Diwali Mela '09

As we were surfing the net yesterday trying to decide where to go out during the day, we found an advertisement for Diwali Mela in the West '09. Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, is on Oct 17 this year and we were just curious to check out the advertised mela (or fair). The mela was held at the training ground of the Western Bulldogs, a popular local Aussie Rules team, in the western suburb of Footscray.

It took us a good 1.5 hours travelling by train and bus to get to Footscray from our home in Clayton. There was a good crowd milling around the various stalls of food, clothes and arts and crafts. It was a mildly nippy day, which made loitering around an open field fairly bearable, and we took in the sights and sounds of the place. The picture on the right is a snapshot of the fair with the skyscrapers of downtown in the centre background. You can see a few more pictures of the fair here.

Apart from these stalls dotted around the ground, there was also a small stage where a band was playing some Bollywood tunes, led by a rather ordinary but enthusiastic singer. After a few songs, there were a couple of traditional Indian dance performances, one of which involved an Aussie girl. What followed afterwards was very lame, a fashion show set to absolutely crappy music played by the same band mentioned above! The clothes on show were definitely attractive, and the models somewhat watchable, but the music was simply appalling and I wondered why they did not choose to simply play a CD!!! We browsed through all the stalls and bought of couple of earthen lamps at one of the crafts stores that my Wife liked.

Fireworks were on tap after sunset but it was getting considerably chilly out there and we were quite tired as well. So, we chose to give the fireworks a miss unfortunately and headed back home, after meeting and chatting with one of my Wife's friends, satisfied at enjoying an Indian evening in Melbourne and exploring a new part of the city.