Salisbury Food and Cultural Festival

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (15:34): I rise today to talk about another fantastic event held in my electorate of Ramsay, the Salisbury Food and Cultural Festival, a collaboration between the Salisbury Business Association and the City of Salisbury. The festival is now in its second year and celebrates the rich diversity of cultures that makes up our community. Salisbury is fortunate enough to be one of the few remaining shopping precincts in South Australia to have retained an original high street. A stroll down John Street in the Salisbury CBD is fantastic any day of the week. I like to say, 'Come to Salisbury and see the world.'

We have certainly seen changes within John Street, which predominantly has been filled with traditional banks and pharmacies, and more recently we are seeing different migrants come and settle in Salisbury: we have the Bhutanese with the Namaste Supermarket and the Vietnamese through their bakeries. Of course, we have a wonderful place called the Pacific Big Butcher, which is actually owned by a Vietnamese developer and businessperson but has an eastern European feel and is very popular with our Polish community.

However, let me talk about Saturday 3 November when the street was closed to traffic and it came truly alive with sights, sounds, aromas and tastes from all over the globe. It was a perfect spring day and more than 2,000 people attended the event, which had a market bazaar with more than 30 stalls. The John Street traders were also open, selling their goods and wares. Five hours of entertainment were scheduled on the main stage and a dozen cultural food vendors, including Thai, Vietnamese, Dutch, Chinese, Persian, Italian, South African, Indian and much, much more, as well as the most popular of the festival, the Mexican food vendors. We had very traditional tacos, which were very highly regarded.

The children were kept entertained by many free activities, including a bouncy castle and face painting, balloon animals, a colouring competition, and the library was open. Of course we had our very own badge-making store, where our office was kept busy all day with parents and children designing their own badges to make and wear. It was an honour for me to officially open the event with the now newly re-elected mayor, Gillian Aldridge OAM.

Most importantly, it was this collaboration between the Salisbury Business Association and the City of Salisbury that brought people together to make sure we could celebrate the uniqueness of Salisbury by combining the local traders and many of our multicultural community groups. What we want to do in Salisbury is make it a warm and welcoming place for people to come together and for families to be entertained and enjoy wonderful food from around the world.

One of the things my office did was have a stall where we produced a diagram looking at the history of migration into Salisbury and at both the social and economic impact the successive waves had made over the years. Of course, it has been quite diverse, from post World War II migration to people from Cambodia and Vietnam in the eighties. More recently, we have had people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Africa and also the Burmese population, with both the Chin and the Karen groups settling in Salisbury as well.

Can I recognise the many people involved on the day: the City of Salisbury, through community services, seniors and their community houses; the Salisbury Business Association; the Rotary Club of Salisbury; and many other local groups, including the Salisbury town band, which played a beautiful set of music.

This event had a bit of a rough start. In the first year, last year, we had to move it indoors at the last minute because of wind, so I am absolutely delighted that it got up and running for the second year. A street fair is a wonderful event. It is very inviting to many members of the public, and I look forward to participating next year as the Salisbury Food and Cultural Festival develops and grows in popularity and size.