The day after director general of health Ashley Bloomfield announced there were no new cases of Covid-19, New Zealand moved to alert level 1. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The day after director general of health Ashley Bloomfield announced there were no new cases of Covid-19, New Zealand moved to alert level 1. Photo / Mark Mitchell
June 7
June 7 saw the tragic death of three people after the vehicle they were travelling in submerged in a pond near Raetihi.
Emergency services were called to a report of a vehicle underwater in a farm pond on the Sunday morning. The Palmerston North rescue helicopter attendedthe scene, and confirmed an elderly man had survived the incident and was airlifted to Whanganui Hospital.
June 9
After battling a multitude of Covid-19 cases, a full scale lockdown and then weeks of further restrictions, New Zealand collectively breathed a sigh of relief on June 9, as the country entered alert level 1, bringing New Zealand as close to normal as possible.
The country entered the new level at midnight on the morning of June 9. The shift marked the first time New Zealand had ever been in alert level 1, after the alert level system was introduced by the Prime Minister shortly before the March lockdown.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Across Whanganui, bars could open, restrictions of cafes and restaurants disappeared, gigs and concerts could resume and movie theatres were once again packed out.
In what was one of the most bizarre Lotto draws ever, not only did seven tickets win Lotto's first division prize, but it was revealed that four of them were sold in Patea ... at the same store.
Each of the seven winning tickets netted a cool $142,857. Two of the winning tickets were purchased at two different shops in Auckland, while one was purchased in Porirua. Amazingly, the other four winning tickets were purchased at the Patea Four Square.
Patea had four winning Lotto tickets in one draw in June. Photo / Bevan Conley
The Chronicle spoke to professional statistician Dr Robin Hankin, who hypothesised that one person purchased all four of the winning tickets, perhaps using their usual combination of numbers.
"It's a very very unlikely occurrence, so it's begging for an explanation."
Lotto confirmed that was also their suspicion, suspecting the winner purchased the same numbers each with a different powerball number to increase the chances of winning.
June 16
On June 16 the Chronicle reported the story of Dr Ron Palenski's research suggesting that the first game of rugby in New Zealand was played in Aramoho.
Nelson is commonly thought of as the birthplace of rugby in New Zealand, but Palenski's new book documented for the first time that Whanganui hosted a rugby game in June 1869 - close to a year earlier than the recorded game in Nelson.
Palenski uncovered reports in a copy of the Chronicle from 1869 stating that at a football match, "kicks had to go over the cross bars". An advertisement for the very game inside the Whanganui Herald said that, in a proposed town v country match, "Town accepts Country's challenge, providing that rugby rules are attended to."
June 23
For people at Castlecliff Beach, it was a sight to behold on June 23, as a pod of orca swam close to shore at the popular beach.
For one resident who has lived near the beach since 1977, she thought she was hallucinating when she saw the whales.
"There must have been 20 or 30 of them, it was incredible," Suzanne Perrin told the Chronicle.
