How nice to have met a fellow board member - I thought I would manage to do that in August at the UK Festival of Quilts, but I didn't find her.
I remember the Floriade when I went to Canberra in 1988, I have a feeling it might have been the first, because I was told that a lot of the bulbs had been supplied by The Netherlands as part of the 200 years celebrations. Apparently the bulbs had to be conditioned so that they flowered in your springtime, rather than a Northern Hemisphere springtime.