This marks the second year the festival has had to be cancelled, which Tatura Lions Club secretary Malcolm Campbell said was disappointing but unavoidable.
“We've actually been planning this since last July,” he said.
“Planning it on the complete understanding that we might have to can it, but we wanted to run it because we thought it was good for the town, but it was just not possible.
“I am really disappointed that we couldn't run it given the amount of planning we put in place."
Due to concerns surrounding COVID-19 and unavailability for the event, many vendors were unable to serve at TatFest this year.
“Usually we've had about 10 people providing meals. This year, we were down to three,” Mr Campbell said.
“I was prepared to go with five vendors as a minimum, but we didn’t even get there.”
However, the biggest issue TatFest faced this year was the lack of entertainment available.
Due to the Tasmanian jumping castle tragedy late last year, Greater Shepparton City Council has placed a temporary ban on jumping castles and inflatables, which eliminated most of the rides planned for TatFest.
"It ruled out the bouncy castles and our zorb balls but that would have been hard anyway because we would have had to get inside them and clean them after every use,“ Mr Campbell said.
“We had a possibility of getting some pedal cars but the insurance companies are not willing to insure businesses with bouncy castles.
“The people that we were going to get the pedal cars from, their insurance runs out in February, and they were unsure about whether they would actually be able to get it again.
“We had to make the call, we couldn't wait until the end of February to decide whether or not to run on the fifth of March.”
The inconvenience of COVID-19 contamination cleaning procedures was another obstacle.
“We normally have an abseiling tower over here, where people climb up and then rope down, and that would have had to been cleaned between every child going into it,” Mr Campbell said.
The new Lions skin cancer screening bus will still be in Tatura on the weekend of March 5 and 6, which allows people to get their body scanned for skin cancer for free.
Mr Campbell said due to its popularity, the bus was already booked out.
“We've had an incredible response and we’ve got four or five people on the waiting list. And I've already told people no more,” he said.
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