The Hamilton Gardens is a tourist and a local attraction in Hamilton and is usually quite crowded.
But the Tulip festival that took place on Saturday, the 22nd of September at the gardens was a whole other ballgame.
The Hamilton Gardens saw thousands of people through the day, coming in to enjoy a day full of spring flowers, music, performances and traditional Dutch food.
However, this led to a police offer directing traffic for more than one hour. Traffic was bumper to bumper on Cobham Drive because of the event.
Though the festival tends to be pretty crowded usually, this time around, the warm weather attracted a lot more people and hence led to the chaos.
Tourists and locals were seen at the gardens, enjoying a picnic, and a tour of the gardens.
Louise van den Berg, chairwoman of the Hamilton Tulip Festival Trust, said she didn’t expect that many people at once at the event.
When the traffic drew crazy at around 10 am, a traffic police was called in to help and he manually directed traffic.
The staff at the gardens were also called in to help with the traffic once they became aware of the situation.
The manager of the gardens has said that they are aware of the problem and will be discussing how to tackle such problems in the future.
The officer was then rewarded with an ice cream, so it paid off, said Senior Sergeant Charles Burgess.
The annual tulip event, hosted by the Waikato branch of the Netherlands Society, is in its 10th year and was created after the national Dutch Festival was organised in Hamilton.
It featured Dutch food, performances, flower artists, and an exhibition on Abel Tasman, the Dutch explorer and the first European known to visit and to put New Zealand on the map 375 years ago.
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