Two a penny

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Maori ‘embassy’ opens on Sunshine Coast

Thursday, 15 January 2009

A Maori "embassy" has been set up in a house on Australia's Sunshine Coast.
The upmarket home's occupants have put up trespass notices signed by the "Maori ambassador to Australia".
The diplomatic headquarters have been established under the Maori Land Act of 1993, the home's occupants claim. The signs warn that if the representatives of the Australian or Queensland governments – or members of a long list of other "fraudulently created entities" – set foot on the property they risk imprisonment and fines, the Noosa Journal reported. .
Neighbours contacted by the Noosa Journal were baffled. A spokesperson for the New Zealand Consulate-General said the office wasn't aware of its Sunshine Coast counterpart.
The paper tried to contact the house's owners – who were in New Zealand – as well as the "ambassador" Joe, who didn't return phone calls.

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Palmerston North man flown to hospital

By CLIO FRANCIS – Friday, 09 January 2009

A 34-year-old factory worker found lying in a garden with severe head injuries yesterday morning has been flown by helicopter to Wellington Hospital.
Palmerston North police said they were called at 12.35am to a home in Tweed Street by a security guard serving a noise control notice at the address.
Police spokeswoman Kim Perks said the man initially been taken to Palmerston North Hospital and placed in an induced coma.
As he served the notice, he saw an unconscious man in the garden of the property..
"..
Perks said people at the Tweed street residence, where a party had been in progress, had told police they found the man unconscious in the street and had carried him to the house just before the security guard arrived. there have since been some concerns about his condition and he has now been transported by helicopter to the Neurological Unit at Wellington" she said.
Police said it was unclear why the victim was in Tweed Street in the first place because he did not live in the area and the street was not on his route home.
Blood was discovered on the road.
"Although the victim was roused by ambulance crews he has been in no condition to speak and it may be some time before he is able to.
Acting Detective Senior Sergeant Cliff Brown said unless further evidence was found to the contrary police would treat the case as a serious assault."
Police are appealing for anyone who saw or heard anything suspicious on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning to contact Detective Sergeant Dave Thompson on 06 351 3812.

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Family $50,000 in debt after double tragedy

By TAMMY BUCKLEY – Sunday, 28 December 2008

CHRISTMAS ORDEAL: Suresh, right, with his wife and daughter and a picture of their beloved only son, Sharvesh.

