Ōamaru's growing steampunk festival isn't just a unique identity for the town – it's a welcome shot in the arm for local accommodation and hospitality providers
Hundreds of steampunks filled Ōamaru during King’s Birthday weekend making what’s become an annual pilgrimage to the North Otago town that calls itself steampunk HQ.
The person who can be credited with bringing them there, Helen Jansen – executive coach in her day job and La Falconesse in her Victorian sci-fi fantasist persona – these days is a festival volunteer.
But she set the ball rolling more than a decade ago, first with an exhibition of steampunk creations that drew thousands of people over a number of years, then branching out to run a fashion show and gala ball that eventually morphed into the annual festival.
Waitaki District Mayor Gary Kircher says with Ōamaru having to live up to its claim of being the country’s home of steampunk, the festival’s post-Covid return is particularly meaningful.
“It’s fantastic to have it back and see the town bustling. This event’s very special for us with our reputation as the steampunk capital.”
Not to mention its timing over the monarch’s birthday weekend being an off-season shot in the arm for accommodation and hospitality providers.
Kircher made an appearance at the opening on Friday night and urged festival participants to make a spectacle of themselves, although they hardly need encouragement.
Whereas the mayor concedes his costume – steampunk’s signature flying goggles with the get-up he wears at Ōamaru’s annual Victorian heritage celebration – was low key, the same can’t be said of many of the hundreds of people in town for the weekend.
The gear worn in Saturday’s parade, one of the main festival events along with a variety show and ball, was a mixture of gaudy Victoriana with such sinister accessories as half-face leather and metal masks and elaborate weaponry, topped by spectacular headgear.
Some of the 100 or more people who followed the local pipe band on a loop through the heritage part of town carried intricately decorated canes and large timepieces disguised as handbags.
Way to go
The parade had a transportation theme and featured a variety of wacky conveyances a number of which had been carted up from Christchurch.
An estimated 3000 people watched.
Nearly all the participants are from out of town, Jansen says, and like her most are middle-aged or older.
“It’s almost as if taking part gives people a new lease of life, an excuse for finding their creative selves.
“We get so used to who we are or were brought up to be that when people put on an outfit they can slip into a different freer persona.”
Dress-ups for grown-ups it may be but Jansen says there’s also a younger steampunk following.
“An increasing number of young people are getting excited about being able to bring their technology into steampunk’s imaginative space.”
Travelling up the island to the festival were groups from Dunedin and Invercargill, and making the journey south was a strong showing from Christchurch and others from Wellington, Hawkes Bay and the Coromandel.
The participants from furthest afield were from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.
A Whitianga contingent went away with the airship-racing trophy, contested by reeling in 1m-long craft running along wires stretched high up in the expanse of the Loan and Mercantile Building.
The former grain store is in the town’s Victorian precinct, an asset Ōamaru lends to the steampunk mania.
“It was exciting racing with four lanes and very tight finishes,” says Jansen.
If that’s not thrilling or eccentric enough there’s also tea duelling, another contest steampunks have made their own.
Referee Jansen, known as the tea master, says the rules are two players each have a cup of tea in which they dunk a biscuit for three seconds. The winner is the person who holds the biscuit longer before eating it.
“You time eating the biscuit before it collapses. If it collapses you're out. It’s a finely balanced thing.”
Love guns
Creativity is the name of the game for festival goers, Jansen says.
“It’s expressed not just in the strange neo-Victorian clothes they wear but also in what their gadgets do. They might have microelectronics and tiny mechanisms and they very often work.
“Steampunks are incredibly creative and often very technical. They might be engineers or technicians who like detail.”
Such as her jeweller husband Iain Clark, whose science-fiction inspired rings and other metal works sparked the original steampunk exhibition.
Weaponry is a popular creative outlet.
“Yes, but it’s not necessarily designed to kill. One of the best ones we had was a pooper scooper that would make all sorts of detritus disintegrate.
“There are also love guns that will tune in and capture the amour of your intended.
“These things are as broad and deep as the imaginations of the individuals who brandish them.”
Their imaginations are fed by such Victorian-era sci-fi writers as Jules Verne and HG Wells who conquered space on the page almost a century before Russia and America went into orbit.
“There’s much to be gleaned by viewing the future from the past,” Jansen says.
It’s no coincidence that the festival features airship races because the craft are a mainstay of steampunk transport.
Ardent steampunks each have their own backstory and Jansen’s, in keeping with her La Falconesse alter ego, involves swooping on prey from an airship.
“I’m a time pirate and I base jump from my ship through a slip in time, opening my wings where I need to be.”
After rescuing someone from their fate in history or purloining something that catches her eye she leaps back to her airship from the other side of existence.
“My crew does a fantastic job because here I am still able to tell my tale.”
With such rampant creativity, steampunks clearly need events other than just the annual festival at which to congregate.
In summer they stage a hunt in the Ōamaru Gardens for the tree octopus or air kraken, the space equivalent of the monsters of the deep.
In spring they head to Alexandra’s blossom festival.
“Steampunks will add their colour and creativity to whatever the occasion might be,” says Jansen.
“They’re very good at photo bombing other people’s events.”
*Made with the support of the Public Interest Journalism Fund*
