One of the tracks to the beach that I use has flaxes either side of the entrance. Sometimes the leaves grow right across the track. I couldn’t be bothered asking the Council to trim them, and just did it myself. Only took 15 minutes.

Keeping tempers cool at Waikawa:

There are special bars across our footbridge designed to stop motorbikes from getting onto the bridge. What they actually do is make it very hard for human beings to get on the bridge, especially those who have dogs on leads, kids, wheelchairs, mobility issues, pushchairs…

For sale 18 Henham Lane, Waikawa Beach: Bareland, 22155 m².

Waikawa Beach For Sale: 13 Holly Way. 2.01ha Land.

From 2018: a small boat being launched off Waikawa Beach.

// @odd

For Sale: 53a Reay Mackay Grove, Waikawa Beach

This house will be visible from our place.

An email to NZTA today:

For exercise and also to do my bit to reduce car use and save putting some CO2 into the atmosphere I biked from my home at Waikawa Beach, Horowhenua, to the dairy at Manakau today to get the bottle of milk I needed. That's about a 20 Km round trip. That's an easy trip on an electric bike.

The dairy is on SH1, which is so dangerous there's no way I'll ride my bike along any part of it near us. I dismounted at the intersection of Waikawa Beach Road and SH1 intending to wheel my bike along beside SH1 to reach the dairy about 225 metres away.

However the side of the road there was full of dense grass and weeds to at least knee high. See attached photo. I had to chain my bike to the fence and walk beside the road, on the tar seal.

I feel NZTA should at least mow this stretch of ground beside SH1, if a proper footpath is not being laid. This dairy is convenient for all those who live at Waikawa Beach — it's the closest store.

I'm aware of others who cycle to the dairy for supplies. It's not just me.

The climate crisis is urgent and everyone should be doing their part to not only allow less polluting modes of transport, but to encourage them. NZTA could help encourage cyclists and pedestrians from Waikawa Beach to avoid using their motor vehicles for such short trips. A little mowing is all it would take, though ideally there would be a proper footpath.

Please do something to make this 225 metre strip safe for people to access the dairy and nearby vege shops.

Miraz Jordan, [address]

And check out the web form response:

We are currently experiencing higher than normal email volumes. We aim to respond within 10 working days.

Yeah, yeah, sure!

BTW: non-Kiwis — a dairy is a small shop that sells items like milk, butter, bread, non-alcoholic drinks, snacks and other basic supplies.

For Sale: 8 Sand Dune Grove, Waikawa Beach.

I had an idea, worked on it with a friend and today we’re launching a summer photo event for Waikawa Beach: Wow Waikawa! Folks submit photos that show the delight of Waikawa Beach, we print some and put them up over summer. It’s been fun getting things ready.

Short on sleep this morning, so my brain cells are groggy. Not convenient when I have a committee meeting for Waikawa Beach Ratepayers Association to attend, with a long agenda.

Today I was rung by someone from LINZ who asked if I could put the broken marker post I reported yesterday back in the ground.

When I dug into the hole I could see the post had been snapped off. There is a building site opposite and I suspect a truck ran it over.

Waikawa Beach, 3 properties for sale:

13 Drake Street

27 Sarah Street

33 Sarah Street

We’ve had 20mm rain today down here at Waikawa Beach at the coast. I imagine that up in the hills there’s been a great deal more. There’s a lot of water about in the paddocks and on the sides of the road.

The river is very full and flowing fairly strongly.

There are only about 150-200 Kotuku, White herons in Aotearoa New Zealand and they are rarely seen beyond their breeding ground on the South Island. Miraculously there has been one at Waikawa Beach for a couple of days. Today I took photos of this magnificent bird.

I often bike around Waikawa Beach on a ~9 Km circuit. Yesterday I went beyond this slightly for a ~12 Km circuit and turned the battery on my electric bike off for ~4Km. Today I’m slightly achey. I have till April to build up for my West Coast Wilderness bike tour. 🚴🏼‍♀️

Spammers crack me up sometimes — ‘sping’⁉️From our Waikawa Beach community blog:

Hello, You misspelled the word “sping” On your website. Sometimes errors > like can hurt your web traffic. Maybe check out a service that alerts > you to issues like … [urls] -Fred

Today I walked on the other side of the Waikawa River, heading north. After floundering through undergrowth to avoid a wet-weather lake I eventually found a wide, smooth, well-used track. After ~1 Km I turned west, found my way through the dunes to the beach and an easy return.

To start with we needed to travel from home to Invercargill. That meant setting off with our friends in the car at about 0915. We drove ~100 Km to Wellington Airport, parked in the long-term carpark, caught the free shuttle to the terminal and hung around until the flight left around 1230. Because it was a local flight on a small plane we didn’t have to go through security.

After a 1 hour flight to Christchurch, enjoying views of the snow-capped Kaikouras, we had a quick lunch and boarded the local flight to Invercargill, so again, no security rigmarole to worry about.

This time it was about an hour and a half, with views of snow capped Alps, but not on my side of the plane.

Finally we saw the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter and a small nearby wind farm, banked to the east and landed at Invercargill, Waihōpai.

Our tour leader, Alison, met us and kindly drove us to the Quest Hotel in the middle of Waihōpai, where we shared a comfortable 2 room apartment with our friends Chris & Jan from Waikawa Beach.

Alison had organised a meal for most of the tour group at The Rocks, a few minutes walk away.

With a group of 20 to feed, along with other customers, our meal was a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

The restaurant was pretty noisy so conversation was a bit tricky, but it was a good chance to introduce ourselves to a couple of our fellow travellers. My neighbour had travelled from Palmerston North, while the person across the table from me came from north of Whangārei.

It was early to bed for me, though Deb joined the end of a Zoom call for the training she’s completing this year.

Tuesday 20 July 2021.

Heh, the telephoto lens makes Kāpiti Island look like you could wade out to it — it’s actually 20Km away. A shot of birds in the estuary at Waikawa Beach this morning.

The river at Waikawa Beach was pretty high the other day after loads of rain — it had been higher than this photo shows. Then today it was really really low. Maybe because it broke through the sand bar at the mouth it’s able to flow out more easily?

So much rain over the weekend localised flooding closed a couple of roads. The Waikawa Beach river’s running very swift — we had 43mm rain (1.6 inches), but up in the hills they surely had a heap more. The river has also managed to breach the sandbar and flow directly to the sea.

We had an unusual event at Waikawa Beach this weekend: the launch of a Little Free Library created by a couple of members of the community. Here’s Anja giving a speech before cutting the ribbon. And that’s the back of me as I introduced Anja to the 40 or 50 folks who attended. 📚

Whew! A busy day doing various tasks for our local Waikawa Beach Ratepayers Association: emails, blog posts, some admin stuff, update the list of members, liaise with the Horowhenua District Council about a dumped trampoline — perfect for a cool, rainy day.

On 05 May I posted about a neighbouring property for sale: Waikawa Beach For Sale: 146 Strathnaver Drive. When we drove past this afternoon it had a Sold sign on it. 5 days. Not bad.