Local wants Lake Ferry recognised

FLY-BY: The Lake Ferry Hotel and Lake Ferry settlement on the shore of Lake Onoke. PHOTO/GRANT MORRELL

A Featherston man is pushing for the Lake Ferry settlement to be officially named, after discovering the coastal town's name had never been formalised.

Perry Cameron found, after struggling to find online information about Lake Onoke or Lake Ferry, that neither were recognised on the Gazetteer, which holds all official names for features within the New Zealand Geographic Board's (NZGB) coverage.

Mr Cameron said because Lake Onoke and Lake Ferry were not officially recognised place names they were often left off maps and hard for tourists and visitors to find.

"I found through my own experience that if you google Lake Ferry or look it up on a real estate site it doesn't show as a district, town, suburb - anything. That's what got me going."

He said Lake Ferry was often associated with Martinborough, which was nearly 40km away, and the mailing address for Lake Ferry was RD2 Featherston, which is 45km inland from the coastal settlement.

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For a place to officially adopt a name, an application must be submitted to the NZGB, which will take into account the history of the place and views of affected people and groups.

Mr Cameron has prepared an application for the official naming of Lake Ferry settlement, which he will submit to the NZGB for consideration at their September meeting.

He is seeking the support of the South Wairarapa District Council, which will decide at its meeting on July 15 whether to support Mr Cameron's proposal.

The naming would apply to about 50 residences which make up the locality and an additional 5ha of land zoned for urban use, according to a council report.

Mr Cameron is the chairman of Featherston's Ratepayers and Residents Association, and also a member and former president of Lake Ferry's Ratepayers and Residents Association.

He bought a farm in Lake Ferry in 1990, then sold part of the roadside land which has since been built on.

Behind this residential strip is his remaining land, which has been subdivided into 14 sections that are up for sale.

He has supplied his draft application to the Department of Conservation, local iwi, SWDC and Greater Wellington Regional Council.

The Ratepayers and Residents Association has handed around flyers on the proposed official naming of the settlement to Lake Ferry residents and surrounding coastal towns, asking for feedback by July 20.

Mr Cameron will bundle all the feedback together with his application and send it to the NZGB secretariat, which will do their own consultation if necessary.

It will then be taken to their meeting in September where board members will decide the outcome.

"I just want them to recognise the name," Mr Cameron said.