Eclectic crowd marks ‘biggest ever’ Newtown Festival

Sunday, 3 March 2024

Wellington pop-rock band Hans Pucket plays to a crowd of all ages at the Newtown Festival on Sunday.

Pop-rockers Hans Pucket are on the last guitar riff of their last song and kids in crocs are grooving behind adults in pink dungarees.

Betty Pringle, 89, (right) and her daughter Lyne Pringle at the Newtown Festival. Betty says she loved indie pop band Hans Pucket and would be looking them up.

A young boy on a nearby balcony lets the rhythm take him to a place of solo dancing, while on the ground, silver-haired Betty Pringle, boogies with her daughter, Lyne. “I loved it,” Pringle, 89, says. “I’ll be looking them up.”

Te KuraHuia, a Māori Pasifika singer songwriter gets the crowd dancing at the Newtown Festival.

The air smells of barbecue, fresh doughnuts and sweat.

Show Pony, a Brooklyn local, at the Newtown Festival with her 'analog ensemble' complete with cassette tape earrings.

This is the Newtown Festival in all its glory, the way it’s been for three decades.

Thousands of people flocked to the 30th Newtown Festival on Sunday, March 3 where the streets were packed with stages, stalls and the smells of street food.

Large figures make their way through the crowds in a Free Gaza demonstration.

The much-loved festival saw the Adelaide Rd traffic jams gone for a day, replaced by the colourful crowd of thousands as the 30th annual event took over for a Sunday of music, food and community.

Genie, a nine-month-old British bulldog was one of many dogs at the Newtown Festival.

A woman who introduces herself as Show Pony wears a costume of cassette tape earring, pink fluffy glasses and a unicorn dress. “This is the analogue look,” she says.

Young Māori Pasifika artist Te KuraHuia pulls attention with her slick moves and te reo raps in front of a dancing crowd who play to our camera.

The crowd dances to Māori-Pasifika artist Te KuraHuia.

There are stalls for politics, protests and plants.

Oly Linsell and 16-month-old Flossie at the Newtown Festival.

“Free Gaza” and jazz band processions makes their way down respective side streets and a magician pretends to juggle in the McDonalds car park.

Couple Dipak and Minnie Parmar make their way through the crowd with British bulldog, Genie, named after Barbara Eden’s I Dream of Jeannie.

“This is the biggest Newtown Festival we have ever seen,” Minnie Parmar says.

The Brooklyn couple brought Genie down in an effort to socialise her around the crowds and masses of other dogs on show at the festival.

At one end is Labour MP for Ōhariu, Greg O’Connor shaking hands.

“This is the perk, I love this,” O’Connor says, as we watch the people drift by, from women in Saris to non-binary folks and dads with kids strapped to their backs.

“Take a cross section of any part of this crowd, it looks like the new New Zealand,” referring to the diversity of the crowd.

“If you’re going to be a Martian and drop in, this is where you’d want to go to.”