By Casey Neill
About 50,000 people sprang up in Springvale for the 25th annual Springvale Lunar New Year Festival.
Greater Dandenong councillor Youhorn Chea told the Monday 23 January council meeting that the event brought together “not only the Asian community”.
“We can live together in peace and harmony,” he said.
Mayor Jim Memeti said organisers, the Springvale Asian Business Association (SABA), “didn’t know how many people were going to attend” when they held the first festival back in 1992.
“It’s just going from strength to strength,” he said.
Martin Lee was SABA president for the inaugural festival and opened the event with Cr Roz Blades.
“It was the brainchild of our founding president Hoang Tran,” he said.
“During his term as president there were too many other things because SABA was in its infancy.
“I took over as the second president and I decided to give it a go.
“New year is traditionally as important as Christmas to the western culture.
“It’s a time where family get together once a year.
“The New Year’s eve dinner is extremely important as a symbol of family reunion.”
Mr Lee said he received strong support from the then-City of Springvale and local politicians.
“Apart from Little Bourke’s China Town I think we are the longest running festival outside of China,” he said.
“It’s a team effort. We add onto it year after year.
“From the beginning when just a core team of five or six people did all the work … the last three years we’ve had professional organisers.
“That makes it a lot easier.
“We employ a festival manager who will deal with all the paperwork. The committee will just concentrate just on the program.”
Mr Lee said this year’s was very diverse, from Japanese drummers to martial arts, Vietnamese and Chinese bands and opera.
“Our stage performance is second to none,” he said.
He said the inaugural event had only a few stalls but “stage performers from the first year was very, very good”.
This year was the first time fireworks featured at the festival and Mr Lee hopes they’ll return next year.
He’d like to see more overseas performers and more food at future festivals – finances allowing.
“I would like to make it an icon for Melbourne for tourists,” he said.
