Rebecca Ryan

The St John Waitaki area committee is this year celebrating 50 years of providing medical care for the community.

Teams of Oamaru secondary school pupils wove their way around obstacles at Takaro Park in cardboard cars on Wednesday afternoon.

A fire on Saturday afternoon which extensively damaged a garage and workshop in Weston is believed to have been started by a spark from welding equipment.

A whole new world has opened up at Steampunk HQ in Oamaru.

The Waitaki District Council's Harbour St upgrade started this week, and the street is now closed to vehicular traffic until October 17 while road works are carried out.

Police had to smash the window of a car at the Oamaru Cemetery to get to the ''grossly intoxicated'' driver, whose vehicle had crashed into a water pipe.

Former prime minister Helen Clark, head of the United Nations Development Programme, packed out the Empire Room at the Oamaru Opera House last night for a Hearts and Hands for Haiti (HHH) fundraising event.

The eyes of the law are expanding across Otago.

The potential of the forest around the Oamaru reservoir has been realised by Mountain Biking North Otago.

A vehicle has crashed into their home for a fourth time, but an Oamaru family is counting its blessings it was not much worse.

Oamaru police want some ''definitive answers'' on the cause of death of about 215 sheep in Ngapara, and will get a second opinion from a forensic vet.

Although large council-run operations around the country struggle to find markets for exporting recyclable materials to, ''little, old Oamaru'' is shipping the products around the world.

A van load of Oamaru high school pupils bound for Ohau Snowfields did not make it to the slopes after the van they were travelling in slid on black ice and rolled off the road yesterday morning.

A University of Canterbury criminologist believes whoever is responsible for the slaughter of more than 215 sheep in Ngapara is either young and ''thrill-killing'' or an ''adult who's demented''.

In the normally quiet and friendly community of Ngapara, gates are padlocked and some residents are unable to sleep after mass killings of sheep in the area, Rebecca Ryan reports.

Duntroon has no fuel station or convenience store.

Whether you believe in lunar madness or not, there is evidence to suggest the full moon has cast its spell over Ngapara in the past 40 years.