'd hear them in the clubs."

Despite its gradual growth in the few of years that followed, the trio admitted the town was embarrassed by it all.

And they weren't making money, so year-round they sold raffle tickets and fundraised, and didn't have the support they needed to keep it going in the same form they were doing with a small committee.

"It didn't bother us that the town was embarrassed but it made it hard," Roel said.

"Council then didn't want anything to do with it.

"It was a small committee and they worked bloody hard."

"We lost money for the first two years and we paid for the event," Bob added.

After seven years, Bob and the committee made one more final plea to the town for its support saying "that unless local support is forthcoming, [the festival is] very much in doubt for future years" and "could be lost forever".

These words were published in the Parkes Champion Post on January 12, 2000 and Roel wrote the front page headline saying 'Will the Elvis Festival continue to rock 'n roll?'

"It wasn't until the mayor Robert Wilson said 'we've really got to get behind this'," Roel said.

So cometh Parkes Shire Council's tourism officer Kelly Hendry whose enormous contribution by seeking grants, preparing merchandise and organising the now renowned Elvis Express train, turned the festival around.

"She was so professional," Anne said.

There is another group whose contribution has at times been understated and that's the involvement of the boys from the Parkes Rugby Union Club, who were the first to influence others to dress up as Elvis for the entire duration of the festival, not just for a night.

"They were the life of the festival, things never kicked-off until they came along," Anne said.

"And the people would be waiting for them."

With events outgrowing venues as years passed, festival days extending from three to five, more than 100 volunteers, the number of events well into the 200s - in 2023 it'll be 350 - and crowd numbers that broke the record at 27,000 people in 2019, Bob said the festival is going to be here forever.

It's also injected more than $13 million into the region's economy.

"It started as an idea and Bob and Anne ran with it, and now it's a juggernaut. It's as big as the Dish and really has put Parkes on the map," Roel said.

"We could have just as easily said no," Bob said.

"We've watched the children of fans grow up at the festival and they're still coming as adults," Anne said.

Bob and Anne are 81 and 79 years old now and Roel is 72, and all are still very much involved in the festival.