ABSTRACT
The growth of the Elvis Festival in Parkes highlights how a remote place with constrained economic prospects has created a valuable tourist resource, and subsequently captured national publicity, through a festival based around commemoration of the birthday of Elvis Presley, a performer who had never visited Australia, and certainly not Parkes, nor had any conceivable links to the town. Indeed, Elvis rarely left the American south. Parkes is essentially a service centre for a part of Australia's wheat-sheep belt, and was plagued with drought for most of the twenty-first century. Newspapers, television and radio stations have all been giving the festival plenty of coverage and if nothing else, it has certainly given Parkes publicity. The Festival invariably began on the Friday night of the weekend closest to Elvis' birthday. By 2010 the winner of the Parkes Tribute Artist Competition was representing Australia in the Elvis Tribute Artist World Cup in Wales against competitors from sixteen countries.
