‘Another level of incredible’
Festival goers have praised the organisers of Christchurch’s Electric Avenue festival, which saw 35,000 music fans dancing into the night to acts including The Chemical Brothers, Six60 and Shapeshifter.
The annual event – returning for a ninth year to Hagley Park on Saturday – is New Zealand’s largest festival and was largely sold out this year with just more than 100 tickets available when gates shut at 5pm.
Those attending credited the festival’s success to a combination of brilliant acts and detailed hospitality planning, which saw separate toilets for men and women and a one drink per person policy brought in as the day wore on.
Social media comments about the event were overwhelmingly positive, with one attendee – Sonja Courtis – rating headline act The Chemical Brothers as “incredible”. “Chemical Brothers! Another level of incredible. How lucky are we to have had them there,” she wrote.
Fellow festival goer Jill Oetgen was largely positive about the day: “It was amazing. I loved the layout and the separate toilets! More water stations were needed. It was like a stampede in there trying to get some water. The music was fantastic.“
“Everyone was on really good form,” another Christchurch resident who attended told The Press. “It was really really well organised,” they added.
Police, including specialist drug staff, plus drug testers from Know Your Stuff and Environmental Science and Research (ESR), were on site to keep people safe.
After the gates closed, Senior Sergeant Roy Appley said the event was going “remarkably well” and praised the organisers.
He acknowledged that while there was a reasonable amount of drug use, including cannabis, MDMA and cocaine, he considered it to be at manageable levels.
“There’s more than what I'd be comfortable with, in truth, but the way of the world at the moment drug use is part of people’s recreational time, so we have to adapt to that,” he said.
A police spokesperson said yesterdayday “the vast majority of attendees were well behaved and enjoyed themselves”. “There were some arrests for fighting in and around the venue, but no reports of any injuries or further issues.”