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Sense of community being put on hold for Eurovision

By Latrobe City Council - 12th May 2005 - Back to News

The sense of community envisaged with Latrobe City’s adoption of Malta in the lead up to the 2006 Commonwealth Games will be put on hold for a few days later this month as the glitzy battle for Europe’s best song arouses the passions of numerous Latrobe residents who have come from other lands, and a rapidly growing audience of Australians who’ve become hooked on the Eurovision Song Contest.

Cr Lisa Price’s enthusiasm for the glamorous and ostentatious Eurovision Song Contest will see her support Latrobe City’s Maltese community’s hope for Eurovision 2006.

Cr Price said that this year she would be adopting Malta’s aspirations for Eurovision just as the whole Latrobe community was adopting Malta for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Cr Price may well be on to a winner backing the Maltese entry ‘Angel’ by Chiara, as the song is already tipped as a hot favourite in the hotly contested competition. "The Maltese community tell me that Chiara is going to wow the voters across Europe who get to decide Europe’s best song for 2005; and they are very excited at the possibility that this year Malta is going to win those all important twelve-points from the other thirty-eight nations taking part in this year’s event," Cr Price said.

Vice Consul and President of the Maltese Club, Mario Sammut, said that Malta is in the comfortable position of not having to compete in the preliminary final being held in Kiev on Thursday 19 May (and broadcast on SBS at 7.30pm on Friday 20 May) as Malta took out twelfth position in last year’s contest, automatically qualifying them for this year’s final.

"This year, surely we’ll win. Malta’s has come close to winning Eurovision on several occasions, even taking out second place in the 2002 song contest, but never quite getting over the line," Mario said.

Members of the German community will be following the success of Gracia who took out a nerve-wracking German final with her rocky number ‘Run and Hide’. Wally Priller from the German Club Astoria, said their community would be barracking hard for Gracia who also makes a guaranteed appearance in the Sunday broadcast.

Wally said the German community would be well and truly getting behind the adoption of the Maltese team in the lead up to the Commonwealth Games. "With the exception of settlers from Britain and Malta, most European migrants who settled here in the Latrobe Valley come from non-Commonwealth nations, so people from our original homelands won’t be competing in the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. As such we can readily embrace the Maltese team as our adopted nation for the Commonwealth Games; though obviously we’ll be barracking first and foremost for the Aussies," Wally explained.

"But for the Eurovision Song Contest, the gloves are off," Wally said.

For the second time in the Eurovision Song Contest, Helena Paparizou will be representing Greece. Helena scooped third place at the 2001 contest with the beautiful song ‘I Would Die For You’. George Labros from the Greek community said that Greeks throughout the Latrobe community would be closely urging on Helena with her 2005 entry, ‘For My Number One’.

The thousands of migrants in the Latrobe Valley who have settled here from the UK will no doubt be closely watching their hopeful, Javine Hylton, who brushed away the competition in the UK decider in March, by giving a scintillating performance of ‘Touch My Fire’, a sassy slice of bhangra-inspired dance pop.

Eurovision fans who migrated from Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Latvia, the FYR of Macedonia and a host of other European nations, will be eagerly watching their former homeland representatives struggle through the preliminary final of the song contest, being broadcast by SBS on the Friday night; hoping they will qualify for a place in the final. If the music, the emotion and the choreography takes the fancy of the voters, it doesn’t matter what language the song is sung in, it can make it to the top. Eurovision is a great leveller.

This year, SBS is actively encouraging song contest fans to gather together at Eurovision parties.

"Communities in the Latrobe Valley hardly need any encouragement to do that," Cr Price said.

"There’s already a huge cult following for Eurovision, and the hotly contested competition is being followed and enjoyed by more and more Australians who’ve never even set foot outside of their own country," Cr Price said.

"The widespread interest in Eurovision here in the Latrobe Valley is also an indication of the diversity of our community which has been enriched by the culture of people settling here from so many lands. It’s also a strong indication that SBS has become an important part of our viewing habits since the multicultural broadcast was introduced in the 1990s," Cr Price added.

"Latrobe City is currently facilitating initiatives by SBS, the Department of Victorian Communities and the Australian Broadcasting Authority, to provide SBS radio transmission service to our region. Multicultural broadcasting is a way of empowering our community by providing citizens with access to broadcasts, much of it in languages other than English," Cr Price said.

Source: www.gippsland.com

Published by: news@gippsland.com

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