Book Fair Report – 2026
To all the Rotary members and our many volunteers:
Well it’s been run and done again for 2026. What a fantastic Fair it was. Prior to opening
day, the Rotary Board made an early decision to aim to raise $10,000 to be earmarked for
Bush Fire Relief. Well we made this easily and these funds will be directed to that area of
need. Overall we have raised just over $15000 this year. Exact figure will not be known until
the Treasurer has taken up running expenses – but these are quite minimal. Other than
cable ties, Bluetac and a few Officeworks signs, our largest budget item is an allowance of
$200 for staff catering. It is a very lean operation.
A couple of years ago some volunteers mentioned that they thought we should be making
more money than $6500 based on the amount of work involved. This was taken on board.
We increased our pricing from $1 to $2 and have endeavoured to upgrade the quality of our
stock. The donations we received this year were all excellent including many new children’s
books. So $6500 moved along to $10500 last year and we have improved by nearly another
50% this year. The project is now VERY worthwhile. A number of Community organisations
around Torquay will again benefit from Book Fair proceeds – and that’s after we have
donated the $10000 for Bush Fire Relief.
A special thank you to Margaret Dunn from St Margaret’s Primary School who contacted us
and volunteered to put together the Children’s Room display. This was excellent. There was
activity and reading going on nearly all the time. Story Dogs were there on Friday morning
too. We are positive that our children’s books sales were well up on previous years. Thank
you Margaret.
Publicity was excellent this year which I’m sure has also helped raise awareness. The Surf
Coast Times give us a great lead in story each year and this year did a review article as well.
Great support from this newspaper. And Haydn’s Real Estate once again published a full
page advertisement for us. We also had a specific “countdown” post on Social Media which
was picked up by the savvy people in town.
The Surfcoast Secondary College must also be thanked for their permission to use their
premises over January. It is a great venue for our Fair, especially with the expanded area for
the childrens’ section. Leftover stock has been returned to storage in our container for next
year. Yes we plan to continue on and present Torquay with another Annual Book Fair in
2027.
Thank you all for your tremendous help.
Regards
Neil Henderson, Linda Neale and Mike Reed – the Book Fair Committee