Warrington Hall for Hire

By Lyn Hastie and Ruth Porteous

 

Warrington Hall is situated on Stephenson Street right next door to the Warrington Playcentre. A well maintained facility, it has recently been repainted indoors with new lino in the kitchen. There is a new storage facility for the chairs and trestles which has freed up the stage and other areas. 

 

The kitchen is well equipped with a stove, microwave, pie warmer, zip water heater and plenty of trestles, chairs and crockery etc.

 

The hall is available for many and varied functions. Do you have a family gathering coming up, a wedding, birthday party or work do? The possibilities for the use of this great facility are endless.

 

The hall is wheelchair-friendly and there is plenty of parking close by. The stage is perfect for entertaining and the local school has held many a production on it.

 

Our next project is to improve the facilities for the cleaner and to beautify to hall frontage. The mainly new and keen committee members are eager to see this wonderful community facility utilised a lot more.

 

If you would like to have a look around, find out about our competitive rates or make a booking, please contact one of the following people: Rowena Park 482 2667, Ruth Porteous 482 2849 or Lyn Hastie 482 2896.

 

WAITATI SCHOOL: What have we been up to?

by Lauren Ashford (Year 5) and Cam Hassall (Year 6)

 

Some of the Year 7-8s from Waitati School were chosen to make their Blueskin Bay fish pie in the Maggi cooking showdown!  They were taken to Christchurch on 25 May and filmed on the Erin Simpson show!

 

I have been playing in the hockey team, and yesterday we won 4-1.  We had only ever played one other game.  Wicked!  The first hockey game we had didn't go too well and none of us had played before.  But it's all about having fun!

 

Adair entered a competition where you had to make an origami apple, take a picture and send it to the people who were doing the competition.  The first 35 school pupils to send the picture to them would win an apple tree. It was great for us to have a new apple tree because a few cows got out and damaged some of our apple trees and broccoli plants.  Luckily one of our school mums had frozen some of the earlier broccoli crop so we were still able to have broccoli soup for our Friday lunch that day.   

 

On Friday we located the missing bike pump.  Ben and I went to the sports shed and got some rugby balls, soccer balls, basketballs and netballs.  We had to pump balls up all morning before school but in the end it was worth it. Now we can continue our learning in P.E.

 

This week we all made planets including Pluto.  This is how we did it; first we blew up some balloons, then we papier-mached them.  Finally we painted them.  We are learning about the systems on Earth that work together, and interesting facts about space.

 

We welcomed Te Ao Marama Tawhara to our teaching staff last month. Marama is teaching Te Reo on Monday afternoons for students who wish to have some extension in Maori language. 

 

Every three weeks the School Council meets up.  Two people represent each class.  They talk about issues such as whether we should get a school pet or not, and fundraising for our school and other charities. 

WARRINGTON PLAYCENTRE

by Sam Ashdown

 

Playcentres are organic creatures, families and children come and go, adding, adjusting, enhancing and improving the centre, its energy and its rhythm. As our children grow the centre grows with them. Through peaks of activity when the roll is so high we wonder how we can adequately meet everyone's needs, to the troughs when the roll is so low we wonder how we can stay in existence, with everyone doing a little, the wonderful entity that is Playcentre prevails.

 

At Warrington our hardworking and graciously giving adult members have been slowly but surely chipping away at the list of jobs we have had to get done in preparation for re-licensing by the Ministry of Education in August this year. We have replaced our gates which were entirely too easy to climb over and escape from; our thanks to Mark Horsefield for his time fitting these for us. We then set about replacing our ancient swing set which required a whole new soft fall area and two new standard compliant frames, and then a selection of interchangeable swinging attachments fabricated and fitted by AJ Grants. A wonderfully well supported working bee before the Easter break saw our old tyre retaining barrier around our outdoor play equipment renovated and raised in height, ready to take the 20 cubic metres of play-grade bark chippings we will have distributed by the time this goes to press, to bring this area up to ministry standards. Phew!

