Homage to a favourite son

Last month First Church and the wider Martinborough community lost a favourite son – Robert (Bob) Sedcole Bargh after a fine innings of 94 years.

The church and adjacent hall were both full to bursting – happy testimony to a large and vigorous family and to strong and enduring friendships.

Among other widespread accomplishments Bob had a great love of music and was a dab hand at the piano and organ. This affinity was put to use at First Church when he agreed to fill in for then pianist Barbara Evans who had just passed away. That was 10 years ago. 

Bob’s engagement came in the usual forthright way: “I’m happy to play your hymns but I’d like it noted that I’m an atheist.” Years of paying attention to Rev. Jim Veitch and arguing the toss with him or anyone else up to the task changed that.  … Continue Reading

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 Friday night, the business owners had been overwhelmed by offers of everything from a range of repair equipment like trucks to manpower _ even an offer to make cheese scones for the cafe.

By Monday morning _ after a weekend of “total” cleaning and repairs, Kitcheners re-opened for business _ losing no trading time to the wrecking loader attempt on the shop-front ATM.

Building owner Sue Sullivan told The Star at the site hours after the pre-midnight Friday attack:

“We were woken up in the middle of the night with our phone ringing off the hook. People over at Cool Change had seen this guy drive the front-end loader round the corner and then just flew straight into the building.” … Continue Reading

Living life in the political fishbowl

After a couple of postponements, South Wairarapa Rebus Club said was a pleasure to welcome guest speaker, Mike Butterick MP, to the November meeting of the club. 

Since election in 2023 he says he has become somewhat used to being treated like a goldfish, constantly on view, having to consider that every word might be recorded or monitored and brought up at a later date to embarrass him or the party.

Having grown up on a mid-Canterbury finishing farm, on leaving school he went mustering for

a year. Then he was employed as a horse and dogs shepherd at Wairere Station, a major Romney stud breeder in Wairarapa, where he met his wife, Rachel. 

They bought their first farm in 1995 and, in 2015, a “town block” near Masterton. … Continue Reading

Lost, gazing into Space way back when

Russia’s Sputnik 1 was launched on 4 October 1957. We all remember that.

Carterton resident David Parr was a teenager when he saw it from one of Nelson city’s vantage points. 

Since then he has been absorbed with Space and related technological progress, an interest which was partlybderived from his son who now has a U.K.-based AI Space Research company. 

Apparently when the lad, young Master James, was at school his teacher observed that he spent a lot of time looking out the window. 

His bedroom walls were covered with posters and paintings of rockets and planets. In turn, James’ interest “brushed off” on David, whose phone is now “full of pictures of the moon, lunar rovers, satellites and so on,” he admits publicly. … Continue Reading