A crowd of 15,000 has watched Geelong’s floating Christmas tree light up for this year’s festive season, according to City Hall.
The tree was the highlight of last Friday night’s activities to launch Christmas 2018 in central Geelong.
A fireworks display accompanied the tree’s first lighting for the season, with a young colouring competition winner throwing the switch to begin the colourful show.
Other additions this year included large model Christmas gift boxes with feature lighting around the base of the 25-metre tree, which also provided a new light show from its on-water location near the base of Moorabool St.
The tree’s six-minute show continues nightly every 15 minutes from 8.30pm to midnight until 7 January.
City Hall put on a variety of other entertainment for the annual tree lighting, with musicians and roving performers also part of the show.
Activities then continued with light projections on City Hall.
Former mayor Darryn Lyons, who conceived of and delivered the floating Christmas tree, used the lighting ceremony to highlight his independent bid for the state seat of Geelong.
Mr Lyons posted images of the lighting and fireworks to his half-a-million-plus Twitter followers, congratulating the crowd on its attendance.
“You all made this tree famous around the world,” he posted.
Geelong’s council voted 9-1 last month to continue funding the tree for another five years.
The $2.3 million would cover storage, maintenance and installation costs as council considered ways of making the tree “bigger” in subsequent years, City Hall said last month.
Councillors backed the funding after receiving an independent report that 97.3 per cent of survey respondents considered the tree “important or very important”.
The tree provided Geelong’s economy with a boost of $17.3 million over its two months of light shows in 2016, the report found.
The tree offered a return on investment of 5.4 to one, City Hall said.
The tree’s future was in doubt after the previous council’s sacking in 2016, with subsequently-appointed state administrators undertaking a review of its funding and future.
The three administrators eventually approved a further three years of funding, noting the tree’s “significant economic benefits to the region”.
