By Goya Dmytryshchak
The Australia Day festival in Altona has been cancelled.
The annual event has been run by the Altona Village Traders Association for the past 11 years.
President Kim Walsh said the festival, which attracts up to 15,000 people, had grown too big for he and wife Sharon to host.
“We just don’t have the arms and legs on the ground to continue to do it, so it’s with a really sad heart,” he said. “It has nothing to do with being politically correct – it’s just gotten too big.
“In a beautiful way, we have created a monster.”
The free day-long event had triathlons, live entertainment, stalls, a sandcastle competition, horse-drawn carriages, double decker bus tours and camel rides. It culminated with fireworks on the beach.
Western Suburbs Triathlon Club has confirmed that its triathlon events will go ahead next year on the Australia Day public holiday.
“Our annual Australia Day triathlon event – kids, juniors and adults – is going ahead as planned for Monday, January 28,” said president Jill Stevenson.
Laverton and Altona Community Bank said it would continue its annual sandcastle competition.
Director Michael Pernar said that, 11 years ago, the bank had given Altona traders a community grant that helped kickstart the festival.
“It’s disappointing, but understandable, that it has become too big an event to be run by the traders, unless they got a lot more financial backing or employed an events co-ordinator,” he said.
“Each year, we allocate funds anyway for the Australia Day festival that’s there. And we just thought, ‘Well, if the traders can’t go ahead with it, we’re still going to continue and have the sandcastle building competition’, because that’s always been a part of our Australia Day festivities.”
Hobsons Bay council had already allocated $21,000 funding to the traders association for next year’s Australia Day in Altona event, which Mr Walsh said would be redirected to smaller events throughout the year.
“What we’re doing to make up for it is, we are having a number of smaller events throughout the summer period,” he said. “We’re going to have some twilight markets. The Altona traders are going to put on extra movie nights, which start earlier in the day for the kids. We’re looking at perhaps having a water slide brought in … a whole host of things.
“I would rather us do 10 smaller things than one Australia Day.
“And again, I’ve got to emphasise we’re not cancelling it because of anything to do with ‘Invasion Day’ or Greens policies or anything like that. I want to emphasise that it has nothing to do with political correctness.
“That played no part whatsoever in us deciding to have to cancel it.”
In 2010, Hobsons Bay council took control of another event, Bayside Festival aka Operation Recreation, which had been run by community volunteers since 1977. The council renamed it the Altona Beach Festival.
In 2013, the council voted not to fund that festival, held every March, saying it was too close to the Australia Day festival.
