As we drive over the hill a city of tents in various stages of construction comes into view.
"It's a shame you couldn't come tomorrow, that's when things pick up," says Shelley.
This year 1600 people have come, up two hundred from the year before.
"While you're here we ask that you respect people's privacy and only take a picture if you ask their permission."
The first thing that stands out as we enter the paddock is a giant wooden man three stories high, in the centre of it all.
Underneath him a lone shirtless figure dances to music only he can hear.
One of the effigies build team Nicholas Lealand will tell me it took a crew of 11 two weeks to build the figure. With months of prefabrication work, but it was all worth it.
"The build is very important for me, you have the time it takes to develop much deeper friendships, you make a lot of friends in Kiwiburn but with the build you have ten people and you know everything about them by the end."
Nicholas, an industrial design student, always marks down this date in the calendar to be here, a place considers a kind of home.
Wearing a swan-dry and sporting giant curling sideburns, he tells me he tells me Kiwiburn is where he feels normal.
"The burn reminds you that there are a whole lot of other people out there that are just as weird as you are, if not weirder."
The story of Kiwiburn traces its way back to the first Burning Man festival in the United States, with a bonfire ritual on the summer of 1986. Larry Harvey, Jerry James, and a few friends met on Baker Beach in San Francisco and burned a 9-foot wooden man.
The event would grow and move to the Nevada Desert that's where a Kiwi doing his doctorate in seismology by the name of Mark Stirling would stumble upon the event eight years later while camping with his friends.
He told me he'd gone out to the desert often, but this trip he discovered something a little different.
"We meet all these interesting people at the local hot springs. They told us they were there for this thing called Burning Man and we should come check it out."
"When we got there I have to say it was a transformational experience it was like... wow this is so cool."
At that time Burning Man in 1994 had a small following of 2000 visitors nothing compared to the 70,000 in 2016 that made the pilgrimage.
During his study he would visit the desert again three more times before heading home to New Zealand.
"I really missed the burning man culture, around about that time I started to get this idea."
During that time regional Burning Man events were springing up in the other states throughout the US but nobody had taken the event overseas.
"I got the idea of doing one, having an international community in New Zealand."
"I thought world deserves to have this idea internationally and this community, it's so amazing, let's see whether New Zealanders get it."
He made his case to the burning man office and meet with the event organisers that included the original creator Larry Harvey.
"The young folks were asking a lot about insurance and details and then Larry, the big changing moment was when Larry Harvey got up and went over to a map of the world and said 'look you guys we're here this guy's wanting to establish a burn down here in New Zealand it'll be our first international regional, let's make it happen'."
And with that the New Zealand Kiwiburn attached itself to the Visionz festival. At this first event 95 people came, the event would grow to a few hundred by 2006.
Mark would eventually pass on the torch to a new generation and in 2007 the event came to the North Island, setting up in the Mangakino first, before settling in Hunterville in 2013.
Chris Hankins was one of the organisers during those years, he says while many District Councils supported the idea of the event their region, the nature of Kiwiburn did raise a few eyebrows.
"When I met with the council manager from Mangakino and we were sitting outside the site, I was honest with her and said look by the way this festival is quite unique. I said there is a lot of nudity."
"And she kind of looked at me and said 'how much?'"
"I said 'well there could be about twenty nude people,' and she said 'oh umm interesting'."
Chris says as the years went byevent steadily grew bigger. It could have grown much faster, but Kiwiburn is not about the numbers game.
"It's not promoted, you know, it's not advertised all over the newspapers, its word of mouth."
But burners still come from all across New Zealand and about one in five come from overseas.
"Even people who have been to the states and have been to Burning Man in the desert which is an insane environment, you're like on another planet. But they come here to a green pasture paddock, with sheep running around and they are blown away."
Like Burning Man, Kiwiburn asks that everyone practice the ten guiding principles of "radical" inclusion, self-reliance and self-expression, community co-operation, civic responsibility, gifting, decommodification, participation, immediacy and leaving no trace.
Because money is no good at Kiwiburn everyone relies on a gifting economy. Some will gift food, others may have skills they can gift like singing or jewellery making.
One facebook post advertises they will be providing coffee but they would love it if people would donate beans and milk, and last year a workshop taught fellow burners how to work leather.
It may be unorganised, a person may wander the grounds, and others may set up permanent tents and invite burners to come to them.
One of these is permanent groups is Chur.
I walk into an archway made of driftwood one of Chur's organisers, Don Simon, greets us.
Wearing a bright suit made of a patch-work of rainbow colours, he tells us that "Chur" is a community within Kiwiburn, a community within a community.
"We've got five structures going up. Over here we've got both the sacred and the profane. So we've got a lovely lush yoga workshop space and then we've got the 'church of doof,' a profane space where you can party all night and make a lot of noise."
He points me in the direction of two tents side by side, made from recycled bamboo and billboard canvas.
One has Indian patterns adorning the walls complete with throw pillows.
"We've got two yoga instructors from Spain who will do a workshop."
Next to that is what looks like a tent night club, with a disco ball hanging from the ceiling.
Apart from a costume area the rest of the tents provide the 'Chur' community with everything they need, including a kitchen to store food and a washbasin.
'Chur' is one of many communities that came together at Kiwiburn, but live on past the festival. Throughout the year they will plan for the next event. Other smaller groups include 'Mint' a group of friends devoted to the colour green and group of Sci-fi fans that have built a replica bar from Star Wars Episode IV.
Kiwiburn will run for five days and will finish on the 30th. On Saturday the wooden man will burn, a moment of celebration.
The next night another, different burn will take place. This one will be a solemn occasion where a temple belonging to no religion will go up in flames.
Messages to departed love ones and bad memories are scribbled along the walls, it is a place for people to let go and to burn away grief.
As our visit comes to an end and we drive away and take one last look at the wooden man, I can't help but note, he has turned his back on the city.
