Farmers – and townies – come to town at Fieldays

MEDIA RELEASE
13 June 2008

Farmers – and townies – come to town at Fieldays

A record 41,837 visitors poured through the gates at Mystery Creek today, taking the total number of visitors to Fieldays’ 40th event to 100,549.

It was a day of prize awards as Ag Art Wear, Possum Fur Fashion Design Awards and Fieldays Wiremark & Cyclone Fencing Championships entrants received accolades. Fieldays’ winning ways extended to visitors with April Dibble and Dick Ward taking away Suzuki King Quad bikes from the Fieldays prepurchase ticket promotion and the second Fieldays Buying Guide and Programme Golden Ticket being found and claimed.

In the Fieldays Wiremark & Cyclone Fencing Championships, Paul Van Beers celebrated his 11th win in the Golden Pliers singles competition and joined with Wayne Newdick to also take away the Silver Spades doubles competition trophy. Owen Peterson and Wayne Newdick took second and third place in the Golden Pliers competition and the Bill Schuler Trophy went to Bill Tutemahurangi who also won the Suzuki motorbike spot prize and the award for Best 2nd year entrant. Best 1st year entrant was Tim Stafford and the Best Quality Fence was erected by Paul Van Beers.

The Fieldays Rural Bachelor of the Year finalists continued to be popular with Fieldays visitors, competing in the STIHL Chainsaw Champs (won by Lee Matthews), Farm Fashion (won by Mark Dillon), RD1 (won by Mark Woodcock) and Drive a Digger (won by Lee Poolton) heats in addition to being auctioned off by RD1 with proceeds going to the Tamahere Fightfighters Families.

Firefighters Matt Alphors, Carl Horscroft and Tristan Saunders were also auctioned off and became honourary Rural Bachelors for the afternoon with $2,240 raised and an average price of just over $200 a head recorded. Standout earner, Lee Matthews ‘sold’ at $225 credited ‘the look’ with the high price on his head. The Fieldays Rural Bachelor of the Year finalists now have a nervous wait ahead of them with the winner and people’s choice announced at 1pm tomorrow.

The New Zealand National Agricultural Fieldays 40th event concludes tomorrow, Saturday 14 June 2008 with gates closing for the final time in 2008 at 5pm.
(Ends)

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