 

Then just for fun we have renovated the sad little piece of wasteland that was behind our building into a "Wild Things" garden area. This project began over a year ago and involved a certain amount of earth moving, a drainage coil and a weekend with a compacter to create a path. Once these hard landscaping jobs were out of the way the fun began, planting out native trees and shrubs, creating a den and filling the area with multi-sensory outdoor accessories. This particular project has been a joy to watch evolve and to me epitomises the sense of shared ownership we enjoy through playcentre. Over the weeks members have quietly brought along something new, a new plant, some shells to decorate the fence or just their time to weed and take care, and while no one person has taken control or responsibility for the area it has become a beautiful addition to our centre's environment, which will continue to mature and grow for future generations of families.

 

 All of these projects have involved a fair amount of work but of course a fair amount of funding also, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank the following organisations for their support through grants: Foodstuffs and the Honda Tree Fund provided the funds to develop the Wild Things area. Then to: Bendigo Valley, the Lion Foundation, Pub Charity, Oceana Gold, the Otago Community Trust, Dunedin Casino Charitable Trust, and Alexander Macmillan, thank you. All of these organisations have contributed to our playground upgrade. These funding opportunities have enabled us to keep Warrington Playcentre moving forward and we are entirely grateful that they are there to be drawn from. We are extraordinarily lucky to have a parent member who has thrown herself into administering and co-ordinating the applications and accountability for these grants; she has our heartfelt gratitude for her tenacity and skill. For myself, a self-confessed "form-a-phobe", I am a little in awe of people who can do this.

 

So, renovations and projects aside, we continue to provide two sessions a week. On Wednesday and Friday mornings from 9.15am – 12.15pm our doors are open and the place is alive with chatter, laughter and stealth learning through play. Since January we have seen three of our children move on to join Room 3 at Warrington School, with three more on regular visits before joining their buddies full time by June. It is always a bitter-sweet moment saying goodbye as children leave us for school. Their personalities, skills and talents are much missed, but it is offset by the joy of seeing children who are secure in their ability to manage themselves away from home, confident and trusting of the adults who care for and educate them, with some strong friendships in place, move on with excitement into the next phase of their learning and growth.

 

As a centre we enjoyed running a treasure map game at the Waitati A&P Society Show, and we are practising hard for the Warrington Matariki celebration where we have been invited to join in the musical programme which follows the parade. We always have a great time when we get out and about. Most recently we have explored Evansdale Glen, picnicking, floating and racing sticks in the river and playing hide and seek. We also had a wonderful autumn walk through the Truby King Reserve at Seacliff, picking blackberries and learning how to play conkers.

 

Following a joint training opportunity earlier this year our Otago Playcentre Advisor, Allen Somerville, who supports several centres in our immediate area from Waitati to Maheno, has instigated the opportunity for members of all these centres to meet as a "cluster group". As small rural centres we share similar challenges with keeping our centres alive and thriving and I find the idea of sharing our problems and successes a really exciting prospect. Long live Playcentres.

WAITATI OPEN ORCHARD

by Hilary Rowley

There is some WOO action coming up. Anyone wanting to be part of the interesting bunch of people pottering round with fruit trees in the streets of Waitati, should get down to the area known as the Riverside Patch on Orokonui Road at 10am on Saturday 16 June. This is a lovely place beside the river, and will be gorgeous in future years when the fruit trees have grown, and it has a lovely cleared picnic spot. Take your garden tidying tools and the makings of morning tea.  If the weather is bad on the Saturday, the Sunday is the replacement day.

 

Wise words from Jason (the WOO orchard guru) are: don't prune yet, wait a bit until Jason runs one of his pruning workshops later on and learn all about the fine art (or is it a craft?) of getting your fruit-bearing plants in the best possible shape for the next season. The thing to do in the fruit orchard now is to divide, spread and plant perennial orchard companion plants. These attract beneficial insects, aid in pollination, and keep infections at bay. Try sweet cicely, creeping and Russian comfrey, feverfew, nasturtium, alyssium, chives.  This will attract humans to your orchard too, by making it a luxuriant, relaxing place.

 

Two pruning jobs which can be done now are grapes and raspberries. It's much easier to prune raspberries when the old fruit stalks can still be seen on the canes. The aim is to prune out anything that has fruited this summer. You start by looking at the tops, then cutting off the old cane at ground level, but after a while it becomes easy to spot the old canes just by their colour at the base. Any canes that are still fruiting can be left, as they will probably fruit again in early summer. Chop up your prunings and use them as kindling. Don't leave them lying about to spread disease.

