NEXUS
PITOPITO KŌRERO
NEWS
Small Town Short News Jared Ipsen (He/Him) Welcome back to another edition of Small Town Short News, where I wade through local newspapers and blogs - past the anti-vax rhetoric, reports on the Morrinsville Bowls team, and ads for various items to insert in to cows, all to bring you the weirdest and wildest stories from our estranged cousins from down the road. Chur!
For those who remember our coverage of the inaugural Tree of the Year Aotearoa competition a few weeks back, it may shock you to hear that the Kāwhia pōhutukawa that took out the top prize wasn’t actually the right pōhutukawa at all - just a similar looking one a few hundred metres down the beach. Believing they were voting for Tangi Te Korowhiti, the tree the Tainui waka was moored to after it first arrived in New Zealand, punters were actually clicking on an image of Te Papa o Karewa, another significant tree and, as it turns out, the actual tree that the Tainui waka was tied up to. The local iwi weren’t too concerned about the mix up, telling Stuff that ‘either tree would have been a deserving winner.’ The competition’s organisers said ‘we don’t go out and look at every tree and every story,’ but after this, maybe they probably should?
A few weeks ago, 10,000 homes across Ōtorohanga, Waitomo and Te Kuiti faced a cold, dark night after a bird flew in to equipment at the nearby Hangatiki power station. Believed to be a wading bird - perhaps an errant dotterel, or a waylaid godwit - the winged creature’s motivations for its final flight are unclear, but at Nexus we believe that the rising cost of living and climate change are to blame. Transpower have since installed preventative measures, such as insulator shields and ‘bird deterrents,’ which is actually just some dude from Transpower standing in front of the power station and waving their arms up and down.
A few more houses in Port Waikato have been deemed ‘uninhabitable’
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If you live around The Base, you may have noticed an escaped herd of cattle roaming the streets recently. The gang of six was intercepted by Council near Wintec’s Rotokauri Campus, but their identity and origin remains a mystery, as they had no identification tags on them and lacked the vocal capabilities to speak a language. After being captured, the bovine beasts were transferred to Council’s stock pound in hopes their owner would come and claim them. If you’re missing half a dozen cows, or think you could convince the Hamilton City Council that the cows are yours, they’re probably still in the pound, or maybe they’re dead. They’re probably dead.
as rising sea levels see our country slowly sinking back into the ocean. As weather events such as storms become more extreme due to climate change, a recent bout of heavy rain saw three metres of sand erode from the shores of Sunset Beach. This recent loss of land follows another major weather event in 2019 in the area that led to the demolition of three more buildings, including the local surf life-saving club. Local residents lamented the local council’s inability to prevent billions of litres of sea water from moving further inland, and their failures in preventing extreme, random weather events affecting their properties built on sand.
