The number of attendees at Melbourne’s annual festival of light smashes last year’s record by 80,000.

Melbourne’s free one-night festival of brilliant illuminations and quirky street performance, White Night, drew a record-breaking crowd on Saturday evening, with 580,000 people turning out to the watch events across the Victorian capital. The number of attendees smashed last year’s record by over 80,000, and almost doubled the number of people who came to the inaugural White Night in 2013. However, with the lowest overnight temperatures recorded since the event began – a low of 12 degrees – the streets were significantly clearer later in the night than in previous years.

Lisa Roet’s golden monkey on Melbourne’s Town Hall

Stretching from the Royal Exhibition Centre in Carlton Gardens to the arts precinct on St Kilda Road, 130 events and installations were on offer at this year’s White Night. Among the most ambitious spectacles were a number light shows using cutting-edge projection mapping technology. These included an impressive display by Portuguese light-artists OCUBO, which transformed the grand facade of the Royal Exhibition Building into a dynamic canvas, while another, Still...