Northland news in brief: State highway work resumes; and marae reopening postponed

Work has restarted on all State Highway roadworks in Northland after the holiday break, including the new roundabout at Kawakawa, above, at the intersection of SH1 and SH11.

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency is taking advantage of continued fine weather in Northland to push ahead with its summer road maintenance programme.
All the agency's crews are back at work after the Christmas holiday break but will stay off the roads on the Fridays before Auckland Anniversary Weekend- Friday, January 29 - and the Waitangi Day Weekend - Friday, February 5 - to minimise disruption for holiday traffic.

The maintenance programme is currently running ahead of schedule with repair and resealing works completed on SH10, SH11 and SH1 north of Whangārei. There will be night works this week on SH1 south of Whangārei to complete that section of state highway.

Marae opening postponed
The opening of Mokau Marae, which was destroyed in a fire in 2013, has been postponed due to the positive Covid case in Northland. The long awaited opening was due to take place on Saturday, however the Mokau Marae Committee made the decision to postpone the opening until February 27 to keep kaumātua, uri, and iwi safe.

Contact police with information
Police investigating the fatal stabbing of 22-year-old Ōkaihau man Bram Willems at Ōpua on January 7 say they had a good response to their calls for witnesses to two incidents earlier that same evening, outside Work and Income and near Bay of Islands College in Kawakawa. Detective Senior Sergeant Geoff McCarthy asked anyone who still had information that might be relevant to the investigation to call 105, quoting file number 210108/7855. A 14-year-old boy has been charged with murder.

Remanded in custody
Two Dargaville brothers accused of having an altercation with police where a firearm was allegedly presented at the officers have been further remanded in custody.
Matua Baker, 20 and Henare Baker, 26, appeared in Whangārei District Court via audio-visual link (AVL) on a number of charges after an airgun was allegedly pointed at officers when they arrested a man at a family harm incident in Dargaville on January 16.
Henare Baker is charged with two counts of using a firearm against officers, assaulting police and threatening to kill/cause GBH, and will reappear in the court via AVL on February 9.
Matua Baker is charged with wilful damage, dangerous driving, two counts of assaulting police and one of threatening to kill/cause GBH, and will reappear on Thursday, via AVL.

Possum has power trip
A possum stuck on a power pole caused an outage mostly for Kaiwaka businesses. The incident happened about 10pm on Sunday. A fire appliance from Kaiwaka was called but the firefighters let the lines' company handle the situation. Power was back on about 10.30pm.

Water main breaks
Much of Kawakawa was without water yesterday morning after a water main rupture. By 7.20am the water supply had been redirected around the break so the town's taps were flowing again, albeit at lower pressure. Work to repair the water main was expected to be finished by noon.