Pako Festa

from w
Though it was about 40 degrees in the shade, Pako Festa still attracted about 100,000 people to Pakington Street, Geelong West for Geelong's annual multicultural festival. Many people found respite by sitting under trees or ducking into shops, cafes, the West Town Hall, or the library to cool off. I watched the opening Aboriginal ceremony, and a Greek dance class but kept out of the sun. Peceli was at a Presbytery meeting in the morning so we met after 1 p.m. but didn't stay long this year as it was so hot and also our Fiji community didn't perform dances this time. Meanwhile our pets rested in an enclosure in the lounge room under the water cooler until the evening when they went outside again. It is a very very hot day and for a while we will try and forget the imbroglio going on in Canberra.

Polyglots, part of Pako Festa

from w
Last night the Geelong Writers and Diversitat (Geelong Migrant Resource Centre's business name) staged a good night at the Wholefoods Cafe - theme Greek writers and Alexandria - poetry by Cavafy, info about Durrell, a beautiful Greek singer, an enthusiastic belly dancer, and local poets and readers. It was an enjoyable night climaxed by several people from the audience joining in the dance including Peceli! On Saturday the Pako Festa in Pakington Street, Geelong West will be in full swing - usually with about 100,000 people enjoying one of Australia's best multicultural festivals.

Pako Festa is on today in Geelong

from w
Every year towards the end of February Geelong puts on a splendid ethnic festival that attracts over 200,000 people. We've been involved for about 30 years as a Fiji migrant community. The march started at 11 a.m. and our Fiji group will dance after 3.30 p.m. (Peceli and I are having two hours rest in between!) Here are some pics from earlier on at the beginning of our march. Will post more later and also go to the Babasiga blog for more info and pictures.

Cook Islanders at Pako Festa

from w
Today was a celebration of cultural diversity in Geelong with the annual Pako Festa in Pakington Street Geelong. We are proud of our city being made up of diverse groups who get along harmoniously. Pako has been going on for 28 years now and our family have been part of it for a long time also. I posted pictures of the Fijian dance and song items etc. on the babasiga blog, but here will post a few pictures of a dance workshop by a group from the Cook Islands where the dancers taught some of the locals how to swing their hips in the Cook Island way. Of course lots more was happening at Pako with 100,000 people in the street festival sampling food, singing, dancing, with clowns and a whole variety of entertainment. While waiting for the Fijian item on the Park stage, I sat on a seat (because my back is still a bit sor) and yarned with a man who migrated from Croatia and a woman who came from Iran. Pako Festa is a day where you lose inhibitions and talk to everybody!

Today has been a day of mixed emotions for me as this morning I attended the funeral of a dear friend, an elderly man from our church, and there have been many funerals lately. It is very sad as we will miss our friend Geoff. Even though they say that 'Heaven is like a transfigured earth' and I think nothing could be more beautiful than the landscape of driving from Cobden to Port Campbell, a place that I often mentioned to Geoff and Laurel Port. Isa, our days are contradictions, light and heavy moment by moment.

Street Faces in Geelong

from w
A project of Diversitat and others, there will be eighteen very large photos of Geelong people up on the walls of buildings around Geelong by Friday this week. I took part in a workshop and my photo of Peceli is one of the 18 out of 2000 so that's lucky. Peceli's face - 2 metres by 3 and a half metres - will adorn an outside wall of the Geelong library for a couple of weeks. We will go to the launch party on Friday night so that will be fun to meet with the other 'lucky' faces. Go to further information.

Of course the annual Pako Festa will be on Saturday February 27th and there's plenty of information on the Pako Festa website. A Fijian dance group will be coming down from Melbourne to go in the parade and to dance on the stage at West Park in the afternoon. Our Fiji Geelong Friendship Club have participated in Pako for at least twenty years.

Taking photographs of faces

from w,
Do you like people taking photos of your face, close-up, really close-up, like six inches away? Well, there's an art project going on in Geelong related to the annual Pako Festa in February, to create thirty to forty portraits of Geelong people, in their variety, to put up on buildings around the city and each photo will be several metres tall! On Wednesday one of the workshops for this project took place at Geelong West Park where it was cool and breezy. While we were waiting I took one photo of a mother and daughters in Spanish costume. Later a teacher showed us how to take interesting portraits and we all had a go with our own or borrowed cameras. I later sent eight photos to one of the project officers but maybe none of them will make the final cut. Background bits and pieces intrude, a face is a little out of focus, the pic is boring like a passport photo, etc. I"m not posting my eight pics as they are assigned for the project but just putting some pics up as examples. The community art project is called 'Many Faces' and later on the best pictures will be on some Geelong websites but mainly the focus is on the huge portraits to be placed on buildings around Geelong. One of the guys took my pic but I really do not want my mug up there on the Post Office wall, metres high!

Pako Festa

from Peceli
Once again we took part in the Pakington Street ethnic festival known as Pako. This was on last Saturday in Geelong West. Usually about 100,000 people attend. There is a huge parade then food stalls, children's entertainment, dancing and singing on stages or as roving buskers. The pictures here were taken waiting for the parade to start, one dance group, some Rotary Exchange students, and five of us from Fiji waiting for the other ten to turn up. It was a good day as usual and we met many friends there.