Amy and Trevor's blog: Multi Cultural Festival

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Multi Cultural Festival

This weekend marked Canberra's Multi-cultural festival. It's a big event in Canberra's calendar and runs from Friday evening until Sunday. We've never been in the evening, but apparently the atmosphere gets fairly electric as there are several stages as well as roving entertainment and unplanned events (like a couple who had set themselves up this year in one of the main walkways with a big sign offering people free hugs!)

First on most people's list though is the food - a vast array of stalls selling everything from Beirut street food to countless noodle stalls and a perennial favourite of chips on a stick!

We stayed for quite a while - it was really hot on Sunday morning, but the 'old' part of the town centre where the festival is held is actually quite leafy and so the trees serve to keep the temperature down a bit. If you do get too hot there's hundreds of stalls willing to sell (or in the case of a lot of friendly Sikhs) give, you ,a bottle of water.

Despite a mass of embassies, day-to-day Canberra is actually pretty white/european, so it's nice to be reminded that under the surface there are actually a host of other cultures living in our city.