Latest news with #Kahu
RNZ News
10-07-2025
- Climate
- RNZ News
Nelson Tasman residents braced for another potentially devastating storm
Civil defence confirmed last month's flooding was the worst in almost 150 years. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii Residents in the top of the South Island are under a second state of emergency in three weeks and steeling themselves for another potentially devastating storm. Nelson Tasman is under a state of emergency, with orange rain warnings in place and areas southeast of Motueka likely to be raised to a red warning. Flooding caused widespread damage in the region on 27 June, leaving some residents without homes to return to. Nelson Tasman Civil Defence confirmed flooding was the worst in the region in almost 150 years . Motueka Valley resident Kate Gloeggler had just adopted new three-month-old puppy Kahu, when the rain started falling two weeks ago. She decided to evacuate with her new dog, when she received a warning on her phone. Gloeggler was now part of a flood support team checking in with people affected by the last flood. "They're quite nervous about more rain coming, because they've just been starting to secure and kind of rebuild the things that got broken, and now there's just more on the radar. "It's quite unsettling and nervewracking for the people here." She said many whose homes were damaged had not recovered from the last event. "They are still in that shock, because they know it is not over yet. It is quite full on for everyone involved, but especially for the people who are affected." Gloeggler planned to be in Nelson with Kahu during Friday and Saturday, when the rain was due to hit. Nelson Federated Farmers president Kerry Irvine was based in Tapawera - an area of Tasman hit hard by flooding. Irvine told RNZ that the last flood affected both farmers and the wider public. "It is a pretty wide event, this one, and I have to stress any more rain is not welcome." He said farmer and the community had to prepare for the rain expected on Friday. "Expect the worst and hope for the best." Irvine told RNZ the rain event nearly two weeks ago was like nothing he had seen before. "I've talked to a number of the older farmers and they had seen nothing like it." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
07-07-2025
- RNZ News
Missing man's car found in Whanganui River
Photo: NZ Police The police have found the vehicle of a man, whose been missing for over a week, in the Whanganui River. The man, called Kahu, was last seen on 27 June in the Whanganui area. Police said he was last seen wearing a black hoodie, with red text on the sleeves and camo cargo plants. "We're asking anybody who is walking along or near the river or coastline near Whanganui to report any unusual findings or clothing matching the description of what Kahu was wearing," a police spokesperson said. If you have any information, please contact police via 105 either over the phone or online, and reference file number 250702/3842.
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan review – an immersive but imperfect coming-of-age mystery
Writing a story from a child's perspective works like a filter over a lens. Novels such as Sofie Laguna's The Eye of the Sheep, Craig Silvey's Jasper Jones and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time use a younger person's narration to process darker, adult themes and reveal the mythologies of the adult world. Jennifer Trevelyan's debut A Beautiful Family uses a similar framing to tell an immersive yet imperfect coming-of-age mystery set in New Zealand. It's 1985, and 10-year-old Alix – a tomboyish, inquisitive girl who is never without her red Walkman and Split Enz cassette tape – is on holiday with her family, who have left their Wellington home for the nearby Kāpiti Coast. Her novelist mother normally prefers secluded spots, but this time she has curiously opted for a populous beach town. Between her parents' bickering and her older sister's burgeoning interest in boys and alcohol, Alix has often felt invisible. This has made her a keen observer, and she understands more than people think. At the outset, Alix befriends a 12-year-old Māori boy named Kahu with whom she soon becomes inseparable. He invites her over to his house, which is full of cooking aunties, rowdy cousins and dogs – a contrast to Alix's loving yet somewhat siloed family. One day Kahu tells her about Charlotte, a young girl who drowned in the area a few years prior. The two children decide to search for her missing body, combing the beach and the nearby lagoon for remains. But as their investigation stretches on, other secrets begin to emerge. What is Alix's mother doing on her long walks? And who is the strange old man next door always watching them? Alix grasps at the truth of things, but her perspective means only the reader parses the more adult story unravelling around her. This framing is craftily handled, with Trevelyan building suspense as the underlying narratives coalesce, delving into familial ties, a child's desire for harmony, and the pinballing of a child on the brink of adolescence. Innocence is deftly chipped away, and some unsettling revelations begin to dawn on Alix. 'Now I understood that a family wasn't a particularly solid thing,' she says. 'It was a bubble purely of our own making and just like a bubble, it could burst.' A Beautiful Family is most enriching in Trevelyan's knack for character; Alix, Vanessa and her parents are all distinctive and familiar from the start, even with the story taking place from a single point of view. However, the novel stalls somewhat in pace and plot about halfway through, meandering into overwriting and a surfeit of detail – there are four consecutive pages on Alix's Walkman, for example. The novel's imagery also veers from tactile clarity ('the lagoon, flat and quiet as a bath') to lines a bit sensorially inert. ('The soup had a dusty taste, like the inside of a long unopened cupboard.') There's also a curious undercurrent of racial microaggressions. Alix's mother says that 'Chinese people tend to look alike'. A school friend of Vanessa's, Crystal, mentions a boy with mixed parents has skin with the 'perfect mix'. And when Alix is invited to Kahu's house for lunch, her mother becomes overly concerned about whether there's enough food. Trevelyan handles these inclusions delicately, and some help evoke the flawed nature of her characters. But though they appear to build towards something – an evocation of internalised prejudices, of casual discrimination, of a white child's recognition of cultural difference – they ultimately never really say anything impactful. By the novel's end, Alix and Kahu, having spent the summer playing detective, suddenly stumble across a much darker discovery. Treveylan pulls some of her threads taut while leaving others loose – and yet the secrets she does reveal are predictable and only end up undercutting her otherwise immersive story. Indeed, A Beautiful Family is a charming debut, bringing life to Tolstoy's adage that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but it gets mired in what turns out to be a lacklustre mystery. Hopefully, Trevelyan's next work will lean more on her evident strengths. A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan is out now in Australia (Allen & Unwin, $32.99), UK (Pan Macmillan, £16.99, £15.29 on the Guardian Bookshop) and the US (Penguin Random House, US$28)
