Sam Hurley: Booze ban prevents a battle

Photo / Thinkstock

Teenagers filled with testosterone and tequila were splayed across our television screens during the second half of the holiday period.

They were scenes I thought were from a bulletin being broadcast from Ferguson, Missouri or Eastern Ukraine. They were, however, the bloodied camping grounds of Gisborne.

I considered myself lucky when I woke from my own New Year's haze some 580km away on January 1 and read the headlines, having decided not to venture to Poverty Bay for the BW Summer Festival.

Three of my mates and I had converged on a similar, but in retrospect somewhat less explosive, music festival in New Zealand's sub-tropical far north. Northern Bass, just outside the town of Mangawhai, brought together local and international artists and thousands of revellers for two days of New Years celebrations.

Initially I was disappointed the festival was classed as a licensed premise, thinking I would be forced to pay top dollar for cheap liquor, and a tad cynical about the full body search I endured upon entry.

But as I later realised this was the best way for the police and security, essentially tasked with preventing a hostile takeover at the event, to maintain some degree of public order.

Sure, some people managed to creatively sneak in their own alcohol and save a few bob, but it was a far cry from the endless bottles of Smirnoff, which people proudly displayed and drank in the Gisborne fields.

Those of us who gathered in the Northland paddocks to camp enjoyed the music, fireworks on the stroke of midnight and two days in the sun, while the overpriced liquor forced us to drink responsibly, meaning no arrests and only one reveller airlifted to Whangarei Hospital.

The police squad at Northern Bass had little to do and spent much of New Year's Eve sitting around a water trough-turned table and enjoying the tunes.

It was a stark contrast to the chaos and three-hour-long BW Summer Festival battle between police and the drunken mob, which led to 63 people being arrested and 83 injured.

Tents were lit, vehicles overturned and bottles and cans quickly converted into hand grenades in a riot, which Inspector Sam Aberahama described as a scene from Braveheart.

My friends and I were extremely grateful that we were not the victims of a charcoaled tepee or obliged to make use of any guerrilla warfare skills we possessed.

Police blamed the riot on excessive alcohol consumption at the BYO event, and it is easy to see why, after watching the online videos of the hooligans, which also left me wondering how no one was killed.

At the end of the holiday period I counted myself lucky that my New Year wasn't spent on the bloodied fields of Gisborne.

• Sam Hurley is a court reporter for Hawke's Bay Today. Linda Hall is on leave.