David Bruce

Camping grounds owned and operated by the Waitaki District Council could be handed to the private sector to manage, including popular summer destinations around the Waitaki lakes.

The Friends of the Forrester group plans to drum up community support for the redevelopment of the Oamaru art gallery.

A former police officer was lucky to escape serious injury when the utility he was driving was clipped by a train just north of Herbert yesterday morning.

A $1.5 million loss by the Oamaru Licensing Trust has prompted a ratepayers' group to call for trust chairman Ali Brosnan and deputy chairwoman Pam Spite to resign.

The North Otago branch of the Historic Places Trust is investigating ways it can continue to exist if the Government passes legislation disbanding it and other branches.

"We are looking at a Ferrari when a Toyota will do," is how a Waitaki district councillor describes options costing up to $15 million to upgrade three Oamaru cultural facilities.

The sole occupant of a single-cab utility vehicle was killed yesterday when it left the road and crashed into a creek bed near Ngapara.

Progress being made by a committee set up earlier this year to involve the community in water management in the upper Waitaki catchment is pleasing its chairman, Barry Shepherd.

Further monitoring will be carried out on the Kakanui Mountains to help establish the feasibility of a wind farm being investigated by Waitaki Wind Ltd.

More farmers may have to put in stock underpasses if the Waitaki District Council finally adopts a new code of practice for stock crossings.

A "passionate plea" has been made to reopen and maintain Grave's Track around the coast of Cape Wanbrow, described as having world-class geological and volcanic formations.

St Kevin's College pupil Sean Hand has had an early Christmas present - five to six weeks in the United States and Canada leaving in mid-December.

The Edmund Rice Singers from St Kevin's College (front, from left) Jack Allan (16) and Quinn McNab (17) and (rear, from left) Jack Meehan (17) and Sean Hand (17) practise for the annual spring Mass in the college chapel tomorrow.

A helicopter with a monsoon bucket was called in to help firefighters extinguish a blaze in a plantation on a Smillies Rd farm on the downlands between Georgetown and Duntroon yesterday afternoon.

Oamaru's coastal walking route, Grave's Track, may reopen again if local resident David Harrowfield has anything to do with it.