If you want to check out what we are up to in our little neck of the woods, have a look at our two-monthly newsletter, Kōrero.

My wife, Kate, edits it with the support of a small team, and they do a great job.

Despite what organisations normally do with newsletters by putting them online, we print about 740 copies of each of the five issues per year and hand-deliver them to all the letter boxes in Puekrua Bay. That way we guarantee to reach nearly every household in the village. The feedback is that they are well-read, and we have had only three or four people who only want them digitally.

This was an important lesson we learned during the first Covid-19 lockdown. We initially hand-delivered weekly printed news sheets to all the households until the Council pressured us to do them in a non-contact way, i.e. digitally. That meant a lot of households with vulnerable inhabitants, particularly older people who aren’t on social media or commonly on the web missed out.

There is normally a theme for each issue, which we get five or six articles on, and we welcome articles, poems, and pictures from anyone in the community on any topic. There would be limits, of course, (e.g. no racists or fascists) but we haven’t been put in that situation yet.

The latest issue has cover art and another painting from a local artist, Christine Ford, who is exploring her Romany heritage. She has an article about this.

We believe it’s important to support our local businesses, which are normally small home-based businesses, out-of-town retailers owned by people who live in Pukerua Bay and are happy to buy a full-page advert, or our small collection of shops in the village, so we take advertising from them. If we lost some of them, particularly retailers, we would have to leave the village to shop in the next town on the state highway or the train line.

And, of course, we advertise community events like fairs and galas, the start of sports seasons when registrations open, and working bees around the village.

Advertising isn’t enough to cover all our printing costs, so we have to get a small grant from one of the local grant organisations in the region. It’s only ever a few hundred dollars once a year, so it’s been reliable so far.

You can read the latest and all the back copies on our Residents Association community website:

Kōrero issues