Growers celebrate their favourite vegetable in 2025 Lower Kalgan Pumpkin Festival

It was a pumpkin-lover’s delight earlier this month as growers and fans of the gourd gathered for the annual Lower Kalgan Pumpkin Festival.

About 1800 people packed into Kalgan’s Bridge Park on April 6 to view and sample the entrants for the heaviest pumpkin, best pumpkin soup, best pumpkin pie, most unusual veggie and guess the pumpkin’s weight competitions.

Bronwyn O’Flanagan, one of the festival organisers, said the event has grown “bigger and better” every year since its launch in 2013.

“It’s a really big community thing and people take great pride in their pumpkins,” she said.

“We do pumpkin soup, pumpkin scones, everyone dresses up in orange, we have lots of vendors, we have a band, we have bric-a-brac, we have the Kalgan volunteer fire brigade doing a barbie and raising funds.

“It’s really, really popular and a great day.”

The titular heaviest pumpkin competition received 26 whopping entrants in the junior and open divisions.

The open title was taken out by Margaret River’s Anthony Quinlin with his 29.8kg veggie.

A 76.4kg pumpkin grown by Kalgan’s Amarah and Kelsey Freemantle was runner-up, followed by organiser Michael Bocian’s 65.8kg entry.

The junior competition was won by Archer Simojoki from Warrenup, with a weight of 14.8kg.

Second and third place was awarded to Lower Kalgan’s Emily Bocian (14.3kg) and Ashton Upton from Youngs Siding (9.7kg).

Tim Fialkowski’s accurate guess of 48.5kg — only one gram off the correct 48.6kg weight — won him the guessing competition, while Frances Giles and Jen Pocock were lauded for their tasty pumpkin soups with chefs and peoples choice honours respectively.

Shardae Holt’s pumpkin pie was the best of the bunch.

Ms O’Flanagan said the organisers have already started gearing up for next year’s festival, which they hope to hold in March.