Orderly start to music festival

Press, 30 January 1982, Page 3

Orderly start to music festival

From

MIKE JOHANSSON,

at Sweetwaters

Sweetwaters music festival opened quietly yesterday for everybody except the organisers on a farm 3km east of Pukekawa.

The organisers were kept busy with some last-minute organisational problems but were very happy with the orderly arrival of the 35,000 festival-goers. On a farm especially bought for the festival, thousands of people set up “homes” ranging from elaborate 10m caravans to a 20m black polythene bag.

People started arriving at the site as early as Tuesday, causing a few problems for the organisers. Last-minute touches were hastily added to the toilet and shower blocks around the site, and by Thursday a market selling all manner of food had begun business. By mid-afternoon yesterday, more than 8000 people had arrived.

They passed the hours waiting for the music, which began last evening, by swimming in the Waikato River or drinking and. smoking in their tents.

It was at the river where the first drama of the festival occurred yesterday afternoon. A ,teen-age girl, who apparently could not swim, was carried by the strong current away from the main swimming beach, but managed to grab one of the inner tubes which had been strung across the river. A. festival organiser, Mr Daniel Keighley, said the tubes had been strung across specifically for this purpose and would probably prove their worth “a thousand times over” during the festival. At each of the previous two Sweetwater festivals a person has drowned. The temperature at the site'yesterday reached into the high 20s and rubbish tins were soon overflowing with empty beer cans and fruitjuice containers.

By early evening, the police had made no arrests at the site, but the officer in charge of the Sweetwater police contingent, Inspector Barry Davies, said he expected there would be some' arrests as the festival progressed. A Ministry of Transport spokesman, Sergeant Mike Warren, said traffic had been reasonably well behaved during yesterday’s influx of people. Several people had been arrested for. drinking and driving, and there had been a few minor accidents outside the festival site.

Motorists could expect a 20 to 30-minute wait outside the gate. At the previous festivals, waits of six to eight hours were common. A small scrub fire on the side of a gully was extinguished by the festival helicopter with a monsoon bucket after seven sweeps over the fire. Mr Keighley said the fire had given the organisers a chance to test the helicopter.