Moomba

Moomba
Waterskiing events at Moomba
Genre	Carnival
Begins	Labour day long weekend (second Monday in March)
Frequency	annual
Location(s)	Melbourne, Australia
Years active	62
Inaugurated	1955
Attendance	1.7 million (record - 1996)
Organised by	City of Melbourne

Moomba (also known as the Moomba Festival) is held annually in Melbourne, Australia. Run by the City of Melbourne, it is Australia's largest free community festival and one of Australia's longest-running community festivals. The event is celebrated over four days, incorporating the Labour Day long weekend, from Friday to the second Monday in March. Moomba is culturally important to Melbourne, having been celebrated since 1955, and regularly attracts up to a million people, with a record attendance of 1.7 million set in 1996.

In 2003, the event was renamed Melbourne Moomba Waterfest and is centred on the Yarra River.

Traditional events include the Moomba parade, crowning of Moomba monarchs, fireworks displays, carnivals in the gardens along the river, river activities including watersports, water floats and the birdman rally, as well as live music and bands.

In 1951, Australia celebrated fifty years of Federation with a parade and the staging of the theatre production "An Aboriginal Moomba: Out of the Dark". In 1954, Queen Elizabeth II visited the city for the first time as reigning monarch, and the City Development Association and the Melbourne City Council proposed an autumn carnival to be known as "Moomba". A committee was formed in July, 1954 to organise and fund the event, successfully allocating £10,000 to its inaugural running. Before the event's first year, controversy was created when Labor Councillor Frank Williams resigned from the committee, branding the planned carnival as a "Bourke street joke for the benefit of shopkeepers". A promotional theme song "Come to Melbourne for the Moomba" was written by Jack O'Hagan.

The official meaning of Moomba is given by the organisers as "let's get together and have fun", but the word means "up your bum" in many local Aboriginal languages. Louise Hercus, in 1969, wrote in the The Languages of Victoria that the Aboriginal word 'mum' translates into 'bottom, rump'. In 1981 Barry Blake in his Australian Aboriginal Languages also stated, "Undoubtedly the most unfortunate choice...was made...when the city fathers chose to name the city's annual festival 'Moomba'. The name is supposed to mean 'Let's get together and have fun', though one wonders how anyone could be naive enough to believe that all this can be expressed in two syllables. In fact 'moom' (mum) means 'buttocks' or 'anus' in various Victorian languages."