Second Quarter Final parade in Wellington

This photo says it all, really… Continue reading

The All Blacks are coming to town!

The New Zealand vs Canada Fanzone-to-stadium parade – notable for the enormous fake beards (at least, I assume they were fake!) worn by some of the Canadian fans, and the fact that this was Wellington’s one and only All Blacks game during the World Cup.

Oh – and also that our semi-official photographer, Geoff Infield, deserted us halfway through the parade to take pictures of the Air Force Red Checkers aerobatics display.

Ah well – we had fun even without ya, Geoff! Continue reading

Festival of Carnivale – dancing and drumming in the rain

It was cold and wet for our Cuba Mall gig, which was a pity, as Cuba Street is something of a spiritual home for Wellington Batucada and we love playing there.

So cold and wet, in fact, that our normally staunch dancers ditched their flimsy costumes and performed in their normal streetwear instead.

So cold and wet, in fact, that this may well go down in the Batucada archives as one of our briefest appearances ever – not much longer than 10 minutes by all accounts. Continue reading

Parade from the Fanzone to the stadium for the Australia vs USA game

This was our first parade leading the fans pied-piper style from the Fanzone along the waterfront to the stadium in time for the game. It was a great one to start with, as the USA fans were, not surprisingly (because I guess they do this all the time for all kinds of sporting events) in fine voice and dressed up to the nines in their national colours.

An evening kick-off meant this parade was the only one of our Fanzone-to-stadium gigs performed in the dark, and it was also the only one where we wore our fish-head costumes, first unveiled at the 2009 Cuba Street Carnival.

Continue reading