Steampunk festival celebrates Victorian style and sci-fi oddity in an unlikely spot

Thousands of people in New Zealand have attended one of the world’s best-known steampunk festivals.

The four-day event in rural Ōamaru is a celebration of Victorian aesthetics mixed with science fiction.

Attendees are often shy in daily life but embrace creativity and eccentricity at the annual festival.

Unique competitions include teapot racing and parasol dueling.

Steampunk fuses Victorian aesthetics and mechanics with a science fiction twist.

The parallel universe presents what the age of steam might have produced if it had continued to the present day.

The genre is limited only by imagination, and the weirder the better.