A finance company found out the hard way that repossessing a Tamahere mansion isn’t as simple as it sounds.
The large home, nicknamed the Te Awa Hilton, was repossessed by FM Custodians Ltd in August 2015, while the occupiers – Robert (Rocky) Hoani Clifford Cribb and Karen Lynne Stevens – were in Europe.
Cribb and Stevens failed to give FM Custodians an address to shift their house full of furniture to, so FM Custodians packed it up into five containers and stored it with a local removal company.
The Cambridge Camera Club is celebrating its 60th anniversary this month with an exhibition of historical Cambridge photographs.
The display will feature at the Cambridge Library from July 24 to 28.
On Tuesday, July 25, 7pm, Jennie Gainsford of the the Cambridge Historical Society will give a talk entitled Moments in Time, Snapshots of Days Gone By.
The sale this week of the former Icepak site has failed to sever links with its tragic past.
The derelict site in central Tamahere was bought by one of the architects of the tragedy that cost the life of a firefighter in 2008, former Icepak director Wayne Grattan.
Grattan, who was personally fined $30,000 for his part in the death of firefighter Derek Lovell and injury to seven others, paid $865,000 for the former coolstore site where the disaster played out eight years ago.
The National Agricultural Fieldays are three weeks away and again sparking interest in the mystery that gave their venue its name – Mystery Creek.
Explaining the mystery has become a hardy annual for writers filling publications in the lead up to the Fieldays, this year on from June 15 to 18.
Tamahere Forum has already fielded a request for an explanation of the mystery which, according to the Cambridge Museum, has grown more mysterious over the years.
The derelict, former Icepak Coolstores site in central Tamahere is again on the market.
More than two years on from the last prospective sale the abandoned, concrete covered site, now a magnet for skateboarders, is being touted to builders.
Marketing signs went up around the 2ha site on the corner of Devine and Koppens Rd last Friday promoting it for lifestyle block subdivision.
Tamahere’s St Stephen’s Church has won a prestigious architectural award – nearly half a century after it was built.
The church, on the corner of Airport Rd and Tamahere Drive, received an enduring architecture award in the annual Waikato / Bay of Plenty Architecture Awards announced last night.
On hand to receive the award at a ceremony at Waikato University was local George Dingle, one of the last remaining parishioners who fought hard to have the church built after its predecessor was destroyed by arson.
A small, peeling plaque at the gate of a local property is one of the last remaining signs of some of the earliest European settlement of Tamahere.
The plaque is emblazoned with the word, Wartle, the name given by a pioneer Scot, Patrick Leslie, to the grand, 14 room homestead and substantial 625 ha (1544 acre) farm he established there in the late 1800s. It earned him the title ‘Father of Tamahere’.
But when archeologists went digging recently for signs of the homestead, its extensive grounds and many farm buildings they came up short.
Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, were welcomed movingly on to the Turangawaewae Marae today, a spectacular event at which Tamahere was represented.
It was an historic moment. The prince was last on the Ngaruawahia marae in 1994 just before Tainui and the Crown came to the very first settlement under the Treaty of Waitangi. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was there in 1953 at what was a significant moment of reconciliation between the Crown and the King movement.
The formal seat of the Maori King movement was ready for the 2015 occasion.
The 67-year-old Hamilton fire officer has completed 40 years on the job and retired this week.
Two things make Wells lucky. Firstly, he’s always loved his job and secondly, he was one of the fire crew to survive the Icepak Coolstore explosion at Tamahere in April 2008.
Click, click, whirr, scrape, slide, chat and laughter – they’re some of the sounds commonly emanating from the abandoned Icepak Coolstores site on Devine Rd these days.
The concrete slabs left behind after the coolstores were removed by fire or the dismantlers were long ago colonised by enterprising skaterboarders.
The unofficial skateboard park or “ghetto spot” is a magnet for skaters from pre-teen learners to the very skilled and experienced, who occasionally showcase their thrills and spills in YouTube videos like this one.
