MUCH of September and October was about the triennial local elections which would determine who would run our councils for the next three years.
Postal votes were held throughout the region, to find representatives on the Napier City Council, Hawke's Bay Regional Council and Wairoa, Hastings, Central Hawke's Bay and Tararua district councils, and the district health boards, along with about 70 other such bodies around the country.
As much as being about who should be elected, the election seemed to be also about whether the voting system was appropriate to the modern day, and how to arrest the decline in voting.
As it turned out, Hawke's Bay voters didn't fare too badly, with a voting return marginally better than the 2013 elections.
The most significant turn was at Hawke's Bay Regional Council, swinging the balance from "for" the Ruataniwha Dam to "against", with the result also that when it came to electing the chairman, incumbent Fenton Wilson stood down. The new man in the chair was Rex Graham.
Another significant development in the polls was the selection of more Maori councillors, including Api Tapine, reported to be the first Maori elected to the Napier City Council.
September had started in rollicking style when 80-year-old crooner Engelbert Humperdinck, a former Mission Concert star, returned to Napier for a one-night concert in the Municipal Theatre, where the biggest acclaim was for his career-launching, A-B side 1966 numbers, Release Me and the song that has since become acclaimed as an unofficial New Zealand national anthem, Ten Guitars.
Two and a half days later the whole region was rollicking, when an earthquake measuring 7.1 struck off the East Cape at 4.37am. It was, however, just one of the now thousands of seismic incidents which hit the east coast of New Zealand, north and south, in late 2016.
But it was big enough to wake father time at Mission Estate's cellar in Taradale, where a clock that had stopped ticking a year or so earlier started ticking again. Not a bad effort for an old boy installed at the Mission in 1890 and possibly as much as 200 years old.
It was with some irony then that the real biggie, the Kaikoura quake early on the morning of November 14 would stop the Taradale Town Clock, although it was soon ticking again.
Meanwhile, the Napier City Council was being ticked-off for not checking the structural integrity of a Salvation Army building it had leased as a pop-up venue for fans of Marine Parade attraction Sk8Zone, which had been closed pending the opening of a new skatepark being built on the Marineland site.
Ultimately, no pop-up, and not a lot of popularity for the council either as Sk8Zone fans bemoaned the loss of their venue, and the way the council had gone about ending more than a century of skating club action on the Parade.
Something else that wasn't happening was the Kura Kaupapa Maori which had been proposed for Havelock North, for after much opposition and debate it was announced the site was not suitable for the school, and another site was being considered in Hastings.
Surrounding this was a number of announcements about how government money would be spent on schools in Hawke's Bay, at least 24 being regarded as not having enough classroom space. Among them was that $19 million would be spent on Kimi Ora School and nearby Flaxmere College.
An investment in the future of the region, as was an unlikely venture in northern Hawke's Bay where on September 27 Rocket Lab opened its Onenui launching site, the world's first for private orbital rocket launching. The first "test" launches are expected in the next few weeks.
Such good news for the Wairoa district was matched by an early-October announcement of an agreement between Napier Port and KiwiRail aiming to get the Napier-Wairoa line going again for log trains. But that was balanced by such things as the October 18 announcement by Silver Fern Farms that the Frasertown meat plant would close, with the loss of 68 jobs.
There was a series of anniversaries.
On September 24 it was 50 years since Hawke's Bay beat Waikato 6-0 in Hamilton to win the Ranfurly Shield for the first time in 32 years. The Bay would go through three years unbeaten in its defence of New Zealand rugby's most revered rugby and sports trophy, but it would be more than 40 years before it would be back again.
The 2016 vintage Magpies weren't so successful, having earlier in September gone an eight-day trek in which they were beaten 25-24 by Auckland in Napier and 63-7 by Canterbury, whom Hawke's Bay haven't beaten since 1982. They did beat Southland in Invercargill a few days later, but the team's days were numbered; and when beaten by Waikato on October 8, that cemented relegation from the Premier to the Championship grade.
On October 10 came the 30th anniversary of the closure of the Whakatu meat works in Hastings, effectively shutting off 1500 pay packets in Hawke's Bay with ramifications still being felt in the second decade of the new millennium.
Two days later it was the 150th anniversary of what has become known as the Battle of Omarunui or the One Day War, a bloody 1866 conflict of the land wars era. A commemoration was held where 23 people had been shot dead, and another at Eskdale, near where another 11 had fallen. The emphasis was on education and healing.
For confusion, little matched the turnaround in the political fortunes and aspirations of Tukituki MP Craig Foss, who effectively launched his campaign for re-election in 2017 with confirmation on October 1 that he had been selected unopposed as the National Party candidate.
But the dream came crashing down to earth when just 10 weeks later, in the wake of the resignation of Prime Minister John Key and instalment of new PM Bill English, Mr Foss would announce he wasn't going to seek re-election after all.