Malakai Te Tau rode with Santa in the Seeka Te Puke Christmas Float Parade. Photo / Stuart Whitaker
Malakai Te Tau rode with Santa in the Seeka Te Puke Christmas Float Parade. Photo / Stuart Whitaker
Seven years old, sitting next to Santa — what else would you do but tell him what you want for Christmas?
It’s exactly the position Malakai Te Tau found himself in on Saturday — and exactly what Malakai did.
Mum Billie had nominated Malakai, who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, to sit alongside Santa in Saturday’s Seeka Te Puke Christmas Float Parade — and he loved it.
“He said it was unbelievable — those were his words afterwards,” says Billie.
She didn’t tell Malakai, who goes to Golden Sands School in Pāpāmoa, about his VIP treatment until they got to Te Puke.
Malakai has left-side hemiplegia, which means he has less muscle tone on his left side.
“Then a couple of years ago he was also diagnosed with epilepsy, so we’ve just got him on medication for that and has to be supervised pretty much 24/7 because of the seizures, and has a lot of support at school.”
Billie says she put his name forward when the call went out for someone to sit in the sleigh’s passenger seat.
“Despite all of his disabilities, he’s just shone through and he’s doing just as good as any other kid. I don’t like him to miss out on what other kids do just because of his disabilities and he’s always wanting to give anything a go.”
The parade is an EPIC Te Puke event and marketing manager Rebecca Larsen says it was “awesome”.
“From an organiser’s point of view it’s always a little bit hard to know [how things will go] until the day — but it was fully at capacity I’d say.”
The parade had a theme of For the Love of Vehicles, which was interpreted in many ways from the Bupa troopers — residents from Te Puke Country Lodge who zoomed around the parade route on mobility scooters — to supreme award-winning Fairhaven School whose float featured Te Arawa Waka as the first vehicle in Aotearoa.
Paul de Wild's replica of the 1890s three-wheel Steampunk auto-carriage from the HBO TV show The Nevers. Photo / Stuart Whitaker
There was also Velocette motorcycle, speedway cars, Minis, Mitsubishis, bicycles, diggers, Mater and Sarge from the animated movie Cars and Paul de Wild’s replica of the 1890s three-wheel Steampunk auto-carriage from the HBO TV show The Nevers.
“The kids must have loved it — all the different vehicles that just came out of the woodwork — it was just fantastic. And the floats were incredible.”
Even the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh had received a makeover especially for the event.
“It was nice to have so much help behind the scenes. It’s one of those community events where everyone pulls together and it just runs beautifully so thanks to everybody who contributed and helped on the day.”
