December
Round and round we go
Welcome to the December edition of The Bright Raclette, a monthly community newsletter where we will be sharing upcoming local events, announcements, observations and recipes to spice up your life and help you plan the un-plannable month of Christmas.
If you keep finding out about fun stuff after it’s already happened… well, that’s exactly why we’re here.
If you are still trying to figure out what exactly happened to all of 2025, don’t worry we’re right there with ya.
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Calling for contributions
The Bright Raclette is open to submissions. We’ll consider pretty much anything at this point, but for a steer please share: recipes, advice, book or movie reviews, art, notices, tips on training dogs and also photos of said dogs.
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THIS MONTH
Hooley dooley it’s come around again, the best and final month of the year. TBR is keeping fingers crossed for a sunsoaked (vs November-style just… soaked) month ahead, the return of park bbqs and a steady rotation of live music. In the spirit of things coming full-circle and the terrifying velocity of time, cyclists and velociraptors, the Tour of Bright will be kicking off the sporting activities of the month, speeding through the streets from 5—7 December.
In less local news, December 10 will see the under-16s social media ban kick in. Everything old is new again, so we’ve cooked up a list of the ways we (the real dinosaurs) once passed the time before the advent of social media, for inspiration. List below not limited to under-16s:
Ride your bike around the neighbourhood
Build a treehouse
Crack open a board game
Learn to play Pink Floyd on the guitar
Phone a friend (extra points if it’s on a landline, extra extra points if your phone is a hamburger)
Try your hand at yo-yos, slinkies and slap bands
Revel in the fact that game boys and tamagotchis are back, baby!
Make a mix tape
Renting a VCR at Blockbuster is no longer achievable, but you can always get your communal movie fix at the cinema
Still uninspired? Never fear, the entire the internet archive is at your disposal
And finally, if you’re in need of a place to escape the madness and actually get some work done in December (someone has to bring home the bacon), Bright Coworking is accepting new ‘regular’ and ‘nomad’ members.
👉 Jump to stuff from us: SEE | DO | WATCH | READ | FYI
👉 Jump to stuff from you: Marjorie Beavis-Warren fails to fail | Alan Owen-Jones reflects on public services but mostly public toilets | Terrifying Cheese Illustrations
SEE
— one-offs —
Dec 5 | Four comedians, one stage, one night of Christmas Crackers. Head to HotHouse Theatre for their final night of Fringe Comedy for 2025. Ticketed event, from 7.30pm.
Dec 5, 6, 7 | Head to Folk, Rhythm and Life Festival at Bilyana Natural Amphitheatre just outside El Dorado. Music, kids village and workshops from 80+ acts across the weekend. The lineup is great, including Nicky Bomba, Kutcha Edwards and Dallas Frasca.
Dec 6 | The Fat-azz Jazz Fundraiser will be transforming Bright Courthouse Theatre into a cabaret club, with multi-genre band Fat-azz blending blues, funk, pop and rock (dancing encouraged) and comic interludes from local comedian, Alan Owen-Jones. Bright Courthouse, 7-10pm.
Dec 6 & 7 | The Bright Singers will perform Christmas carols at Mount Beauty Senior Citizens from 4pm on Saturday (6th), and at Bright Art Gallery from 5pm on Sunday (7th).
Dec 12 | Liz Stringer brings piano, stories, and heart to Beechworth Old Stone Hall in her ‘To Survive’ tour. 6.45pm for 7.30pm start.
Dec 12 | Add a bit of glamour to your Friday — or at the very least, witness other people being extremely glamorous on a glitter-filled night of bingo, dancing and general fabulousness at Drag Bingo. Star Hotel, 7pm. Strictly 18+.
Dec 22 | Sing a carol or two (from the stage or your picnic rug) at the the Brewery Christmas Carol-oke, hosted by the carolling king of Bright Adam Lindsay. Bring a keen sense of Christmas cheer and some tinsel. 5.30-7.30pm.
Dec 31 | Usher in the New Year with one (or all?) of these solid options:
lazing amongst the leafy trees and apple-sweet breezes of Wandi valley with Jus’ Gordon at the Wandi Pub from 12pm.
snacking and sipping on the lawn of Ringer Reef at a Buffalo-backdropped New Year’s picnic with Adam Lindsay, 1-4pm.
treating your ears to the acoustic gymnastics of Angus Montaigne in the beer garden at Don Mungo’s. 6pm.
getting down on the dancefloor of the Brewery, where Echo Thief will be headlining followed by DJ Tim Taylor on the decks. Rounding off 2025 with free finger food and a disco igloo… need we say more?
