An estimated 500 people turned out at the weekend for the Karen community's annual soccer and volleyball tournament at the Epsom Huntly Recreation Reserve.
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The event, running since 2010, had a forced hiatus for two or three years.
"So this year we really pushed to make it happen," the Vice-President of the Karen Organisation of Bendigo Eh Soo said.
"And we tried to involve everyone as much as we could."
A total of 12 teams from around Victoria, five of them from Bendigo, competed in the soccer, while five women's and nine men's teams took part in separate volleyball contests.
In addition to the main events, activities like tug of war, sprinting, "frog-jumping" and a three-legged race attracted enthusiastic participation, according to Eh Soo.
A range of traditional food, like sugar cane juice, Karenni soup and chicken balls, was on sale, with funds raised going towards the Karen New Year's celebration to be held this year on December 31 at the Garden for the Future in White Hills.
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When it came to the soccer grand final on Sunday, there was a World Cup atmosphere at Epsom, Eh Soo said.
"Everyone loved it. They had really missed it, and appreciated it," he said.
"They were cheering, they were dancing, it was amazing to see."
Despite a wealth of young local talent, the trophies were all carried off by visiting teams.
Scorpion, from Ringwood, took out the soccer, with Mae Surin runners-up.
In volleyball Six Angels from Melbourne were the women's competition winners and Karenni United the men's, with Geelong runners-up in both tournaments.
Eh Soo acknowledged the help of the City of Greater Bendigo, Bendigo Community Health, LCMS (Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services) and Epsom Football Club in organising the successful community event.
"It's really good to see young people playing soccer and the community coming together," he said.
"It means a lot to us.
"Hopefully everyone's enjoyed it and next year we can do it again bigger and better."
Bendigo's Karen community, which was founded with the arrival of seven refugees in May 2007, has grown dramatically in recent years.
According to the 2021 census, Karen was the dominant language, other than English, spoken at home in the City of Greater Bendigo, with 1.3 per cent of the population or 1597 speaking it.
That number increased from 870 in 2016.
By comparison, the next four most commonly spoken languages in 2021 - Mandarin, Malayalam, Punjabi and Tagalog - had only between 460 and 570 speakers, 0.5 per cent or less of the population each.
An ethnic minority from Myanmar, formerly Burma, the Karen have been persecuted by the government in that country for generations, with tens of thousands of people living in refugee camps on the border with Thailand and others making their way to Australia, New Zealand, North America and Scandinavia.
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