Canadian tourist Tyler Tiemstra (left) checks over his
census form with St Kilda district supervisor Bruce Beath,
at Dunedin Holiday Park yesterday. Photo by Peter McIntosh.
About 300 people, multiple nationalities and a rush of
check-ins - it might have been a chaotic start to Census night
at Dunedin Holiday Park but in the end, even the stragglers
were caught.
A production line was set up so that those who checked in on
Tuesday evening were passed on to census staff and those
staff were on hand yesterday morning to receive forms and
catch the odd person they had missed as they checked out,
such as Canadian backpacker Tyler Tiemstra.
Among the campers was a group of about 50 pupils and teachers
from a Canterbury school and about 40 pupils and teachers
from Germany.
St Kilda district supervisor Bruce Beath said a card with the
German translation of the relevant census questions
hadhelped.
Most of the tourists were from the United Kingdom and Europe,
so translation had not been too much of a problem, he said.
''The staff here were also very helpful handing out forms to
those who had already checked in.''
Otago South Canterbury area manager Bryan Bishop said using
local people with local knowledge as collectors meant even a
few freedom campers were delivered census forms.
Yesterday was a quiet for collectors who waited to hear at
which addresses people had filled their forms online, so did
not need forms collected.
Statistics Minister Maurice Williamson said the online
response to the census was great, with more than 1.7 million
individual and dwelling forms completed online on Tuesday
night.
It was not too late to fill in census forms as collectors
would be picking up paper forms until March 17. People could
also still complete census forms online.
- rebecca.fox@odt.co.nz
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