It’s Zebulon here, and this is the Burning Horse story.
Burning Horse was born part creative vision – part community effort – part synchro-destiny.
I grew up on the farm where the festival is held and feel super blessed because the property is sick. After gaining a degree at Lincoln University and enjoying a fairly lengthy and transformative overseas experience, I returned to work the farm with my old man, Rohan, and good mate, Burns. I had some hefty changes in mind, which mostly meant upping up the self-sufficiency rating by about 10 fold. To help with some of the workload I signed up as a host on a volunteer site; the first person to contact me was a crazy Swedish dude, Yon Freebird.
My brother, Zack, and I have built a frisbee golf course down at the river, so a lot of Yon’s jobs that summer revolved around weed-whacking thistles and doing other groundskeeping chores to convert gnarly terrain into pristine fairways. One afternoon we were clearing out an old shed and ended up with a bunch of scrap wood. I asked Yon if he wanted to build something out of it, and he immediately responded: “I will build the horse of Sweden.” We set to the task of turning that wood into a horse sculpture, and the outcome was hysterical.
At around the same time, a legendary mate, ‘Sexy Dave’, turned up. I’d met him doing a ski season in Austria, and he had moved to Queenstown chasing the snow. He loved it here so decided to extend his stay. He called me one day that summer, and the conversation went something like this…
“Zeb mate, how are you getting on?”
“SEXY DAAAAAAVE!!!! I’m good man and you?”
“Yes, good too mate. Hey, my birthday is coming up and I’m hoping to get out of Queenstown for the weekend, possibly heading South somewhere, maybe the Catlins, maybe camp out. Wondering if you have a spot to recommend down there and if you care to join?”
“I could indeed recommend some absolutely stunning spots around the Catlins but I have an even better idea… you bring your crew down the farm for the weekend, we play some disc golf and I will throw you a party!”
“Amazing! Anything else I need to know?”
“Yes. The party will be named ‘Burning Horse.”
And just like that, the figurative stage was set. Sexy Dave came down with a bunch of his mates from Queenstown and around the world. I had my crew from around Southland, and we had an epic weekend of activities, bonfires, swimming, music, yarns and the ceremonious Burning of the Horse.
I recently caught up with Freddie, a mate with fond memories of that night: “Man – I think I played guitar for like 4 hours at one point.” So, yeah, there was music, but there was a lot of dreaming, planning and discussion too. What if this one-off party became a little less ‘a gathering of mates’ and little more ‘ full-scale festival’!
Throughout 2017 there were a series of chance encounters that helped progress the vision of a festival into a reality, the most fundamental of these was meeting Stevie Dub at a random ass party in the bush near 5 Rivers.
I told Stevie of our concept for a festival, and he told me about his garage packed with music equipment and a plan to launch a production company. Steve and I went back and forth with a few ideas; we truly got the ball rolling when he came out to the site and gave some prospective stage dimensions, and we decided upon its location. Fortunately, thanks to the disc golf green keeping, our options were quite plentiful.
At this point, Zack was living at the farm, as was a mate Lucas, from Montana, and a steady flow of amazing volunteers. When it comes to projects such as these, Zack has pretty mad skills and sets a high standard of quality. We wanted to build a stage from materials sourced from the farm. A wind storm had blown over a number of trees in our pine plantation, so we decided on a design based using full trees as opposed to milled timber. A roof was made from recycled corrugated iron from an old woolshed which was kindly donated by a top lad Russel; and the stage was set again, now in a more literal sense.
Not long before the event, I was talking to my soul brother, Brad Lake, about the progress. Brad and his mate Brendon had recently launched the hemp supplement company ‘Beefy Green’. He asked if I thought he should set up a lemonade stand type stall and sell smoothies loaded with hemp protein powder. I told him if he did we would build him the lemonade stand of his dreams. A week later the Beefy Shack was complete, a structure to rival the awesomeness of the stage. They decided to add some plant-based food options to their menus: wraps, curry, pad thai, square toasties, and Montana Flat lamb.
Meanwhile, Yon the crazy Swede had been living on a boat off Waiheke Island. He quit his job and hitchhiked to the farm, arriving a week out from the festival. The timing was perfect as we had two horse skeletons that needed some love, and Yon had an inner master-sculptor urging to be unleashed. And unleashed it was. Both ‘The Trojan’ and the ‘Rearing Mare’ turned out more badass than our wildest dreams. Finishing touches were still being applied Friday when our first guests were already pitching their tents.
The weekend was epic, and despite a few trials of adversity, I would consider it as one of the best moments of my life. Stevie Dub and his team with On Point Productions did an unbelievable job decking out the stage. There were some sick performances from over 20 DJs, attendees from 16 countries and a community love that is hard to define. I will never be able to thank enough those of you who came and gave your positive awesomeness. All we can do is put in the mahi and help Burning Horse where we can to become what I feel it is destined to become.
Cheers party people!
Zebulon
