The Back to the Bush Festival will return to Miles from Thursday 6 to Sunday 9 September, where the local community will open their homes, backyards and even their secret fishing spots to city visitors.

The full four-day program just released details a mix of events, where a love of country and a love of vintage collide, with access to bush experiences and local vintage collections. The people of Miles embrace the Festival and the visitors it brings, with farming families hosting their city “cousins” on farm visits and other rural residents opening their private properties for access to unique country buildings or beautiful country gardens. Some locals turn tour guide for the Festival, hosting fishing tours to their local secret fishing spot, or leading tag-along four wheel drive tours along bush tracks to a spot to stop to “boil the billy” and to find the best fields for viewing wildflowers in bloom, all insights only the locals know best.

This new-look festival could hardly get more country, with Farm Tours, Cow Pat Lotto, Exhibition Tractor Pull, Whip Cracking, Camp Oven Cooking, Chainsaw Sculpting, a farmer-style Tough Bugger Challenge, Dog High Jumping, Sheep Shearing and live music headlined by Mick Lindsay and Caitlyn Shadbolt.

Bringing the Festival’s vintage experience into the mix, the town of Miles’ vintage credentials have long been known with its famed Miles Historical Village, which lends a stunning backdrop to some of the most loved Festival events. One such event sees festival-goers invited to bring along their own antique and collectable items, with antique appraisals available from the experts. It’s the Festival’s Private Collections Tour that really sets the Festival’s vintage offering apart from the rest, being one of the only Festivals in Australia where residents open their own private collections. Across backyards and homes, the local Miles collections are unique and sometimes quirky, with everything from 1960s bikinis, Matchbox cars, a hat collection including a Beef Eater’s hat, and a collection of World Champion Tea Cosies.

The vintage spectacle of the Miles Back to the Bush Festival extends to the very skies above, with a Vintage Aircraft Airshow across the town on Saturday 8 September, with opportunity to see the aircraft on the ground the following day at the Miles Airport. The festival only comes around once every two years, so it is a rare and genuine opportunity to experience the Australian bush and the best of country lifestyle in small town Australia!

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