Elvis Wall of Fame Unveiling

It is the Parkes Elvis Festival’s honour to induct Festival Founders, Bob and Anne Steel, to the Parkes Elvis Festival Wall of Fame in 2025.

Anne and Bob were the owners of Gracelands restaurant in Parkes. The pair had a vision of opening a restaurant so purchased a former student hostel and transformed it into a restaurant and function centre. Gracelands opened its doors in 1981 shortly after they returned from a family holiday to Disneyland in the USA. Anne commented that it was a shame that they didn’t get to visit Graceland. Bob’s eyes lit up as he said “How would Gracelands be as the name? It sounds so much better than Bob and Anne’s”.

In 1992 Anne decided to go full steam ahead and changed the Gracelands restaurant theme to rock ‘n’ roll. Staff uniforms switched from the traditional black and white attire to rock ‘n’ roll skirts, bobby socks and Elvis silhouette printed t-shirts. Rock ‘n’ roll music played on the stereo with Elvis and many other music greats from the era.

It was during 1992 that Roel Tencate, the local Editor of the Champion Post Newspaper, was at his mother’s birthday party at Gracelands. The family are Elvis fans and they sang and danced to Elvis until the early hours of the morning. It was then that Bob was having a quiet red wine with Roel at the end of the night who planted the idea of having an Elvis week in Parkes. The pair thought that August would be the ideal time until Anne joined the conversation and disagreed. It was January when business was slow. The heat in Parkes drove locals on holidays to the beach and some businesses to close because it was so quiet. It was decided then and there that Elvis’s birthday weekend in January 1993 would be the date.

The inaugural Parkes Elvis Festival kicked off with the opening night’s dinner at Gracelands on 8 January 1993 with a birthday party for Elvis. Bob ran the bar, Anne organised the event and cooked, daughter Tiffany (now the Festival Director) was MC and ran the competitions and son Andrew checked people in and worked the bar. No one dressed in theme except for Elvis Lennox. Bob had asked Elvis to judge the evenings competitions however when he realised he was the only person in a jumpsuit, he asked to go into the competition instead. To no surprise, Elvis won the look-a-like and John Lovett won the sound-a-like completion.

This year will be a significant milestone in the Wall of Fame’s history, with the Wall of Fame plaques being relocated from the wall in Kelly Reserve to the newly built Gates of Graceland at the Parkes Visitor Information Centre.

Performers