Music festival one of many stops on working holiday
Country music enthusiasts, musicians and other festival-goers have rolled into Gore for its country music festival, and so too have its volunteers.
Working holidaymakers Sally Laws and Kevin Jackson are two of those volunteers and have parked their 7m retro house bus at Gore's A&P Showgrounds to help out at the 11-day Tussock Country music festival.
Mr Jackson, originally from South Africa, has a background in engineering and is translating those skills into helping festival trustee and sound engineer Jeff Rea with sound.
Ms Laws, from the United Kingdom, has been on the doors of events and working at the festival's merchandise stand inside the St James Theatre.
The couple both have working-holiday visas and have been travelling the country and working seasonally.
Over summer, they ran a small family campsite at Lake Benmore, which was in a beautiful part of the country that they really enjoyed, Ms Laws said.
The pair also picked hops in Wai-iti, near Nelson, and after the festival they are going back up to the top of the South Island to Richmond, to work in a tree nursery.
The pair had heard good things about that area in the winter and were looking forward to less rain, as that could be a problem for a house bus.
The damp was more of a problem in their Nissan Civilian, she said.
"Cold is fine, damp is less fine."
Ms Laws said they both worked the Country Music Honours event that kicked off the whole festival and the Late Night event on Saturday and were looking forward to the busking competition and Gold Guitar Awards in the coming days.
Her favourite of what she had seen was the honours event as they had no idea what they were getting into when they signed up and the show gave some good history and background to the festival.
She also really loved seeing Tami Neilson, getting to know volunteers, hearing the different types of songwriting that New Zealand had to offer and trying the St James' ice cream.
There were quite a few festival-goers at the showgrounds where they were staying, she said, as well as rugby practices and children doing cross-country, an amusing snapshot of Gore life.
They had been well looked after by the grounds caretaker, Dawn Ross, who had given them a nice camping spot and was checking on them, and they had even bumped into each other at the festival.
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