Northland news in brief: Tu Kaha sensory room a region first; scrub fire extinguished and lifejacket reminder

Sonya Marais, an occupational therapist for Mid North Community Mental Health and Addiction Services at Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand, welcomes people to the Tu Kaha sensory room.

Sensory room aids recovery

Tu Kaha, an inpatient mental health facility in the mid-North, has the first sub-acute sensory room in Northland. The area is intended to be used as a recovery-focused tool to allow practitioners to move away from using purely clinical treatments and utilise recovery-focused treatments such as sensory modulation and cognitive behavioural therapy. Sonya Marais, an occupational therapist for Mid North Community Mental Health and Addiction Services at Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand, created the first sensory room at a Te Whatu Ora-owned and operated sub-acute unit in Kaikohe. Bunnings supported the service by donating materials and providing 11 people for a working bee. Local mural artist Erica Pearce was commissioned to produce the beautiful artwork in the room.

Bunnings Waipapa complex manager Damian Aimers with Sonya Marais.

Scrub fire

Kerikeri firefighters were called out to a scrub fire on Saturday that took over an hour to put out.

A call went out around 5.40pm that scrub was ablaze at Te Tii on the Purerua Peninsula north of Kerikeri, a Fire and Emergency New Zealand spokesman said.

When firefighters arrived, they found a fire covering about 10 by 50m of scrub. They spent over an hour putting the flames out, and the cause of the fire has not been identified at this stage.

Lifejacket reminder

Coastguard is reminding boaties and people out on the water to don lifejackets in a bid to bring the country’s high drowning toll down. Drowning is the leading cause of recreational deaths in Aotearoa, and according to recent data from Water Safety New Zealand, craft-related incidents account for 31 per cent of those deaths. Last year, 21 of the 29 drowning fatalities from watercraft - eight of which were in Northland - were due to people not wearing lifejackets.

Bus contest winner

Nine-year-old Amay Dignon, from Hurapaki School, won CityLink Whangārei’s “Design a Bus Back” competition. The competition, run for the first time this year, asked primary school-aged tamariki to create a design for the back of a bus to show why catching the bus is better for the environment than other forms of travel. Hundreds of entries - both online and from schools - gave the judges a very difficult task, as they were of such a high standard.

Bird misses out

Northland entertainer Luke Bird missed out scooping up this year’s prestigious television personality award. Bird is the first Northlander to be named a finalist in the New Zealand TV Awards 2023 category. Instead, the TV Personality of the Year award went to Below Deck star Aesha Scott of Tauranga.

Ahipara surf patrols starting

Surf lifeguards have started patrolling Ahipara Beach. The volunteer group Far North Surf Life Saving will patrol the beach until February 2. Lifeguards will be patrolling Baylys Beach, on Kaipara’s coast, from December 23 to January 19.