A man with a stab wound to one shoulder ended up walking into a Whangarei home early yesterday.

It cost $32m and has won a top engineering award - but Whangarei's bridge has been unable to rise for boaties when temperatures topped 26C this summer.

Road works have brought traffic to a standstill south of Whangarei as holidaymakers trickle home from their summer breaks, leaving some motorists seeing red.

Two launches collided in Whangarei Harbour last night, leaving them both significantly damaged.

Radiant summer weather made a brief call to the North Island at the weekend, attracting hardy bathers into the still-cool water at beaches and creating a run on icecream.

A man in his 50s died after falling 10m from a flying fox at a Northland fun park today. St John territory manager Mark Going said an ambulance from Whangarei responded to a call in Maungakaramea at about 5.45pm.

The family of slain up-and-coming rugby league star Luke Tipene are gathering for another farewell after his second cousin was killed in a car crash.

A person has died in a crash between a car and a truck on State Highway 1 south of Whangarei.

A 16-year-old has been charged with the murder of a Whangarei man who was assaulted at his home on Sunday morning.

A father of three who died after an apparently unprovoked attack at his Whangarei property has been named by police.

An elderly man was flown to Whangarei Hospital yesterday after being trapped by a piece of timber for about 24 hours on a property in Northland.

When Whangarei Pak'nSave checkout operator Rebecca Mclean, 18, helped an elderly customer pay for her groceries last week she did not intend to tell anyone.

A 50-year-old man has been arrested over a kidnapping incident in Whangarei last month.

North is just the tops, Elisabeth Easther discovers on a trip up to Whangarei.

A rare Nissan Skyline racing car, valued at $60,000, has been stolen from a rural property in Whangarei.

A wounded postwoman is believed to have been accidentally shot with a pellet gun while making her rounds in Northland yesterday morning.

A 68-year-old woman died and three people were injured after a car crossed the centre line and collided into two vehicles, police say.

Police are investigating the kidnapping of a 33-year-old woman who was forced to drive around Whangarei with a man who threatened her with a knife in the car.

More than 2000 avocados stolen from a Whangarei orchard had recently been sprayed and are unsafe to eat, police say.

The High Court hears a Whangarei teen stabbed her boyfriend in the heart after he smashed her phone and they'd argued over access to Facebook.

A woman waiting in a car while her husband paid for petrol at a central Whangarei service station had to fight off a man who got in the driver's seat and tried to drive away.

With the school holidays over, forecasters are warning to brace for another cold week as the main highway north of Auckland remains closed for repairs.

Torrential rain last night caused slips which partially closed State Highway 1 as Northland was lashed by stormy weather for a second straight weekend.

Home alone with no readily available food or heating, police found four children in a darkened, dirty house, lit only by a computer screen's glow.