Letters to the Editor: State of Gisborne CBD, kia ora for Herald waka ama coverage

The New Zealand long distance waka ama championships turned on quite a spectacle. Photo / Murray Robertson

Well, for me, I used to love coming to town but not now, it’s so depressing.

I blame some businesses for not keeping their windows clean.

I also think our town needs some upgrade of some sort. You just got to look at Christmas time - there is no Christmas spirit whatsoever.

It doesn’t help with taggers going around tagging the shops and seeing derelict buildings boarded up so the homeless don’t sleep in the doorways.

Some of the blame has to rest on the council.

The cruise ships are coming soon, and I don’t know why they are coming if our CBD is looking sad.

It would be nice to see pop-up shops come into the empty ones for the summer months so our tourists could stay longer.

K A Richardson

Gisborne great for waka ama

Kia ora, ngā mihi mahana mai Te Hiku o Te Ika.

I wanted to thank The Gisborne Herald for acknowledging our national waka ama long-distance nationals.

The venue was a great site, and the event organisers ran a good, safe four-day programme for more than 900 paddlers and whānau.

Day 1 events were cancelled due to weather, but it gave some of us an opportunity to check out the famous local Route 35 cafe in Tokomaru, a few urupā to locate some loved ones and a visit to Toi Houkura.

Gisborne is a great site for waka ama racing and, of course, you have the renowned Mareikura and Horouta whose inter-club competitiveness lifted the national competition to another level over 20 years ago.

Three of us caught the Whangarei-to-Gisborne flight which made travel easy - and we were within an eight-minute walk of the venue.

You also have a national collaboration of waka makers with Sonic and Tai - who are taking our sports to high-performance levels.

Kia ora to Air Ruatoria, which gave us perspective on our local efforts to keep Kaitaia Airport open.

Tēna koutou. Thanks for the manaakitanga.

H. Halkyard-Harawira

Rangaunu Sports Club

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