Oyster Festival Set For Saturday

15 MAY 2017

Oyster Festival Set For Saturday

The Bluff Oyster & Food Festival takes place in Bluff this Saturday (20 May) with tickets for the event having sold out nearly two months ago. Accordingly there will be no gate sales this year.

As always the iconic Bluff Oyster will be the star attraction with around 20,000 of the delicacy on hand. Food stalls will also provide plenty of other succulent seafood treats such as blue cod, mussels, salmon, crayfish, whitebait, paua, kina, creamy seafood & oyster pie plus seafood chowder.

However there is plenty on offer for those who do not enjoy seafood with items such as escargot in the shell with garlic butter, muttonbirds, venison burger, chicken nuggets and more while those with a sweet tooth are also catered for. There is also a range of beer and wine plus hot tea and coffee to accompany the tasty fare.

International artist, Helen Henderson, who spends much of the year in the United States but also has a home in Bluff heads the musical entertainment this year. Henderson moved to the UK from Invercargill in the late 1970’s and was signed to Ensign Records, home of the Boomtown Rats, Sinead O’Connor and the Waterboys. Others on stage include Otepuni Moonshine, Christchurch band The Stoutfellows, Nelson based Bragg Brothers featuring Lou and Chris Bragg who grew up in Bluff and The New Entrants with former Bluff boy Corey Cross on vocals. The Bluff School Kapa Haka Group and the Cook Island Drummers are also popular entertainers at the Festival each year.

The professional oyster openers grace the stage in Shed 3 at 12.30pm with sections for Men and Women as well as a Teams Relay race. The reigning Men’s Champion, Shane Wixon, is back to defend his title while in the Ladies event, six time champion Vic Pearsey is back to try and extend her great record.

The Oyster Eating races follow with contestants selected from the crowd to down a plate of Bluff Oysters as quickly as possible.

Once again this year Festival organisers are offering a prize for the Best Costume, a reward for those who put so much preparation into their day out.

This year’s Festival marks an important milestone for the current committee who took charge of the Festival in time for the 2008 event. Since then the committee have taken the event from strength to strength, even opening the new purpose built venue in 2015. This year marks their tenth Festival – a mighty effort!

For those who have tickets gates open at 10.30am before the traditional Piping In Of The Oyster, the Ode and official welcome at 11am.

A return bus service operates from Invercargill on the day at a cost of $15 return.

Tickets for the 2018 Festival scheduled for 26 May 2018 go on sale immediately after this year’s event – available from 6.00pm on Saturday 20 May.

ends

© Scoop Media