Lost and found at Fieldays as the crowds get bigger
It’s easy to get lost among tens of thousands of people at Fieldays – especially if your phone battery runs out of juice.
Cellphone battery chargers are an essential part of the Salvation Army’s equipment at Fieldays.
That’s not only for themselves – it’s also for those who get lost in the seething mass of people at Mystery Creek.
Each year around 40 people get lost at Fieldays, not just children but adults and elderly too.
And for some of these, the problem is simple: their cellphone battery has run down and they have no way to make contact with those they have lost contact with.
That’s where the Salvation Army steps in at its missing persons tent.
“If people get lost but they’ve run out of phone battery or credit, they can come here to the tent and we can lend them a phone or charge their phones for them,” said David Walker.
As Fieldays’ busiest days, Friday and Saturday, approach, the team at the lost persons tent are advising visitors to take precautions.
The event is expected to see over 130,000 people walk through the gates during the event. In such a big place with so many people it is very easy to get lost.
David’s wife Robyn Walker is a Salvation Army chaplain who has been at Fieldays looking after the missing persons tent for eight years.
She says the key to staying safe and together is to ensure some form of communication and plan ahead, including a meeting point.
“I recommend people to use the missing persons tent as their meeting point.”
They also have a plan for parents, giving out identification wrist bands for children.
Children often go wandering at the event or get lost in the crowds. Robyn recommends parents head to their tent, get a wrist band and put it on their children with their contact details.
Robyn and David said they dealt with more lost people than they had expected on the first day of the event.
The opening day is generally farmers’ day, and Robyn says people don’t tend to get lost because they’re all farmers and they’re all on to it.
“To the farmers and their children this place is just a big paddock, but we actually had seven lost people come to us for help,” said Robyn.
She says on average they have 30-40 people who go to them lost. One year she remembers that they had 60 missing people in just one day.
“Fieldays is so busy and we cannot predict what is going to happen and how many people are going to come to us each day,” she said.
