Today is Waitangi Day - a national public holiday in New Zealand, celebrating the signing of the Treaty Of Waitangi. My morning begins with a few hours in the office, making up for the time I spent yesterday looking at apartments. At lunchtime, I head out to the first of two cultural events that I plan to visit.
It's a celebration of New Zealand culture and, suitably enough, it's being held in Waitangi Park in Wellington. Waitangi park is a recently refreshed area of grassland, well maintained for general recreation and relaxation. Around the grass there are other recreational facilities - a skate park, basketball courts, children's playground, cafe, and for the ladies, a Movenpick ice cream parlour. There is also a small stream that, for many years, has been hidden away in an underground cilvert. It has recently been brought back to the surface, routed over gravel beds, and has a planted margin to fiilter and clean the water before it flows into the adjacent bay.
The event itself is well attended and very much a family occasion. There are various cultural, craft and food stalls, a woman telling a story to a group of enthralled children, and a stage at the far end of the grass where a Maori choir is singing. The sound is unmistakeably pacific island music, and it sounds like sunshine friendliness.
There are skateboarders practicing their tricks in the park (they've been there every time I've walked by in the last few weeks - through into the evening), a group of people playing basketball, and a couple of graffiti artists showing off their considerable skills. I suddenly become aware that the choir's performance has finished. It's not the lack of singing wafting across the grass that alerts me. It's the distressing noises being made by the next performer. He's doing a number of more classical songs, and not very successfully. He has a good voice, but he's hitting too many bad notes. I put it down to nerves or adrenaline, but it's enough to move me on to the next event.
I ask a few passers-by for directions to the Wellington Velodrome. It seems nobody has heard of it, but someone in an ice cream queue hears me say the name of the event, and she steps in and gives me directions. I set off towards One Love.
It's a twenty minute walk under the hot sun that I've become accustomed to, and then a queue to get into the venue. Reaching the entrance gates, they're checking bags and preventing people from taking alcohol into the venue. Preposterously, a few feet ahead, two small children (neither of them are school age) are having to drink the two bottles of juice that their mum has in her bag. It seems it's not enough for the children to drink some of it, just to prove it's not alcohol. They won't be allowed in until the liquid has been poured away, or the children have drunk every drop. There's fairly widespread disapproval in the rest of the queue, and even the marshall right next to us thinks it's wrong. But the jobsworth won't change her mind. The mother moves to one side, and the rest of us resume our passage through the gates. The marshall pretends not to hear the disparaging comments coming her way.
Once through the gates, I walk up the hill, I reach the velodrome itself. It's an outdoor, concrete surfaced oval bike track. Within the oval, there's a large stage with a DJ playing reggae music, and the usual array of festival facilities - food stalls, drinks stalls, various crafts stalls, and people milling around and enjoying the music. There's an inflatable tent housing a free disco (people are given cordless headphones and can then go in and dance with the others. It's a strange sight. They're all enjoying whatever is playing but, to the onlookers, it's a load of people dancing in silence.
The banked turns are too steep to be a comfortable place to sit, but outside the track (where the crowd would normally watch the races) there are crowds of people sitting eating & drinking and enjoying the day. Thankfully, the trees provide some shade too, and it's a comfortable place to be. Various acts come and go - primarily dub and reggae. There's another Maori band who perform some more songs that sound like sunshine and friendliness. It's great to listen to. Then a small group of young men come up on stage in traditional dress and perform an impressive haka.
They file offstage, and another DJ arrives, playing more reggae. I don't mind reggae, but I've reached my limit now, and the event finishes in about 90 minutes (6:30pm). So I walk back into Wellington. Waitangi Park is almost empty now - stalls are being packed away, and it's returning to it's normal role as a peaceful place for people to sit and read on the grass, or play with their kids. I walk on, past the bars along the waterfront, and back to the hotel.
Waitangi Day has been good, but it's really emphasised how much 'smaller' some things in New Zealand are. One Love felt like a near miss. It had all the ingredients that you'd find in a UK festival, and it had the weather. It just didn't have enough people.
Nevertheless, I've enjoyed my first Waitangi Day, and it seems that the rest of New Zealand has felt the same way. It's been the most successful for years.
