'Moomba' Festival 1967 - 'Float parade' thru' the city.

The Pallaris Collection contains 16mm colour footage of the Moomba parades in Melbourne from the 1950s to 1970s. Most films were shot by aspiring filmmaker John Christofi Pallaris, while some are credited to Reg Robinson.

Moomba Festival held its inaugural event through the streets and parks of Melbourne on 12 March 1955. The festival was designed as a cultural public event for the city, incorporating a street parade, a carnival and an outdoor art show, among other festivities. Throughout the 1950s to 1970s the grand parade down Swanston Street was at its peak, attracting crowds of hundreds of thousands of people and featuring a stream of decorated floats on flat-bed trucks advertising businesses and community groups, accompanied by marching bands, celebrities, clowns, and performers on stilts. The crowning of Monarch royals who lead the parade has been a tradition since 1955.

This 16mm film shows footage of the 1967 Moomba parade, filmed from the intersection of Victoria and Swanston Street at the top end of the city. The photographer captures stunning colour footage of the parade as it rounds the corner leading through the city to the Shrine of Remembrance, with crowds of onlookers lining the streets.

The parade is led by a marching band, the inaugural King of Moomba Robert Morley, and the Queen of Moomba, Patsy Earp, on a large, swan-shaped float. The camera then follows the various decorated floats, performers, clowns and celebrities, including Noel Ferrier and Mary Hardy, the National Trust, the Lions Club, Retails Traders of Victoria, and Lionel Rose in a red convertible car (including a close-up of Rose waving at the camera).

The footage then appears to shift to the 1968 Moomba parade, with the Queen of Moomba Judy Fenelon, followed by signs reading Moomba’s 14th Birthday, and the King of Moomba Alfred Marks. Some of the notable floats in this sequence include Myer Department Store, Hansel and Gretel, Geraldine O’Shea Academy of Irish Dancing, Gravox, the Ettamogah Pub, and Crawford Productions.

Content warning: this footage includes a short clip of clowns Zig (Jack Perry) and Zag (Douglas McKenzie) performing in the parade. In 1994, Perry was convicted of sexually assaulting his granddaughter 20 years earlier, and in 1999 Zig and Zag were dethroned from their position as Moomba Monarchs.