On Saturday, 28th September, practitioners took part in Cairns “Festival
of Lights” parade. Every year this event has a different theme. As Cairns,
a popular resort community about 12 hours drive north of Brisbane, doesn’t have
many practitioners, a call went out and several practitioners from Bowen, Mackay
and the Gold Coast travelled up to join in this event.
The practitioners in Cairns had built a boat-shaped float with “From Stormy
Seas to Peaceful Shores” painted on the sides, three banners with Truthfulness,
Compassion and Tolerance on them and a central mast with Falun Gong along its
entire length. Fairy lights went up the supports from the two boat ends to the
top of the mast and a floodlight directly under the mast and pointing straight
up brightly lit up the Falun Gong banner. The radiance of Dafa could be seen
by all.
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| Doing exercises before the parade |
There was a delay in starting the parade, so all the practitioners decided
to perform the exercises next to our float until the parade began. This attracted
the attention of many of the other parade participants, as well as many people
passing by. People stopped and asked questions about the practice and the persecution
and several stated they would come to the practice site. Doing the exercises
also helped ground all of us amidst all the noise bustle of the parade.
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Practitioners’ boat-shaped float Parade banners
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Leading our procession were two practitioners carrying a maroon velvet banner
with shiny gold Falun Dafa lettering followed by a yellow vehicle with Falun
Gong on the sides pulling the float. Following were two other banners, the first
with “Falun Dafa is Good” and the second with “The World Needs
Truth, Compassion and Tolerance”. The car had a sound system mounted on
top playing Pudu the entire way and the practitioners wore yellow Falun Dafa
T-shirts with white paints.
There were many different floats, most with loud music, dancers, drummers and
displays of all sorts. Our boat-shaped float with its silent procession and
gentle music really stood out. The parade route went along the esplanade for
over two kilometres and thousands of people lined both sides of the road the
entire way. As our float majestically went by the crowds of people, many clapped,
some came out and patted practitioners on the back and told them to keep up
the good work, others said that the world really did need Truthfulness, Compassion
and Tolerance and many yelled out Falun Gong. We were amazed by the number of
people and really happy with their extremely positive and supportive reaction
to us.
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| Information stall Exercise demonstration | |
That evening we all stayed together, had a meal and studied and shared. The
next day, we went to the monthly markets at The Tanks, where we had an info
table and banner and did an exercise demo on an outdoor amphitheatre stage.
Some people who watched told us they really felt the energy and that this is
what they had been looking for. There are still many predestined people waiting
for the Fa everywhere.
A number of us drove back to Bowen and then travelled to Mackay on Tuesday
to help at their exercise site and share in their reading night. The Mackay
sites have many new people coming to learn the exercises. As most of the Mackay
practitioners are relatively new, they really appreciated the input from other
practitioners. We have found that it is very important for practitioners to
support each other during this period in whatever ways we can. This ended a
very successful several days of activities in north Queensland.
Posting date: 9/Oct/2003
Original article date: 8/Oct/2003
Category: Australian News
