Survey: road safety measures on Rawhiti Road and Teihana Road

Note: this survey is now closed. We will provide your feedback to Porirua City Council.

In 2016 the Residents’ Association was approached about concerns around children’s and pedestrians’ safety outside the school. Recently Porirua City Council presented us their plans to make Rawhiti Road and Teihana Road safer, as outlined here. They propose that the following safety measures be put in place:

  • Extend a footpath on Rawhiti Road for 220m from number 92 to the corner of Wairaka Road
  • Construct a pedestrian zebra crossing with refuge island on Teihana Road, outside number 10.

If you are a local resident, please fill out this short survey; your feedback is most appreciated.

(Survey now closed)

Survey: road safety measures on Rawhiti Road and Teihana Road Read More »

Community Garden and Food Forest progress

Last Friday we had a couple of hours of working at the gardens – weeding, cutting grass and a bit of planning. I think 8 of us were there – sorry we didn’t get you all on the photos. This week activity is planned for Monday from around 4pm – everyone is welcome to come along and join in / have a chat about what we are doing. Things to do this week include planting Comfrey and other support plants around the trees to help them with fixing minerals, nitrogen etc. It would be great if we could do something together every week – so message your email if you would like to be put on the emailing list – and let us know if you would like to ‘take ownership’ for one week or more – to make sure things keep moving ahead.

Community Garden and Food Forest progress Read More »

Pukerua Bay 2019 calendars for sale

The first batch of 2019 calendars have arrived and been delivered to those who ordered them, thanks for supporting us! We have more still for sale. Below are sample images of January and July. This time we’ve marked handy things on the calendar for you, like school term dates, recycling days, and your friendly local residents’ association meetings, as well as the usual public holidays and lunar phases. All printed on quality stock and yours for only $18. Please indicate if you are local, and someone will drop them off at your house, otherwise its $5 extra for postage anywhere else in New Zealand.

Funds go towards the Residents’ Association, to help pay for things like annual insurance, the access licence across Kiwirail land for the community garden, and so on.

Buy your 2019 calendar(s) now!

Pukerua Bay 2019 calendars for sale Read More »

Progress on resolving future hall management

The Pukerua Bay School Board of Trustees (BoT) and the Pukerua Bay Residents Association (PBRA) have met to discuss the future management of our local hall, in an attempt to find a way forward.

We met last Thursday night (22 November) to discuss options for how the hall committee might be involved in the future management of the hall and what role they might have.

The Board outlined its responsibilities as the property manager, and its obligation to develop a policy that reflects those responsibilities and is consistent with the Ministry of Education’s and legal requirements.

The hall committee described the strong feeling of attachment that many people in the community have to the hall, which they have developed over many years of children attending the school, and the hall being the centre of many community events over the past 45 years.

The two groups agreed that everyone in the community shares a guardianship role over the hall and that a relationship between the hall committee and Board should build on that.

We spent quite a bit of time clearing up differences in the interpretation of events in the past 15 months and acknowledged that we could have communicated better over that time.

The administration of the booking system remains a sticking point for the hall committee. They would like to explore other options that reflect their expectations and that would be acceptable to the Board while addressing the Board’s concerns and legal liabilities.

There is genuine goodwill between the two groups to find a way forward. A smaller group of us will continue to meet to find some agreements we can take to the wider group for ratification.

Those present at the meeting were all the members of the BoT, the new school principal Chris Els, deputy principal Andrew Wooster, the Hall Committee and PBRA chair Iain MacLean.

Conor Twyford (BoT) & Iain MacLean (PBRA)

Progress on resolving future hall management Read More »

Good turnout for beach clean up

Bags of rubbish collected from beach

A good turnout of locals and friends netted many bags of rubbish from the beach to the south of Pukerua Bay this morning.

The clean up was organised by the Sustainable Coastlines group (thanks Ben, Oliver and the rest of the crew), with the support of Kathmandu.

Around 30 people started from the pou at 10am and heading along towards Wairaka Rock with bags and a determination to strip the beach clear of rubbish.

The group got almost halfway along the coast to Hongoeka and brought back all the rubbish they found, apart from a very long, heavy plastic pipe and a large sheet of plastic that they couldn’t manage along with all the bags. But they did manage to bring back a large plastic float, which took two people to carry.

A lot of the rubbish was small pieces of plastic, often mixed in with the seaweed near the waterline – hard to see, but if you took your time, you could find a lot of it. There were a lot of bottle caps, small wrappers, pieces of string or rope and lids of all sorts. The pieces might seem too small to bother with, but small pieces are the right size for fish and seabirds to try to eat, and therefore dangerous.

Most of it appeared to have washed up on the beach, rather than being dropped there, but it all comes from somewhere – washed down a stormwater drain or blown into the sea from somewhere – so it’s a good reminder that it is just as important to pick up the small pieces of litter as the big pieces.

Well done everyone, and thanks for all the hard work.

Photo of girl signing sheet of paper Signing in before heading out
Photo of gloved hand and piece of green plastic rubbish Some of the pieces of plastic were very small and hard to see
Photo of gloved hand picking up large piece of orange plastic conduit pipe Some of the larger pieces were very obvious
Photo inside bag showing mixture of rubbish Bags filled up quickly with all sizes of rubbish

Photo of two people carrying bags of rubbish by some rocks
Coming back with the booty

Photo of some bags of rubbish, including large plastic items Just some of the rubbish collected
Photo of people sitting on grass and seats eating food The workers enjoying a tasty lunch laid on by the organisers

Good turnout for beach clean up Read More »