Among other events were any number of winery concerts, perhaps the most significant being that of 68-year-old James Taylor, one of the biggest-selling singer-songwriters of all time, at Church Road on February 5, where as fresh as ever to the delight of the crowd was his latest go at Fire and Rain, which had been released in 1970.
It had otherwise been a bad week for rain.
There wasn't a lot of it, but what there was was enough to cause one of the worst dilemmas for Hawke's Bay sport, when in company with the general irrigation of McLean Park it caused the scrapping of jewel-in-the-crown one-day international cricket match between New Zealand and Australia on February 2 without a ball being bowled.
Confused diehards waited for hours, ultimately thwarted by one wee patch which just wouldn't go away. It was a sort of health-and-safety issue for players, but a great big headache for the Napier City Council as it was realised the drainage wasn't up to scratch.
McLean Park was effectively blacklisted until it was fixed. It was a blow to the ground, which since the 1979 staging of New Zealand's first test cricket venue outside the four main centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, had become one of the country's most prominent venues for the sport, and which in 1997 staged New Zealand's first day-night limited-overs international.
A further international in March would be transferred to Hamilton. McLean Park would be dropped from the schedule for the 2017-2018 summer, and the council has had to try to fast-track replacing the drainage system and turf, now expected to start in April to enable cricket to return next summer.
What a nightmare for the city council, for the next day it would be announcing chlorination of parts of Napier's water supply, following a showing of E.coli in samples from its Enfield Rd reservoir.
Farmers, however, were happy. There had been some hot weather, peaking at over 33C on January 11, and a grass fire or two amid high winds about 10 days later highlighting the reason for irrigation bans to help conserve water.
These were lifted on January 25 after rain in them thar hills, with some irony for that was also the date the plan to store water form the hills with a proposed Ruataniwha Dam was officially put on hold. It had been on the backburner since some supporters were ditched at the previous year's Regional Council elections.
It was also about the same time work started on the Whakatu Arterial Link road network, a multi-faceted problem-solver in the regional transport strategy.
By mid-February water, the shortage thereof, was becoming an issue again, highlighted by a huge rural fire east of Havelock North destroying one home and causing the evacuation of more than 20 others, drawing dozens of firefighters from as far as Wellington and with four helicopters bombing the flames at the peak, as temperatures again soared over 33C.
It was never clear whether it had done any good, for one target might have been the Tasmanian grass grub which insect specialist Ruud Kleinpaste said had invaded Hawke's Bay.
It was a tragic start to the year on the roads, with six people killed in the first eight weeks, almost half the previous year's toll which had been Hawke's Bay's second-lowest annual road toll in 50 years.
Major individual successes included the recognition of the long-standing principal of Napier's St Joseph's Maori Girls College in the New Year Honours as Dame Georgina Kingi, and on February 11 in Invercargill where John Kirkpatrick, of Napier, would become World shearing champion, after three finals placings since 2008. The triumph would also win him the supreme honour at the Hawke's Bay Sports Awards three months later.
