Blisters, sunburn and tinnitus be damned, Wellington needs Homegrown Festival – or at least something to replace it.

The mood of the day at Homegrown was set early and forcefully: “local heroes” Dartz had a message for the afternoon early birds wasting no time in getting thrash punk through the ears and booze into the stomach. Pōneke’s favourite post-pub rock band came with the warning that it was “a dangerous day to be a cold one” – or, to be more realistic, a $12 lukewarm Steinlager.

After 18 years in the capital, Homegrown Festival’s final hurrah in Wellington before it moves to an as yet undisclosed location was steaming and pumping and yet just breezy enough to cool any heat-induced exhaustion. Fans had commented that the crowds packing out the waterfront seemed smaller than previous years – I wouldn’t know, because this was my first go at being a Homegrown punter.

And those first time shivers felt best shed at the Rock Stage, where Shihad would perform what was supposed to be their final ever show on Saturday night (they ended up selling out a surprise show at Meow Nui the next day), and die-hard fans were already lining up along the barricade to secure a front row spot, several hours early. Thankfully, they had the showmanship of Dartz frontman Daniel Vernon, waxing lyrical on stealing from the supermarket and killing your landlord, in front of graphics from the 1997 PlayStation smash hit Jonah Lomu Rugby, to kick the day off right.

After hearing tunes about Toyota Corollas, it was onto Corrella at Waitangi Park’s aptly named Park Stage, through the throngs moving down Ara Moana with a dripping chicken souvlaki picked up along the way. The reggae ensemble could have easily won “best opening of the day” with their entrance soundtracked by a snippet from the first reading of the Treaty principles bill – as Hana Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke performed her famous parliament haka on screen, the band did their own.

They breezed through ‘Churr Māori’, a Fugee-fied rendition of ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ and ‘Blue-Eyed Māori’, and even though the mate I came here with likened the sound to “Air New Zealand landing music”, I thought it made perfect “Wellington-on-a-good-day” music. Whenever you have a lull in your schedule, you should just go see someone, even if you’re unsure if it’s really your thing – what else are you at this $200 music festival for?

Back at the Rock Stage, Troy Kingi and the Cactus Handshake turned the waterfront into a dust bowl. Stuck underneath the sun without even a cloud for respite, you could’ve closed your eyes and let Kingi’s guitar drive you down the dirt tracks and mirages of the Mojave Desert. Open your eyes again, and the image of Kingi wrapped in a poncho might trick you into thinking you’ve landed at the feet of a shaman, here to make sure you survive this musical journal while spiritually intact. Then the guitar rips you apart again.

As the day progressed the number of bodies sporting Shihad shirts seemed to double, then triple, then quadruple, the only thing moving faster than the intoxication levels. If Jon Toogood was their God, I was about to finally realise a childhood dream of seeing mine: Nesian Mystik.

If you know, you know – the knowing being endless summers spent blasting their Elevator Musiq album along Lyall Bay, and wholeheartedly believing Nesian Mystik were bigger than Jesus. It kind of boggles the mind that Nesian Mystik being here for their first show since their 2011 farewell tour didn’t get as much hype as Shihad playing their final show.

You could’ve spotted the Poly’s from a mile away – we were all in front of the Park Stage, rocking the rude Ngāti dreads and the greenstone around our necks. They played all the hits – ‘Sun Goes Down’, ‘Dance Floor’, ‘Nesian 101’, ‘Mr Mista’, ‘For The People’ – while bodies moved with the beat and voices proved they hadn’t forgotten the Nesian styles. Even better, the band hinted there could be new music on the way; I publish these words in the hopes that that will make it come true.

Then, it was dinner (lort cha, courtesy of K&K Cambodian Food Truck) and a show (tunes, courtesy of The Beths) at the City Stage, where you could either dance on the grass or give your tired feet a rest on the steps surrounding Frank Kitts Park. You can’t go wrong with The Beths, who are consistently on form and whose lyrics prick the heart and feed the insecure ego no matter how many times you’ve heard them sung live – with nothing to replace Homegrown yet, you really could call them experts in a dying field.

Leave halfway through their set and round the corner to the Lagoon Stage, and divine timing would have delivered you to Aaradhna performing ‘Down Time’ as it did me. Aaradhna has one of those voices which can easily stand alone, but she let one special guest briefly upstage her: local legend the Wellington tree man, playing his famous saxophone. The sun fell fully behind the horizon as she saw her set off with ‘Forever Love’, breathing soul into bodies which were either intertwined or gurning solo.

An hour out from Shihad’s set, a slow moving line had formed from the entrance to the Rock Stage, outside the Brew Bar, back to Te Papa. It seemed the perfect time to get a McFlurry from across the road, then find someone else to watch. We caught the tail-end of Drax Project’s set performing ‘Catching Feelings’, which was surprisingly good – I say “surprisingly” because I’m still trying to seem too cool for ultra radio-friendly music, and watching frontman Shaan Singh jump around the stage, sing and play the saxophone can really change your mind about this band.

Ten minutes out from Shihad’s performance, the line had just about disappeared. So we packed ourselves in like sardines between the university breathers and old-school bogans and waited for it all to let rip. And it did: nearly 40 years of rocking, apparently pent up inside every geezer in attendance, poured out as Toogood thrashed his guitar and flames were sent into the air.

The waterfront had been swallowed up by the power of rock, with Toogood going back through the band’s early albums Killjoy and Churn, awakening the inner teenager locked away inside the Gen X-strong crowd. I only stayed for about 25 minutes, after remembering I’ve never really “got” Shihad’s music; but there’s still beauty in the fact that even at the supposed end of your career, people can still discover your music for the first time – sounds live on, even if you don’t.

Before the day had wound down, my friend turned to me and said: “I think we can say we’ve had a sufficiently good day”. It would’ve been faint praise coming from anyone else, but he’s one of those hard-to-please types who is prone to endless critique, and I knew what he was really trying to say.

It was the only bandage I needed for the blisters on my feet and the ringing in my ears – the reminder that all you can really hope for out of a festival experience is a sense of shared joy. It would be a shame for that joy, felt for years up and down this waterfront, to walk out the door along with Homegrown if another festival doesn’t come to replace it.