Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Day 107 - The Parade

 
Today, Sunday, was the day of the parade that concludes the Fremantle Festival. What a nice coincidence that our stay in Fremantle fell right into the entire 11 days of the festival. At 2 PM some inner city streets were closed to let big and small children draw on the streets where later the parade would pass by. As we weren't so interested in drawing with sidewalk chalk, we came in time for the parade. We went to a place where we could stand in the shadow, while the parade would walk in the sunshine for best photos. And since we were 10 minutes early, we nevertheless grabbed some chalk and drew "Love from Switzerland" and the Swiss flag on Fremantle Cappuccino Strip ;-) A minute later we had already triggered a little conversation with a couple from Lugano that was amused to see a Swiss flag. höhö.


Like yesterday, on Maritime Day, there were also bagpipe marching bands. But not only bagpipe music blasted our eardrums out, but also the "Sambanistas" and another Brazilian group were extremely loud (accompanied by half-naked feather-decorated dancing girls). Several circus groups as well as ethnic representatives from the Russian community, the Croatian community and the Thai community walked by in their traditional dresses. The second biggest group was the Hare Krishna sect who not only sang their well-known songs, but also had a big "temple on wheels" with their local Guru.
Between the dance groups, the music groups, the ethnic groups and the school groups, there were a lot of political groups that formulated their concerns or asked for support. Sustainability groups, activist groups against live animal exports, energy saving groups and a huge crowd that was against bulldozing a wetland area for building a new piece of motorway. Also many greens demonstrated for birds and other animals, or dressed up as butterflies ("that our land stays green, so all our butterflies can be seen"). There was a homosexual pride group and, last not least, quite a lot of people who demanded de-criminalization of asylum seekers and a more liberal immigration policy. That's Fremantle. 







The "Guru" on top of this rolling shrine




In the middle of the parade there were four or five brave persons with rainbow-coloured pride flags. Later we found that poster on the wall of the St, John's Anglican church. A pride mass. What a difference to the way the church in Europe is handling homosexuality. Thank you.


Watching the after-parade dance party on Kings Square from far away ;-)

No comments:

Post a Comment