Top-secret plans for an extravagant world culture festival to be held right here in Watsonia have been uncovered. The event, believed to be named “Watso 22”, is hoping to capitalise on the nostalgic memories of the ground-breaking World Expo 88 held in Brisbane over 20 years ago, by launching a similar festival in the year 2022.


A key feature of Bicentennial celebrations, Expo 88 attracted over 15 million visitors to Brisbane in 1988, and essentially brought the world to Brisbane, with many nations erecting pavilions at the large-scale event. While Watso 22 seems to have noticeably humbler aims, the planned festival would have the potential to truly put Watsonia on the international stage, boosting tourism to the local area, and dethroning Taylor Swift as the biggest celebrity to ever walk our streets.

In yet another The Watsonia Bugle exclusive, we managed to speak to an anonymous member of the organising committee, who revealed the team was not concerned about the current COVID-19 situation. They said, “Obviously a lot of things are on hold right now, but we feel we have plenty of time between now and the official opening of Watso 22. And who knows, maybe our event will be just what Watsonia needs once all this social isolation stuff has calmed down? By 2022, our region should be ready to welcome back international visitors, and the economy will no doubt benefit from an event of this magnitude.”

While the source remained tight-lipped about the nitty gritty of Watso 22, they did provide just enough hints to provide a rough outline. They said, “Naturally, any event that pays homage to Expo 88 needs a monorail through the middle of it, so we’re hoping to install one of them. That will help to ferry the thousands of visitors around the Watsonia CBD, from pavilion to pavilion.”

But all we really cared about was whether this event would provide us with all we’ve ever wanted for Watsonia: a giant dim sim in the heart of our suburb. Sadly, when it came to this topic, the source remained non-committal. They just said, “No guarantees. I’ve been pushing for it, because it would provide an amazing centrepiece, but not all members of the committee are on board. Luckily I have two years to lobby them.”

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