Mark Price

Hunter Valley Station, Lake Hawea, is associated with years of news stories about public access - the latest being Thursday's delayed reopening to the public of Meads Rd that runs through the station to the Department of Conservation camp at Kidds Bush. But, as Wanaka bureau chief Mark Price reports, public use of Meads Rd is not the only access issue the station has been embroiled in this year.

 Public access by road to the Department of Conservation's Kidds Bush camp ground, on the shores of Lake Hawea, has been restored for the holiday period.

The idea of a swimming pool for Wanaka of the same dimensions as Dunedin's Moana Pool got the thumbs-up from swimmers at a Queenstown Lakes District Council public hearing yesterday.

Thirty-five two-person teams will put a new multisport product to the test tomorrow when they line up for the first Red Bull Defiance adventure race.

The smashed-up van is gone, the jack-knifed truck and trailer unit is gone, the emergency services are gone and even the last remaining road cones are gone.

When Southlander Jack Minty died in 2000, he left his daughter and three sons with a 137ha farm, in six titles, on the shores of Lake Wanaka.

A cold, wet and windy November has made life difficult for southern honey bees and their keepers.

Like taking Richie McCaw out of the All Blacks - that is how one Wanaka community leader described a police proposal to do away with the senior sergeant position in the town early next year.

Wanaka is set to lose its police senior sergeant position and also a rural community constable job in a restructuring of the Otago rural policing area.

Wanaka resident John Wellington has called for more action to ensure public access to Mead Rd, Lake Hawea.

Discussions are under way between the Upper Clutha Tracks Trust and about 20 landowners along the Clutha River over the possible route for a cycleway linking Wanaka and Cromwell.

T-intersection or a roundabout?

Duncan Boswell, of Wanaka, has won his battle to get to Gallipoli.