The Sunshine Lunar New Year Festival returned to Hampshire Road, Sunshine on Sunday 12 February in celebration of the lunar calendar.
Presented to the community by the businesses of Sunshine, the now annual Lunar New Year Festival was an action-packed day of family fun for all ages bringing in more than 40,000 locals as well as visitors from further afar.
Hampshire Road was closed to traffic and came alive with multicultural street entertainment for the whole family.
A large stage built in front of Sunshine Plaza hosted exciting musical, dancing and comedy acts including the fabulous and funny Diana Nguyen who gave away hundreds of dollars in red-pockets to the audience. Other performers included Ryan Ritchie from TrueLive, One Spirit Africa, LaDescarda and Sounds of Polynesia.
The stage also hosted a fast pho eating competition with the local City West Falcons winning the fastest bánh mì eating competition and $1,000.
The festival also offered a fabulous array of street food stalls representing many nations, children’s carnival rides, pony rides, face-painting, stiltwalkers, bubbles, street-performers and cultural children’s craft activities. Sunshine’s favourite local sporting groups attended with fun kids’ activities. Razor the Raptor and Toby the T Rex Dinosaurs visited with their five dinosaur babies and danced down Hampshire Road.
A vibrant lion and dragon dance, complete with long string fireworks, took place at the stage with the festival ending with a traditional Lunar New Year display of fireworks.
Sunshine Business Association president Vu Du said the group was “proud to bring such a wonderful event to the community”.
“Our local businesses have praised SBA for such a successful day, with one of the shopping centres saying it’s their busiest day of the year, and this is what drives us in delivering such festivals along with all the wonderful smiles and people dancing on the day”.
The Sunshine Lunar New Year Festival is a free cultural community event staged and presented by the Sunshine Business Association, supported by Brimbank Council, Victorian Multicultural Commission, Victorian State Government, SBS, Melbourne Airport Rail and Sunshine businesses.
The association’s next event is A Sunshine Wander on Monday 27 March as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival’s Eat Drink Westside.
