Hopes high for Bay's It! festival
After a series of Covid-related cancellations, Business Paihia is praying its popular It! Bay of Islands Food and Wine Festival will go ahead this year for the first time since 2019.
The event will take place on the Village Green on Saturday, October 1, with White Chapel Jak as the main act. The award-winning acoustic covers band stole the show when they played the last festival as a support act. It will be the festival's 11th year. Proceeds from previous events have supported the Waitangi Mountain Bike Park, the Weet-Bix TRYathlon and other local causes.
Wild weather cuts power
Yesterday's stormy conditions left hundreds of homes without power in the Far North. A weather-related fault in a transformer supplying the southern side of Whangaroa Harbour, roughly from Kāeo Bridge to Radar Hill, left almost 450 homes without power from 9.45am. Affected areas included Whangaroa township, Mahinepua, Tauranga Bay, Matangirau and Towai. Power was restored around noon. Around 11.45am another weather-related fault, this time on the Oruru feeder, knocked out power to 345 homes in the area around Peria and Oruru, inland from Doubtless Bay.
By noon the number of houses affected had been reduced to 60. Another outage, just after 2pm, affected 230 households at nearby Taupō Bay. Around the same time a large tree downed by the wind partly blocked State Highway 1 near Houhora.
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