Mayor due home from hospital tonight

Mayor John Carter and wife Leoni are looking forward to getting home to Waipapakauri Ramp near Ninety Mile Beach. PHOTO / FILE

Far North Mayor John Carter is expected to arrive home this evening after being discharged from Wellington's Wakefield Hospital earlier today.

Mr Carter, who lives at Waipapakauri Ramp north of Kaitaia, had surgery for prostate cancer on Friday.

He said the operation went as expected and "everything's chugging along nicely".

"It'll be nice to be home. I'll have to take it a bit quietly for a while, but I've felt fine from the moment I woke up from the operation," he said.

He would be back at work on Monday and planned to take part in a meeting at the council chambers in Kaikohe via video link from Kaitaia's Te Ahu Centre.

In the short term he would reduce his travel and cut back on civic engagements.

Final test results would not be known for two weeks but his specialists saw no reason for concern.

Mr Carter urged all Northlanders to get regular health check-ups and catch any cancers early.

It is not his first brush with cancer. In 2005, while still the MP for Northland, he had part of his bowel removed. As in the latest case it was caught early, which greatly reduced the risk of spreading.