 

Grapes need to be pruned back quite harshly. You basically have the long leaders that you are training along your wall, deck or wire and prune each branch back to within two buds of the leader. These buds will bear your fruit next year. I recently read that if you have more than one main leader they must be at about the same height as each other, otherwise the lower one will not fruit. If you want to train layered branches of grapes across a wall, you will have to do it with more than one plant.

 

Sitting on our bench at the moment is a big pile of grape bunches grown outside in North East Valley with no frost protection. They are a variety called Siebel, a Canadian wine grape which seems a very hardy variety. We have some growing in Orokonui that have fruited already, though it will be a long time before we can make wine. I will try and distribute some cuttings to WOO members if anyone is interested.

Anzac Day Reflection

By Helen Beamish

Around 150 people of all ages gathered on 25 April to reflect on the tragedy of war and to remember those who died in the process of "going to war" for our country.

The Blueskin Bay Remembrance Service is always a time for the community to gather and be grateful for the relative peace of our lives, and to be challenged to choose peace in our personal relationships as well as the wider communities we live in – locally, nationally and internationally.

This year, the newly refurbished Waitati Hall was graced with some amazing artwork by the pupils of Warrington School. 

Guest speaker, Glenys Clement, continued the recent tradition of a "local" sharing stories of their family involvement in past world wars and the impact on their family. She told the story of her Dad, who served in WW2, and was able to capture both the tragedy and the camaraderie of being a soldier and the toll this took on her grandmother, father and mother.

The sense of community "gathering" always extends through time before, during and after the service... we are grateful that so many people choose to contribute to marking this day locally. Thank you!

If you would like to be involved in future services – telling your family story or helping with organisation – please contact Helen (482 1440) or Alastair (482 2505).

 

 

Nicole Foss: Preparing for the Economic Depression

By Andy Barratt

Nicole Foss began her talk at the Waitati Hall in late March by describing herself as a "big picture" person. And it was certainly a big picture that she set out before her audience.

Nicole's thesis is a simple one. The developed world faces two imminent crises, a financial crisis and an energy crisis. The financial crisis will come first (we are already experiencing its first phase); the energy crisis will arrive somewhat later. Hence the title of her talk: important though Peak Oil and other forms of resource depletion might be – not to mention the ever-growing spectre of Climate Change – it is on the current financial situation and its implications for our way of life that we should concentrating our attention right now.

Nicole is not the only one to be talking of an inevitable economic collapse, of course. A quick search on the internet or the shelves of the public library will supply endless hours of depressing reading. But where her analysis differs from most (see, for example, Dmitry Orlov's darkly hilarious Reinventing Collapse) is that she expects this to be a deflationary (rather than a hyperinflationary) economic depression. In her account, the banking crisis of 2008 marks the high point of an economic "bubble" which she describes as a massive pyramid scheme which (like such bubbles in human history) is bound to burst – at immense cost to us all. When it comes, the ensuing depression will be at least as long as the Great Depression.

And that is only half the problem, of course. This is because the energy crisis will then follow hard on the heels of the economic depression. (Thankfully for those wishing to keep total despair at bay, Nicole hardly made mention of the ever-escalating dangers of global Climate Change – a small enough mercy though it might seem.)

On the energy front, Nicole gave a fairly rapid summary of what is by now a standard analysis, reviewing the Peak Oil scenario, diminishing returns on energy invested in ventures like oil from shales, the lack of credible alternatives to cheap fossil fuels, and so on. The good news, though, is that the impact of the energy crisis will be mitigated – at least for a while – by the economic crisis, which will reduce demand and thus give us a breathing space before the supply collapse really kicks in.

The final part of Nicole's talk was the bit we were all waiting for, of course. If all this is on the way, what the hell do we do about it? There is no way New Zealand will be miraculously spared. Our problems are well understood already: high household debt; a housing price bubble; vulnerability to rising interest rates; and a reliance on international trade (which is a major casualty during periods of economic depression). The NZ dollar will fall in value and we are likely to pay the price of having our trading banks in Australian ownership.

