Alf has co-ordinated the village’s Mulga Bill Festival since its inauguration in 2006 and has put countless hours into establishing and maintaining the projects started by the festival committee.

His office at the Yeoval General Store is buried in festival paperwork, grant applications and historical texts on Australia’s greatest poet.

He laughs that his house and yard have “gone to wrack and ruin” since he and other dedicated volunteers decided to put Yeoval on the map.

The growing success of the Mulga Bill Festival has been recognised by the State Government in the form of a $30,000 grant to keep the event running for a further two years.

The funding was supplied through the Department of State and Regional Development’s community economic development program to employ a festival co-ordinator.

Mr Cantrell, who has co-ordinated the event since it began in 2006, has been selected to continue his role and plans to make plenty more improvements for this year’s event.

The centrepiece of the festival is a 27km bike ride from Cumnock to Yeoval. The ride attracted 140 entries in the 2006 inaugural event and has grown to the point that more than 600 entries are expected this year.

“Yeoval hasn’t got a Harbour Bridge or an Opera House and we needed to make Yeoval a more appealing place,” Mr Cantrell said.

“Because Yeoval is where AB ‘Banjo’ Paterson spent the first seven years of his life and the ruins of his home are still there by Buckinbah Creek, we decided to build around that idea.”

Interested community members met to discuss options, developed the beginnings of ‘the Paterson Project,’ and the rest is history.

Each time the festival has run, more features have been added and crowd numbers have increased and this year is no exception.

This year will see the staging of the inaugural Mulga Bill Festival art competition and a brand new quick shear competition with more than $3000 in prizes.

The event begins on July 27.