The address is 2 Hira Street, the Playcentre, so not literally in a garage.

While heading out to the Spring Fling on Sunday we noticed these magnificent lines of trees in full bloom, but being a dull day, here instead is Sue Lusk’s pic of them in sunshine taken last year. 🙂

If there’s another sunny day in the next week, we’ll go out and take our own. 🙂

Reproduced from the Kapiti Independent News website

By Dave Johnston, of the Paekakariki Station Museum

The Discover Kapiti Heritage Group — with representatives from the different museums on the Kapiti Coast, including Mahara Gallery — are holding special ‘open days’ for the first time this coming weekend: 30 September and 1 October.

The theme for the weekend is the ‘Story of Transport’ across the region. Each Museum will share stories and displays regarding different aspects of transport.

Paekakariki Station Museum will have a new display showing historic photographs of Centennial Highway, Paekakariki Hill Road and the Wellington & Manawatu Railway.

In conjunction with this display, it has produced a book outlining the different forms of transport used throughout the Kapiti Region.

The book, Kapiti Transport History, has been produced on behalf of the Station Museum by Michael O’Leary, the Paekakariki writer and poet.

It will be available for sale at the Museums and at Paper Plus in Coastlands. Michael O’Leary will also be available to discuss the project and sign copies at the Kakariki Bookshop on the Railway Station.

The book contains historic photographs of road and rail travel throughout the region, with a section on aviation history — and it also covers walkways and cycleways.

To sum up: ‘The new volume describes all forms of transport used on the Kapiti Coast — and is informative and easy to read.”

Paekakariki in April 1966. (Dave Turner pic)

We visited at about 11:30 this morning and there was a steady arrival of cars.  Despite the hot dry weather forecast there was also a steady scattering of ‘sky juice’, just as there has been at other such events this this year, but it was light.

The old schoolroom and playground, now the tennis court, add to the quaintly rural atmosphere and an environment which just like the Waikanae Beach zone, needs to be protected from ‘progress’.

The provisional state of the parties in the 120 seat parliament is:

National 58,  Labour 45, NZ First 9, Greens 7, ACT (David Seymour) 1

Special votes could make a difference of 1 seat as happened in 2014 (in favour of the Greens at the expense of National). David Seymour of ACT is there to support National.  Which leaves National 2 seats short, possibly 3, and a coalition with NZ First is probable as Winston Peters did this in 1996. That will hopefully mean a ban on 1080 poison, a curbing of the undue influence of the Road Transport Forum in favour of the movement of freight by rail, and a big reduction in the numbers of immigrants.

Jacinda Ardern has made a remarkable improvement to Labour’s showing: from 25% of the vote in 2014 to 36%.  It’s likely that she has a good chance of being the next PM after Bill English — if that’s in 2020, she’ll still be the youngest PM that NZ has had at 40 (David Lange so far has been the youngest at just short of 42 when he was elected).

We have three pieces of advice for her:

1. The best solutions to problems are not always the government throwing money at them.  This is particularly true in health.  What is needed is close scrutiny of how money is allocated and spent. She only needs to look at what’s happened with Kapiti council mismanagement under Mr Dougherty where there has been a huge increase in taxing and spending, but instead of public amenties it has gone on an army of bureaucrats and on vast over-payments for consultants and contractors; in other words “jobs for the boys”.
2. People working together can achieve significant improvements in services without significant recourse to public money.  Look at how much volunteer firefighters, community patrolers, nature enhancers and community beautifiers do in Waikanae!
3. People do not like taxes on water!  Again she only needs to look at Kapiti where two mayors in a row have been defeated because of it.

The election night tally:

Nathan Guy (National) 18,866

Rob McCann (Labour) 12,824

Sam Ferguson (Green) 1,712

Romuald Rudzki (NZ First) 1,508

Others 1,425

Special and overseas votes will probably add about 13-14% to these figures.

The margin of 6,042 is about the same as in 2014 and is more than the 4,380 difference in the party vote.  Full details.

While doing our bit to support democracy today, we came upon this gorgeous big cherry blossom tree in the school yard.  It had two tui in it, one visible in the second pic.

See this post from 2 years ago for the row of these trees at the Belvedere Road entrance.

William Field (1861-1944) was a Wellington lawyer, MP for Otaki (first Liberal, later Reform), and a keen tramper who was involved in the Tararua Tramping Club’s formative years.  Field Way in Waikanae Beach is named after after him and his wife, Isabel Jane Field.  The regular Wellington to Palmerston North passenger train, Fields Express, was also named after him. Today’s equivalent is the Capital Connection.

More info on the Tararua Tramping Club website.

By Marcus King (1891-1984).  No date.

Polls close at 7 pm tomorrow.

You may think choosing a party to vote for is like choosing a bank, and the slogans tend to be similar (one which stuck in our memories was Wir sind auf deiner Seite or ‘We are on your side’ by Commerz Bank in Germany.  Oh yeah?)

But apathy tells the politicians and top bureaucrats that you don’t care what the next government does — and that encourages them to think that they can do what they like. People in Kapiti have experienced 9 years of autocratic rule by the council boss — and it’s not good.

Defend democracy and the power of the people by voting!