The first weeks of the new year can be a rather subdued period in town centres across Auckland with so many local families getting away for a break over the school holiday period.
Devonport village fairly exploded into life on the middle weekend of January with the coincidence of Tāmaki Makaurau’s inaugural hosting of the globetrotting SailGP competition regatta and the first major festival our harbourside village has hosted in decades.
Promoted by Highlife Entertainment, Sunsetter Festival has become a regular summer feature on the North Shore events roster, with previous years’ iterations held at open grassy venues including Smales Farm and North Harbour Domain. While it has a restricted footprint, meaning smaller crowds, Devonport’s Windsor Reserve is a picturesque jewel in the crown of the peninsula’s parks, sitting as it does next to a delightful inner harbour beach and populated with shade-providing pōhutukawa trees.
For festival organiser Adam Bennett, it was a long-held goal to bring this one-day dance music event to Devonport, and this summer’s fantastic spell of weather meant it fully lived up to the ‘sunsetter’ celebration promise.
Bennett describes the festival as a huge success with the 2,400 well-behaved party people attending, the majority aged between age 35 to 65, creating a really nice vibe. Carefully fenced to ensure that access to the waterfront pathway and the kids’ playgrounds remained freely available, he says the Windsor Reserve space worked well and could comfortably hold 2,500 in the future.
Dulcie and Vic Road Kitchen were among local businesses providing food to festival goers, and several more of Devonport’s hospitality venues took advantage of the festival’s 9pm closing time to offer after-party DJ entertainment. Happy crowds carried on partying from the top of the village to the bottom, with DJs and dancing on the deck outside Signal Hill, in front of Tiny Triumphs and on the wharf beside The Kestrel.
In tandem with the finals day of SailGP yacht racing right in front of the grandstand crowds in Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, the buzz continued into a busy Sunday for Devonport, making it a weekend to savour.
