The separate catchments of the Far North

The Far North is an unusual district, sprawling, as it does, across hundreds of kilometres and unlike most NZ provinces it is made up of many small towns without a dominant main city.

This has resulted in quite separate catchments for all sorts of things, notably our print media. The Northland Age (or News of the World as our editor thinks) maintains such strong readership in its core territory of North of the Mangamukas, that it can still command a payment from its readers. The other local newspapers have long since become freebies, surviving and in some cases prospering on advertising revenue alone.

The result of this is quite fragmented local news coverage in our papers and anyone wanting to get a picture of the whole of the Far North has to supplement the Age with the Bay Chronicle from Kerikeri, the very similar Northern News from Kaikohe, newcomer the Bay Report also from Kerikeri and others including the well presented Doubtless Bay Times.

Few of our citizens are well known across the whole district and occasionally some very controversial local issues ignite their local catchment without any reporting in other areas. Such an issue is the future of the Kerikeri Domain which is under threat from a few councillors lead by the Mayor, determined to heave the Rugby Club out of town and off the very ground that early settlers set aside for just such an activity.

Locally held surveys indicate over 95% of folk want the central domain left as it is, but a group of recent arrivals including a wealthy absentee have determined that the sports fields will become home to a large sculpture and the Farmers Market (currently happily operating one morning per week in the carpark). This is to allow for passive recreation, whatever that is!

One of our problems is that our district attracts quite a few retirees, which is fine, but as they haven’t battled here to get their businesses going, raise their kids, be on school committees and play and support sports clubs, they forget about the interests of those who are still doing these things. Worse still a number of them get a bit bored and decide they should be on the council and tell the rest of us how to live.

We’ve got a few of those now, with more offering themselves without any real experience of how things are up here, and wanting to get it back to how it was where they came from. Most of us want it to be how it is in the progressive, positive and prosperous places.