By Shania Howard

A Kaikohe teenager with big dreams wants to shatter Northlanders' stereotypes of Maori, her school and her home town - and she's made a great start to that with a poem that has taken social media by storm.

The Independent Police Complaints Authority will be investigating a collision between a police four-wheel-drive vehicle and a small sewage truck on State Highway 1 at Pukenui yesterday morning.

Appeals on behalf of Far North families who might not have much to celebrate this Christmas have attracted an extraordinarily generous response, and that continued last week courtesy of a Northland charity and a number of Mid and Far North businesses.

The Far North District Council is still saying nothing about the future of chief executive David Edmunds, despite discussing the issue behind closed doors last week.

The run-offs in the Kaitaia leg of the Tux Yarding Challenge are about to begin, featuring the top seven qualifiers from Friday and the top five from earlier on the second day.

Organisers of the annual 7-a-side summer social football tournament have once again issued their usual challenge to other Far North sporting institutions to place gifts under the tree in the office of the Northland Age.

Kaitaia Intermediate School is going to miss Shirley Ogbourne, home economics/food technology teacher there for the last two decades, and her four-legged teacher aide Meg.

Time well spent

How cool was that!

An Auckland couple who own a section at Cooper's Beach accidentally acquired a house recently, after it was delivered to the wrong address. And it clearly didn't want to move.

Some regarded the Croatian immigrants, many of them from the province of Dalmatia, who began arriving in the Far North some 160 years ago, almost universally to dig kauri gum, with suspicion, but they had given much to the new home.

The renowned Seeka Dinghy Race in Kerikeri is to be reinstated after a lapse of several years

Finding guidance in life and the comfort of the Lord is has made 90-year-old Kaitaia man Ivan Grbich a faithful churchgoer

Rodger Beatson, who responded to his first alarm 52 years ago, was just the 50th recipient when he received his double gold star medal on Monday

Got the hump?

The Ministry for Primary Industries has rejected the claim that a lack of action on its part has given the invasive Australian sea squirt Pyura doppelgangera (Pyura stolonifera) a four-year head start

A Norwegian oil company is pledging openness and a willingness to listen

Kerikeri-based showjumper, Sophie Burling, celebrated winning the equestrian code award at the 2013 Konica Minolta Sport Northland Sports Awards held in Whangarei on Friday, November 29.

NorthTec has put the onus on applied arts students in the Hokianga to prove that the degree course they want would be viable.

An Orwellian disaster

A belt too far

The Kaitaia Fire Brigade didn't get to Te Kao in response to an alarm at 5.30 on Sunday afternoon, but was in the right place at the right time to deal with another emergency.