— Sneak Peak —
Sure, it’s not strictly on this month, but you probably need to book it now so hop to it:
Kick off 2026 with a bang at the CIRCUS with Cirque Nouvelle, who will be spinning very fast and setting things on fire (probably) in the Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre on Jan 20th.
Feastival Falls Creek will be returning in February 2026, with The Jungle Giants headlining! Tickets are on sale now so lock in for a weekend of music, art, comedy, food and good times.
—Weekend regs —
FRIDAYS
The Star | Trivia and Joker Poker. Meat trays and good vibes from 6pm.
Myrtleford Summer Series | Free live music on balmy summer evenings in the Piazza. Umbrellas and chairs provided, BYO picnic rug. Check out The Friesians (Dec 5), The Stents (Dec 12) and Adam Lindsay, who will be playing alongside the Myrtleford Twilight Market (Dec 19).
Harrietville Hotel | Head on over to the ‘ville to catch Dean Haitani (Dec 19), 6.30pm.
Wandi Pub | The Troubadour will be making a Boxing Day appearance (Dec 26) to help you unwind and digest with soaring vocals and soft guitar. 12pm.
SATURDAYS
Harrietville Hotel | Sprinkle some groove into your Saturdays with Glenn Wilson (Dec 6) and Rhyley McGrath (Dec 20). 6pm.
Ringer Reef | BYO picnic rug (but not your own booze) on down to the sloping lawn and listen to Bryce Poulter (Dec 27). 1-4pm.
Wandi Pub | Special Saturday double-billing with Tahlia Brain from 12pm, and Red Brick Radio from 5pm (Dec 27).
Don Mungo’s | Sweaty summer nights are for Mungo’s Disco. Every Saturday from 10pm, DJs from near and far.
SUNDAYS
Bright Brewery | Join Sunday sessions with Dean Haitani (Dec 7), Meagan Thomson (Dec 14), Szara Fox & Andrew Darling (Dec 21) and The Cholesterol Brothers (Dec 28). The Hop Terrace from 2-5pm.
Wandi Pub | Ride out for a lazy Sunday afternoon in the beer garden and check out Toby Mobbs (Dec 14, 12pm), The Troubadour (Dec 21, 12pm), and a double-stacked Jus’ Gordon and Glenn Wilson (Dec 28, 12pm and 5pm).
BONUS HOLIDAY GIGS (WE LOVE SUMMER!)
Ringer Reef is hosting five days of music between Christmas and New Years Eve. From 1-4pm every day from 27-31 December, check out Bryce Poulter, Dos Hombres, Tahlia Brain and Adam Lindsay. Sip a chilled white, relax on the grass, throw a frisbee if you’re feeling frisky. Do it all again the next day, and the following three. The world is your oyster.
With so many days of tunes to choose from, this could very easily be you. Wandi Pub is featuring double-decker music days between the 27-30 December, With Jared Buckley and Toby Mobbs (Dec 29) and Jared Buckley and Angus Montaigne (Dec 30) rounding out the list with Monday & and Tuesday gigs from 12pm and 5pm.
👇 Did we miss any gigs? Message us below or at bright.raclette@gmail.com for upcoming gigs or venues we should contact for 2026!
DO
So much to do, so little time.
Dec 1 | If you’re a kid (or have responsibility for one), sign up for The Big Summer Read at the library. Send us your review or your own story!
Dec 1 - Jan 26 | Check out the wealth of local artistic talent at Bright Art Gallery’s Summer Art Awards Exhibition. Open 5 days a week (Thu to Mon), 10am to 4pm.
Dec 4 | Ladies, if you’ve ever wanted to learn how to operate power tools, the Alpine Multi Skills Group shed induction night is for you. First Thursday of every month — chop some wood, live the dream. Bright United Men’s Shed, 5.30-7.30pm.
Dec 5-7 | Race the central streets of Bright for the Friday night crit. Each race will be capped at 35 riders, so get in early. If you don’t want to ride, pick a good viewing spot, your favourite jersey and watch it fly by. This year, there’ll be a night market so you’ll have good local food and drink to enjoy.
Dec 5 - 7 | Volunteer for the Tour of Bright as a judge, driver or general helper. Get fed, make friends, and enjoy a celebration drink at the end. All the proceeds go to sponsoring the (100+) local kids in mountain and road biking.
Dec 6 | Get gift hunting at Mount Beauty Markets, 9am-1pm.
Dec 12 | Mystic Bike Park’s Summer Sesh is back, and everyone is invited. Long summer evenings, epic rides, and great vibes, with well-deserved post trail drinks served at the Bright Brewery River Bar. You have two bites at the apple this month, the first on the 12th and the second on the 19th, but never fear! If you miss out, the event will continue on through January.
