Catch all the colour from Toowoomba’s Vaisakhi Festival

The Centenary Heights State High School hall was transformed into a beautiful sea of culture and colour as Toowoomba’s Sikh community gathered for Vaisakhi Festival. See all the pictures here.

About 200 members of Toowoomba’s Sikh community gathered at the Centenary Heights State High School hall on Saturday to celebrate Vaisakhi, the Punjabi new year and the day when Sikhism began as a collective faith.

Komal Kaur at the 2021 Vaisakhi Festival in Toowoomba.

Criminology student and proud member of the local Sikh community, Komal Kaur, said the festival of Vaisakhi takes place each year on April 14 and signifies the date of harvest for the largely agricultural based faith of Sikhism.

At the 2019 Vaisakhi Festival in Toowoomba. Picture: Nicola Lancaster

“It’s probably the biggest event of the year for Sikhs and a chance to come together again especially after we could not hold our event last year due to the first major COVID lockdown,” she said.

“This weekend we celebrated the cultural part of Vaisakhi with music, dancing and food, all of the children have been really busy practising their dances over the Easter holidays and are so excited to be able to get on stage and perform.

“Next weekend we will celebrate the more religious part of the festival at the Gurdwara (Sikh temple).”

At the 2019 Vaisakhi Festival in Toowoomba (left) Komal Kaur and Rajwant Jhajj (right) Picture: Nicola Lancaster

Ms Kaur said this year the sale of all tickets is going towards KhalsaAid, a charity organisation helping support the farmers protests that are currently taking place in India.

“KhalsaAid is a wonderful organisation which provides aid and humanitarian relief to a wide range of nationalities and countries across the world,” she said.

“With over 200 tickets sold this year we’re glad to be supporting a charity that is doing a lot of great work for the farmers back in India.”