Careful reopening
Kerikeri's Turner Centre is "carefully" opening again for community groups under Covid-19 lockdown level 2. Be Free & Play Music resumed last week, with many more events expected to follow. The first auditorium show is not scheduled until September, however, and the box office will remain closed.
Visitors this week The Far North (Kaitaia) RSA has re-opened for members only, Tuesday to Sunday, midday to 8pm, but this week will resume welcoming guests and visitors. The kitchen is serving meals once again, while all the standard Covid-19 rules apply.
Historic homestead burns
A family's five-year effort to restore a historic Northland homestead has gone up in smoke. No one was home when the fire broke out, in an isolated area near Matawaia, 20km southeast of Kaikohe, so by the time someone raised the alarm about 11.40pm on Monday it was too late to save the house. Fire trucks and tankers responded from Kawakawa, Kaikohe and Kerikeri. Kawakawa fire chief Wayne Martin said a family had spent the past five years working on the ''lovely old homestead'' on Peri Rd, off Pokapu Rd. The restoration wasn't far from being finished. The family had been out since 11am on Monday. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. The house was not connected to power and had no indoor cooking facilities. An investigator was at the scene yesterday trying to determine how the fire started.
No new Covid cases
There were no new cases of Covid-19 reported in New Zealand yesterday, the 11th consecutive day of no new cases.
The total number of confirmed cases remains at 1154, which is the number reported to the World Health Organisation.
The country's combined total of confirmed and probable cases remains at 1504. The number of recovered cases is unchanged at 1481. Only one case remains active and all of Northland's 28 cases have recovered.
There have been no additional deaths.
