The Sydney CBD stood still as police arrived in cars, on bikes and horses to stop the traffic and escorted the parade that was approximately over 1 kilometre long.
This year's Sydney Easter Parade featured the Millennium Marching Band; Tommy Franklin – who is better known as "Byron Bay's Dancing Man"; Butterfly stilt-dancers, animal and character costumes, giant inflatable ark, rainbow, globe and hundreds of colourful banners and flags.
The sound of celebration was pulsating in the air as people from different ethnic heritage celebrated the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday. The atmosphere was electric and the crowd was cheering, dancing to the music, waving red flags and cheering sticks with "JESUS IS RISEN" printed in white.
Many people commented that it was an amazing experience and that they had never been involved in anything like this. Others echoed that they had been involved in past Easter Sunday marches but this has got to be "the best Sydney Easter March in over 20 years!" Another agreed that even though we didn't have 50,000 people involved like in the early 90's, but there was such a feeling of celebration and not just another march.
The organisers of Sydney Easter Parade 2012 explained that in order to be relevant to today's generation, they are changing the march into a parade, a celebration instead of a protest since we have more of a reason to celebrate than participants in other parades. Their vision is to make Sydney Easter Parade to be one of most popular annual parades in Sydney, not just for Christians but also to share the joy and celebration about the "true meaning of Easter" with everyone who watches the parade.
The post parade celebration continued at Hyde Park with live entertainment by the marching band, dancing by butterfly stilt-walkers, a powerful testimony from Tommy "The Dancing man" Franklin and the funky sounds of the band of brothers "Carry On".
