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The newest event to come to Bendigo, the Lost Trades Fair, has proved to be very popular.
The two-day event has attracted thousands of people, with queues of vehicles and people growing within half an hour of gates opening on the first day.
City of Greater Bendigo tourism and major events manager, Terry Karamaloudis, said pre-sale tickets numbered over 5500 by Friday afternoon.
Most of these, he said, were bought outside the Bendigo region.
Mr Karamaloudis said it was hoped such events would bring an influx of new visitors to the region, who would stay and spend here, bringing new money into the economy.
The Lost Trades Fair moved to Bendigo this year after outgrowing its former home of Kyneton.
Last year, organisers had to cap numbers at 18,000 after the 2018 event attracted 22,000 visitors.
Organiser Lisa Rundell said almost 10,000 people went through the gates on Saturday, and speaking to the Bendigo Advertiser on Sunday morning, it was anticipated the event would see a similar crowd on the second day.
Saturday
The penny farthing bicycle is often viewed as a relic of a time long gone by.
But did you know you can have them made right here in Victoria, for proper riding?
Melbourne's Dan Bolwell has been crafting penny farthings for 20 years, and doing it full-time for about seven years.
It arose from a childhood passion that has yet to burn away, and he has dedicated his life to building the iconic bicycles.
"My work here is my heart, my soul, my passion... It's not just an object, it's about a culture, what we do," Mr Bolwell said.
Mr Bolwell is one of almost 200 artisans at Bendigo's first Lost Trades Fair this weekend.
The fair celebrates traditional and rare trades and crafts.
Mr Bolwell said penny farthings were originally made for racing and adventure, and the bikes he built were made to withstand the forces of riding.
There was a community of penny farthing riders, he said, who were all "amazing, articulate, beautiful" people.
Also at the Lost Trades Fair is retired signwriter Robert Weaver.
He became a signwriter at the age of 16 in 1959 and retired six years ago.
Nowadays, he said, the process of signwriting was mostly computerised and involved printing or vinyl cut lettering.
But his signwriting was done by hand.
"It's an individual sign, then, whereas you get it off a machine, it won't look any different to one that'll come out of the shop tomorrow," Mr Weaver said.
To be good at signwriting by hand, he said, a person needed "time and practise".
The fair attracts visitors and artisans from many places, but most will not have travelled so far as the Gungwanhurr Collective.
The collective is a group of Yolngu women from north-east Arnhem Land, who have come to Bendigo to showcase their traditional weaving.
One of the women, Yimin, said it was important to show their culture, in which women pass their weaving skills down to the younger generations.
She said weaving and painting were ways in which stories were shared.
The women weave with dried strips of pandanus leaves, which are coloured various hues using dyes derived from roots and plants.
Australian Mechanical Organ Society member Graeme McDiarmid is at the fair with a mechanical organ built in 1993.
He explained that mechanical organs originated in Europe and allowed people with no musical skill to play music, as they were simply wound by arm.
Another member of the society, John Wolff, demonstrates a barrel or crank organ, which plays paper music rolls - the first affordable medium for music that allowed it to be widely distributed to the public.
The Lost Trades Fair moved to Bendigo this year after outgrowing its former home of Kyneton.
It proved to be a popular attraction shortly after gates opened on Saturday morning - vehicles queued to get a park and many people were already inside within the first half an hour.
The fair continues on Sunday at the Bendigo Racecourse, between 10am and 5pm.
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