Southern dogs under control, behaving and returned

Of the 3,410 registered dogs living in the district, only 152 were listed in the South Wairarapa District Council’s Dog Control Activities complaints register for the year to July 2024 _ 13 more than the prior year but down 57 on 2021-22. The highest number of complaint offences _ 83 …

Toast to the new Taste Wairarapa

By Joelle Thomson, Wine Writer Taste Wairarapa stepped in where Toast Martinborough left off on the third weekend of November this year. The well-known Toast Martinborough food, wine and music event has run for 30 years and will return in January 2025 in a reincarnated form with Foley Wines as …

How Well Do We Know People In Our Community? – December 2024

By Lyle Griffiths Born in Whanganui, Mariana McDermott first lived with her mother in the home of her grandmother. After her mother remarried, the family moved to Martinborough, to Hikawera, where her stepfather, Tiki Mahupuku McGregor, built his own home. It was close to the old meeting house, which had …

Kitcheners ram-raid brings out community support

A front-end loader assault on a bank ATM which collapsed part of a verandah, ripped open a cafe frontage and wrecked building support beams netted the culprit nothing – but brought a swell of community support for the damaged Kitcheners Cafe business. Within nine hours of the ATM ram-raid on …

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LETTER OF THE MONTH

November 11, 2024 November 2024, Regular Features Comments Off on LETTER OF THE MONTH

Could ZERO growth be the answer?

 

So, Martinborough’s sewage woes continue, and have seriously clogged up the council’s, and town’s, plans for continued growth. Sewage and the matter contained therein does clog things up, true. 

Studies will “help the council decide the level of growth they wish to enable.” Karen Krogh goes further with this dire warning: “a town which cannot grow will inevitably decline.” 

It could well be true that one sign of possible decline in a town is a declining population, but is it equally true that a non-growing population must thereby mean a decline in its coping, its happiness or its wealth? 

What evidence is there for such a claim? Many successful small towns in rural Europe have not grown significantly in a hundred years. What is self-evidently true is this: Martinborough’s growth must be a major cause of the town’s inability to manage its waste – the population approximately doubling in fifty years, along with its ordure. And you might well think too that this extra population and their extra money all contributing to the rates should mean individual household rates declining. Yet rates here have rocketed astronomically. So down the toilet goes that fond imagining, along with the sewage.It seems to me at least that growing populations, far from being a supposed boon to a town, or country, bring considerable difficulties to communities which must then provide, within the ability of local landscape, for the basic human needs of this growing population. What are Wellington’s woes but a similar example? Though of course the present government is trying to cure this problem by making much of the town redundant and assuming the affected folk will just move along.The same growth fetish certainly applies to the entire country. Rates of growth of the New Zealand population over the past thirty years have averaged around 1.3% (at times over 2%); this average if continued means a doubling of the population within fifty-three years (the population has indeed doubled in the last sixty years).  … Continue Reading

Soldier Settlements in the south – and their fight to survive

November 11, 2024 November 2024 Comments Off on Soldier Settlements in the south – and their fight to survive

Although the book, “South of Martinborough – Two Soldier Settlements and their Neighbours,” by

Diane Grant, was launched exactly two years ago at the Waihinga Centre, it continues to be sought

by people who weren’t in the audience back then.

The book was the idea of Danna Glendining who farmed with her husband John in Tuturumuri for more than 20 years. During that time she asked residents who had grown up and worked in the district to record their memories from the early 1920s when the first soldier settlements were established around New Zealand.

The result: a daunting collection of boxes containing interviews, reminiscences, diaries, correspondence, newspaper clippings and other items which were lodged with the Wairarapa Archive when the Glendinings moved to the Waikato. 

Aware of the region’s history and the importance of the material, the Archive decided a book had to be written, but it was some time before Diane Grant, an old friend of Danna’s from the women’s movement of the 1970s, and partner in Fraser Books, Wairarapa’s independent publisher, said she would take it on – despite other commitments. … Continue Reading

Top of the pops for Christmas

November 11, 2024 November 2024 Comments Off on Top of the pops for Christmas

By Joelle Thomson

“In victory I earn it and in defeat I need it,” said the late great Sir Winston Churchill, who is often attributed with this infamous quote in which he was supposedly referring to champagne and who famously enjoyed a bottle of Champagne Pol Roger every day. 