As we face all of this, Nicole reminded us of the importance of human psychology and the need to steer a course between the natural – but ultimately unproductive – responses of anger or fear. Instead, she stressed the need for us to keep a long-term view and to focus on constructive activity. What this means above all is doing things for ourselves. Forget about central governments coming to our rescue and work towards survival from the grass roots. In a depression, deglobalization and decentralization will be the way forward and strong local communities an absolute necessity.

So what do we do? At the individual household level we need to reduce debt as quickly as possible and gain as much control as we can over essentials, such as water and power supply. Hold on to cash (don't rely on the banks!) and try to pool wealth across generations, reinventing the extended family. We also need to become generally much more tolerant of the risks we face, accepting these as a natural part of the process of living. We should invest where we can in "hard goods", the things we need when the going gets tough: shelter, land, water provision, cooking equipment, low-tech transport, hand tools, books and manuals, medicines, and so on. At the community level, it will be a matter of pooling resources and understanding that interdependence, not autonomy will be the key to resilience. Again, Nicole drew on her background in psychology, emphasizing the necessity of developing relationships of trust.

Oddly enough – and despite the depressing prognosis it contained – Nicole's talk was, for me at least, an invigorating experience. For those who missed it, her interview on the Kim Hill programme on National Radio (March 24) is available on the internet. And her website (theautomaticearth) also has lots of interesting stuff on it.

 

 

--
--
From blueskin.co.nz and 'Blueskin News' published by Blueskin Media: voluntary/non-profit community publishers in Blueskin Bay (Seacliff, Warrington, Evansdale, Waitati, Doctors Point, Purakaunui), Dunedin, New Zealand. All material sent to or published by us is "copyleft" in the public domain and may be freely shared, archived, re-edited and republished. If you want to credit the source it's "blueskin.co.nz".

BLUESKIN RESILIENT COMMUNITIES TRUST: Community resilience

by Chris Skellett, Co-chair

 

For the last couple of years, you will have been reading in the Blueskin News about the wonderful array of activities under way in the Blueskin area. What a fantastic range of community projects geared towards providing us with a sustainable lifestyle in an uncertain future.

 

Anyone who attended the Nicole Foss presentation last month could not help but feel alarmed at the inevitability of an impending global economic collapse coupled with a total breakdown of carbon-based energy strategies. Something has to change, and it has to change soon. It's all too easy for us to sit at home and watch the global dramas play out on the six o'clock news, but here in Blueskin Bay (including Purakaunui and Long Beach of course) we have a great opportunity to actually do something about it. Most people choose to live in the area because of the lifestyle. We love looking after our own: growing our own food, chopping our own firewood. Now, within our area there is a growing level of excitement about creating a viable source of renewable energy, a wind cluster.

 

We have the technical expertise, the financial know how, and the political goodwill, to make something quite special happen in our area. Whatever business model we eventually use, BRCT's commitment is that the community will, as much as possible, own the project, either as shareholders or as members of a co-operative. Community ownership is, both financially and psychologically, the critical factor in the project's success.

 

Wind cluster plans are being prepared for further community participation. The Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust is aware that we would be establishing the first community-owned wind farm in New Zealand. As a prototype of this kind of venture, we have become a nationally significant project and would provide a model for other communities to follow.  We would be able to generate our own power in our own community.

 

It will be a great feeling to look out at the turbines slowly rotating on the hill, and know that they were built by us, are owned by us, and are pulling us together as a community.  We will have greater control over our power prices, greater certainty over a sustainable power supply and will have achieved something quite radical as a community.

 

I joined the BRCT as one of six trustees.  We have the role of ensuring that the trust stays true to its objectives. Encouraging Blueskin Bay's resilience, through local food production, transport initiatives, and energy projects such as retrofit house insulation, a planned energy advice service, and the proposed wind cluster, are excellent goals for our community.

 

I would encourage anyone with an interest in the trust to log on to the website or to visit our office at Waitati School. These are exciting times for the bay. I hope that everyone will feel connected at some level to the idea of developing a more 'resilient' community, and that you can be supportive of the many different and worthy initiatives already under way.

