There ain't nothing like a free ride and that's the way it will be today at Hawke's Bay's major Waitangi Day celebration in Hastings.
The free rides will be on several of the attractions of fairground specialist Mahon's Amusements moved from the weekend's Dannevirke A and P Show and set up yesterday at the Regional Sports Park in Hastings as part of a $100,000 people investment by Ngati Kahungunu Iwi.
There are five rides, including the Hurricane and the Sizzler, along with an array of inflatable attractions at the 8am-4pm big day out which includes an entertainment package headlined by hip-hop, reggae and R&B star Che Fu, who was awarded an MNZM in 2009 for services to the music industry and who has seven Tui New Zealand music industry awards to his name.
Event manager Te Rangi Huata said Che Fu will perform the last half hour, sticking to his most successful hits, while other performers during the day will include kapa haka groups Te Rerenga Kotuku, from Wairoa, and Hastings-based Ngati Kahungunu ki Heretaunga, both back at the park where they appeared at national biennial festival Te Matatini in a month of cultural indulgence kicked off by the Waitangi Day celebrations last year.
The iwi, supported by the Hastings District Council and Napier City Council, says the event is to celebrate "178 years of nationhood" from the time chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands. It was signed later in 1840 by Kahungunu chiefs on the banks of the Tutaekuri River at Clive.