The best thing about Te Awamutu isn’t the weird rose garden, the cheap gas, or the Op Shop – it’s the beautiful Regent Theatre, which is celebrating 90 years of film, fun, and handjobs in the dark. Make sure you check it out before the end of the month, when owner Allan Webb gifts the business to the community. The theatre’s movie memorabilia is cool, but the lolly selection is next level.

 

Even though Hamilton missed the brunt of it, a bit further south Waitomo is still dealing with damage from Cyclone Dovi. The Waitomo District Council reckons it might even take two years to repair the sunken roads and power lines – they’ve probably got quite a few meetings about it to take care of, first. Maybe some with nice catering from the little cafe in town.

 

Speaking of councils, a lovely 73 year old lady has been waiting for four months for the Rotorua Lakes Council to mow her berm after they suddenly stopped doing it. The council reckoned it wasn’t their problem, and their contractor who had previously been mowing her berm had been doing it “in error” – man it sucks when you accidentally help someone, right? I guess being almost $6,000,000 in debt makes you want to save money where you can.

 

In more Vegas news, the Rotorua Lakes Council has been using drones to find rough sleepers at Sanatorium Reserve. In their defence, the surrounding area is geothermal and can pose a serious danger to anyone trying to sleep in there – but using drones to find homeless people is some serious dystopian Black Mirror shit. This follows about a year of bad optics from the Council – maybe they need better PR.

 

150 wild horses in Kaimanawa need houses or face the firing squad. Since being released to the wild in the 1800s, their population has ballooned to the thousands. Despite their popularity, and interest from the scientific community, thousands of horses running around damaging the environment isn’t ideal. If you’d like a wild horse, you can fill out an application at kaimanawaheritagehorses.org – just don’t tell your landlord. I’m sure they won’t notice. 

 

Back in Hamilton, water reservoir levels are still low, prompting Council to continue restrictions throughout March, even though no one really listens to them or cares anyway. Rototuna continues to be the highest water usage suburb in Kirikiriroa, probably because all of our shitty townhouses don’t have grass, or sun, or umami, or happiness. At least there’s plenty of on-street parking, though. 

 

Cocaine’s about to get way more expensive, with Customs seizing 700 kilograms of the crap, which they found in a shipping container in Tauranga. I honestly didn’t know that you could get cocaine in Aotearoa. This follows another recent bust of just over 600 kilograms of P in Auckland a few weeks ago by Police – I guess they’re having a pretty good month, then? Police say the attempted imports are cartel related, so I’m not gonna say any more about it because I’d like to keep my fingers.

 

Planting Guide

 

Now that we’re staring down the long barrel of another harsh Kirikiriroa winter, food sources are gonna get scarce for our winged friends of the sky. Get some food and water out for the birds – even an empty ice cream container full of water will do. You can get cheap bird seed from Bin Inn that you can sprinkle over the lawn, or just chuck all your leftovers out there and hope for the best. The birds in my backyard are quite partial to a handful of Ready Salted. If you want to splurge, though, Bin Inn also has a great selection of hanging feeders and ‘bird energy bars,’ which sound delicious, but trust me, they aren’t.