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BUY VOUCHERS TO SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES IN PAPAKURA Now we have a fabulous offer for you all! How about buying a $20.00 or more voucher from a local business in Papakura and we will give you an extra $5.00 voucher to spend. Now that’s a good deal for sure. Head to www.livepapakura.co.nz to see which stores are accepting these vouchers and support and love local businesses…

Many years ago, more than I care to admit, I managed to convince my seniors in the military to allow me to do a non-trade relevant course, as a Unit Physical Training Instructor. I think in hindsight it was probably not that hard a “sell”, after all it was likely to result in me being way too tired and beaten down to be of any bother to them for the duration. One of the first…

The impact of COVID-19 on our economy is yet to be seen in its entirety and may not be for some time. Fortunately for Franklin and Papakura areas, the sense of community is strong, and I believe it won’t be long before many businesses are back in full swing and it is up to all of us in the community to support them. The expected move to Level 2, hopefully mid-May will see…

Immensely talented local portrait artist Logan Moffat is undaunted by the postponement of his exhibition ‘The Mind is the Portrait’ due to the COVID-19 outbreak. He sees it merely as a reason to continue working on his portraits and to evolve what he knows as consciousness painting. A former student at ACG Strathallan, a graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts, with a BFA Honours, …

For a few weeks prior to our country’s General Election we, the public, have the usual experience of over-zealous candidates seeking our attention and support. This year the election is scheduled for mid-September. Watch the political class falling over each other promising you the earth and attempting to lure your vote. However, on the day after the election, and safely back in…

In the middle of May, the Government announced its Budget for the next financial year. New Zealand has never seen anything remotely like it. It made clear the Government’s intention to spend vast sums of money in an attempt to protect New Zealanders from the economic shock caused by the coronavirus and the Government’s draconian measures to deal with it. Last month, I suggested…

No one can say with confidence what our COVID-9 world is going to look like over the next 12 to 24 months. The rules and models of the old world no longer hold. It is this uncertainty itself that adds great stress, overlaying the fear of specific scenarios. Times like these can bring out true leaders but also false prophets. Trying to distinguish between them is much easier in…

In the traditions of Ngāti Tūwharetoa of Taupō, Ngāti Hotu were an aboriginal people living in that area at a time when the people of Tūwharetoa i te Aupōuri came to live in the lands claimed by their ancestor Tia. It was thought the original people took the name Ngāti Hotu to be spared from being destroyed by the Tainui and Te Arawa peoples. One story among the Tainui people…

Sixty years later, an underwater research group has discovered U-196 partially submerged, stern down, in the sand and apparently not fully flooded in 15 meters of water. It is surmised that U-196 refuelled from the German convoy raider ‘Orion’, somewhere near Palau, before the German surrender brought inevitable internment, then headed south as the Japanese navy was preparing for…

This year, between October and December, a replica of the Endeavour will sail around New Zealand to commemorate a significant event in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history: Captain James Cook’s first visit to New Zealand. While not the first European to visit New Zealand shores, Cook was the first to explore and chart both north and south islands, compiling ‘the first cartographic map’…

For the residents of Acacia Cove, lockdown hasn’t been that tiresome after all, despite all planned activities being cancelled. They have been kept busy with a whole new way of utilising the many facilities that life at Acaica brings and along the way many have made new friends. The low density design of the village even allowed one industrious resident to engage in bucket golf! …

Perhaps it is dangerous to write about such a fast-moving situation as the Covid-19 pandemic when what I write may not be published for 10 days or more, but at time of writing my strong impression is that the public believe that the Government has done a remarkably good job of suppressing, perhaps even eliminating, the spread of Covid-19 in New Zealand, and that they deserve warm…

I had a crappy day the other day, quite literally. The macerator pump for our toilet and greywater system chose Saturday morning to put itself into Coronavirus lockdown, so I spent the day lying on my belly in a two-and-a-half-footby-Very-Long tunnel under the building, headlight torch on, up to my elbows in the stuff that toilet macerator pumps deal with. I felt like one of my…

It’s safe to assume most New Zealanders understood this as meaning we have the potential for the virus to be gone, out of here, see you later, because elimination generally implies “the complete removal or destruction of something”. Also, the Covid-19 website says: “Our goal is to eliminate Covid-19 from New Zealand, so that we can live and work free from this disease.” However,…

He was one of the most respected writers and poets of the Beat generation alongside his friends, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. He was unconventional and championed for gay rights at a time when homosexuality acts were criminal in every state and embodied counter culture thinking too with his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and economic materialism. Allen Ginsberg…

Let’s not put too fine a point on it: for the past five weeks we’ve been living in the middle of a crisis of unknown magnitude. It’s been a time of unprecedented change and for many it will have been an intense period of worry and anxiety. But however much lockdown might have separated us, it has also brought us together as families and communities united in fighting a common…

The Papakura Business Association is committed to helping businesses in Papakura open under Levels 3 and Level 2 of the COVID-19 lockdown. Most businesses in Papakura are open in some way or other, and you can support your local favourite retailer, café, trade, professional service or health or Beauty service by going to www.papakura.co.nz and searching for them. \#EatLocal in…

When John and Liz van Winden moved into the large, purpose built New Zealand Home Loans building in Manukau Road earlier in February of this year, they would never have dreamed that by the end of the following month, that new office would be shut due to nationwide lockdown, as the result of a global COVID-19 pandemic and that everyone on the office would be working from home. “It…

It’s hard to believe the events that have transpired in the last few weeks, but happen they have and as we enter another week in our bubbles, our daily routines are very much different than they were a few weeks ago. We go out for ‘essential supplies’, exercise in a local space keeping 2m from the nearest walker, check in with the official COVID-19 information available daily…

Since January, I have been following international coverage and debate about Covid-19 closely. Looking back over almost three months now, what seems extraordinary is how flat footed the international response has been. An exception to that has been that of the much-maligned World Health Organisation (WHO), which from the outset has endeavoured to provide information and advice as…