Dec 13 | Treat yourself to Gapsted Estate’s Summer Long Lunch. A four-course meal with paired wines and live music to wash it all down? Not too shabby. Ticketed event.
Dec 18 | Host Malone (Selina) back at it again with a Christmas themed Hops & High IQs Trivia at the Brewery. Bookings recommended, the questioning starts at 6pm.
Dec 19 | ‘Tis the season to attend markets. Who are we to fight tradition? The Myrtleford Markets are an evening affair this Friday, from 4-8pm.
Dec 20 | Get your weekend coffee, strudel and crepe fix at Make it, Bake it, Grow it markets. 8.30am-12.30pm.
Dec 21 | The Rotary folks are punching above their weight again running Bright Carols in the Park at the Sibley Soundshell, Howitt Park. Not to alarm you, but Santa is expected to attend. 6pm.
Dec 22 | Raise your voice and raise a glass at the the Brewery Christmas Carol-oke. All your favourite Christmas carols played live in the paddock by Adam Lindsay and his band. 5.30-7.30pm.
Dec 26 | Slip, slop, slap down the Rotary waterslide opening day. Rotary are looking for community volunteers to help out across December/January — lend a hand, and your family slides for free during your shift! Contact Allan Poyner at waterslide@brightrotary.org.au.
Dec 26 | Celebrate 70 years of the Myrtleford Lions Golden Spurs Rodeo! Grab a blanket and some snacks and settle in to watch all the thrills and spills of your friendly local country rodeo. Myrtleford Recreation Reserve & Showgrounds, 3.30-10pm.
👇 In the know about an upcoming event? Message us below, or at bright.raclette@gmail.com
WATCH
Cinema | Choose from Bright’s Sun Cinema new movies this month:
Eternity (Elizabeth Olsen must choose which of two extremely handsome husbands she will spend the rest of her afterlife with); Zootopia 2 (brave rabbit cop Judy Hopps and her foxy new friend team up to crack a perilous case); Avatar: Fire and Ash (the long blue people are back, proving that a good franchise never dies); The Housemaid (see if Sydney Sweeney’s flop-curse will continue in this adaptation of Freida McFadden’s suspenseful psychological thriller).
Stars | Get excited for the longest day of the year, the summer solstice (Dec 21). AI recommends: watching the sunrise or sunset (both arguably trickiest to do on this day of the year), having a picnic, going for a hike, meditating, doing some yoga and setting intentions. AI sounds like she’s a bit of a hippy at heart, and we like it.
Weather | In news that will surprise no one, the first half of December is looking warm.
👇 Saw something you liked? Or didn’t? Submit your own review below or at bright.raclette@gmail.com
READ
The bit you really came for: contributions from locals about life and times in the valley.
🛀 Marj fails at failing and goes to a spa instead.
This month, everyone’s favourite Raclette Reviewer Marjorie Beavis-Warren learns a lot about failure, and a little about irony, as she comes to the realisation that the only thing worse than failure itself is failing to fail in the first place.
As readers who scroll down this far will know, this month I set out to achieve deliberate, constructive, intentional failure. In hindsight, what I truly set out with was the intention to be successful at failure.
What I have learnt (which is obvious if you consider what it means to fail) is that you can’t fail intentionally; because if you set out to fail and you succeed, then you haven’t really failed have you? Don’t ponder this too much - it will break your brain.
To spoil the ending; I did fail. Hard. Just not in the big ‘bang’ way I had intended to, but rather with a pampered whimper.
The challenge started out strong! I was determined to fail, and I had a lot of ideas for how I could go about it. I even developed an evaluation framework to determine which ideas would work best for failing at!
Marj’s failure challenge evaluation framework:
For ideas to be considered for this challenge, they have to meet the following criteria:
Potential for failure: I started from the premise that in order to fail at something it has to involve learning something new to provide the opportunity to fail i.e. it needs to have a learning curve plus a need for patience and attention to detail, which, as the long suffering Mr B-W will tell you (after having to leave work to come and let me in the house because I forgot my keys again), are not my strong suits.
Potential for success: There must be the possibility of actually succeeding, validated by a measurable binary ‘success / failure’ outcome.
Achievable timeframe: All ideas have to fit into the three weeks I had, balanced against work, sleeping, and mowing the lawn (which seems to consume the majority of my waking hours).
Low investment: If I’m going to fail I want it to be cheap, like me.
I started with a list of about 20 ideas, including one put forward by a certain Editorial team overlord for me to ‘train her dog’ (which feels like it breaches some kind of ethics code?).
