‘Classic country festival’

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 2

‘Classic country festival’

Timaru reporter The Holme station Arts Festival held just south of Timaru at the week-end was the classic New Zealand country festival, according to one of the performers, a poet and musician, Steve Thomas. The shaded lawns and historic homestead gave an apt setting for a celebration of the arts, and South Canterbury responded with about 700 flocking to Holme station yesterday, among them the Cabinet Minister, Mr Moore. “I definitely think this sort of festival is the thing of the future and is a sign of our coming of age,” said Thomas, who was one of the festival’s main drawcards. “It is so easy to underestimate country people as far as culture is concerned,” he said. However, the festival was not without its problems. On Friday evening, its director, Mrs Dawn Somerville, was at her lowest ebb when rain bucketed down as the Minister for the Arts, Mr Tapsell, was welcomed by the South Canterbury Maori community. Fortunately, the rain eased overnight and the weather turned so dramatically fine that for the next two days most of those attending the festival sought to escape the sun under the shade of the many trees round the homestead. Yesterday’s garden party was the week-end’s highlight with the Southern Ballet Company performing Beatrix Potter, Steve Thomas giving his tongue-in-cheek poetry, and the Amici Trio playing selections from Mendelssohn.

Food, wine, and blackberry juice could be

bought as one strolled from marquee to homestead taking in the various performances. The children were not forgotten. The author, Margaret Mahy, gave readings from some of her works and the Flying Hat puppet company kept many of the younger ones entranced. Steve Thomas provided much of the adult humor but it was generally humour with a message. Conservation themes run through his poems and he performed two that dealt with rivers and one that dealt with whales. He had a costume change midway through his performance reappearing in goggles, bathrobe, and bathing cap firing a few salvos at our consumer society, particularly television advertising “so fishy Mitsubishi, rust off to the setting sun.” The city of Nelson also came into the firing line — “nutty, arty-farty town,” according to Thomas. The winner of the short story competition that was held in conjunction with the festival was a Sumner writer, Jane Buxton with her story entitled “The Magpies.” Ms Buxton writes part-time and teaches at Tamariki School. However, it was the first time she had written anything for adult readers. One of the three judges, Mr Bill Parker, a lecturer in Maori studies at Victoria University, said that “The Magpies” had been finely drawn in a somewhat Mansfield style and was distinctly New Zealand in its setting, flavour, and language. For her efforts Ms Buxton won $lOOO and a greenstone ornament.