Initially, local historians were less than impressed.
For a long clip , there was n’t a lot of incentive for tourist to visit Ōamaru , a small seaside township about three hours south ofChristchurch . The Victorian architecture and resident colony of puritanical penguin were enough to rationalize a day stumble at most .
But one day in 2009 , a jeweler and cosplayer named Iain Hart build a steam - powered beer tankard complete with a tiny boiler . Friends of Hart and his better half , Helen Jansen , articulate it reminded them of steampunk — a futurist science - fiction subgenre that ’s typified by a Victorian - inflected aesthetic of sinister wood and dial .
Hart decided to put on an exhibition in a local Ōamaru heading , but he needed more material . common people at the Wellington - base studio behind the flick prop forLord of the Ringsgladly send over a container of widget and doodad . When supplemented with honest-to-god machinery and land equipment donated by locals , his haul terminate not only fill up the drift , but slop out into the lawn in front of it .
Oamaru Captured
That first display has since turn into an yearly extravaganza : the Steampunk Festival . ab initio , only five the great unwashed bought ticket . But on the day of the consequence , about 150 people show up unheralded . And by 2023 , more than 400 steampunk enthusiasts buy tickets to various fete result , according to TourismWaitaki , with at least 2,500 more turn up to watch the parade . More than half of these visitors stayed for three Night or more , bringing a upsurge of energy into the townspeople in June , which is typically the coldest , darkest month of the class . Jansen says the festival play in about $ 1 million a year , too .
“ It ’s sort of like a renaissance of the field , ” she severalize me . “ It ’s set out the imaginativeness and tending of the rest of the world . When I inhabit in Christchurch and said I was propel to Oamaru , I would n’t care to tell you how many masses asked : ‘ Where ? ’ ”
Now Ōamaru is on the mapping .
Ōamaru’s past as a small farming town meant there was plenty of mechanical equipment lying around and waiting to be repurposed.|RuslanKaln/iStock/Getty Images
Initially , the organizers of the annual straitlaced Heritage Celebrations , a radical dedicated to recreating 19th - century Ōamaru over a four - day fete in November , were less than impressed . Steampunk is not exactly historically accurate , and enthusiast take plenty of liberty when interpreting Victorian way . In 2012 , the chronicle enthusiasts who ’d organise celebrations endure so far as to pass up entry to a pay duo who ’d invest the grave sin of accessorizing with rayguns .
Jansen says she arrest it ; the square-toed historians think the steampunkers would menace their efforts to establish Oamaru as a center of straitlaced acculturation . “ Along comes this arriviste group , rising on the articulatio humeri of their laborious work , to endanger what they had done and at the very least foul their fragile success , ” she suppose . “ They were openly contemptuous of the steampunk stylus , particularly the vesture . ”
The tensions were dissolve over time , as the two groups found common terra firma in footing of the history but also as the original organiser stepped down for one reason or another , left town , incur too old , or burn out . Newer event organizers that stepped up to influence with the Victorian Heritage group were more subject minded , and now the two groups run together in form their respective events .
Steampunk cosplay allows residents to riff on their town’s Victorian-inflected past.|Oamaru Captured
" Without the original Victorian Celebrations , steampunk would never have seen the brightness level of day as it exists in Ōamaru , and Ōamaru would be one successful one-year event poorer , ” says Jansen .
That first year of the festival , a dozen or so participants debut reference in the Steampunk Festival parade . And Ross McKay , a retire banker live in Dunedin , was not one of them . He did n’t get the appealingness and reckon , frankly , that the cosplayers were weird .
But he presently realized the steampunk craze played right into his live pursuit in science fiction and account . “ It was strait-laced , but it was also airships and ray guns and gadgets , ” as he put it . The next class , he adopted the alias of Captain Roscoe Dangerfield , Inspector of Nuisances — a material job in prim times . He also sewed himself a suit featuring tails adapted from trouser legs that nearly brush the earth and embroider lapel sewn from a beaded table runner .
Thousands travel to Ōamaru each year to participate in the Steampunk Festival’s parade, both in character and out.|Oamaru Captured
McKay was in , boots , beaded suit , and all . After first come in across steampunk in Oamaru , he embark on give out to any steampunk fete , event , or marketplace day . The first time McKay stepped out in full steampunk garb was for an event in key Wellington . He was worried that folks might pronounce him in the way that he ’d ab initio judged the other participant .
“ My knees were shaking , my tum was go , ” he says . “ But everybody I fulfil or saw , they smiled . No one thought I was weird . ”
The gist was transformative . Until he discovered steampunk , McKay had always thought of himself as shy and quiet , happy to blend into a crowd . These day , McKay study singing , do comedy onstage , and has four years of stitching lessons under his belt . He enjoys the ethos of contract an objective , wearing apparel , or a gadget and transforming it into something else .
And reinvention — a key tenet of steampunk — is on the nose what happened to the Ithiel Town of Ōamaru .
I visited Ōamaru in March 2024 , a few months before 300 or so people would parade their alter egos through Victorian Ōamaru . But the festival ’s influence was apparent . walk down Harbour Street , the gist of Ōamaru ’s prissy precinct , I passed a busy bakeshop and a little heading where a automaton waved a fixed arm from the windowpane . I was drawn toward the entrance of a cavernous pick - brick building that await like an old warehouse . Above the doorway , fade blockage alphabetic character write out “ auctioneer . ” Below that , a much impudent paint line declared : “ Steampunk Central , No . 9 Harbour Street . ”
Inside the erstwhile building I find out two different computer memory with shelf stack with everything from vintage Bible to top hats , an impressive collection of richly - heeled leather boots , and more than one wax ram ’s skull draped in gold chains .
Further down the street was another building to research ; Steampunk HQ , a museum housed in an industrial former metric grain store . It contained a tiny room with a studded alloy door that took two workforce to heave open . Stepping inwardly , I was engulfed by mirrors and luminousness , soundtracked by ethereal music . It feel like time was being wrick upside down and shaken around — a pleasantly disorientating experience , much like my overall sojourn to the surprising little steampunk township of Ōamaru .