A CHRISTMAS double-tragedy has robbed a close-knit family of two loved ones and plunged them into tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
On Christmas Day when Suresh Narayan hoped to be opening gifts with his young family his family was instead united in prayer for four-year-old Sharvesh having just finished 13 days of prayer for Suresh's big brother Shayam.
Instead of celebrating this festive season, a south Auckland dad has had to bury his big brother and his only son in just over two weeks a tragedy that's left a $50,000 new year's debt his family will struggle to repay.
"December used to be our good month.
It's customary for followers of the Hindu faith to pray for 13 days following a death.
On November 24 Suresh an engineer from Manurewa got a heartbreaking call from his younger brother telling him their brother Shayam had died from a heart attack in their homeland of Fiji. The 15th of December is our wedding anniversary and (Christmas Eve) is my birthday," the heartbroken dad told .
"The best thing was for me to go there.
With no close family in Suva to help his brother's grieving widow and two children, Suresh caught the first available flight, on November 25, to help arrange the funeral. Here you just call the funeral director and they do the rest but there you've got to do everything yourself," he said. It's way different to how it's done here.
But the night the 34-year-old left for Suva his son fell ill with vomiting and diarrhoea.
Suresh's wife, Vijay, and their two children 10-year-old daughter Shayala and son Sharvesh would fly over two days later.
But Sharvesh was still nauseous when he arrived in Fiji and throughout his uncle's funeral the following day, so Vijay took him to a local doctor.
Vijay took her son to see a doctor who treated the four-year-old for a viral tummy bug and cleared him to fly.
"When they came back from the doctors when I sat down with him I was not comfortable," Suresh said.
He told the family to keep giving the boy the medication he was prescribed in New Zealand. I said to my wife `we better take him to Suva Hospital'.
"(For) a child who is really active, never been sick, always running around just lying there and just talking, he didn't want to do anything (I was concerned). Suresh decided to fly his only son home for the best treatment possible but when their flight stopped in Nadi he decided to get another doctor's opinion. .
"We went to the GP and he said `this boy is very sick you guys have got to take him to Lautoka Hospital'.
By then Sharvesh was having trouble even responding to his dad.
Doctors advised Suresh to seek urgent treatment in New Zealand.
Doctors advised Suresh to seek urgent treatment in New Zealand.
With no travel insurance, Suresh called his bosses at Chenery Contracting in Otahuhu and they helped find an air ambulance to bring Sharvesh home.
"(My boss) called and said this is how much it's going to cost and I said `yup just pay, if I have to take out a loan I will'."
So just a week after learning his 39-year-old brother had died, Suresh was seeing off his own son in an emergency air ambulance flight.
Unconscious with his liver failing, Sharvesh was flown to Auckland with his mum and two doctors on December 2.
Specialists at Auckland's Starship Hospital could not find the cause of Sharvesh's liver failure and started planning a liver transplant.
"I was really relieved when I saw the doctors from New Zealand working on him. That gave me more confidence (he would pull through)," Suresh said.
But what little hope the heartbroken family had faded when doctors revealed the boy's brain had been damaged by swelling.
"In Lautoka Hospital he closed his eyes and he never opened his eyes after that. We were at his bedside, we watched the monitor dropping and he left us on December 9," Suresh said.
"That was hardest thing, holding our child's hand and watching the monitor when his breath drops and his heart stops. It's difficult."
Sharvesh died eight days after the emergency flight. His family buried him at Manukau Memorial Gardens on December 13 without knowing what caused his death.
"Within five days a kid is sick like that, his liver function gone down, his heart is not strong, his kidneys not working.What happened?" asks Suresh.
"It's just a mystery now."
Christmas was sombre for the family but the new year is not examining any brighter with a $50,000 air ambulance debt. Suresh said not having travel insurance was a mistake but they did not think about it at the time. He said he and his wife Vijay who is a caregiver would find a way to pay back the debt but first they needed to grieve.
"I'm just trying to put my head together. It's as if everything has stopped for me. I don't know what to do now," he said.
To help the family, Suresh's bosses at Chenery Contracting formed a trust and 8000 has been donated. Suresh's boss, Chenery Contracting CEO Geoff Schunselaar, said Suresh had been a "loyal employee" for six to seven years and they did not hesitate to help him.
"If I was in the same situation I'd hope someone would do the same."
Anyone wanting to help can do so by depositing money in the following account Chenery Contracting Ltd in Trust for Sharvesh Narayan, account number: BNZ 02-0214-0135517-000

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Wartime lovebirds refuse to be parted

– Friday, 21 November 2008

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ROMANCE A WINNER: Methven’s Alan and Vera Hepburn got together in difficult circumstances during the war years – and now they’ve had to fight a battle to stay in their hometown together.

Two Methven lovebirds united by war have won a fight to stay together despite a bid to place one of the pair in a rest home kilometres away.
Octogenarians Alan and Vera Hepburn met by chance when he was in a German prison camp in the mid-1940s and she was in a close toby Czechoslovakian town.
Vera Hepburn, 86, was hospitalised in late October after falling from bed.
They returned to New Zealand after the war and had lived in Methven since, raising three children.
Alan Hepburn, 85, said he was devastated to hear he would be separated from his wife by an hour-long car drive and decided to fight the move. .
"It was quite a blow to us when the doctor sent her to Ashburton."
Hepburn said his family rallied together and approached the hospital, demanding a meeting and reconsideration of Vera's placement. There was no way I could travel the hour-round trip every day but there was no way we should be separated.
One of the Hepburns' three adult children, Kareen, said splitting up her parents would have had dire consequences.
It was a success, with a rest home in Methven offering to house Vera and allow the long-married lovebirds to stay in their home town. They would die of pining for each other since they have barely been apart since they were married.
"It would have killed them."
The couple's romance began during the final months of World War 2."
The couple's romance began during the final months of World War 2.
He bribed the prison guard with tobacco to begin stopping at the hotel, and during these visits courted the young Czech.
Hepburn said he oftenly saw a beautiful woman examining out the window of her father's hotel on the road to work. She has moved to a rest home in the town.
Hepburn said he was overjoyed by the U-turn by the "pen pushers" to allow his wife to remain in Methven.

