Hamilton East Heritage Festival aims high

Sunday's Hamilton East Heritage Festival looks likely to go off with a bang!

With heritage firearms in the hands of blackpowder enthusiasts, demonstrations will make their presence felt.

Blanks will be fired from a range of 1800s vintage weaponry comprising a flintlock musket, percussion muskets and an 1886 patent Snider breech loading rifle. Some of the muskets date back to the 1850s and earlier.

Alf's Imperial Army will also be on hand to add to the military mayhem.

The  free Steele Park festival  in Hamilton East promises to be the best yet.

Organised by the Hamilton East Community Trust, music headline acts will be The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band and the Reelmen plus old favourites, The Big Muffin Serious Band and Every Second Tuesday.

The Great Heritage Trail Buggy Walk will debut - a fun event for families around the Hamilton East Heritage Trail. There will be spot prizes for best dressed families - heritage of course - and for the best decorated buggies and trikes.

Sport Waikato will organise a celebrity tug of war, in the old fashioned style, and is hoping for a good turnout of local heroes to entertain their fans.

Two teams of the Pirongia Clydesdales will be taking visitors for rides around Hamilton East and there will be penny farthings and horses and ponies for kids and the adults to ride.

The Hamilton Brass Band will lead off the parade at 10am and from then until 4pm there will be non-stop entertainment for children and adults.

As always, Beale Cottage, Hamilton's oldest building, will be open for afternoon teas. Dr Beale and his wife and nine children lived in this tiny cottage which also included his surgery in the 1860s.