Free and fun: activities for the summer holidays 

With the school year ending, Council has lots of fun, free things for children and young people over the holiday break.

From Storytime to virtual reality, creating your own mini-magazine to meeting cuddly animals at the zoo, Wagga Wagga is the perfect place to be these holidays.

Wagga Wagga City Library will be heading to the Botanic Gardens next week for their annual Storytime in the Park sessions.

Outreach Services Team Leader Wendy Harper is encouraging parents and carers to bring their kids along for some Christmas-themed fun, games and activities.

“In addition to some wonderful Christmas stories, we’ll have Amber the Bubbling Faerie filling the air with beautiful rainbow bubbles, and Santa has promised to make an appearance,” Ms Harper said.

“You can borrow books from one of our Agile Library vans, plus meet some of our zoo’s animals who will be coming along for a stroll with the zookeepers.”

Storytime will take place near the adventure playground and barbeque area on Wednesday 14 December and Friday 16 December, between 10am and 11.30am.

Teenagers and older kids will enjoy the chance to immerse themselves in an alternate universe with Wagga Wagga Art Gallery’s upcoming exhibition Terminus, by Jess Johnson and Simon Ward.

Inspired by Sci-Fi, comics and fantasy movies, Terminus is a virtual reality (VR) installation that transports the viewer into an imaginary landscape of rich colour and intricate patterns.

You can explore the dream-like places, populated by humanoid clones and cryptic symbols, via a network of travellators and gateways.

Catch Terminus from 17 December 2022 until 5 February 2023 in the Art Gallery’s New Media Project Lab.

Plan a visit to the Wagga Zoo and Aviary from Monday 26 December onwards for an opportunity to meet some of the zoo’s newest arrivals.

Zoo Curator Wendy McNamara said the team would be holding meet and greets daily from 11am near the wombat enclosure.

“We recently welcomed a new kangaroo and wallaby who were born here at the zoo,” Ms McNamara said.

“Now they’re a bit older, we’ll be doing meet and greets with both Mike the red roo and Theodore the wallaby. We’ll also have the dingos out and about, as well as our reptiles.”

Meet and greet will run for approximately one hour each day depending on numbers.

The zoo will stay open seven days a week between 9am to 4pm from Monday 26 December onwards for the rest of the school holidays.

During January, young people aged 12-17 years can try their hand at producing a zine, with the help of Halfway Print Fest and Nest Studio Collective.

A zine (pronounced ‘zeen’) is an original, self-published, non-commercial book, usually produced by one person or a very small group of people.

Zines come in all shapes, sizes, topics and formats: from handwritten to cut-and-paste using drawn images, photographs, collage and computer-generated images and text.

The library will be running a series of zine workshops from 11 January to the 17 January in a range of locations across the city and rural villages across the Local Government Area.

These workshops are free for participants thanks to the generous support provided by the Office for Regional Youth and Create NSW.  For more information, visit waggalibrary.com.au/whats-on

This summer the Museum of the Riverina Historic Council Chambers venue is hosting The Best of the Bald Archy prize – the past 26 winners, providing a hilarious social history of Australia. A series of Bald Archy garden gnomes are also on display.

The Bald Archy Prize was bequeathed to the Museum of the Riverina following the passing of its founder Peter Batey OAM.

For Council facility opening times over Christmas and the New Year, visit wagga.nsw.gov.au/openhours

For more information

Wagga Wagga City Library: waggalibrary.com.au

Wagga Wagga Art Gallery: waggaartgallery.com.au

Wagga Zoo & Aviary: wagga.nsw.gov.au/zoo