By Sahar Foladi
An amusing day for the community as Springvale celebrated its 31st annual Lunar New Year on Sunday 15 January.
The free Springvale Lunar New Year festival was back this year with flourishing colours and activities for the whole day.
The festival consists of vibrant mix of live music, food, traditional and internationals dance including, lion dance, African and Mexican dance and hip hop, Japanese drums, firecrackers and more for the entire day.
The event took over Buckingham Avenue and surrounds from 11am to 10 pm.
Organised by the not for profit, Springvale Asian Business Association (SABA) in partnership with City of Greater Dandenong, the event was a hit with a great turnout by the locals.
Fireworks erupted from the Buckingham and Queens Avenue intersection at 9:30 pm, which marked the end of the celebrations for the day.
Established in 1987, the organisation has become widely known and respected for its works in a culturally diverse community.
The organisation provides networking platform for local businesses, day to day and topical issues between the council and traders regarding topics such as, economic development, streetscape, local by-laws, food safety, COVID safe, training and drug awareness.
The Springvale Lunar New Year which SABA has been holding every year since 1993 has been one of the famous and well-known festivals.
In 2020 it drew a crowd of more than 60,000 in the past.
President of SABA, Daniel Cheng said the feedback was amazing from participants.
“I have organised multicultural performance programs before and everyone loved it, every year but this year had more variety.”
It’s roughly estimated that 80,000 people attended throughout the whole day.
“The highest number will be during the fireworks at 9:30 pm, I would say 6000 people,” Mr Cheng said.
He also said it was the first time almost all of City of Greater Dandenongs councillors were in attendance. The new CEO, Jacqui Weatherill also attended.
There were 65 stalls and Mr Cheng said that most of the stall holders products were almost finished.
Jim Memeti posted on Facebook, “SABA plays a very important role in supporting the community and businesses in Springvale. We appreciate all that you do to making Springvale, sensational Springvale.”
SABA was nominated to receive the Victorian Multicultural Commission Ambassador Award in 2005.
Secretary General for SABA, Vincent Golf said it was largely a very well arranged event, incident free.
Mr Golf said from where he stood on the stage he could see participants should to shoulder.
“The people were shoulder to shoulder for all the way down to the Ferris wheel on the other side of the festival.”
Mr Cheng said they will continue to have fireworks and display performances and foods from different cultural backgrounds like African, Indian and Afghan as much as he possibly can.
