NHILL woman Winda Dewi celebrated this Eid-ul-Adha alone, away from her family in Indonesia for the first time.
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Eid-ul-Adha is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide, and is one of two annual Islamic feast days.
The festival marks the end of Hajj - the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca.
The day is celebrated on different dates across the globe, depending on the moon's placement in the sky.
In the Wimmera, the day was observed on Monday.
Ms Dewi arrived in Nhill to be an Indonesian language assistant at Nhill College. She moved to the Wimmera from Bandung, Indonesia earlier this year.
She said Eid-ul-Adha was about celebrating a feast with family, and feeding the lesser privileged in community.
This year, Ms Dewi offered prayers in her Nhill home and cooked traditional dishes.
"I cooked few Indonesian dishes. I cooked Gulaisapi - it's like curry base eaten with rice cakes," she said.
Ms Dewi said the prayers offered as part of the festival required a larger group of people, and given she had no company for the celebrations, she couldn't celebrate it in a larger scale.
"The day before Eid-ul-Adha, I was fasting from sunrise until sunset. In the night, I was doing takbiran, which is offering prayers to the lord the whole night," she said.
"I was listening to the Koran recitations and reciting the verses until the morning, and in the morning I was suppose to pray but I couldn't do anything, since there is no mosque in Nhill."
Ms Dewi said she missed her family in Indonesia - especially at this time of the year.
"Eid-ul-Adha in Indonesia is quite big, so we celebrate it with the family after doing the sacrifice. We do everything together - we cook together with the family, and there is a big gathering. The culture in Indonesia is very different from that in Australia," she said.
Meanwhile, Ms Dewi's friends in other Victorian cities and towns had a different story to tell.
"It was very different from how my friends celebrated. My friend, who lives in Melbourne, celebrated it with the Muslim community there. My other friend who lives in Geelong celebrated there. There are a lot of Muslim communities in Geelong," she said.
In most countries with large Islamic following, public holidays are declared for people to celebrate the holy day.
But for Ms Dewi, she said she had a tough time juggling her work and celebrating the occasion.
"It's quite hard when it happens on a weekday," she said.
In Horsham, Shanaz Khan celebrated the festival with her family of five.
Mrs Khan moved with her two sons, Aaquib and Ammaar, and daughter, Aaliyah, from Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2016, to be with her husband, Ashraff Khan, who is a doctor at Horsham's Wimmera Base Hospital.
Mrs Khan celebrated Eid-ul-Adha by cooking a South Asian dish.
"I cooked biryani, which is a rice dish. It's a one-pot dish cooked with meat and lot of spices," she said.
"We also went to the mosque and prayed. We have a special prayer and sermon on that day. We usually don't go to school or work, and try to spend the time with our families and friends."
Mrs Khan said there were about 15 muslim families in Horsham.
With the small numbers, and others leaving town to visit their families in their home countries, she said couldn't celebrate the day in big numbers.
She said she couldn't visit her family, either, and missed them dearly.
"It wasn't that special this year. I was certainly missing them, but thanks to technology, we Facetimed them, and showed them: 'I cooked this sweet... and look at my new dress and shared all those tiny joys'," she said.
Mrs Khan said the Horsham Mosque, the Wimmera's first, was one of the reasons the family chose to settle in Horsham.
"When my husband came here in 2014, there was no mosque here. They started to build the mosque after he came here," she said.
"Having a mosque, it is easy to guide the children and practice our religion."
Mrs Khan said the mosque had allowed her to pass on the teachings of Allah to her children.
She said it also helped the children understand their traditions.
"Aaliyah has been here since she was two. She didn't quite understand the festivities. It was quite hard to explain how we celebrate and she didn't have any memory of the celebrations in Sri Lanka," she said.
"The boys, on the other hand, understand it. Also, they have about three other Muslim friends in Horsham. In terms of Horsham, it is a big number.
"It's good for them. Then they share the same faith and ideologies, if not the same culture, since they are from different countries."
Mrs Khan said the family's move to Horsham had been rewarding.
"I am quite happy how the Horsham community has accepted us. They are warm hearted and I am happy that they are welcoming migrants - not only Muslims, but everyone," she said.
"I feel more protected and more comfortable to be in Horsham. I don't feel insecure when I am here. Even in Sri Lanka, sometimes I didn't travel or take my children without my husband or brothers. But here, I have the liberty to do that."
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