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

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

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

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