My Account
Looking back on 50 years of festivals, one of the founding organisers Ken Fearnley, 79, remembers the Old Time Music Halls as one of his favourite events.
Now living in Summerset, Mr Fearnley was the president of Warkworth Jaycees when Jack Keys first mooted a community celebration.
The first week-long festival featured an activity or event on every day.
“There was no commercial element, everything was self-funded and the community really got involved,” he says. “It was a huge success and we knew then that it had to become an annual event.”
Mr Fearnley says the theatre group organised a music hall in the Warkworth Town Hall, which drew on all manner of local talent, from singers and musicians to comedians.
“Traffic officers weren’t particularly well liked back then so when our local officer, Gordon Cummings, got up to sing, the whole hall went dead quiet. The pianist started to play and then when he started to sing, the audience was in absolute awe – he had a wonderful voice. When he finished, the place just exploded.”
Mr Fearnley also recalls how Auckland Mayor Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, a follower of the Jewish faith, was the guest of honour at the Combined Services Club dinner.
“I was chairing the gathering and one of the members came up and whispered in my ear that the main course was pork chops. We quickly dispatched someone to Tony’s for a serve of fish’n’chips. Sir Dove-Myer, who said he could have easily just pushed the chop aside and eaten the vegetables, was nonetheless very appreciative of the fish.”
Current organisers would envy the ease with which events were organised back then. For instance, Mr Fearnley says getting permission to close the main street for the parade involved going into the Council’s Warkworth office and asking over the counter.
“The Council officer said, ‘Okay, that sounds like a good idea – everyone loves a parade’ and that was it. The permission granted.
“At one festival, a local helicopter pilot flew low over the parade and emptied a load of lollies onto the crowd. There were lollies bouncing off people’s heads all over the place. No-one was hurt and it was a lot of fun, but I doubt you’d get away with that now.”
Mr Fearnley says the festival has always been an opportunity to pull the district together and take pride in the area as a whole.
“I hope we never lose the community commitment to the festival because that’s what makes it so special.”
