Bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine!

We couldn’t have asked for a more glorious day for the annual Parkville Gardens Residents’ Association (PGRA) Easter egg hunt on April 2.

Great weather and the promise of chocolate are certainly a winning combination. A terrific turnout of well over 100 kids and adults, plenty of eggs, a few basic rules to keep the game fair, and friendly management by the PGRA team made the event a great success.

It was particularly satisfying to see new faces from new places come along and meet up.  Bringing people together and building community is what the PGRA is all about. We’ll keep at it.

There’s something more to look forward to. Social housing providers Housing First and development partners Frasers Property and Citta are teaming up to host a Parkville Easter Family Fair on Saturday, April 15 (not on April 8 as stated in last month’s column).

All residents are welcome. Come along to the Galada Ave Reserve for a fun day, kicking off at 11am and running through to 3pm.

Attractions will include another Easter egg hunt (yes!), an art activity, face painting, a petting zoo, and food trucks. With a bit of luck, the weather will be as lovely as it was on April 2.

Speaking of community, our neighbourhood partner, Nas Mohamud, has worked with her colleagues at the City of Melbourne to secure data from the 2021 National Census specific to Parkville Gardens. Thanks to all of them.

A couple of factors make interpretation a challenge. The first is that the census was taken during Melbourne’s prolonged COVID lockdown. This meant, among other things, that many international students had not been able to return to Australia. Second, a number of questions had only an 80 per cent response rate.

Here’s just a few facts and figures …

Overall, we’re a young community. Of the total population of 1760, nearly half (47 per cent) were aged between 20 and 40.

Complementing this segment, given the large retirement and aged care facility in the neighbourhood, about 17 per cent were aged between 80 and 100. Nearly half (46 per cent) of our residents were born in Australia, with the next biggest group born in China or Malaysia (20 per cent).

Unsurprisingly, Cantonese and Mandarin (23 per cent) are the most common languages spoken at home after English (50 per cent).

In brief we are a wonderfully diverse mob. PGRA will continue to do all we can to promote inclusion, engagement, safety and respect.

On that note, we hope everyone had a most enjoyable and relaxing Easter break. •