ONCE again the main street of Tamworth was transformed into a multicultural mixing pot for Fiesta La Peel.
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It was a one way ticket around the globe, with 43 countries represented in stalls dotted along Peel St, presenting the flavours, sights and sounds and song and dance of their people.
It was the biggest and most culturally diverse edition of the annual event ever organised.
The thousands of punters who turned-out let their tastebuds do the talking in terms of their favourite stall among the mix.
It was the familiar faces among the food stalls that pulled in the biggest lines of the evening.
While we’re pretty blessed in Tamworth to have an established, and blossoming, foodie circuit, but Fiesta is much more than getting a fascinating feed.
Other than our local restauranteurs, the street was lined with some of the newest families sharing their “taste of home” cooking their feasts usually reserved for their traditional celebrations.
It would have been great to see huge lines for the families putting on their traditional spreads too.
Multicultural Tamworth’s Eddie Whitham said there were stalls at Fiesta with families from Brazil, Burma and Iran who only recently moved to town.
In a completely foreign environment on the other side of the world, the first action of these people is “giving away food in the street” in a town they barely know.
“These are people who live and work in our town, but they are being and doing something,” Mr Whitham said.
“They’re actually becoming a part of the community, more than they would if they were just going to work and coming home.”
These people are taking an opportunity and trying to make the absolute most of it.
To some, it’s unfathomable to think about uprooting your entire life and transplanting it to another country.
But these people have done just that and their first action is giving away food to people they don’t know.
It is incumbent on the region’s residents to make everyone feel welcome and support people who contribute to our community.
Nonetheless, it’s a great endorsement for our community that one of our council’s biggest, and most well-attended, annual events is a celebration of our diverse, growing, multicultural city.
