Jetski owner found safe in Wanganui – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

The owner of a jet ski found washed up on Peka Peka beach is safe and well in Wanganui.

Senior Sergeant Alisdair Macmillan, Kapiti Police, said a beach walker found the damaged Kawasaki jet ski about 9am. With no immediate sign of a rider, the walker contacted police.

A fixed wing aircraft from Paraparaumu Airport, the Kapiti Coastguard launch, and police in a four-wheel drive vehicles spent nearly three hours combing the search zone until the mystery was solved.

Police checked the jet ski’s engine number with a Kawasaki service and sales centre which was able to pinpoint a Wanganui reference. A phone call revealed the jet ski’s owner was alive – he had become separated from the machine while crossing the Wanganui River bar last week.

Over the next few days, tides washed the jet ski south down the coast. “We’re pleased everything turned out for the best,” Senior Sergeant Macmillan says.

Updated 10th March 2009

STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti Coast councillors have toured of one of Aotearoa's unique buildings, the heritage - listed Rotunda at the former Otaki Health Camp, the country’s first.

Jeremy Smith reports that the 105-year-old, eight-sided rotunda predates the Health Camp.

It wasn't actually built in Otaki, but was one of two built in Rotorua in 1915 as part of a military hospital, on the site of Rotorua’s present public hospital.

Later they were taken to Otaki for the opening of the health camp in 1931.

Full story in the main column (December 19).

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.