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Big-name politicians rarely sighted in the political wilderness of Raglan were among those to learn first-hand about Whaingaroa’s landmark environmental initiatives when the National Party ginger group the Bluegreens held their annual forum here recently.

But while the talkfest applauded Raglan’s efforts and even went on to earn National some brownie points from an unlikely quarter – Greenpeace – it didn’t particularly impress Raglan’s best known environmental activist, who says he found some aspects of the weekend bizarre and ingenuine. Keep Reading

On Thursday, February 2,  42 magnificent, mysterious maidens (most of us now ex-maidens) met at the metropolis of Raglan to match the might of many mates who mingled to attain the mighty title of Best Dressed at our annual Ladies Themed Day tournament. Obviously, the theme was the letter M.

The weather was overcast and somewhat muggy but that didn’t matter to we maidens, at least we didn’t get sunburnt. Our greenkeeping team had worked well to have our grass green playable for this day, to allow us to play good competitive bowls and move majestically to the melodious music. Keep Reading

He’s only 12 but Zak Hooper has a plum job over the holidays that’s really taking him places. And you could say the sky’s the limit.

The Hooper family typically spend their summer break at their Wallis St bach, where they have a particularly prolific black doris tree – and access to a neighbour’s as well. Keep Reading

Angela Williams just loves knitting and a story on TV One’s Good Sorts segment got her thinking about how she could put her knack for knitting to good use.

Aired four months ago, the story about Craft Angels a group knitting, crocheting and sewing items for babies of families in need struck a chord with Ange and she has been creating lovely little booties since.

Semi-retired and working from home, the avid knitter enjoys putting her hands to good use in her downtime and has knitted more than 100 booties since she was inspired by the Craft Angels group.

The group is part of Little Sprouts a volunteer-run charitable trust which gives away hundreds of baby packs every year to more than 70 charities across New Zealand.“I think it is lovely for a vulnerable family to have a handcrafted item for their baby,” Ange says.

Ange knitted her first item – a jumper – when she was eight under the guidance of her mother.

“My mother was wonderful she would tell me how many stitches to cast on and what to do next – it was all in her head.”

She entered her first item at an A&P competition as a 10-year-old and reckons she only got third prize because she was so young.

Since those first stitches as a youngster, Ange has always had a knitting or crochet project on the go.

A founding member of the Raglan Chamber of Commerce, Ange is keen to support local and buys all her wool for the booties from the Raglan Book and Gift Centre.

“I can get six pairs of booties from one ball of wool,” she says.

Ange will also talk to her sister-in-law who is a retired nurse about the needs of families at Waikato Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit and selling them at a charity shop where she volunteers.

For more information about Little Sprouts and Good Sorts visit littlesproutsnz.org or check out their Facebook page @LittleSproutsCraftAngels.

Janine Jackson

Angela Massey is putting Raglan on the Art Deco fashion map with a win at the Cambridge Races contemporary fashion in the field competition.

The races last Friday marked the centenary of the Waikato-Bay of Plenty Harness Incorporated Racing Club and race-goers were judged in five categories for their Art Deco-inspired outfits.

A deco aficionado and avid costume collector, Angela knew the competition was right up her alley.

“I love doing dress ups. I have a lot of vintage and dress ups costumes in my wardrobe. A lot of people in Raglan know that and come and borrow costumes off me,” she says.

With the help of friends Trish Bush for the loan of a parasol and hat, and Colleen at Raglan shop Dixie Pearl who loaned her a bag, Angela came up with the winning look.

“Everything was vintage or op shop – nothing was bought from a high-end fashion shop.” 

The fashion in the field contestants were narrowed down to finalists by roving judges and Angela was given a ticket to join the final fashion parade in the over-25 category.

“I saw these beautiful girls walking over and I said to them you look beautiful and they said so do you and handed me the ticket to go into the finals. So, they were the judges – I didn’t know that. I wasn’t buttering them up I genuinely thought they looked fabulous,” she laughs.

Around 30 people were put through their paces in a fashion show with the top three from each category selected.

“Lo and behold I was chosen, I didn’t expect that.”

As well as the winner’s sash, she received a bottle of Mumm Champagne, some chocolate and hair products.

Angela knew from the first race it was going to be a great night after winning over $100 on a rank outsider with a $4 bet. 

“Before I even got the tickets for the fashion finals, I had won $135,” she laughs.

Janine Jackson

Raglan engineer and self-confessed “mad inventor” Niall Darwin drives an electric car that he reckons is faster than the Ferrari he wanted as a teenager.

But it’s been a long and slow road to get there, costing more time and money than he ever could’ve imagined.

The Greenslade Rd resident who lives off-grid and is proud to own nothing that runs on petrol  – from cars and e-bikes to a ride-on lawnmower he uses around the two-acre property – describes his year-long legal battle against electric car giant Tesla as a “huge, horrible project”.

And while Niall’s now happy with what he’s got – a rebuilt Tesla Model S “full of communication” at the touch of a button and with speed to spare – he’s very unhappy with the process which drove him to take extreme measures.

Niall says Tesla essentially “stonewalled” him at every turn after he plugged in his rebuilt car only to find, contrary to an email from a Tesla Sydney executive when he bought the wreck in Australia back in 2017, there was no supercharging and no software support. 

