A four-wheeled ATV and the distinctive "Uncle Buck's Trailer" - used in numerous community and family projects - were last night still missing almost a fortnight after being stolen from the owners' Whakatu home.
Tom and Margie McGuire have used them for eight years to help plant about 50,000 trees on a 2.5km of the riparian strip of the Clive River, near Kohupatiki Marae.
The trailer, belonging to Margie McGuire's brother, has a particular history. It was at least 50 years old and well in demand throughout the Clive and Whakatu area - the "community trailer", Margie McGuire called it as she pleaded for its return. The trailer goes "way back". From the days when it was used to cart bins of apples for hosts when Tom McGuire and his brother helped take Under 17 Hawke's Bay Maori rugby sides to such places as Ruatoria, to furniture-moving and carting of piping-hot hangi.
The red and black Polaris ATV and the trailer were unhooked from Tom McGuire's truck between 3.30am and 5.30am on Friday, July 27. That's the period when everyone finished catching up on old yarns with a visitor from "up north" to when Tom McGuire went into the kitchen and saw out the window the ATV and trailer were not where they had been parked the night before.
The visitor's car had also been entered, and in rolling back towards a kerb had made way for the trailer to be removed.
