The weekend started on the Friday night with the inaugural spotlighting walk for kids.

A dozen children, and 70 adults, met up in uncertain weather conditions, to go koala hunting.

Walk leader, Christian Patteson, led the group to view not one but two of Hawks Nest’s elusive urban koalas.

The sky obligingly cleared for a few minutes to allow a little stargazing on Jimmy’s Beach.

Six local possums were then spied on the track from the beach to the Singing Bridge, where participants enjoyed a wonderful display put on by dolphins frolicking below.

The hot chocolate at Acito’s Café afterwards was rich and creamy and the participants loved the whole experience, with many people stopping to sincerely thank the organisers for arranging the evening.

The fantastic turnout for the spotlighting walk on Friday night was followed by a huge turnout for the heritage tour on Saturday.

The bus was followed by a dozen or so cars, so that all could participate.

The surf club also had a successful barbecue tea on Saturday night with a chatty crowd lingering well past bedtime.

The very heavy rain on Sunday morning caused many visitors to head back home straight after breakfast.

The weather also caused some of the attractions to be cancelled or changed, including the discovery ranger’s program and the number of displays in the street.

Despite this, more than 200 people participated in guided or self-guided walks on Sunday.

The helicopter flights were also a huge hit, apparently smashing their own record for most flights in a day, previously their record was 31 flights but on the day a new record of 42 flights was made.

Event coordinator, Shona Hunter Howarth, said she was delighted with the weekend, although disappointed with the weather on Sunday morning and the subsequent impact on the plans for the day.

Nevertheless she has already called the event committee together to review plans for 2008.

More than 1000 ‘hits’ per day were recorded in event website visits in the last week before the event.

“Overall, the number of enquiries we received about the weekend and the huge number of website ‘hits’ indicated a high level of interest in the event and in the area generally,” Shona said.