Hōngongoi / July 30, 2025
Koha Coffee
Sunday, 3 August, 10.30 am – 12.30 pm
Come along to the Community Hall at 80 Houghton Bay Road this Sunday for another catch up with locals and find out what’s happening. Bring along some kai or a koha. Leone is hosting.
You can just have a good old chin wag, but if you are keen there will be a rāranga hārākeke session for beginners going on as well, before more weaving in the afternoon. You might want to make a day of it! See below for more details.
Rāranga hārākeke at the community hall
Sunday, 3 August, 11 am – 1 pm and 1 – 4.30 pm
We are delighted to make our community hall available to Te Motu Kairangi rāranga hārākeke group on the first Sunday afternoon of each month from August until December. They are dedicated to learning, sharing, and reconnecting with the art of Māori flax weaving, and you are welcome to come along and have a go.
This first time they are offering a special beginners session in the morning as well as a returners session in the afternoon. If you are new please bring 5-10 rau (blades) of harakeke, sharp scissors, an old towel (if you have one) and a bag to take away the leftovers. A Koha is appreciated, but not required.
If you love it, they will be back on September 7, October 5, November 2 and December 7. Or if you are really hooked they weave every Sunday rotating around Haitaitai, Breaker Bay and Miramar as well.
Playground update
The new playground is not quite done, but is now open for use. Word spread around the school like wildfire and it has seen a lot of use of the last few days. Lots of happy sounds coming from it so we hope it meets with general approval, even though the end result is rather different from where we started off. Interesting to see how it is being used, one thing we never thought about is that the much larger matting area allows for good play area when the winter grass is boggy (or just mud), for running around or such things as kicking a ball or doing cartwheels.
So what’s coming up? They are going to lower the height of the swing seats, the installed chain length allowed for a perfectly level surface. The slide colour will change to a more browny red, which was the original choice, as close as we could get to the rusty red of the matting. The seats and picnic table are being refurbished. The fencing with the panels of children’s artwork will be installed in a couple of weeks, after which the school will arrange an “opening”. The bund will be planted with the help of a few school children with plants to help create a wind break, there will be more planting near the roadside and grass will be sown in the spring.
Meshtastic: an off-grid network
Do you want to be able to be connected to others when the power and internet are down? The meshtastic network uses free radio bandwidth. Other suburbs around Wellington are creating these important resilience communication networks.
The transmitting Sensecap you buy for about $70 is not much larger than a credit card, and connects to your phone via Bluetooth. Communication is through the Signal App, which works the same as WhatsApp.
The Haewai Houghton Valley Community Association is willing to bulk buy devices for a discount, so if you are interested contact meshtastic@houghtonvalley.org.nz to be put on the list. Meshtastic website
Coastal reserves management plan
It’s the final week of public consultation on Tātou ki Uta – our draft Coastal Reserves Management Plan. Submissions close at noon, 5 August 2025. WCC would appreciate support, critique or even just corrections for what has been proposed. The pages that most relate to Houghton Bay include 71 -77 of the main document, and page 8 of Appendix B, but you are welcome to engage with other parts of the document as well.
Exploring Environmental Personhood (part 2)
As we mentioned in the last newsletter, Environmental Personhood is granting the same legal rights to environmental entities as we have for humans. This concept is at the core of our ‘Lifting the Creek’ project.
In an ecosystem, everything is interconnected, including us, and needs to be considered as a whole. Everything in our environment should be treated with respect as if it were one of us. What that means for our ‘Lifting the Creek’ project includes:
- A healthy indigenous forest cover with thriving manu (bird), mokomoko (lizard), invertebrate and freshwater fish populations; with an animal-pest and weed-pest free status; and with many walking tracks;
- An enduring system of Kaitiakitanga led by locals and recreational and employment opportunities to engage with and care for the area;
- Our stream flowing above ground once more and regulating stormwater flow naturally with wetlands;
- A pristine beach and marine reserve.
These ideas are taken from the 100-year vision that we are building for our community. Both the vision and the ‘Lifting the Creek’ project include community based ideas as well. We will look at these next time.
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