Editorial: Bad cliff accident at Vinegar Hill

Kiwiburn festival near Hunterville.

SHREWD readers might have wondered if there was an untold story behind today's page one lead about the dramatic rescue near Vinegar Hill.

From the outset let's remind ourselves there is a young man in hospital fighting for his life right now. We respect his right to privacy and wish him a full and as pain-free a recovery as possible.

That said, our role is to investigate stories and report what happened, to whom and, if possible, why.

And so we felt it important to explain to readers why we could not go inside the festival and talk to festival-goers yesterday by reporting that we were denied access by both the private land-owner and the festival organisers. That, of course, is their right.

Someone might have known the young man and could have added to his story.

Are the four people he hitched a ride with still at the festival? What was their take on what happened and how are they dealing with it?

We might have liked to ask folk of their thoughts about the closed-gate policy that kept the young man outside of the festival and what presumably drove him to try to find another way in.

Did he "pay the price" for breaking the rules, as festival founder Mark Stirling so ineloquently put it, or should perhaps the festival organisers have paid for someone to man the entrance 24/7 to let in late arrivals?

We won't know what their thoughts are if we can't ask them.

We support Hunterville, its community and events, and the festival, too. We wrote at length about it last year in our Saturday feature supplement, 48 Hours. But we're also independent journalists whose job it is to tell the facts and ask relevant questions.

So we ask, were you at the festival and what can you add to this story?

Please contact us.