Dragon Boat Festival organised in Morton Bay Brisbane

Association and Multicultural Queensland worked together with local and wider communities to hold the first ever Dragon Boat Festival in Pelican Park Clontarf in Morton Bay on 20 June.

About 100 VIP guests among hundreds of participants and spectators attended the event. Represent the traditional owners of this land, the elders of the community, Aunty Peggy Tideman, Aunty Cathy Jackson and Aunty Brenda attended.

Families, tourists, local residents enjoyed the free vegetarian food, fun games, dragon boat racing and multicultural performance.

"It is our honour that we can greet about 100 politicians, government representatives, wider community leaders attending today’s event," said Carl Wu, President, Brisbane North Chinese Association. "Today we meet together to celebrate one of the most important Chinese Traditional Festival – Duan Wu and we also call it the Dragon Boat Festival."

"The fifth lunar month is considered an unlucky month. People believed that natural disasters and illnesses are common in the fifth month. In order to get rid of the misfortune, people would put calamus, artemisia, pomegranate flowers, Chinese ixora and garlic above the doors on the fifth day of the fifth month. Since the shape of calamus forms like a sword and with the strong smell of the garlic, it is believed that they can remove the evil spirits," Mr Wu said of the festival's origins and significance.

"The Dragon Boat Festival which we are holding has big potential to grow up and attract tourists into Morton Bay Region. We hope that it will help us recover from the economic effects of the pandemic in this region. Meanwhile, as you can see that this is an event run by the local communities, the diversity communities and supported by the local residents and Chinese communities. So this event will offer an important opportunity to bring multicultural families together, to share culture between diversity communities and to work together as one team. That is our national spirit – we are many, but we are one, we are Australian," Mr Wu further said.

Dragon Boat Festival's origin

The story best known in modern China holds that the festival commemorates the death of the poet and minister Qu Yuan of the ancient state of Chu during the Warring States period of the Zhou Dynasty. When the king decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu Yuan was banished for opposing the alliance and even accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry. Twenty-eight years later, Qin captured Ying, the Chu capital. In despair, Qu Yuan died by suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River. It is said that the local people, who admired him, raced out in their boats to save him, or at least retrieve his body. This is said to have been the origin of dragon boat races. When his body could not be found, they dropped balls of sticky rice into the river so that the fish would eat them instead of Qu Yuan's body. This is said to be the origin of zongzi.

Dragon Boat Festival was long marked as a cultural festival in China and is a public holiday in the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. It is unofficially observed by the Chinese communities of Southeast Asia, including Singapore and Malaysia. Equivalent and related official festivals include the Korean Dano, Japanese Children’s Day and Vietnamese Tet Doan Ngo. People gather together to pray for peace and luck. Meanwhile, people have chance to know each other and enhance the friendship and help each other in life.