The A Team

Around fifteen people deliver the Martinborough Star as their contribution to the community. Most have been braving the elements and wandering dogs for going on for nine years.

These good people are the critical cog in the process, a newspaper, no matter how good, is nothing until it is delivered.

As a way of acknowledge their great work each month the Star will invite one of the delivery team to be interviewed by Rachel McCahon. Each month a name will be drawn at random – note; some of the team have opted not to be interviewed.

Anne Dodd – A Country Delivery Round
When the Martinborough Star began in its current form nine years ago, Anne was one of the first to offer her time in delivering the paper around the local district. She felt strongly that the rejuvenation of the Star through the initiative and energy of David Kershaw and Mike Beckett was something she wanted to support and helping by picking up a delivery round was an excellent way of doing so. “It was such a good thing for the community”, she says, “ and I wanted to support the team who had got it going too”.
Anne has lived in Martinborough since 1985, first commuting to work in Wellington and then taking over as the librarian here in 1986. She and her husband Richard had bought land and built a home in New York Street and were enjoying life in the Martinborough community, and the opportunity of a job right in the village was too good to overlook.
In those days it was a part time position and it was before computers saw the demise of the time-honoured card systems for both searching for and issuing books. “It was a very traditional, old style library in the 80s”, says Anne, “but it was a fantastic way to get to know the community, especially the old established families”.
Anne stayed in the position for 23 years, moving with the tides of change as the library made the transition into the modern technological age, expanded physically, took on more staff, and broadened the range of services available.
Over those decades, Anne always found satisfaction in finding out what people wanted and “seeing their pleasure when I found it”. Being the local librarian was “such a great way to feel part of the area”, and for Anne that commitment to the community in which she lives then extended to supporting the Star.
Librarians are invariably enthusiastic about sharing information and commonly have an instinctive feeling for keeping records, which in the case of the Star are records of place, people, events and a time in history. Helping to support the local paper is very much in keeping with those ideals and values.
So Anne took up a rural circuit close to her home, including New York and Regent Streets, plus Todds, Puruatanga, and Hinakura Roads. Hers is a route with larger, spread out properties, not all with letterboxes, so the bag of papers is not unduly heavy.
And it isn’t all about support for the Star because, as Anne says, “ it makes a very good walk, which was the other reason I took it up”. Although she and Richard have sold their property they plan to stay in Martinborough and Anne has every intention of continuing her country walk for a long time yet.