PM Transcripts

OPENING OF MIATTARA FESTIVAL
NEW~ CASTLE, N. S. YI. 1st September, 1967
Speech by the Prime bMinister, Mr. Harold Holt
My Lord Mvayor,
Alderman Bell,
The Princess of Mattara, 1966, my greetings, and
ly congratulations in advance to Princess of Mattara, 1967,
1Vdy greetings to all the Distinguished Visitors present, and
To you, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Boys and Girls,
This is for me quite a unique occasion because although
it is your 7th Lattara Festival it is my first and I am delighted
to have the honour of being with you, ( I understand with the duty
of formally declaring the Festival open), and I hope I do not
forget to do so by speaking too long, but also to be with you on
what represents part of what has occurred to me to be a very
balanced diet of living as one finds it here in this rapidly
developing city of Newcastle. Because you now rank as the sixth
urban area in point of size in the Commonwealth of Australia,
only surpassed in size by five of the capital cities and I suspect
that you will catch up with one or two of those before you are
O much older. . Earlier today as I flew around the city with the Lord
1ilayor, I found him very knowledgeable, pointing out to me all
the important developments which were occurring here. I could
not fail to appreciate the significance which Newcastle occupies
in the life of this great Commonwealth of ours. Not only are
you ranking sixth in numbers but in industry, significant in the
diversity of your industries both of the engineering industrial
type and on the land with a wine industry which commands a
premium price around Australia. You have here one of the most
critically important areas of the whole of the Commonwealth of
Australia. But proving that men and women do not live by bread
alone or even wine alone you have developed this happy Festival,
this Mattara Festival, the Mattara I understand signifying the
hand of friendship, and if there is one characteristic which we
regard as typical of the Australian, it is his capacity for
mateship, for feeling at one and happy with his fellow citizen,
and your Festival here tonight appears to symbolize that spirit
which we prize so much in our national character.
Now it is not my purpose to dletain you at length when
you have such greater attractions in the young ladies I have
been seeing backstage to come before you and accept the judgment
of those who have been set that difficult task.
But I do ex -press the hope that just as the years which
have gone have marked a most remark~ able development in Newcastle
that here you have deve-boped a civic and community spirit which
I believe not only puts a stamp of individuality upon your
community but marks you out as one of the great thriving
enterprising areas of the nation as a whole.
Because with that you have also developed this festive
balance to the otherwise more sombre and serious aspects of life,
I hope that this 7th Mattara Festival will prove to be the most
distinguished, the most festive, the most happy of all those which
have made up the series. And it is with good wishes to you all,
the hope that you can go on as a community from strength to. strength
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