The colour of happiness

May’s Kalbar Sunflower Festival blooms copious smiles and much-needed funds for cancer patients.

Story Bruce McMahon  Photos David Kelly

Drought was crippling the family’s lucerne farm in 2020 when Russell Jenner brightened his wife Jenny’s day with a bunch of store-bought sunflowers. Unknowingly, he planted the seeds for Kalbar’s annual Sunflower Festival.

Held on rolling hills in Queensland’s Fassifern Valley, an hour south of Brisbane, the riot-of-colour weekend sees visitors walking out with armfuls of yellow flowers and wide smiles. The three days in May have become a legacy event, too, remembering Russell’s loss to cancer in 2023 and raising thousands of dollars for cancer patient care.

“Lucerne takes a lot of work and a lot of water,” Jenny says. “In 2020, Moogerah Dam was down to 12%, we weren’t able to water the whole farm and so we were thinking what we could do – something that didn’t need a lot of water. Russell and I got the idea of planting sunflowers for agritourism. That first year [2021] we planted about 15 acres [6ha], just used social media and it sold out. We didn’t know what to expect, but it grew organically and has grown from there each year.”

Russell worked through the Jenner farm’s festival in 2022 and 2023, and died in July, 2023. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 oesophageal cancer in late 2021.

Today, the event on a rise just south of Kalbar’s historic hamlet is often oversubscribed. One year the website kalbarsunflowers.com.au crashed in a first day sell-out and Jenny’s now stabilised ticket sales at 13,000 over the three days. She’s worked out that was the sweet spot – a number of people the town, neighbours and gravel road to the farm can handle.

“People walk out with a big pile of sunflowers and big smiles,” Jennys says. “It’s the colour, they’re so big and bright. They make people happy and all that money goes back into cancer care. Even though I’ve lost my husband, this is his legacy, this is what we started together.”