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story but the truth today is that great champagne is growing in price while New Zealand’s best sparkling wines are growing in quality. I personally enjoy both, for different reasons.

New Zealand produces a vast amount of sparkling wine, most of it made to a high standard by such luminaries as No 1 Family Estate (owned by Adele and Daniel Le Brun and family), Cloudy Bay, Deutz (owned by Pernod Ricard but named after the French fizz of the same name), among many, many more in Marlborough. Not to mention the outstanding Quartz Reef NV from biodynamically grown grapes in Bendigo, Central Otago. Here are three of the Wairarapa’s best bubbles. I hope you enjoy drinking them as much as I have enjoyed tasting and writing about them.

Wines of the Month:

17.5 / 20

Matahiwi Brut Rosé RRP $24.99 to $30-ish

Making sparkling wine is a complex operation and, given the high volumes of Matahiwi Rosé Brut made each year, this is a fabulously flavoursome little number. 

It’s a blend of 65% Pinot Noir (hence the bright pink hue) and 35% Chardonnay. This wine has appealing purity of flavour with all the tastes of summer berries strawberry, raspberry and red plum aromas. Tasty, light bodied and deliciously good value. Matahiwi.co.nz … Continue Reading

Mouldering historic Carkeek Observatory still awaits council action

November 11, 2024 November 2024 Comments Off on Mouldering historic Carkeek Observatory still awaits council action

History in the grass: Stephen Carkeek descendant Ra Higgott found these rails, wheels and guides from the observatory dome lying in the grass on site, restored them and handed them to SWDC for “safe keeping.”

By Ray Lilley 

“Firstly, my apologies for not communicating with you for a while and for the project moving slower than we had originally anticipated,” Carkeek Observatory’s council-appointed project manager James O’Connor wrote recently.

He also noted more delays ahead before preservation work begins on the site of the country’s oldest observatory _ four years after it was granted the country’s top heritage protection rating.

The Heritage 1-listed observatory was built in 1868 by amateur astronomer and local sheep farmer Stephen Carkeek. Located off Murphy’s Line Road in  South Featherston, the historic observatory was only re-discovered _ in rundown  state _ by a small group of astronomy buffs in the 1990s.

It faded from memories again till the then Martinborough Dark Sky Association (now Wairarapa Dark Sky Reserve) helped resurface memories of the historic – but unvisited and unloved – landmark.  

It won HeritageNZ’s top protection level when listed four years ago, and its preservation and protection came under the aegis of South Wairarapa District Council.  … Continue Reading

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Sports

Martinborough golf by a hank – of wool

  We start at the end of the month, when the annual Baabraa Trophy between Martinborough and Eketahuna was fought out on a glorious Sunday in Martinborough. A field of 70 played a stableford round and the average stableford points for the two clubs were calculated. Eketahuna scored an average …

Lady golfers show Rosebowl winning ways

September has been an up and down month weatherwise for golfers, some beautiful early spring days followed by cold and rain. Thankfully for the important days the weather has mostly come to the party. Early in the month the Cotter Rosebowl was successfully defended at Carterton by Martinborough’s team of …

Stunning first 4 – 1 win for Marty Women’s FC

By All-knowing Football Reporter It was always going to happen. After a few draws, some losses the newly-formed MWFC won their first game. An impressive and resounding victory. It started with ‘The Fox in the Box,’ the striker who plays in the traditional Number 9 role of marauding the penalty …

Regular Features

From the Mayor

By Martin Connelly Water services have been a political football for some time. We associate …

EVENTS

Wellington Heritage Festival WHEN: October 26 – November 17  WHERE: * Wellington Region – 140 …

How Well Do We Know People in Our Community?

By Lyle Griffiths Pforzheim in Southern Germany was where Thomas Röckinger lived with his family, …

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Could ZERO growth be the answer?   So, Martinborough’s sewage woes continue, and have seriously …

THE STAR BOOK REVIEW

    By Brenda Channer – Martinborough Bookshop “Costanza” by Rachel Blackmore This is a …

THE STAR  BOOK  REVIEW  

By Brenda Channer –  Martinborough Bookshop “All the Colours of the Dark” by Chris Whittaker. …

EVENTS – October 2024

Discover Te Muna  WHEN:     Saturday, Sunday, October 19 – 20  TIME:      …

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