Heavy rain and thunderstorms threaten New Year’s Eve events in Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay. Video / Finn Little, Sasha Dickie
As a celebration, the usual enthusiasm for New Year’s Eve seemed to be in meagre quantities as Hawke’s Bay waved goodbye to 2024 and said “hello” to 2025.
The lights from cellphone screens were busy as Napier welcomed the new year with the fireworks display at the Marine Parade Sound Shell. Photo / Doug Laing
Whether it was just because of the weather was debatable.
While there’d been rain in varying amounts and places over the previous 48 hours (not to mention some hail and wind), by midnight it was comparatively mild with a temperature of 14C as the crowd (about 5000) milled around the Marine Parade Sound Shell for the major event, hosted by Napier City Council.
It was one of the smaller midnight crowds for a New Year’s Eve event since the council revived the Marine Parade celebrations when Napier became one of the first cities in the world to see in the new millennium.
This year also marked 25 years of Hawke’s Bay Today and 150 years of Napier as a municipality.
A scout around bars afterwards indicated there generally weren’t huge numbers of stayers but, nevertheless, Napier was still a place to be, with some parts of the country missing out altogether due to the weather.
As the music died at the Shell, the ringing-in of the New Year with the bell from the HMS Veronica rested with councillor Ronda Chrystal. It revived a bit of a family tradition with her late grandfather Ronald Spriggs having performed similar roles with the brassware when he was mayor from 1950 to 1956.
It was a team effort, with Mayor Kirsten Wise having spoken earlier in the evening.
The Phil Edwards Band, which joined fellow Auckland crowd Hands Off, on stage at the Napier Sound Shell on New Year's Eve. Photo / John Cowpland / alphapix
The countdown to midnight was low-key and then came the fireworks display, which regulars might say was shorter than usual.
And then it was over, the crowd soon dispersing, although a small queue formed at the ice cream van and several of the 10 other food vans. By 1am, the city streets that had been closed since 4pm were reopening.
While not the summery highs of a few weeks earlier, the MetService forecast was accurate, predicting that the rain would ease off and clear.
Napier City Council events manager Kevin Murphy said: “It was great that we got through, with the weather. It was a great success.”
A family night out at the Marine Parade New Year's Eve celebration in Napier. Photo / John Cowpland / alphapix
He particularly praised Auckland covers band Hands Off, the night’s contracted organiser Beth Elstone, of Littlestone, and Sight and Sound Services operator Henry Norton, as the “unsung heroes”.
With every town, city and venue looking for New Year’s Eve bands, some bookings were made a year out, Murphy said.
“Hands Off are very experienced, they were one of the ones we were talking to early, and when we approached them, they didn’t have a booking, so we were in,” he said.
Shining a light on 2025 - the New Year explodes into life on the Napier foreshore. Photo / John Cowpland / alphapix
Local fireworks display producers were busy. They had done shows earlier in the night for the younger ones at the Sound Shell, and also at Hastings’ mid-evening 2024 sign-off during the Fiesta of Lights at Tomoana Showgrounds.
Police, who had staff at events and locations throughout Hawke’s Bay, reported just one arrest, for assault, near the Sound Shell.
Soon after midnight, multiple patrols responded to a report of a group fighting in the vicinity of the nearby Marine Parade North carpark. While the group was reported to have dispersed when police arrived, officers were still on the scene more than an hour later.
The big bang theory: If it lights up the night it'll light up your life. Photo / John Cowpland/ alphapix
Police in the Napier-Hastings area were called to at least two crashes.
The first involved a vehicle and a pedestrian near the Marewa Village shopping centre in Napier at about 10pm. The pedestrian was taken to hospital in Hastings, but no further details were available by midday on Wednesday.
Police were continuing inquiries relating to an incident near Omahu after midnight. They said it appeared to have been a “disorder incident” that also involved a vehicle crashing, but no serious injuries were reported.
The New Year wasn’t offering a great deal of early climatic improvement for events happening in the Bay, with temperatures not expected to exceed 24C in Napier and Hastings in the next 10 days.
