Rachelle Todd has played a starring role at the Apple and Grape Harvest Festival for many years – but few of the hundreds of festival visitors who snapped her photo would recognise her face.
From 2012, Rachelle was the person inside one or the other of the popular Festival mascots, Jonathan Apple and Isabella Grape.
Now she is stepping out of the mascot costume to take on the role of young ambassador at the 2022 Festival.
“I was the mascot for many years,” Rachelle said. “I have been the apple and the grape, I’ve worn the mascot costumes in the Toowoomba Festival of Flowers and most recently I was in costume at the busking [South East Queensland finals of Australian Busking Championships].”
Rachelle has recently returned to Australia after four years in London, where she completed a Masters Degree in Conservation Science and worked as assistant editor for BMC journals.
She is looking forward to using her social media skills to fundraise for the Festival as a young ambassador, as well as working with her sponsors, Shane and Anna Schnitzerling of Vincenzo’s, to promote the district.
“I think it’s an incredible cause, because the money goes back to the Festival and the community,” Rachelle explained
Like Rachelle, sponsor Anna Schnitzerling is keen to reconnect with the community and the Apple and Grape Harvest Festival after a long absence from the district.
“Rachelle’s very passionate about the Festival and that was a deciding factor in taking it on,” Anna said.
For Anna, sponsoring a young ambassador is a way to give back to the community and support local businesses through the Festival, as well as continuing a long family tradition of community involvement.
She hopes that supporting the young ambassador competition will help to reinvigorate the community spirit which she remembers as a youngster attending the Apple and Grape Harvest Festival in the 1980s.
“The schools were so involved and the kids were on bikes riding down the street,” she recalled. “Hopefully the 150th anniversary of Stanthorpe will bring that back.”
Festival president Russell Wantling agreed that the ambassador program will go a long way to reigniting community spirit.
“When you have ambassadors like Rachelle whose passion for the festival and this community is undeniable, you know you are on the right track. And for Shane and Anna and the team at Vincenzo’s to recognise and share that passion, well you really have a perfect match.
”Shane and Anna have been working tirelessly to re-open Vincenzo’s, so for both of them to take on something of this magnitude, simply to support their community, it just speaks volumes.”
Anna said Rachelle’s fundraising events would use local produce and businesses wherever possible.
Fundraisers already planned include a garden party at Diamondvale Cottages on 31 October, and future events including a Pizza/Pasta Night, Ladies’ Day, and raffles.
