YOUNG and old flocked to Riverside Park on Saturday afternoon for the biggest Harmony Day celebrations in Swan Hill’s history.
More than 3000 people attended the seventh annual event and, sprawling on picnic blankets on the grass, the festival-goers ate their way through an array of international cuisines on offer.
Local community members represented their native countries through food stalls, including Peru, Malaysia, Iran, Iraq, the Philippines, Korea and Zimbabwe.
By 7pm the Peruvian food stall had completely sold out of food, and others soon followed suit.
The soundshell hosted performances by local band the Funk Kings, the Swan Hill Ukulele Group and 20 members of Swan Hill disability group the Expressive Arts Group.
A group of Filipino dancers made their way down from Melbourne to participate in the night and the Bendigo Chinese Lions performed twice, with their cheeky antics delighting onlookers.
Swan Hill Mayor Les McPhee emceed the occasion and the night closed with Aunty Debra Chaplin and Imparja Pettit welcoming dancers on stage to do a live performance of the Marruk Project’s video clip 1, 2 Step.
The Harmony Day garden — hundreds of colourful tissue paper flowers, all created by community members and fashioned into a maze by landscape gardener Rohullah Hussaini and Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery director Ian Tully — proved to be a hit, albeit briefly.
Seven weeks in the making, and seven hours in the ‘planting’, by 6pm the garden was no more, as throngs of children gleefully dismantled it, bit by bit.
For more on this story pick up a copy of Monday’s Guardian (April 11, 2016).
