8
Wednesday August 31, 2016
one on one with the Sun
The Sun
Leading the charge on Picton’s summer festivities Picton’s annual Maritime Festival is an eagerly anticipated event and Beryl Bowers is gearing up for her 12th year, she tells Glenise Dreaver. Beryl has seen the Maritime Festival event grow and prosper in the 12 years since she and her team first worked on what has proven to be a very good idea. That same year she picked up the organisation of the already-existing Picton Christmas Parade. Not everyone would have chosen to do that but they are, she says, both family festivals and very much about the children. It’s always been about the children. Unsurprisingly, her first career choice was as a Karitane nurse. Karitane was set up to help families and children at risk and she was very committed to that. But while Beryl paid for 18 months of training and then did the months needed to become registered, much was very hard for an eighteen-year-old to deal with, especially in sole charge positions. So Beryl moved into administration/ reception work. Then came the big OE on a cruise ship to Perth. “It was so rough they couldn’t fill the swimming pool.” The shared cabin, with three other girls, was a big plus though. “We had a lot of fun.” She worked at a Kalgoorlie pre-school. After a few months, she hitched back to work in Perth, then boarded a train across the Nullarbor to Sydney before heading home. She met Cliff, newly returned from three years of military service in Singapore. It wasn’t straightforward. Someone had wrongly told her he was married, so she turned down four dates. He was persistent though and the confusion finally got sorted, with marriage following just ten months after the first date. They have lived in Picton for their forty years of married life. Beryl worked in administration, in preschool work and as a teacher aide before training as a registered teacher by distance
education in the 1990s. She has also done the administration for Cliff’s plumbing business for many years. Beryl’s close 10-strong team of volunteers already has the 2017 festival planning under control, having started with the annual debriefing and planning. There is a smaller but just as close a team for the Christmas Parade. “It’s a cool little committee.” “We’ve got a great system. We go round the room handing a baton from one to the other. While someone holds the baton no one can interrupt. We are really honest and pull everything apart, but never nastily. We also talk about our favourite things and what went well.” The odd disaster has struck. The year the sewage overflowed after heavy rain and poured into the harbour on the day was memorable. “We had to shift the raft race to Shelly Beach at the last minute. “I felt like the Pied Piper as we led everyone there. We were lucky to be allowed as it had rained and rained and the foreshore was really muddy. “But it was all right in the end.” What she loves about the festival is that it fosters a sense of community. “Everyone is so positive. It always blows me away on the day.” Beryl’s main role is finding funds for the $60,000 needed. Marlborough District Council, Crafar Crouch, Kenny Barging, Creative New Zealand and firms with local connections like Interislander, New Zealand King Salmon and Bluebridge Cook Strait Ferry are all, she says, wonderful supporters. “Year after year.” Currently she is crossing her fingers about their application for COGS (Community Organisation Grants Scheme) funding for help with publishing a manual for the project planning. That will mean the event can continue when the current committee members have to call it a day.
By Saturday January 21 2017, the Picton foreshore will present a very different picture to that presented on this quiet spring day.
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