“They don’t want people to have rebuilt cars,” he told the Chronicle. And he says that to make things worse Tesla logged into his car without permission to turn off supercharging, which is about four times quicker than fast charging.

As he colourfully described Tesla’s action on national television recently, “that’s a bit like your average Ukrainian hacker coming into your computer and stopping it from working”.

After losing his legal case Niall was forced to find a workaround and pay someone in the United States big dollars to hack his own car so he could manage and control it himself.

Tesla’s need for control of the technology is “quite toxic”, says Niall. He was appalled to realise the American company on a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy would simply write the car off. 

“They were willing to waste that much embodied energy.”

Niall told Newshub on television channel Three that the experience has left him with a really bad taste in his mouth from a company he thought was trying to change the world. 

“It goes against their spin,” says Niall, who when he’s not battling Elon Musk and his 45,000 employees simply enjoys “playing” with batteries.

Niall has his own battery that literally runs his life from workshop to house to car, and is currently working on bettering batteries to upgrade older electric vehicles like his 2011 Nissan Leaf.

While he could’ve done without an experience that he says took up a lot more of his life than it needed to, Niall’s now happy to have a fully functional electric vehicle and to be “divorced” from Tesla, with all the service information it was so unwilling to share now at his fingertips.

“It’s about being able to look after, take control, of what you own,” he stresses, disillusioned at how a big corporation like Tesla can monopolise the technology.   

Edith Symes

Noted New Zealand artist Robin White took a trip down memory lane to Raglan over the Christmas/New Year holidays – and found her home town as a teenager “changed out of recognition”.

“It wasn’t like this,” she told the Chronicle, taking in Oram Park on one side of Nihinihi Ave and the 1960s house her father built overlooking the estuary on the other. “Everything looked so different.”

Robin recalled Nihinihi Ave as a metal road and just a few baches back then.   

There was no reticulated water or sewerage and only a carry can for a toilet, she said, standing by the shed her family lived in on the property until their “very simple” two-bedroom house was ready to move into.

“I loved living by the sea and being on my own,” the celebrated Kiwi painter and printmaker who in 2003 was made a Dame, revealed of her time here. “I spent hours pottering around the estuary (at the bottom of the section) … fishing for herrings and mullet … or out in the dinghy.”

She remembered Wayne Petchell – who went on to run his family’s Bow St supermarket for many years – exercising his racehorse on the beach, and the Kereopa boys riding their horses into town. 

“And I had my first driving lesson on the airstrip,” the 72 year old added as she looked out across the estuary. “Camp end.”

Robin did her fourth and fifth form years (now years 10 and 11) at Raglan District High School, as the area school was then known, where her interest in art was nurtured.

“I did art to School Certificate (level) at Raglan,” she revealed to colourful Martinborough publisher Alister Taylor in his lavish 1981 book ‘Robin White, New Zealand Painter’.

“My teacher was a man who wasn’t an art teacher but he was very interested in art himself. He somehow got me through School Certificate. Art was the highest mark of all my subjects, but it wasn’t particularly high.”

She later boarded at Epsom Girls’ Grammar and then went on to Elam School of Fine Arts, where she rated the celebrated Colin McCahon as “the most influential of all my lecturers”.

Robin – who now lives in Masterton – was back in town briefly between Christmas and New Year for the unveiling of Tex Rickard’s memorial at Poihakena Marae alongside that of his land rights activist wife Eva, a Kereopa.

She told the Chronicle her father, Albert Tikitu White, had been great friends with Tex back in the day and both grew large crops of kumara in Raglan’s “perfect” sandy soil. 

“Dad built a huge box in the garage where he stored the kumara,” she laughs. “He used to give away sacks of it at Christmas … and swap with the Kereopa clan for kaimoana.”

Robin said it was wonderful to see how the local land has since been reclaimed, nurtured and developed. She was also impressed at all the activity on the marae, from the kohanga to the carving school. 

“It is alive and well,” she said, acknowledging the groundwork of an earlier generation.

Robin’s work through to the early 1980s focused, as Alister Taylor noted, on the “landscape in which she lives and the people whom she knows and loves”.

While paintings like ‘Sam Hunt at the Portobello Pub’, ‘Mana Railway Station’  ‘Mangaweka’ and ‘Fish and chips at Maketu’ rank among her best known works from the period, her catalogue also included locally inspired paintings of her family home in Nihinihi Ave and a series of watercolours entitled simply ‘Sandhills, Raglan’.

For the Raglan paintings she worked from her old sketches and photographs from that time.   

Robin immersed herself during the 80s and 90s in the island lifestyle of remote Kiribati in the central Pacific, turning her hand to woodcuts and other styles of art which still influence her today.

She has represented New Zealand at a number of international exhibitions, and in 2017 won the NZ Art Awards Laureate title which helped her continue collaborations with Pacific artists.

Robin was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003.

Edith Symes

Raglan Community Board’s newest and youngest members, Charlie Irvin, Grace Mindoro and Sven Seddon, are looking forward to being the youth voice for Raglan.

The 16-year-olds recently sat in their second meeting since they were elected earlier this year and say the experience is giving them an opportunity to find out how local government politics work in their town and how they can make a difference for young people in Raglan. Keep Reading