Marton Country Music Festival 2018
For the last 14 years, there has been an ever-growing Country Music Festival in Marton.
For the first 13 years, my wife has been the coordinator, doing the grant applications and booking the visiting stars and bands, for each of the festivals.
We have had headline artists from USA, Germany, Italy, Australia, and of course, the best of NZ talent
Last year she relinquished the reins to a group in Feilding, a town about 20 min away.
Over the years we had built up the attendance from the motorhome/caravaners from the first years 48 to this years 440.
One of the different stalls present was
For the non-Kiwis, Whitebait is a native very small, almost colourless, fish that lives in the sea, and comes up the, predominantly West Coast, streams and rivers, to spawn. [a bit like salmon]
They are caught by small nets, served with an egg batter and fried/bar-b-qued, served on a slice of bread and a segment of lemon, he was one of the busiest stalls.
For most of the years, I have been “on the gate” taking the entrance fee, telling the visitors where to go/park, and any other jobs that come along.
During this time I have been amused/intrigued by some of the names the caravans have.
Here are some of them, along with some of the vehicles that were there.
The other side of the same motorhome
Named
Some of them come prepared for anything
The values range from
and
To
The car that is normally on the trailer is in town restocking supplies, it was a hot night the night before.
A few of these were taken with the settings for the B & W contest, I had forgotten to change the settings.
The NZ Government has a Super Annuity Scheme for when you retire, called Kiwi Saver.
There was plenty of room for the tenter’s as well
on the number plate, NP = New Plymouth, Naki = Taranaki
Some of the crowd settling in on Saturday afternoon
The stage at twilight
with thanks to son-of-satire for the banner
Ohhhhhhhhhhh that looks like a LOT of fun!!! Thank you so much for sharing the photos!! It's so nice to see the other side of the world warm when I'm freezing to death :D
It was 30 to 32C in the shade on Saturday, in the arena it would have been hotter as the trees stopped any breeze getting through, in the tents, it would have been even worse.
!___1 Here is a small bit of warmth for you.
So how was it, just being a punter for a change, able to come and go at will with no stress?
Did Mum enjoy just sitting and listening to the music without having to do all the work too?
Mum learned how short peoples memory is, There was only one artist that publicly thanked Mum for all the hard work she had done over the years, the rest were too busy climbing up the A*** of the new team in the hope they would be invited back.
Lynn and Patty brought Marie Fri and Sat, they enjoyed themselves, learned a lot for the Egmont Festival that is only two weeks away.
Wow that's a lot of motor homes all in one place, haven't see that many before like that in NZ.
Hope you and your wife where able to rest this year and just enjoy the shows and atmosphere.
Two of her sisters and a niece came over and hey spent the days, between a couple of heat showers, on chairs or on a blanket on the ground.
There would have been 2500 to 3000 plus people spread out enjoying the show.
Marion Burns is where they got the idea of the energiser battery from, she is never still, If you get a chance to see her do so, her antics are a show in themselves without her fiddle playing,
She lives up your way so you have more chance than down in the boondocks.
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Looks a good day out. the fish sounds nice :)
They are a delicacy, at meal time he had a queue waiting all the time.
People [my mother and grandmother vintage] would use the cheese grater to cut potatoes up as mock whitebait when I was a kid.
With everybody loving them they are getting rarer, I can remember people catching enough to feed their neighbourhood and digging the leftovers into the garden for fertilizer.
Now a very good day is 3 to 5 lb for a fair amount of work.
They are worth it though. and freeze well
But yet you still didn't show us a picture of the fish, did you eat it all.
Are the whitefish getting over caught, maybe they should back off until there numbers grow
It didn't last long enough to get a photo, it just disappeared by magic.
They have shortened the catching season to help them regrow and that is helping.
The big catches were 60 od years ago, then sanity set in, and people caught less, and for their own use only.
Thats good news but you could have shared, :( lol
I was going to but the slaves fish set up a mess. talking about murder, butchery, is that what is going to happen to us, etc. so in the interests of your welfare I ate your piece for you, at great sacrifice I might add.
Well thats just greedy, you have to learn how to share
Great , innovation of new technologies @len.george
A lot of money spent on some of those rigs.
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