We mentioned this council in a post last year.

According to TV channel Seven News, the council could be divided between Holroyd and Parramatta.

AUBURN Council will be sacked today and an administrator appointed due to ­serious concerns some councillors were misusing their position.

The Parramatta Advertiser has learned Local Government Minister Paul Toole will inform the council of its fate this morning after considering a submission from the council last week.

The council’s disciplinary action will be followed by a public inquiry examining serious ­allegations of improper conduct, amid claims that some councillors made fortunes by rezoning their own land and developments, which became legal under new local government laws in 2012.

A council report tabled at an emergency meeting on January 27 said Mr Toole wanted the councillors stood down so that no planning decisions could be made during the investigation.

From The Daily Telegraph (Australia)

The first concert of this year’s season is on Sunday 21 February by the Amici Ensemble

Donald Armstrong–Violin; Malavika Gopal–Violin; Julia Joyce–Viola
Andrew Thomson–Viola; Andrew Joyce–Cello; Ken Ichinose–Cello

Programme

Strauss:  Sextet from Capriccio, Opus 85
Anthony Ritchie:  “Ants” – Sextet for 2 violins, 2 violas and 2 cellos
Boccherini:  Fandango
Brahms:  Sextet in G Major, Opus 36

Info from their website

“No Waikanae Music Society season would be complete without a visit from NZSO Associate Concertmaster Donald Armstrong and his ever-changing Amici Ensemble. Over the years this ensemble has appeared in many shapes and sizes, bringing us everything from trios and quartets to octets and even nonets and giving us the chance to hear many works seldom heard in live performance. Composed mainly of NZSO principal players, plus additional leading chamber music players, the personnel list of this group has been a veritable “who’s who” of New Zealand musicians.

“Amici’s 2016 programme is devoted to music written for string sextet, but there the similarity ends. The sumptuously romantic introduction to Richard Strauss’s opera Capriccio will open the programme, followed in complete contrast by a new composition from prominent New Zealand composer Anthony Ritchie, commissioned for the Amici Ensemble by Christopher Marshall. The famous BoccheriniFandango, originally for guitar and strings, is a frenetic dance movement that will lead us into the interval in a light-hearted mood. For the second half of the concert we will hear a masterwork – the great second string sextet by Brahms – which has been described as “romantic, highly expressive, but with an air of restraint and mystery, and permeated with a bitter-sweet melancholy”.

It is an issue which has opposition from groups on both the left and right of the political spectrum. No-one seems to like the secrecy, uncertainties and subjugation of national soverignty.

Taken today.  The 1954 Citroen Light 15 was in Barrett Drive which bisects the two lagoons.  The flag flying in the left background was the proposed new NZ flag which will be the subject of the referendum shortly.  In fact we saw three of these today and only one of the present flag.

This was in the relative coolness of the morning yesterday, the temperature in the afternoon reached a warm 32 C.  A stall is outside the Shoreline Cinema, which specialises in Art House and fare from outside Hollywood.

Three photos taken at the marae (website) this morning.  Kaumatua and dignitaries gave welcoming speeches, mostly in Maori, there were songs and performers, a hangi feast in the hall (which the public could buy tickets for) and various market stalls.  Some of these were in the parking area between the marae and Mahara Place.

It all served to remind attendees of the importance of the indigenous heritage for both the country and Waikanae.

a Maori song being sung.  The column visible in the left background is Te Puna o te Aroha (the source of love)

one of the speeches is given

A scene on the north bank.  This only lasted 10 years before being replaced again with the present bridge.

Part of a travelogue by a globetrotter named Jub Bryant.  According to Sue Lusk, he is ‘born and bred in Waikanae and, like many young people, needed to get away to see what’s outside Waikanae before really appreciating Waikanae. He is currently touring the world and writing a blog about his experiences and came home for January. He has now added his time in Waikanae to a travel blog he has been writing since April 2013 – “tiki touring kiwi” named after the Tiki Tours he enjoyed with his dad as a youngster (a great kiwi name for “adventures with no plan at all” as he calls them).’

his Waikanae webpage

We’re not clear exactly where he means with ‘The best spot to swim is just north of Waikanae Bridge’ — the footbridge at Otaihanga, or the railway bridge? (in both cases really east or west rather than north).

Here canna lily and agapanthus, as well as a small group of cabbage trees on the left and in the distance a rather suffering large conifer.  Apparently this is because of droppings from birds which sit in it.