Whether you’re Irish or not, celebrating St Patrick’s Day is a beloved tradition worldwide that sees thousands of people coming together to dress in green, drink, enjoy live entertainment, eat traditional Irish food and celebrate the Irish heritage.

The day of celebration marks the day of Saint Patricks death, and was originally a religious holiday typically observed with church services, feasts and alcohol.

The modern St Patrick’s Day has now shaped up to include jaw dropping street parades, green beer (thanks to US Budweiser’s marketing push in the 1980’s) and a sea of green merchandise & costumes!

Here at Paddyfest, we are a festival for the Irish in all of us… because as they say, “Everyone is Irish on St Paddy’s Day!”

Experience an incredible day out with family and friends in the picturesque grounds of Eagle Farm Racecourse, filled with live music, delicious food, traditional Irish ales & craft beer, roving performers, Irish pipe bands & dancers, and a dedicated kids zone.

Paddyfest is a festival where you can bring the whole family.

Paddyfest brings together the best in Irish traditions with all the best event highlights you could want. So, round up your friends and family and immerse yourself in the vibrant social scene of Paddyfest!

10 Interesting St Patrick’s Day Facts

1. The first St Patrick’s Day festival wasn’t held in Ireland – it was actually celebrated in Boston in the United States in 1737.
2. We should really be wearing blue! Saint Patrick himself wore “Saint Patrick’s blue”, a light shade. The green colour only came about after it was linked to the Irish independence movement in the late 18th Century. One of the traditions on St Patrick’s Day is to pinch anyone not in green.
3. Saint Patrick wasn’t even Irish! He was born in either Wales or Scotland and at the age of 16 he was kidnapped and sent to Ireland to be a slave.
4. St Patrick’s Day used to be a dry holiday. Hard to believe now, with Guiness and other popular stouts free-flowing during the day! A 2012 estimate pegged the total amount spent on beer for Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations at $245 million. And that’s before tips to pubs’ bartenders.
5. Why does the Leprechaun guard the pot of gold? Because he earned it! According to legend, leprechauns spend their days making and mending shoes. It’s hard work, so you can’t blame them for being territorial about their pots of gold.
6. It is also believed Saint Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. However, post-glacial Ireland never actually had snakes. Many believe that the term “snakes” referred to the serpent symbolism of the Druids of that time and place. Today, there are no snakes to be found! Perhaps he could have tried Australia?
7. Chicago hosts one of the worlds biggest St Patrick’s Day parades and in 1962 they began their annual tradition of dying the Chicago River green! A plumber noticed how dye used to trace possible sources of river pollution had stained a colleague’s overalls a brilliant green… so began the tradition! It takes 40 tons to change the colour for 4 to 5 hours!
8. Your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are about 1 in 10,000. Trifolium dubium, the wild-growing, three-leaf clover that some botanists consider the official shamrock, is an annual plant that germinates in the spring.Other three-leaf clovers, such as the perennials Trifolium repens and Medicago lupulina, are “bogus shamrocks,” according to the Irish Times.
9. The world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade is held in an Irish village. It lasts only 100 meters, between the village’s two pubs.
10. Saint Patrick never got canonised by a Pope, making his saintly status somewhat questionable. He’s a saint in the same way that Aretha Franklin is the “Queen of Soul” or Michael Jackson is the “King of Pop.” But in all fairness, many saints didn’t go through a proper canonization. In the Church’s first millennium, there wasn’t a formal canonization process at all, so most saints from that period were given the title if they were either martyrs or seen as extraordinarily holy.