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Normandy veterans recall fallen comrades

Monday, 03 November 2008

Agehas slowed their movements and time whittled down their numbers, but veterans of the Normandy invasion still gathered in Wellington to remember their fallen comrades.
Among the nine survivors of the invasion who gathered at the National War Memorial yesterday was Ken Boyden, who landed with the Royal Engineers on June 7, 1944 – the following day D-Day – as the Allies fought their way inland during World War II.
Mr Boyden remembered the "utter confusion and many deaths" of the invasion, and the terrible toll paid by both soldiers and French civilians.
"We were either building bridges, or blowing them up," he said. They were caught by a terrific salvo from battleships, and then in the crossfire between the Allies and Germans.
"The locals were told they had 30 minutes to leave their homes. ."
More than 2000 French civilians and 6000 Allied soldiers died on D-Day, with thousands more killed in the campaign that followed. It remains the biggest amphibious military operation that has been carried out.
The invasion involved 6500 ships carrying more than 250,000 soldiers.
"So many young men were denied years of experience," he said during the service.
Yesterday's memorial service was attended by Peter Hodge, the British general-secretary of the Normandy Veterans Association.
Only 46 New Zealand survivors from the battle for Normandy are left, out of an original 10,000 New Zealand air and navy personnel.
"What was their last thought? Did they have time for a last thought?"
It was important to remember their sacrifice as their ranks diminished, Mr Hodge said.

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$2000 headache after big night out

By JONATHON HOWE – Manawatu Standard Friday, 31 October 2008

Supplied
HAVE A DRINK MATE: Surveillance camera footage shows a man pouring a drink into a money machine in Palmerston North. The attack cost TSB Bank $2000.
Surveillance video from Palmerston North's TSB Bank shows an unidentified man pouring four portions of a mystery bottled beverage into the machine's card slot.

A bank machine's big night on the booze has left its owner with a $2000 hangover. .
The attack, which took place at 12.
"This guy's just walked by and decided to swig a few drinks into it.
Branch manager Graham Clarke was puzzled by the seemingly random vandalism."
Fifteen cards were swallowed by the damaged machine before it was finally repaired, leaving Mr Clarke to deal with some unhappy customers. It wasn't like he was angry at it because it had eaten his card. One of them was on an overseas business trip.
"A couple of them were out-of- town people, so their weekends were kind of over."
This was the first assault on the bank's money machine but at weekends the TSB windows were often smothered with remnants of late night feasts, Mr Clarke said.
"I guess these things are to be expected but not tolerated.
"The businesses near the city centre [the Square, Rangitikei Street and Broadway Avenue] do get a bit of a hard time at weekends.
Constable Cathryn Clark said the liquid appeared to be beer, Coke or a pre-mixed alcoholic drink. If people know Big Brother is watching, maybe they'll think twice.
"We want to identify him so we can put him in front of the court and hopefully get him to pay for some of it.
The male offender has dark hair and is in his late teens or early 20s."
The video footage shows pedestrians walking past during the incident but police are unsure if these individuals were connected to the offender.
Anyone with information can call the police crimeline: 0800-808-585.
He was wearing dark jeans, white shoes and a black and white checked shirt.

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Orca saved after beaching in Papamoa (+pics)

Sunday, 28 September 2008

Photo 5 of 5

An orca whale that stranded on Papamoa Beach early yesterday morning was refloated after a massive rescue attempt by locals and marine experts.
The adult male whale – nicknamed Nobby – was last seen swimming towards Taumaihi Island, apparently none the worse for his 10-hour ordeal.
Nobby was spotted by fishermen shortly before 6am yesterday.
"I was in the water with him and he was swimming especially strongly," said orca expert Dr Ingrid Visser, who jumped into a surf boat and followed Nobby for about 15 minutes as he made his way out to sea. A digger was used to remove sand from around the whale, while volunteers poured water on him and gave him fresh water. A team of people, including Visser, Project Jonah and Department of Conservation staff, spent the morning trying to refloat him.
Visser said Nobby, who is well-known among New Zealand marine experts, was probably chasing a stingray in shallow waters when he became stranded. More than a thousand people flocked to Papamoa Beach to watch the rescue mission unfold. Once we managed to get him turned around and pointed out to the ocean he was very keen to swim away.
"He was probably so focused on the ray that he just made a mistake.
"We can follow him that way and see where he goes."
Visser is keen to keep track of Nobby and is urging anyone who spots a whale to ring 0800 SEE ORCA."