Connected Community is a Resilient Community

By Angela Brown, Community Board

We have now completed our Emergency Resilience Series _ a collaboration between WREMO (Wgtn Regional Emergency Management Office), SWDC and the Community Board. 

This series is the start of Emergency Resilience planning for our community. We are so fortunate to have such engaged, supportive and skilled individuals who are prepared to step forward in the event of an emergency.

The recent Leadership Skills Workshop attracted more than 30 people and we are confident the Emergency Community Hub Open Day which took place after this article went to press will have been well supported. If you would like to know more about the Community Hub and be involved in future activities, contact angela.brown@swdc.govt.nz

Resilience planning was just one of the goals set by the Community Board this year – another commitment was to fully understand our role as governors of the Pain Farm Estate.

We have been working with the council to update the policy which determines how this valuable asset is managed and how the funds are distributed. This has been a much longer process than anticipated but we are hoping to announce a funding application round before the end of this year.  … Continue Reading

From the Mayor

Martin Connelly

I feel as if this is the first of these articles that I have written when the weather was fine. The recent better weather lets me take longer walks with Carlos, and to finally confront the garden.

Just as the good weather seemed to be settling in, the bad weather returned with a vengeance last weekend with truly frightening winds closing the hill road and also doing a lot of damage. I am told we should expect much more windy weather before the spring is over. Please take precautions.

People sometimes ask me how does the council support economic activity in the district? The short answer is that we help to fund Destination Wairarapa and the Wairarapa Economic Development Strategy. Both organisations are collaborating at the present time to help us reap the benefits of having become a Dark Sky Reserve.

A recent event that the Council supported was the Wairarapa Rebel Business School. The Rebel Business School supports regional economic growth across Aotearoa. It does this by providing free entrepreneurial training courses to (primarily) young people wanting to start their own business. The recent Wairarapa Business School was the first time such a course has been run locally, and it was very well attended. By the end of the course many attendees had developed their business plans and others were implementing their business ideas.

Alongside initiatives such as this, a lot of what a council does day in and day out also supports the local economy. Roads are fundamental to most businesses, as are many other council services. Importantly, enabling new people to come and live and do business in the district also supports economic activity. … Continue Reading

P&K: Years with glassless windows

U.S. Marines on furlough from Guadalcanal with malaria were deployed to Martinborough after the 1942 earthquakes (Magnitude 7.6) to help demolish parts of the main P&K store structure which had been badly damaged and partly destroyed. 

Part of the demolition job called for wire ropes tied to trucks, then the Americans brought in explosives to move some of the wrecked building facade.

David Kershaw said one unintended consequence from the blasts: they blew out all the remaining glass windows on the Square and Jellicoe Street frontages.

Result? At a time of World War, at a time when Europe was using all the glass it could produce to repair war-damaged buildings _ and when all glass was imported _ P&K had no front windows on its building for six years.

Solid wooden shutters improvised for all that time, with glass finally installed in the last months of the 1940s.

P&K: Weevils in the dates

During and after WW11 imported Middle East dates were always infested with weevils.

Staff would break up the cakes of dates and put the dates into water to drown the weevils.

They would scoop off the dead weevils and put the dates on sacks on top of the shop’s bike shed to dry in the sun.

The dates were then put into a mixture of hot water and golden syrup, and stirred to coat with the mixture before drying them a second time.

The staff would bag and sell them to customers who said, as David Kershaw reported: “they are the best dates we’ve ever had.”

David insisted nobody ever reported finding a weevil in the repackaged dates – dead or alive.