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan review – an immersive but imperfect coming-of-age mystery
Writing a story from a child's perspective works like a filter over a lens. Novels such as Sofie Laguna's The Eye of the Sheep, Craig Silvey's Jasper Jones and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time use a younger person's narration to process darker, adult themes and reveal the mythologies of the adult world. Jennifer Trevelyan's debut A Beautiful Family uses a similar framing to tell an immersive yet imperfect coming-of-age mystery set in New Zealand. It's 1985, and 10-year-old Alix – a tomboyish, inquisitive girl who is never without her red Walkman and Split Enz cassette tape – is on holiday with her family, who have left their Wellington home for the nearby Kāpiti Coast. Her novelist mother normally prefers secluded spots, but this time she has curiously opted for a populous beach town. Between her parents' bickering and her older sister's burgeoning interest in boys and alcohol, Alix has often felt invisible. This has made her a keen observer, and she understands more than people think. At the outset, Alix befriends a 12-year-old Māori boy named Kahu with whom she soon becomes inseparable. He invites her over to his house, which is full of cooking aunties, rowdy cousins and dogs – a contrast to Alix's loving yet somewhat siloed family. One day Kahu tells her about Charlotte, a young girl who drowned in the area a few years prior. The two children decide to search for her missing body, combing the beach and the nearby lagoon for remains. But as their investigation stretches on, other secrets begin to emerge. What is Alix's mother doing on her long walks? And who is the strange old man next door always watching them? Alix grasps at the truth of things, but her perspective means only the reader parses the more adult story unravelling around her. This framing is craftily handled, with Trevelyan building suspense as the underlying narratives coalesce, delving into familial ties, a child's desire for harmony, and the pinballing of a child on the brink of adolescence. Innocence is deftly chipped away, and some unsettling revelations begin to dawn on Alix. 'Now I understood that a family wasn't a particularly solid thing,' she says. 'It was a bubble purely of our own making and just like a bubble, it could burst.' A Beautiful Family is most enriching in Trevelyan's knack for character; Alix, Vanessa and her parents are all distinctive and familiar from the start, even with the story taking place from a single point of view. However, the novel stalls somewhat in pace and plot about halfway through, meandering into overwriting and a surfeit of detail – there are four consecutive pages on Alix's Walkman, for example. The novel's imagery also veers from tactile clarity ('the lagoon, flat and quiet as a bath') to lines a bit sensorially inert. ('The soup had a dusty taste, like the inside of a long unopened cupboard.') There's also a curious undercurrent of racial microaggressions. Alix's mother says that 'Chinese people tend to look alike'. A school friend of Vanessa's, Crystal, mentions a boy with mixed parents has skin with the 'perfect mix'. And when Alix is invited to Kahu's house for lunch, her mother becomes overly concerned about whether there's enough food. Trevelyan handles these inclusions delicately, and some help evoke the flawed nature of her characters. But though they appear to build towards something – an evocation of internalised prejudices, of casual discrimination, of a white child's recognition of cultural difference – they ultimately never really say anything impactful. By the novel's end, Alix and Kahu, having spent the summer playing detective, suddenly stumble across a much darker discovery. Treveylan pulls some of her threads taut while leaving others loose – and yet the secrets she does reveal are predictable and only end up undercutting her otherwise immersive story. Indeed, A Beautiful Family is a charming debut, bringing life to Tolstoy's adage that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but it gets mired in what turns out to be a lacklustre mystery. Hopefully, Trevelyan's next work will lean more on her evident strengths. A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan is out now in Australia (Allen & Unwin, $32.99), UK (Pan Macmillan, £16.99, £15.29 on the Guardian Bookshop) and the US (Penguin Random House, US$28)
Scoop
18-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Templeton Group Celebrates Four Wins At 2025 Property Industry Awards
Friday 13 June proved auspicious for Templeton Group, as the company took home four major accolades at the 2025 Property Council New Zealand Rider Levett Bucknall Property Industry Awards, the country's most prestigious property awards programme. The wins spanned 3 projects, across 2 categories and reflected the strength of Templeton's diverse portfolio, which includes residential, mixed-use, and tourism properties. Templeton's developments in Long Bay and Upper Queen Street won three awards in the Hawkins Multi Unit Residential Property category: · ABSTRACT (Auckland CBD) Excellence Award · Kahu (Long Bay) Merit Award · Light Box (Long Bay) Merit Award Templeton was also recognised in the Holmes Group Tourism and Leisure Property Award category, taking home a Merit Award for ABSTRACT, which uniquely blends short-term hotel accommodation with long-term residential leasing. 'These awards validate the bold vision Templeton brings to each project,' said Nigel McKenna, Templeton Founder and Chairman. 'Each of these developments reflects, in its own way, Templeton's understanding of the role of development as a force of social influence, changing perceptions and creating new and meaningful opportunities for families, creators and communities. They all feed off our team's eclectic interests in design, culture and the arts coupled with a willingness to invest in creativity, expressed as a result of strong partnerships. I'm incredibly proud of our team and our collaborators, who continue to challenge what's possible in urban design and community living.' About Templeton Led by Nigel McKenna, Templeton Group is New Zealand's largest private, non-listed residential property developer, with a multi-billion-dollar portfolio under development throughout New Zealand. Common to all Templeton projects is a strong focus on design aesthetics while always delivering places where people want to live.
