Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a big weekend in Casey celebrating many festivals and markets. The Celebrate Mooroolbark Festival ran over Saturday and Sunday, celebrating its 21st birthday. It is a great event that brings together local residents, community groups and local businesses. It was wonderful to catch up with Mark and the team at Mooroolbark CFA; the Mooroolbark Girl Guides; the Mooroolbark Boys and Girls Brigade; Ken and the team at the Mooroolbark Men's Shed; Josh and Debbie from Hope City Mission; Neal and Debbie from Holy Fools; Harry and Barb from Caladenia Dementia Care; Helen on the committee from the Mooroolbark committee garden, which is getting that established as we speak; as well as Maarten and Manuel from Drawn Out Dads—dads who have started their own businesses drawing comics while working during the day, a fantastic story. To local strawberry farmers Clara and Linda: it was great to have those farm-fresh strawberries on the day. I also caught up with Neville and the team from the Mooroolbark Bowls Club and Andrew and Barbara from the Lilydale Rotary Club, who were helping out as volunteers. I want to give a shout-out and thank you to Liz Ryan, the committee, the volunteers and the stallholders for a wonderful celebration of our community.

We had the Australian Chin Community Arts and Multicultural Festival on Saturday. It was an amazing celebration of their performances, traditional music and sport. The Chin wrestling was amazing to watch for the first time. If you have not seen Chin wrestling, go and watch a match. It shows amazing athletic ability. There were musical performances. There were tributes to those in Myanmar who are still fighting today and tributes to previous generations. It was touching to hear those tributes. It was also touching to see the younger generation of the Chin community who were born in Australia, the four and five-year-olds, and the traditions of their homeland still being continued. The Chin are of Tibetan origin. They're from Myanmar. They've suffered widespread and ongoing ethnic and religious persecution since 1960. Many of the community now call Casey home. I'm proud to work with them and continue to represent their community. They're an amazing community that adds so much to Casey.

We also had Wandin North Primary School's harvest fair on Sunday. This is a big day. Circle it in the calendar. It's a great fundraiser for Wandin North Primary School. Congratulations to Principal Paul Bailey, all the staff, parents and teachers on a successful event. It was great to see everyone back together again. It was also great to see Dave from Treasuring our Trees. He's a force of nature. His organisation came about after the June storms of 2021, which devastated our community. He's turned that into a positive. He's created a nature and sensory garden, starting at Wandin North Primary School, so that something good could come out of something that was terrible for our community. It was great to visit there last week and to see how excited the parents and kids were for that garden, which is only weeks away from opening.