The Samahan ng mga Pilipino-Australians in Gippsland (SPAG) celebrated the Gippsland Filipino Festival on the second Sunday of February 2022.
In line with this occasion, the Filipino Community Council of Victoria (FCCVI) also launched its home-based aged care services in La Trobe Valley.
To mark these twin landmarks, the Filipino community in Gippsland treated shoppers and visitors at the Morwell Sunday Market to a full-blown Philippine-style fiesta.
Setting up a stage in the midst of the stalls of the local Sunday Market, members of Morwell’s Filipino community wowed the crowd with several hours of nonstop entertainment, which local market shopkeepers lauded as a boon to attendance and patronage.
While Filipino artists entertained the audience, local shopkeepers happily plied their wares, selling everything from locally grown farm produce to estate jewellery. The Filipino performers included Angel Bardos, the SPAG Ati-atihan Group, the Mabuhay Dancers, Allan Baladjay, Simon Butcher, Mary Ann Van der Horst, Miguel Valdivia, Rochie Turner and Chris Besas.
Jointly sponsored by the Samahan ng mga Pilipino-Australian sa Gippsland (SPAG) and the Filipino Community Council of Victoria, Incorporated (FCCVI), the all-day event featured a parade, Filipino food, live song and dance performances, raffles, games and a search for Mr. and Ms. Valentine’s Day.
SPAG President Jerry Baladjay undertook meticulous preparations to ensure that the event was an affair to remember, going so far as to render song numbers for the audience. FCCVI President Marlon de Leon, on the other hand, ferried visitors in from Melbourne and surrounding areas to give them a taste of Gippsland hospitality.
The guest of honour at the festivities was Philippine Consul General Maria Lourdes Salcedo of the Philippine Consulate in Melbourne, who made the two-hour journey to congratulate and lend support to FCCVI’s latest initiative. She hailed the expansion of home-based aged care services to Gippsland as a landmark achievement and joined in to help make this latest project a success.
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