Te Hononga, Kawakawa Library and Far North District Council customer service centre. Photo / Facebook
Te Hononga, Kawakawa Library and Far North District Council customer service centre. Photo / Facebook
BAY NEWS BITES
When Friedensreich Hundertwasser died in February 2000, a group of citizens came together to form the Kawakawa Hundertwasser Memorial Park Charitable Trust. The aim was to preserve the local memories and legacy of Hundertwasser's New Zealand heritage, in particular his prominence in Kawakawa history.
Interior of Te Hononga Kawakawa Library which has won the Regional Commercial Interiors Award in the 2021 Auckland/Northland Regional ADNZ Resene Design Awards. Photo / Facebook
The trust worked together with keystakeholders Ngāti Hine, Kawakawa Business and Resident Association, Far North District Council, Northland Regional Council, Far North Holdings Limited and the wider Bay of Islands community, to bring the Hundertwasser Memorial Park Centre - Te Hononga (the joining of cultures) - into existence.
Te Hononga, which houses the Kawakawa library and the Far North District Council customer service centre, has won three awards at the 2021 Auckland/Northland Regional ADNZ Resene Design Awards.
Pip Bolton of Kerikeri design firm Avail Pacific won the Regional Commercial Interiors Award. She was Highly Commended in the Commercial/Industrial Category Award and Highly Commended in the Resene Colour in Design Category Award.
Dog registrations increase
More dogs have been registered so far this year than were registered last year. Far North District Council revenue from dog registration renewals was $16,000 higher at the end of July than for the same period last year, although several months of last year were in lockdown or semi-lockdown.
Flynn the dog features in a pre-movie advertisement to be played at the Cathay Cinema, Kerikeri.
Manager of Environmental Services, Rochelle Deane, estimates the increased revenue represents an extra 300 registered dogs.
A newsletter was sent out with dog registration notices. It was created by Nicola Griffin and Matt McCambridge and included information about animal management and promoted responsible dog ownership.
Griffin also created a pre-movie advertisement as part of the Aroha campaign which features local dog Flynn. The advertisement will play at the Cathay Cinema in Kerikeri.
Wooden skate ramps at Kerikeri Skate Park, which is being redeveloped as part of the Domain Revitalisation Project, will be relocated to Simpson Park, Moerewa when alert level restrictions allow.
The Far North District Council had planned to truck the ramps to their new home on Wednesday last week, but that was the first day of lockdown. They now aim to move the ramps as soon as lockdown ends.
Council investment in Moerewa during the last 10 years includes new netball courts, upgraded facilities at Otiria Rugby Club, a community recycling centre, road safety improvements and flood alleviation works.
In lockdown mode
The hotels, motels, restaurants, cafes and charter boat companies that depend so much on tourism in the Bay of Islands aren't operating during lockdown. So there's not much to report, not many citizens to mention, no celebratory story to relate, hardly a titbit to tell. Everyone has hunkered down.
As a consequence, that international woman of mystery Sara Dinnen (who lives somewhere in the Bay of Islands) has written exclusively for Bay News and this is her contribution.
Wine, Women and Song
According to wine, ahem, sellers, women are outdrinking men and surprising as it may seem, there are valid reasons.
Girlfriends understand wine is a binding agent, a unifying sisterly force that reaches an apex when enough vintage has been taste-tested to sing anything by Neil Diamond. Photo / Elevate
Women still do most of the household grocery shopping and since the advent of wine availability in supermarkets, the logical sequence isn't hard to fathom. That means they do most of the buying and there has to be a payoff for ferrying three kids and all the week's victuals in a metal trolley with four wheels each pointing different ways.
So, women buy the wine and most important to understand is that wine was invented by women. As gatherers of crops, it was women who were most likely to have placed berries or grapes in a container in a cool, humid and dark corner of the cave for storage, only to discover the delicious effects of the fermented beverage a few weeks later.
Wine remains dating back to before 6000 BC have been found in Armenia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Georgia and China. Although scholarly confusion exists over whether this was grape, rice, date or honey wine, it doesn't much matter because it behoves women to honour this ancestral memory and we need not bother with official statistics nor a professorial hypothesis.
Girlfriends understand wine is a binding agent, a unifying sisterly force that reaches an apex when enough vintage has been taste-tested to sing anything by Neil Diamond. Indeed, women can teach men a great deal about the craft of buying and drinking wine. We intrinsically know there are rules of quaffing engagement because genetic memory tells us so.
• Buy to price and with a French name. It doesn't have to be French of course because Chateau Criquey from Australia has une certaine qualité don't you think? And at $4 a bottle ($24 in a restaurant) it's hard to avoid.
• Get three-for-the-price-of-two because you always sing better when you're whickered. Never have "just one". You'll miss out on gut-lining fodder that somehow makes its way to the kitchen bench after four. Drinks that is, not hours.
• Rosé is pink but it's not gay. It's a reminder of the robust athleticism you enjoyed on Corfu before you came home and had kids.
• Going to the supermarket in slippers for more wine before 7pm isn't naff. It's a post-feminist statement of uber-independence and a two-fingered salute to conservatives. Or should that be conservationists? Or perhaps conversationalists?
Yes indeed, to women, wine is fascinating fun and frivolity and does not need, nor does it ask for, an intellectual précis on necessity. It exists and therefore is, as Zen-like as one hand crapping in a forrish.
- Sara Dinnen
Heritage New Zealand seeks queer heritage
Carmen's Curios at 288 Cuba St in Wellington, once the home of transgender icon Carmen Rupe, is one of the many LGBTTFQI+ listed sites as part of Heritage New Zealand's Rainbow Project, which seeks to diversify the heritage listings.
Headed by Senior Heritage Assessment Adviser Kerryn Pollock, the project recognises places of historical, cultural and social significance to New Zealand's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, takatāpui, fa'afāfine, queer and intersex communities.
Queer significance will be incorporated into the list by updating existing listings and through new listings of places where the queer story is significant.
"We're excited to get this project off the ground and are grateful to the community already showing enthusiasm and support," says Pollock.
Other places so far updated as part of this project are the Thistle Inn, St Andrew's on the Terrace, and Rewi Alley's House. Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga is actively looking for new listings that tell a queer story, and welcomes suggestions.
For more information visit the HNZPT Rainbow List page or contact Kerryn Pollock, email Rainbow@heritage.org.nz or ph (04) 494 8320.
• Email Sandy Myhre at mywordmedia@yahoo.com if you have any news you'd like to see in Bay News.