Anyway, the serious contenders were: learning basic car care (changing a tyre, fitting snow chains, changing oil, etc.), building/refurbing a piece of furniture (I have upcycling projects gathering dust that Mr B-W keeps threatening to burn), a consistency goal (like daily steps), or entering the best dumpling competition at ‘Dumps-giving’ night.
So there I was; a clear framework for inclusion and a whole bunch of ideas ready to choose from. I was prepared to fail!.
Except that the whole enterprise required me to actually prioritise choosing a failure challenge over the ten other competing (and actual grown up, real life) priorities on my plate. I spent all three weeks in a state of panic, paralysed by the choice. Not only did I fail to start the challenge, but I also failed at several other things with actual proper grown-up consequences.
And so I just accepted failure. I admitted complete and utter defeat and accepted that I needed a break. Rather than trying to actually get something done, I just… didn’t. Instead, I did what any failed influencer worth their salt does, and escaped to a spa for some ‘me time’ to ‘reflect and grow’ on how to be better next time.
Enter an hour well spent at the new Sukore spa in Albury floating in magnesium pools, sweating in their sauna and steam room and cooling off in the cold plunge in between. Readers, let me tell you: it. was. wonderful. If this is what failure feels like then give me a F.
It smells like a dream. Their change rooms have a ‘tea station’ and a woodburning stove. They have tiny towels you can sit on in the sauna, all set to some sort of magically perfect background music. And no, this is not sponsored because businesses don’t sponsor influencers that have no followers or influence. I paid the full, and I feel reasonable, price of $45.
The irony of failing to fail is not lost on me. In fact, I have taken this ironic failure and turned it into a win if you really think about it; in failing to fail, I really won because I learnt that failure is really in the eye of the beholder, right?
Ultimately, the reason I set out to intentionally fail was to see what I could learn - and I still did that. I learnt that by trying to prioritise 10 things at once I’m actually directly on course to fail at all of them! I learnt that the key to learning from failure is acceptance; to be okay with starting from where you are. And, crucially, I learnt that there’s a really nice spa in Albury where you can go and soak away the shame of failure to a beautiful background sound track.
Next month: Who knows at this point - let’s call it a surprise and see what happens shall we? In the meantime, if 2025 has gotten too much for you then book yourself in for an hour of doing nothing at Sukore in Albury. They also have a dry zone option featuring something called ‘percussion therapy’ which is, I presume, where someone hits you with a drumstick to your preferred drum beat.
Caravan Park Public Toilets: Alan Owen-Jones’s Roman Empire
I see the caravan parks are currently having a bit of a makeover and I’m pleased to see the start of a Roman inspired, public toilet in a caravan park in Bright.
The Roman civilisation invented the word ‘inclusive.’ They had public toilets that were long benches with holes in them, for people to all get together, without privacy screens and do their business. They would chat, read and just catch up, while other human bodily function business was happening. This really brings a community together. They didn’t have toilet paper, but instead used a shared, sponge on a stick, called a tersorium. This led to all sorts of diseases being spread and it took another 1,000 years before someone decided it might be better if it was used to actually clean the toilet, and not the person. This was when the toilet brush was invented.
This Bright version is starting with a single, modern day toilet pan where once a person uses it, others will gather round and converse. The manager tells me they will eventually add more open air pans, to accommodate a growing crowd, once people become comfortable with this latest, rekindled trend.
This open air, inclusive public toilet, is what Bright parkrun has actually modelled itself on.
We just love all gathering together and catching up, while other business (like a 5k run or walk) is happening. There are no barriers, screens or cubicles; we are all out in the open and comfortable. We must all have a bit of Roman blood in us.
So break out the toga and come on down to Bright parkrun on Saturday mornings. I’ll deliver a welcome spiel at 7:55am and we’ll set you off a bit after 8. We have apples, vollies and we will leave the tersorium at home.
Every Saturday morning, Mystic landing pad, Morses Creek road.
Bright parkrun: Putting the public, back into toilet.
Sent from my phone using the free wifi of the guy sitting next to me
Terrifying Cheese Monsters: Part One
👇 Do you write things? Draw things? Make jokes? Send them to us below or at bright.raclette@gmail.com
FYI
Got big plans? Specifically, ones which need approval? Council is trying to make your life a bit easier (thanks, council) with their monthly Planner-in-Residence sessions in Mount Beauty and Myrtleford. Session dates and times will be provided in the new year, but you will be able to book a 30 minute session to seek preliminary planning advice.
Late November/early December sees the return of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, a global campaign led annually by UN Women. Check out the events happening across Victoria here.
Got some sand with a bit of an asbestos-y aftertaste to it? Ditch it at Porepunkah Transfer Station.
👇 Do you know something we don’t? Drop us a line below or at bright.raclette@gmail.com