Year of the Sheep Twilight Parade down Sydney Street (9)

SYDNEY, Feb.23 -- The City of Sydney’s Chinese New Year Twilight Parade on 22 February night featured more than 3,000 national and international performers, building projections and 35 floats.

Marking the Year of the Sheep, the parade celebrated the sheep’s characteristics and depicted its life. A giant five metre tall merino, shepherds, shearers, Bo Peeps and knitting grannies as well as floats from Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai communities made this year’s parade one of the biggest and most impressive on record.

“The Twilight Parade is an excellent way we celebrate Sydney’s cultural diversity, with local and international communities that observe the Lunar New Year taking part,” Sydney Mayor Clover Moore said.

“Always the most popular item on the Chinese New Year festival calendar, we expect huge crowds to line the city streets to welcome in the New Year,” the Mayor said.

Starting at Town Hall, performers and floats wove their way down George Street and through Chinatown before finishing at Cockle Bay with a spectacular fireworks display to scare off the previous year’s bad luck and mark the beginning of the Year of the Sheep.

More than 100 performers from Sichuan, Shaanxi and Beijing in China also performed. In Sydney exclusively for these celebrations, martial artists, acrobats, jugglers, puppeteers, dancers and musicians amazed crowds with their unique skills and extraordinary performances.

Victor Dominello, NSW Minister for Citizenship and Communities said that the relationship between China and Australia continued to get stronger and stronger each year.

“We see the lighting of the Opera House in red, and we see the festival like this, we know our relationship is going to get stronger as the years get on,” said Victor Dominello.

Robert Kok, councilor of the City of Sydney said It was fantastic that the event became bigger and bigger. He felt proud of having a Chinese background, because so many people in Sydney came out to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

“Historically, China and Australia had a very good relationship, and I think the Chinese New Year and the Chinese culture will do a lot for our relationship,” said Robert Kok.

Due to light rail works on George Street and developments in Darling Harbour, this was the last year the Twilight Parade ran in its current format, with plans for alternative routes from 2016 already under way.