Winter wellness with Daisy Wood

Herbalist and naturopath Daisy Wood on winter wellness and life in Paekākāriki. Interviewed on Te Pae, Paekakariki 88.2FM with Mark Amery and Sylvia Bagnall, July 2020. Daisy is part of Winter Wellness and Homegrown Health, Paekākāriki School 2pm Sunday 2 August.

Read More

A century of service

It’s the end of an era for the ‘oldest garage on the coast’. Owner Chris Clarke is retiring and the building has been sold to a Waikanae-based collective responsible for restaurants, a bakery and craft brewery.

Read More

Paekākāriki Progress: community media 70 years ago

Found under the house of Paekākāriki’s former chemist Mr Bill Carson during lockdown, is a 1950 copy of a fortnightly community newspaper, Paekākāriki Progress. This is what a community website or newspaper (shades of Paekakariki Xpressed 2000-2010) looked like 70 years ago. With its hand-drawn masthead, typed, printed and stapled, it fulfils many of the same functions: events, a directory of services, local body politics, news from community groups.

Read More

Bubble breakout!

A beautiful record of a community day and night 20 June at St Peters Hall Paekākāriki by photographer Bob Zuur with an array of musical talent and words from Gilbert Haisman. This night saw the hall’s new floorboards given a thorough test. Here, we take the chance to remember a few of our people in words and images.

Read More

Plant seeds in people

“It’s crucial that we make time for blue sky thinking.” Sophie Handford imagines Paekākāriki in 50 years. The second in our series of stories by young residents on what we will, or could look like in the future. Images by Louve Pharand-Doucet.

Read More

The Lockdown Alphabet

Covid-19 punished many in the arts sector and yet it’s art that we rest on and return to during crises. Paekākāriki printmaker Joe Buchanan of Diatom Press captured the human response from his garden studio resulting in an extraordinary series of hand-cut lino and letterpress prints. Drawing on his background as both biologist and font-nerd, the collection documents and comments on the full sweep of the lockdown journey; from our sudden fascination with viruses, to haircuts, to hope.

Read More

Diamond in the rough: One Eye Gallery

New Zealand’s regions are full of galleries representing the work of local artists. Rarer outside the cities are contemporary art dealers representing the often more challenging work of artists nationally. From 1997-2004 in Paekākāriki, was a quite brilliant exception: One Eye Gallery. Just north of the Wellington art scene, highly regarded painter Gary Freemantle operated a satellite. He mixed an ever startling array of art outsiders and locals – work of quality from elsewhere but little seen in Wellington – and artists already of repute trialling new ways of working, like Don Driver, Joanna Margaret Paul, Rob Cherry and Hariata Ropata-Tangahoe.

Read More

Paekākāriki Xpressed 2001-2011

An award-winning community newspaper we consider, with total bias, to be one of the finest ever printed. Paekakariki Xpressed editor Don Polly here reflects on those who contributed to a paper which informed and entertained Paekākāriki households for a decade.

Read More

The last years of the Paekākāriki Pub

‘Photographs like these are traitors to the fact that we easily forget.’ Mark Amery kicks off a series dedicated to the stories of the infamous Paekākāriki Pub with a photo essay by Andrew Ross.

Read More

Waitangi Day 2020 Paekākāriki

On February 6th Ngāti Haumia ki Paekākāriki and the village community hosted the official 2020 Waitangi Day commemorations for the Kāpiti Coast. Delivering spectacular sunshine, music and kai the day will be remembered as a triumph of community spirit. Mark Coote was there to capture some shots for the Kāpiti Coast District Council record books.

Read More