New Year’s Eve in Hawke’s Bay: Fireworks and bands ready to rock

New Year's Eve 2019 was the first Napier appearance at the event by Auckland covers band White Chapel Jak, who were performing as emerging talent at the time. Photo / NZME

Public New Year’s Eve celebrations in Hawke’s Bay will focus on a Napier Marine Parade family occasion that has become a regional institution since the revelry was remodelled for the arrival of the new millennium 26 years ago.

Such events had been previously canned for several years because of drunken revelry that generally resulted in hundreds of people spending the first hours of the new year in police lock-ups across the country.

But Napier City Council event manager and Hawke’s Bay Musicians Hub frontman Kevin Murphy says the alcohol-free events in Napier, with a mainly unchanged format, have been largely incident-free.

“It’s a great family night out.”

The parade will be closed to traffic from 4.30pm on Wednesday from Browning St to Vautier St, with a night of entertainment starting at 7pm.

It culminates with the countdown to midnight, Mayor Richard McGrath’s first ringing of the Veronica Bell to welcome in 2026, and the second of two fireworks displays on the night, with a new twist.

The first is at 9.45pm for families wanting to get children off home to bed, and the accompanying musical arrangement can be accessed on phones by downloading a Pyrocast app, entering the codes DXTY for the Kids Show DXTY and ZPZ2 for the midnight display.

A feature of the live musical entertainment will be local rising star Ella Pollett, whose original Losing My Mind was released in October, hitting No 1 on the Hot 20 Aotearoa New Zealand-artists Singles List, and in November reaching No 26 on the Hot 40 Singles chart for all singles sales in New Zealand.

Auckland covers band White Chapel Jak are back, having first appeared on the night as emerging talent in 2019 and featuring again two years ago.

Murphy rates them as possibly the best covers band in New Zealand at present.

The rest is local talent, with Devils Elbow – who have been on the Hawke’s Bay music scene for about 19 years, with frontman Alec Withers; Sophie Jean Dance Company, back after a first New Year’s Eve appearance last year; and show newcomers Urban Dukes, who also play a range of popular covers.

The general public marking of New Year’s Eve in Hastings focuses on the Fiesta of Lights at Tomoana Showgrounds, featuring Napier covers veterans Pulse and their selection of hits from 8.30pm, and an earlybird fireworks display for the “kiddies” starting at 9.45pm.

Another institution that dates back to the start of the millennium and runs nightly for more than three weeks, the fiesta closes at 11pm.

Promoter Te Rangi Huata, whose crews laid more than 20km of fairy lights for the three weeks of nightly displays, expects about 3000 people, including children in pyjamas and dressing gowns, and who, generally, leave as soon as the fireworks display is over.

Northern Hawke’s Bay hotspot Mahia has a significant team of police drafted in to support sole-charge local constable Chad Prentice, who, in his 14^th year policing the Christmas and New Year’s Eve period in the area, says the focus is on alcohol offence prevention and safety on the roads.

He says many of the campers who swelled the crowds on the peninsula for Christmas Day have packed up and headed elsewhere, including the three-day Rhythm & Vines festival, which started near Gisborne on Monday.

Like most beach areas, Mahia has a midsummer ban on alcohol in public areas, while its lone local pub will close at 9pm on New Year’s Eve, Prentice says.

Doug Laing is a Hawke’s Bay Today reporter based in Napier, with a career of 52 years in journalism, reporting events in Hawke’s Bay for more than 40 of them.