Fond memories of ‘fantastic’ woolshed rages of late 1980s

Back in the late 1980s, a woolshed in Hilderthrope, about a 15-minute drive north of Oamaru, was home to the Woolshed Rages. The BYO parties featured live bands and were a huge hit in the Waitaki for almost two years. Thirty-five years later, the beloved makeshift venue is now being torn down by new owners. Reporter Nic Duff catches up with Steve Conlan, the man behind the rages, to reflect on the fun had in that woolshed.

Steve Conlan owned a farm just north of Oamaru in the late 1980s.

One day, he and his brother, Des, came up with the idea of holding official parties in the woolshed and rvaan with it.

"Over the years we’d been to a few woolshed parties, so we thought we’d go one better and have them more organised. We pre-printed tickets and gave them to our friends and they sold them to their friends, so we had a good clientele come up.

"We got the old woolshed and we cleaned it out and put toilets down [the back] and enclosed it with deer netting and black polystone. We made a stage at the back with toilets and we organised to sell tickets. We had a couple of free buses out there and had a barbecue going all night and two bands going from 9 o’clock to 3 [o’clock] in the morning. Sold about 500 tickets each time."

The first rage was held in January 1987. From there, it just snowballed for the next 18 months, he said.

"We had the first one, then decided to have another one about six months later and just carried on until we had the seventh one and then after that I sold the farm."

The rages were a heap of fun, Mr Conlan said.

"They were good dos, good crowds and we had bands from Dunedin [come] up."

Some of the groups that played included Hudson Crawlers, Big and Bouncy, Dark Ages, Urban Road, Chelsea Set and MTM.

"People still come to us and say ‘Oh geez, remember those bloody Woolshed Rages? They were fantastic nights.’ There were a lot of good stories we could tell, not that we could put them in the paper.

"We had a lot of fun. They were well organised, BYO and it worked really well."

The party-goers ranged in age from "20 to 55", Mr Conlan said.

"After the fifth [event] we found there were a lot of younger ones coming in. We didn’t really want that, it was more for the older group.

"So, for the last two we had over 30s rock’n’roll nights, so that got rid of the real young ones. BYO, you had to be careful."

A security firm was hired to check tickets at the door.

This worked well but Mr Conlan had to let one of them go after they denied entry to a group of travelling adult netball players.

"A busload of netball girls turned up. They must have seen the lights and heard the music and they were trying to get in. [The security guard] said ‘no tickets, no entry’. I said to him ‘you stuffed up there mate, you silly bugger’.

"He didn’t get a job the next time."

One of the more memorable rages was when he hired a company from Dunedin to build pyrotechnics on the stage.

"That was bloody interesting.

"I remember the band was playing and there was a saxophone player. I said [to him] ‘Just stand back, mate, from the edge of the stage’."

There must have been a misunderstanding because when Mr Conlan turned his back to the band and "gave the thumbs up to my mate to set them off" the saxophone player was in the danger zone.

As the explosives went off, the poor musician was left covered in gunpowder — "but he survived", Mr Conlan said.

While the pyrotechnics provided great visuals, there were safety concerns after party goers found the key that controlled the explosions ... which meant they were a shortlived addition.

Fast-forward to today and the majority of the woolshed has fallen down on its own and the rest will be demolished soon.

Even though the venue will no longer be standing, Mr Conlan and the thousands who attended will always have their memories of the Woolshed Rages.