12:00a.m. 16th September 2007

Doonan kitemakers John and Marie Beattie at work on one of their colourful creations.

Finding an explanation for why people fly kites is as hard as explaining why I still have my brown paper kite hidden away in the top shelf of a wardrobe.

But the prospect of putting up their kites again has lured dozens upon dozens of kite flyers from up and down the east coast of Australia to the Sunshine Coast next weekend for the annual Coolum Kite Festival.

More than 40,000 people are expected to attend the event – one of the biggest free public events on the Sunshine Coast.

The festival, which fills the beach from the Coolum Surf Club north to Stumers Creek with people and the air space above with colour, has grown immensely from the first event held seven years ago.

That small-time affair was put together by a couple of dedicated kite enthusiasts with help from the late Ron Field and his wife, Val – two later-in-life converts to kite flying who recognised the potential for such an event.

The Fields became interested in kites after their daughter brought one home from an overseas holiday in 1990.

“Ron was off work with ill health and she said, ‘Dad, why don’t you make kites?’. So it really started from there,” Val says.

“He made one and the three of us started flying. We met some other people flying kites and that’s where the Queensland Kite Federation started. Now it’s a big club.”

When the Fields retired to Coolum from Brisbane, Ron met a cluster of people who were trying to organise a kite-flying event and he chipped in with his expertise and contacts to get the festival off the ground.

Kite-flying experts from as far as New Zealand and Holland will attend this year’s festival as guests, as will Balinese Prince Ida Bagus Ucrasena Narendra and Princess Helmi Ginanti – both kite flying enthusiasts.

Kite festival chairman Noel Mooney, who visited the Balinese International Kite Festival last month with a small party of kite flyers, says the popularity of kites overseas in countries such as Bali had to be seen to be believed.

“I just got back from Bali and it’s really huge there,” he says.

“It’s cultural. It’s what they do over there in their spare time.”

John and Marie Beattie of Sunshine Rainbow Kites are the only kitemakers to be found on the Sunshine Coast through the regular channels like the White Pages and Google.

The Beatties make kites from the back room of their Doonan home, and sell them from a stall at the Eumundi markets and at other special events such as the kite festival.

They concentrate on four or five simple but popular designs of fabric kites, but do have more adventurous designs in their range.

While the Beatties get lots of inquiries for the fashionable, two-stringed stunt kites, Marie says single-string kites are best for beginners, especially children. Twenty dollars will buy a simple, single-string Australian-made kite that will fly without a problem.

“You get it up there and it sits in the air and it’s easy. When you’re comfortable with that, you can start with a stunt kite,” Marie says.

So the next time someone tells you to go fly a kite, take them up on the offer – it might be good advice.

www.coolumkitefestival.com