An Omokoroa man with only months to live will fulfil his long-time dream to take a family holiday to the South Island thanks to the generosity of his community.
Omokoroa residents have rallied around to support Mike Masson, a local father and volunteer firefighter diagnosed with terminal cancer.
A Givealittle fundraiser page dedicated to the "Masson Clan South Island Holiday" had reached $8290 yesterday.
Mr Masson said his family were blown away by the support and was looking forward to following through with the trip planned since they moved from Scotland to New Zealand eight years ago.
"It's one thing we said we'd do when we moved to New Zealand," he said.
Mr Masson had been battling cancer for close to a year but it was recently diagnosed terminal after spreading into his bones.
"They [the doctors] just said make the most of the time you've got. They haven't given me a time, I guess how long's a piece of string? They said it's not a year but it's more than three months."
Mr Masson, his wife Carolynne and their three daughters, Erin, Eilidh and Niamh, were well known in Omokoroa, the girls having attended Omokoroa Point School and Mrs Masson a teacher at Pahoia School.
When people heard about Mr Masson's diagnosis, a flood of support came in and the idea of supporting a family holiday was decided on, Givealittle page creator Andrea Penellum said.
"I had people coming up to me asking how they could help and they were okay for meals so we thought more money would always help." The supporters were hoping to raise about $10,000 for the family's holiday.
"Omokoroa is a special place when something like this happens," Mrs Penellum said.
"The money is coming in from all sorts of places ... thanks to Facebook we're getting donations from overseas as well."
A car wash, sausage sizzle and fun walk is planned at Omokoroa Point School from 9am today as an extra fundraiser to add to the trip fund.
The family were still planning the details of the trip but Mr Masson hoped to start from Dunedin and work their way up.
"We're having all these suggestions fired at us," he laughed.
He was looking forward to seeing the amazing scenery he had heard about and the kind of scenery that lured the family to move to New Zealand in the first place.
He said it was scenes from Billy Connolly's World Tour of New Zealand that originally drew them here, deciding on Tauranga as a beautiful city and Omokoroa as a nice community.
"It's lovely, an amazing little village," he said, "like the village I grew up in".
Mr Masson said his whole family was blown away by the support they had received, from meals and baking, to builders and painters offering their services and now the donations for a final family holiday.
"We can't thank them enough."