Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Maritime Festival makes waves
A Maritime Festival which started from humble beginnings has grown to become one of the biggest events in the Marlborough calender.
Now in its 14th year, the popular Picton Maritime Festival is expected to attract a recordbreaking 6000 people this year.
And a key team of just nine volunteers have helped make the January 19 festival a drawcard in its own right.
Festival chairperson Beryl Bowers said there would be a range of entertainment on offer, ranging from community performances to headline acts.
‘‘I’m really excited to announce our headline act will be The Koi Boys straight from the Gold Coast, featuring Picton’s own Kevin Keepa.
‘‘The Koi Boys are well known in both Australia and New Zealand as that trio who were knocked out before the finals of 2015’s The Voice Australia resulting in a huge back lash from fans,’’ she said.
One of the festival’s longest serving volunteers Pauline Gregory said the festival would not be possible without the huge support from the community.
In the festival’s history, Gregory, from Gregory’s Engineering in Picton, has only missed out on one event.
The festival will feature a range of maritime themed activities and competitions.
The first Build a Boat competition
ROBERT GUYTON
Some plants, despite their values and beneficial uses, are disliked for their habit of clinging. Hook grass (Uncinia uncinata), kamu or hooked sedge, no matter what name it goes by, is much despised and maligned by trampers and anyone at all who inadvertently stumbles through a stand of it and finds it drilling its way through socks, gaiters, woollen trousers and long johns in order to wildly irritate the wearers of what they thought was protective clothing. There’s little bar neoprene that can repel the tiny, determinedly irritating barbs of hook grass, and once they have lodged themselves into whatever woven fabric you are wearing, they are there to stay, at least till you get home and hurl your itchy clothing into the washing machine where agitation, hot water and fabric softener might lessen the effects of those needling hooks.
It’s not necessary to head to the mountains and high passes, though, to get yourself wrapped in irritating barbs. Our gardens are home to a number of clingers that won’t let you pass by without asking you to pause and consider their presence. Burdock is the champion of waita-whiling in my garden. Mostly, it’s a spectacular plant – large leaves beautifully formed and presented – until it sets seed . . . Then, it’s a menace, seeming to delight in stretching out and impaling passers-by with its tiny barbs, clustered in large burrs along the stem of its purposegrown will be back with all the equipment required to build a raft on the foreshore and the Novelty Raft Races will feature again, as well as the Mussel Raft race competition.
First on stage at 11am will be the Queen Charlotte College Kapa Haka while in the water, the Waka ‘‘Te Hoiere’’ will arrive.
Treasure Island also opens at 11am with free children’s ocean stalk. Burdock burrs look innocuous and don’t sting or smart when they attach themselves to you, but as you continue on your garden tour or task they begin to announce their presence in your clothing.
They itch, not stridently, the way nettle does with burning stings, but more subtly, relentlessly forcing you to change your clothes. Nettle doesn’t require that you shed your trousers, only that you apply crushed dock leaves or antihistamine creams, but with burdock, disrobing is the only way to stop the itching.
Bidi-bids (variously known as bidi-bidi, biddy-biddy or biddibiddi, themed educational and fun activities.
Bowers said Jonny from the Goodtime Music Academy will hold four morning workshops, teaching children to make music out of rubbish bins.
‘‘The Picton Clinker & Classic Boat Club is providing free trips across the harbour. The Dory Boats (small dinghies) will be available with the help of the Girl all derivatives of the Ma¯ ori name piripiri), our native version being from a worldwide ‘‘family’’ of clingers, are sticky in a way familiar to most of us, especially children.
Many of the Acaena family that grow here are groundhugging and harmless, but all like to hitch a ride on socks or hairy legs – whatever’s on offer – and have earned a reputation for stickability, thanks to their barbed, pointed seed heads. They’re pretty plants, the opportunistic Aceanas, and are often planted as groundcover in areas that won’t be walked upon often. Their sticky behaviour means they migrate freely and Guides for our children to learn to row.
‘‘A rowing competition will also be part of the on-water activities. The ex-Whale Chaser boat and other launches will also be on the floating jetty as a static display,’’ she said.
Especially for younger members, musician Kath Bee will be back joining The 3 Ring Riot Circus act and the Balloon Family make a pest of themselves over time. They haven’t earned a place in the much-hated list of plants and reside comfortably in the ‘‘kind-of-annoying’’ section of the gardeners’ almanac.
Cleavers attach themselves to woollen garments but no-one really minds – much. They are easy to remove and don’t leave an irritation of any sort. Cleavers have an odd name, in my opinion. Cleave means to split apart, as in ‘‘cleave that log with your axe’’, while at the same time meaning ‘‘stick together’’ or ‘‘cling to’’, as an anxious child might to its mother when startled by thunder or the sound of a who will make some free creations.
‘‘The finale will be the Fireworks with another spectacular show - starting at 10pm to celebrate how far the festival has come from its humble beginnings in 2005.
‘‘A special thanks to our local business who have contributed substantially to this year’s fun family event,’’ she said. vacuum cleaner.
In the case of the plants, Galium aparine sticks to, rather than divides from, whatever it comes into contact with. It’s often called bidi bid by New Zealanders upon whom it has draped itself, but it’s not an accurate name.
Cleavers are commonly known as bedstraw or ‘‘that bloody stuff’’, but falling into a bed of bedstraw won’t elicit the same cries as tumbling into stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) will. Horses and donkeys, by all accounts, love them and benefit greatly from consuming them.
I enjoyed a soup this very evening, made with cleavers, and stinging nettle primarily, that tasted very good indeed.
When first I met cleavers here in my forest garden – then a prairie rather than forest – I learned that cleavers were once used by milkmaids as a sieve of sorts, with fresh milk being poured through a tangle of the hairy stems in order to filter out any lumps.
The image of a country lass, bonneted and ruddy, performing this act, has stayed with me, and I’ve no interest in being disavowed of my belief that cleavers were used in this way.
Cleavers grow without molestation in my garden. I grow all of the stick-to-ya plants I’ve discussed here, and while I occasionally fall foul of them, I’d never call for their banishment, believing there are ways to live with them that don’t require retiring great swathes of garden to them. I’m happy to stick with them.