Another festival success

This year's Toast Martinborough has been, by most accounts, a success.

All I've spoken to who attended had a great time and were full of praise for the way the event was run.

Police were happy with the crowd behaviour in general, despite making some arrests, and said a policy of stepping in early to shut down any trouble helped keep the atmosphere positive.

Police on site also said they'd had good feedback from patrons, who had thanked them for their presence.

So it was a shame the end of the night was marred by an accident involving a woman in her 30s who was struck by a bus near Palliser Estate on Kitchener St.

Initial reports on Sunday night were that her injuries could have been very serious, so it good to find she had been discharged by Monday afternoon and was making a very good recovery.

You have to feel for Toast organisers - they'd done everything they could to ensure a happy end to the festivities for all involved, and then, just as the day was wrapping up, the worst news.

While it's certainly an event organiser's responsibility to make sure the best possible transport plans are in place, they can't control the actions of everyone coming and going from the event. And thousands did make their way to and from the festival without incident.

It did seem a bit unnecessary for organisers to quickly point out the accident had occurred outside their jurisdiction - it wasn't at a venue and was "well outside the festival circuit". No one had blamed them, and besides, some responsibility for festival patrons surely extends beyond the boundary of each winery.

But the accident aside, the overwhelming feedback from the day is of a Wairarapa success going from strength to strength.