Giant ted set to return in Santa parade
The floats are looking good. Just don’t tell the kids about Ted.
A headless Ted – not pictured because nobody wants to see that – will be restored to cuddly cuteness in time for Invercargill’s Santa Parade on Saturday.
The giant teddy that has long been a beloved fixture of the parade suffered a mishap after last year's event when, mercifully away from the eyes of young children, his head departed his body and fell onto Queens Drive just past the Blind Centre.
Surgical waiting lists being what they are, Teddy has remained decapitated all year.
But the gnomes at the parade’s Lorneville storage facility are cheerfully confident he’ll once again be intact by the time the parade starts at Gala St at 1pm.
If anything, preparations are a tad ahead of schedule. The cosmetics, including paint jobs, have been attended to and just the last-minute details need attending to, like getting Thomas the Tank Engine back on the rails after he developed a drunken-looking lean when some air escaped from his, erm, tyres.
As for this year’s mystery new float, we’ll just have to wait to see what emerges.
This year the parade takes a simpler route for traffic management reasons, starting at 1pm on Gala St and heading down Dee St, turning at the Troopers’ Memorial roundabout, and heading back up Dee to Gala St.
Organiser Alice Pottinger asked people to enjoy it from a single spot rather than try to cross the wide street for a second look.
That would help let everybody see, she said.
The floats would then be at the Gala St reserve from 2.30pm, where people would have a chance to get more up-close-and-personal with their favourites.
Organisers have once again drawn strong volunteer support, including help from Adventure Southland, Frontline students and, as ever, the Rotary Club of Invercargill.
And there’s already good news for next year, with the now-closed department store H&J Smith donating some of its window display materials which will be able to be transformed for floats for 2024 and beyond.
Meanwhile, the Gore and Bluff Santa parades are each scheduled for December 10 and Riverton’s, as tradition dictates, on Christmas Eve.