 

You can find out more about the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust at: http://www.blueskinpower.co.nz/ or by calling 482 2048.

 

 

 

--
--
From blueskin.co.nz and 'Blueskin News' published by Blueskin Media: voluntary/non-profit community publishers in Blueskin Bay (Seacliff, Warrington, Evansdale, Waitati, Doctors Point, Purakaunui), Dunedin, New Zealand. All material sent to or published by us is "copyleft" in the public domain and may be freely shared, archived, re-edited and republished. If you want to credit the source it's "blueskin.co.nz".

Blueskin Playcentre Building Project Update

By Michaela Wilson, President Blueskin Playcentre

We are very excited about receiving $25,000 from the Community Lotteries Grant.
Blueskin Playcentre has 13 families (18 children) currently enrolled and our numbers are growing. We are very excited about the move to Waitati Primary School as we believe this strengthens our community and is a wonderful opportunity for the children to make an easy transition to school. We look forward to the retrofit of a classroom kindly offered to us by Heidi Hayward (principal) at Waitati School and supported by the Ministry of Education.
The Playcentre Association, Carole Gillions, Brendon Whip and Maree Coll have supported us with the move by arranging for temporary licences until we have secured the rest of the money for the build.
The community has supported us through different fundraising efforts and donating to the centre. Last year we received support from Mt Cargill Contracting which donated sand for a new sand pit, which the Waikouaiti Community Board donated $1000 towards, and  Lotteries donated $6000 towards an outdoor area and safe fencing for our playground. Paul Ashford Landscaping built the sand pit for us.
We had a wonderful opening with Room 3 (new entrance and Playcentre kids), Buttons the Shetland pony and lots of bubbles. This is the beginning of our new playground area and the children are thrilled. We have been working towards this since 2009 and look forward to completing the project this year.
I should also mention that the centre is run by a parent co-operative of volunteers under group supervision. Staff at the centre have donated their time to help build a new early childhood facility in Waitati, the only one of its kind in Blueskin Bay and a wonderful asset.
The Otago Playcentre Association President Carole Gillions would like you to know:
As you are aware Blueskin Playcentre has moved into a room at Waitati school and currently we have a temporary license for this location. This license expires on 17 August 2012. On behalf of the Blueskin Playcentre I would like to give you a formal update of where we are with the relocation and building extension project at Waitati School.
In November last year all the drawings and specifications for the new extension work were completed and signed off by all of the parties involved (including the Ministry of Education). The total cost of this project has been projected to be $180,930 (excluding GST) of which  Blueskin Playcentre and the Otago Playcentre Association have already spent $17,000.
We applied to our internal capital building fund (SRCW) within the Playcentre Federation for a large portion of the building cost. In December last year we received notification that they would grant us $100,000 and would also provide us a contingency budget of $16,000 for items which come up in addition to those are planned.
We also have applications in with three other funders, Otago Community Trust, Alexander McMillan Trust and Pub Charities for a total amount of $75,000. Just recently we received $25,000 from the Otago Community Trust. We are waiting to hear back from the other two funders. Therefore, the earliest time we would be able to look at commencing building of any kind would be June 2012 (pending funding ). As soon as funding is received we will be able to meet with you and plan a date which suits the school for us to start the building. Until the funding is received though, we are unable to give a firm date. 

Jumble Sale
Our annual jumble sale is coming up on 27 May. The money from this will be used to help with costs towards our new building. We also fundraised at the Bland Park Music Festival. We would like to extend a big thank you and plenty of aroha to Tania Turei and Katie Bourne for the organisation of this event and also to all those musicians who played.
We also enjoyed fundraising  at the annual A&P show. Thank you to those who again organised this event. We are so grateful for the use of the Noddy train at these events. We held an Easter raffle and sold Easter bunnies to raise funds. Thank you so much to all those wonderful people in our community for your support and hard work. We and all the little people at Playcentre are very grateful. Hopefully we see you all at the jumble sale!

--
--
From blueskin.co.nz and 'Blueskin News' published by Blueskin Media: voluntary/non-profit community publishers in Blueskin Bay (Seacliff, Warrington, Evansdale, Waitati, Doctors Point, Purakaunui), Dunedin, New Zealand. All material sent to or published by us is "copyleft" in the public domain and may be freely shared, archived, re-edited and republished. If you want to credit the source it's "blueskin.co.nz".

