Big carnival for Queen's Birthday weekend
Ohakune is turning on the hospitality for Queen's Birthday Weekend beer festival visitors.
A pre-ski season carnival will be staged at the same time. It is designed to coincide with the maiden voyage of the snow train, now named the Kiwi Lager Ski Express. Last week 25 people attended a planning meeting organised by representatives of the local business community, the police, ski train promoters and Dominion Breweries.
Plans were confirmed for a two-day carnival to be held in conjunction with the beer festival . It is intended bringing about 500 visitors from Auckland aboard the train, though up to 80 may have disembarked at National Park to stay at Fletchers Ski Lodge, which is owned by the promoter Mr Don Fletcher. The train will be met in Ohakune around
11. 40p.m. by an official welcoming party including the Mayor, Mr Garrick Workman, or his deputy. Hot drinks and refreshments will be served before the visitors are shuttled off to lodges and motels. Saturday's programme includes a beer festival from 12 noon to 5.30 p.m. It will be held in a huge 120ft by 30ft marquee to be erected on a grass site at the Ohakune Junction Ski Village. Simultaneously there will be a carnival pro-
gramme nearby with various food stalls selling a range of snacks from candifloss to venison stew and hangi-cooked meat and vegetables. The programme includes a typical bushcamp where the. venison stew will be served, entertainment by buskers and an "oompah" band, a remote control car demonstration, a trolley derby, woodchopping, ski races on the pavement, a tug-o-war, a carrot-eating contest, a woodturning display,
grass-skiing, pavement painting, a snow princess competition, mini-motorbike racing, a sheep shearing demonstration and donkey rides. In the evening there will more music, entertainment and dancing at the Junction's Hot Lava Night Club. On the Sunday there will be a half-marathon fun run, short train trips to National Park and/or Waiouru, white water rafting and tramping and trips to the Turoa Skifield where chairlifts will be
operating from 10 a.m. to 2p.m. Mountain cafeterias will also be open for refreshments. At last Thursday's meeting concern was expressed over control and security at the beer festival. It was stressed that the festival would not run all day or even into the evening and that security guards would be hired to work both on the train during the trip to Ohakune and at the festival itself. It was also agreed that the festival would be confined to the Kiwi
Lager marquee and this would be sited away from the carnival site. DB promotional sponsorship manager Mr Leo Falleni said the festival would not be a "Munich type festival" with drinking in the street. A booth licence would be sought on the basis of strict control, serving of just beer and wine and shielding of drinkers from the public. "We don't want drunks because if we make a mess of this it will make a mess of the rest of the winter as far as the ski express is concerned," he said. The meeting was told that although promotion had not really begun in earnest, the train was already halffull and bookings were flooding in. A carriage full of journalists including a television crew will be among the visitors on the maiden voyage. Profits from both the festival and the carnival will be given to community groups. During the ski season it is possible another train will run from Wellington to Ohakune each weekend. An alternative would be to run a fleet of buses from Wellington. This is still being explored. The return Auckland express fare is $80 economy and $90 first class.
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Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 242, 17 May 1988, Page 16
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614Big carnival for Queen's Birthday weekend Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 6, Issue 242, 17 May 1988, Page 16
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