Don’t bug out – the National Insect Expo is back again for 2025.
The largest event of its kind continues to call Woodend home, and organiser Bert Candusio is ready to host the event for its fourth year.
He said every year it gets bigger and bigger.
“The first one we ran in 2022 we were expecting 300 people or so, and nearly 7000 people came through the doors for the three days,” Mr Candusio said.
“It was so overwhelming and then we noticed some interesting things happening in 2023 and 2024. We were getting not only visitors from every state in Australia but we were getting visitors from overseas, primarily Europe, looking to network with Australian breeders for their sources of supply in Europe.
“Last year we had visitors from the United States, Germany, Madrid in Spain, Italy, South-East Asia.”
This year, expect plenty of fun for kids, art and of course, bugs.
“We have a lot of specific handcrafts that are not available commercially. These are really individual pieces of artwork that people can admire and purchase at the expo,” he said.
“We also have a lot of private insect collections, including one of Australia’s largest butterfly collections.”
One of the highlights for the kids will be Things of Foam and Wood, which is bringing its giant talking blowfly puppets to the expo.
“Kids will be enticed by these blowflies to find these maggots,” Mr Candusio said.
The kids will then need to return the maggots to the dung pile for the blowflies.
Mr Candusio said the blowflies will run three times a day over the three days, alongside performances from Gone Buggo.
Kids will also be able take part in a pining demonstration so kids can learn how to correctly pin and set their own butterflies.
The National Insect Expo will be held from Friday, October 3 until Sunday, October 5 at the Woodend Buffalo Indoor Sports Stadium.
Tickets will range from $10 for children to up to $25 for adults.
Details: insectexpo.com.au/