Working Bee at Living Legends.

by Valerie Fay

Hi, everyone. Just a reminder that we are having another working bee at the Living Legends site on the morning of Sunday 29 April . Meet at the usual spot and time: 9.30am in the Orokonui Scenic Reserve at the end of Killarney Street, Waitati.

 

Try and spread the word amongst friends and neighbours as we need many more hands to help maintain the plants. If you have any questions you can contact me via e-mail at mikeandvalfay@clear.net.nz or phone me in the evening on 482 2806.

 

Lucy will be back at the beginning of May. Best wishes,

--
--
From blueskin.co.nz and 'Blueskin News' published by Blueskin Media: voluntary/non-profit community publishers in Blueskin Bay (Seacliff, Warrington, Evansdale, Waitati, Doctors Point, Purakaunui), Dunedin, New Zealand. All material sent to or published by us is "copyleft" in the public domain and may be freely shared, archived, re-edited and republished. If you want to credit the source it's "blueskin.co.nz".

BLUESKIN ENERGY PROJECT [photo sent separately]

by Scott Willis

 

Using electricity to heat our homes is an inefficient use of electricity (though of course better than fossil fuel alternatives) and clean burning wood can be carbon neutral, as long as new trees are planted for those cut down. We currently heat our homes using firewood (including pellets), diesel, gas, coal or electricity. Our national electricity supply is only about 70% renewable at present – low for a country with all our wind, hydro and solar resource and small population. But keeping warm in cold weather is important for good health, and the way we keep warm can also maintain environmental health. So clean-heat is important, but you'd be foolish to waste that heat in an un-insulated, or poorly insulated house – it's just too expensive.

 

Therefore, alongside the Blueskin wind cluster project BRCT is working to establish a Community Energy Advice Service, as part of BEP. Very soon we expect the DCC to launch an 'Eco-Housing Targeted Rate' initiative to support further insulation installation and clean-heating installation. We're working with the DCC and the Community Energy Network to develop an information and advice support package to accompany the eco-housing initiative and make it accessible, particularly to residents in cold unhealthy houses. As part of that (if we can) there'll be home energy audits, telephone advice and more, to help people take action within their budget. Such a service would not only ensure people understood the various grants and offers available: it would also allow the knowledge we've developed to be made more available, and allow us to use the experience of others who already provide this service in other parts of NZ. Our biggest challenge as usual is finding the resources to make it possible, and we're working hard on that.

 

Ironically, it was while wood-splitting late March that I suffered one of the downsides of firewood – 'Autumn Hand' as some health professionals call it – or the accidental and painful meeting between a sharp axe and unwary thumb. As many of you know, at present I'm the only employee at the BRCT office, but when I was out of action through April, BRCT volunteer trustees and friends, who already contribute a great deal, stepped up to keep the energy work moving along while bone and flesh knitted. I'm enormously grateful to them and all who've helped this past month. You've probably found the latest BEP pamphlet in your mailbox thanks to their hard work for example. Other work on the boil centres around the establishment of a 'Power Purchase Agreement' – a necessary element to ensure financial viability of the local wind cluster – and ownership structures. Wind testing continues to provide still richer data on the available wind resource, and as soon as I clear my office backlog we'll begin preparation for mid-year community meetings, where the full proposal options will go out on the table to be discussed and debated. And as we move further into the year our website www.blueskinpower.co.nz/ is where you'll find fresh information, like for instance photo-shopped images of what a wind cluster on Porteous Hill might look like from three different Blueskin locations.

 

For information on BEP contact Scott on 482 2048 or by email scott@blueskinpower.co.nz.

 

--
--
From blueskin.co.nz and 'Blueskin News' published by Blueskin Media: voluntary/non-profit community publishers in Blueskin Bay (Seacliff, Warrington, Evansdale, Waitati, Doctors Point, Purakaunui), Dunedin, New Zealand. All material sent to or published by us is "copyleft" in the public domain and may be freely shared, archived, re-edited and republished. If you want to credit the source it's "blueskin.co.nz".