Horse flu stops Man From Snowy River festival

Equine influenza has claimed another victim — this time an event worth about $3 million to the North East Victoria.

Corryong's Man from Snowy River Festival organisers have announced the event will not be run next year.
Festival chair, Sandra Beirs, says costly horse flu restrictions and indefinite quarantine schedules mean more than two-thirds of the April event's competitors would not make it across the border from NSW and Queensland.
"It's devastating, we've agonised over this decision for weeks," she said.
"The longer we tried to keep organising without any firm dates from the government departments, the bigger a risk we took with spending all of our funding on overheads and having to cancel closer to the date.
"We chose to go with this decision to enable ourselves to have the funding to kick off in 2009."
Mrs Beirs said despite their frustrations, organisers felt no animosity towards the Department of Primary Industry or other government agencies.
"We just have to accept that the governments are doing what they have to do to get control over equine influenza," she said.
"They're probably just as frustrated as what we are.
"It's understandable; it's just hard to take when we rely on this event so much."
Mrs Beirs said the board had explored other options before deciding to pull the plug.
"We did consider running a smaller festival but we've built it to a standard that's so high, to run anything less I think people would go home disappointed," she said.
Mrs Beirs said the board's decision had nothing to do with September's announcement that major sponsor Telstra would no longer fund the event because it included a rodeo, a sport it said promoted animal cruelty.

SOURCE: The Border Mail
By VICTORIA MACDONALD
14 December 2007