The first ever Rangitata Military Revival will take place over Labour Weekend at the Rangitata Island Aerodrome.
Spearheaded by Geraldine Military Museum founder Don Pelvin, the event will be donating all profits to Cure Kids.
The multi-day attraction will feature a plethora of military vehicles, artillery, displays, re-enactments and pyrotechnics.
Mr Pelvin said he had two main focuses when looking to set up the new event.
"Our main focus was not making money.
"We wanted to create an enjoyable military weekend for people who are involved and interested in the hobby and then to benefit somebody, which we are doing through Cure Kids.
"We’re not looking to glorify war, it’s people’s passion and everybody has different passions."
"We just have a variety of people who restore vehicles, who show vehicles and who re-enact certain events that have happened in our past.
"We’re just trying to pull all that together under one umbrella and call it a solely military event."
Mr Pelvin said the idea came from the fact there were no longer any such events in the South Island.
"They used to have ‘Anzacs in Action’ out there [Rangitata Island Aerodrome] prior to Covid.
"I think they did three different shows which were quite successful.
"I thought maybe we could get together and pull something off and this is what we’ve done."
"I had to have a couple of components together before we could launch it.
"One was a place to have it and we thought because they’d run stuff out there before, that would be the ideal place.
"I also needed a guy who was right up on the pyrotechnics side of it.
"I talked to the venue and a guy by the name of Hamish Bruce and asked them if we could pull it off and they said ‘why not?’."
He said there would be a wide variety of interactive and static displays for people of all ages to enjoy.
"One thing we have got coming in at this stage, is a World War 2 Harvard aircraft which may take people for flights but it won’t be cheap.
"On Friday we’re going to have a swap meet there where people can bring along any military stuff excluding firearms and ammunition.
"The show itself will open on Saturday and Sunday. There will be about 100 military vehicles of all different varieties there, some extremely rare ones as well.
"We’ll also have the option for people to go for a ride in some of them — we’ll have a fenced off area where we can take kids for rides for a gold coin donation."
There would be a couple of re-enactment battles on each day, he said.
"There’ll also be set-up villages and displays of British stuff and German stuff.
"There’ll be a German field kitchen there, they’ll be cooking up food for themselves.
"They won’t be able to sell it but we will have food vendors and all that sort of stuff out there as well.
"We will also have a raffle where the winner will get to do a blank firing of the 25-pounder [field gun].
The aim was to be able to give as much money to charity as they could.
He said the hope would be to make the event an annual occurrence.
"The main focus is to bring people together and have a great weekend.
"If the public get enjoyment out of it and get behind us for a good cause it will be worth it."
Admission will cost $10 per day for adults and $5 for children.
