Mumble Grunt runs smoothly for police

Press, 29 March 1982, Page 2

Mumble Grunt runs smoothly for police

The Mumble Grunt rock music festival at Arundel, near Geraldine, at the weekend had given the police no problems, and there were no arrests, said Inspector Brian Turnbull, of Timaru, yesterday.

The police contingent of more than 50 men and women') under Mr Turnbull’s command, had a field headquarters at Chips Park scout camp opposite the festival site.

“The weather was fine

both for the police and the festival,” said Mr Turnbull. He thought the numbers at the festival would fall below the 3000 hoped for by the organisers. Twelve bands, from all parts of Canterbury, took part, and kept up their music from the start at 3 p.m. on Saturday until yesterday afternoon.

The organiser, Mr Peter King, said that the week-end was an experiment to gauge the response of the Canterbury public to a festival with local bands and productions. Mr King had a special word of thanks for the farmers in the area who had helped the festival to go ahead. “Without them the festival would have been much harder to organise,” he said. According to a young electronics engineer from Sydney, Australia, who had attended the festival on Saturday, such festivals were mainly held in the cities in Australia. “This is the first one that I have attended outside the metropolitan areas and I like the idea of holding them in the country. I enjoyed the music, but the attendance must have been disappointing to the organisers,” he said.

The organisers were not available yesterday for comment on the festival.