Meet the Volunteers

The National Agricultural Fieldays held annually at the Mystery Creek Events Centre sees New Zealand punch far above its weight, hosting an incredible 140,000 plus people over four days.

Provincial Waikato, remarkable only for its grass, becomes a veritable Mecca for agricultural pilgrims the world over, to come and pay homage at our muddied gumboot-clad feet.

Amidst the hubbub of the AgArts competition, the glossy brochures, the smiles and speedily delivered sales-pitches, you might notice a bright-eyed sort of person – watchful, alert, quick-witted and ever-ready to offer a helping hand.

They’ll be unobtrusively moving through the thickening crowds, removing a trip hazard here, consoling a lost child or disoriented older person there, calling for back-up on the RT or towing a car out of a boggy rain-sodden parking space.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Fieldays volunteer.

Lance Enevoldsen started volunteering at Fieldays in the mid-1990s. The quietly-spoken Hamilton business owner is now the Operations and Logistics co-ordinator for Fieldays. He oversees parking and traffic, couriers, site services, property and water supply.

In the mid-90s, Lance was a school-leaver who’d landed himself a job farming at Orini, out the back of Taupiri.

“I was a member of Young Farmers.  At the time, Young Farmers were involved in parking all the cars at Fieldays.”

Enevoldsen has kept coming back to volunteer ever since, for the last 20 years.

“You just get drawn in. You think, ‘Hey this is quite exciting, quite full-on.’ You get to meet a lot of people. Come the end of the day you help a huge amount of people, so there’s that aspect as well, of helping.  It’s all part of tying you in for the longer haul.”

The volunteers don’t get perks directly, besides being fed and watered throughout the four days and having a sit down dinner together on the final night, Saturday. The first meal of the day is an early breakfast, as many volunteers are on deck at 5am when exhibitors start arriving onsite.

“The perks are in helping people, in working with others as a team. There’s an emotional connection, and the adrenalin. You’re mixing with a very diverse range of people in the Society of volunteers, including people in their 70’s or 80’s who were founders of the event.”

Enevoldsen’s team oversees requirements at the “Bachelor of the Year” camping area, from water supply to providing site guides and time-keepers for the duration of their stay at Mystery Creek.

“Anything they need operationally or logistically is available. The Bachelors are chaperoned by one of the long-term volunteers of the Society. Frank is with them from the start, to help them out with whatever they need and to make sure they get from one place to the next.”

Frank Sargent is a part of Simon Kay’s site services team, which is overseen by Enevoldsen.

“Simon is absolutely the lynch-pin in delivering Fieldays.  I do what I can to make sure everything is available that he needs during Fieldays itself.  From the first week in June, the ball is very much in his court.

“My team for parking and traffic is run by Jason (Hoyle). As of that first week of June, full management is handed over to him as well.”

“I try to be as hands-off during the event as I possibly can.”

Volunteers need to have a good tolerance for difficult situations. For example, working in traffic can be difficult as there can be quite a lot of aggression.

“Managing that is very important.”

Enevoldsen says it’s not only male drivers who give cause for concern.

“We see more women driving with cell phones and really not paying attention to where they’re going.  I have seen people [women] run over a row of 50 cones, being completely oblivious to it.      Small car.  How you wouldn’t notice? No idea. ‘Smile, and walk away’,” Enevoldsen jokes.

“Around 15 years ago, someone lined me up and ran me over. I closed a gate, they [the driver] thought it should be open and ran me over. I didn’t have to go to hospital but I did end up having to do quite a bit of physio. I got rolled across the front corner of his car and off the windscreen. The police followed it up, so I just left it at that.”

Enevoldsen says when people get out of their cars at Fieldays, they should note the colour of the poles in the car parks – red, yellow or blue.

“That’s really helped reduce the numbers of people that get disoriented.”

Team leaders are always looking for new volunteers.

Guest services team leader Shirley Murphy says: “You’ve gotta be bloody quick and fast and slick around here to get volunteers, I tell you, and when you get good ones you keep them. And when someone comes and asks you about ‘such and such’ you say, ‘Hands off. He’s on my bloody team’.”

The banter is fast and Enevoldsen’s polite attempts to interject are over-ridden by Murphy’s cheeky rebuffs. Smiles and chuckles all round. The mood settles again.

Murphy started volunteering at Fieldays six years ago, following a recruitment drive over the radio and in the newspaper. She was originally part of the team that dropped off the Fieldays Exhibitor newspaper to the 1,000 site-holders at Fieldays.

Two years ago, the 130+ volunteers were divided into three teams. This has hugely helped the smooth running of the Fieldays Volunteer Society, sharpening them to the point of military precision.

Murphy said, “I find the volunteers to help out in the AgArtwear and to meet and greet the audience as they come in.  We cover the Kiwi’s Best cooking shows, site liaison and visitor’s liaison. I do site judging, large and small sites, indoor and outdoor, and the Best Premiere Feature Site judging.  We also make sure that exhibitors don’t go outside their allotted area.  Then there’s our own hub. I get staff to come in and do all the cooking, breakfast and lunch, for all the volunteers. That includes police, fire and so on. There’s around 200 people fed at each meal. ”

Volunteers in guest services also help support visitors in the Business International Centre (BIC), run by Marcelo Mieres.  This includes registrations, storage of personal belongings, and orientation of visitors to the centre. The BIC looks after overseas guests, corporate groups and government officials from New Zealand and abroad. Visitors to the BIC come from as far afield as China, South America, Ireland and England.

“I like to make sure things are ticking over and running well,” Murphy said.

“Lance has been awesome to me. I was real green when I was brought into this role. I used to ring him up and say, ‘You want a coffee?’ and I’d go ‘round and pick his brains. This is my first year really of standing on my own two feet. I’m going to do a lot of ringing tonight because I’m still short of volunteers. We could do with a good boost of younger people, particularly to mix and mingle in areas such as the BIC and IT support.

“It’s the team leader’s job to get the appropriate people into the appropriate roles.

“One older guy on my team, Dave Wright from Te Aroha, we always meet with a hug and a kiss. That’s just the friendship we’ve formed through Fieldays.

“Being an older man who’d already done a few years out in car parking, Dave asked me if there was anywhere he could go to get out of the cold and rain.  I said to Dave, ‘I’ve got the perfect job for you, working in the Pavilion on my team’.”

Dave has been involved in a number of roles at Fieldays over that six years, including car parking, making checks on sites and that exhibitors were up with their regulations, running a survey of all the exhibitors in the pavilion, and reconnecting lost children with their parents.

“This one day, two little kids came up and the oldest one said, ‘Excuse me mister. We’re lost. Can you ring my mum?’ She pulled up her sleeve and the cell phone number was written up her arm in black vivid.”

Dave phoned the children’s mother and pretty soon they were reunited.  Dave recommends this to any parents who are bringing young children to Fieldays.  He said there are usually a few kids that get lost.

Mystery Creek Events Centre Membership Administrator Sierra Jenkins says there are over 130 volunteers for Fieldays in 2014.

“Our volunteers are essential to the successful running of Fieldays; we simply could not make it happen without them. Some work behind the scenes –  helping park cars from before 6am, running the courier vans, and assisting with any site build-up necessary, while some work on the front lines – hosting guests, exhibitors and clients. We have many different positions that the volunteers fill, and no matter their role, each and every one is very important to Fieldays.

“We are very lucky to have such a dedicated group of volunteers, and their commitment and passion for the Society has helped us create the event we have today.”