Online Editor

Organisers of yesterday's Hawea Picnic Races believe the event might have attracted a record crowd this year.

Julie Ramsay had thought the dinosaur slide she designed as a child about 35 years ago for a lakefront playground in Wanaka would be long since extinct.

Croquet is the sport that united Lynley Browne's family and kept a common interest through five generations.

After many months of preparation, the Warbirds and Wheels attraction at Wanaka Airport will open its doors to the public for the first time today.

There was no other place Dunedin woman Margaret McLeod (77) could have contemplated celebrating Christmas yesterday than camping at Glendhu Bay Lakeside Holiday Park, just as she has done for the past 57 Christmases.

A group of Wanaka carolers entertained the residents of Elmslie House rest-home yesterday afternoon before taking to the streets on board the back of an Upper Clutha Transport truck to spread some Christmas cheer throughout the town and further afield.

Two men will appear in the Queenstown District Court next month on joint charges in relation to alleged stock thefts from a rural property at Mt Barker, near Wanaka.

The new $1.76 million wastewater system at Glendhu Bay Lakeside Holiday Park will be put to the test on Boxing Day as about 300 groups of holidaymakers arrive.

Two men are to appear in court next month on joint charges in relation to the alleged theft of stock and farming equipment worth nearly $250,000 from a farm near Wanaka.

The Wanaka community has once again given generously to the town's annual pre-Christmas foodbank drive, with 70 needy families in the district receiving hampers of donated goods yesterday.

A proposed multipurpose community facility for Wanaka which has been in the pipeline since 2004 has taken a "significant" step forward, after the formation of a charitable trust to govern the project and source funding to build it.

Peter Entwisle finds a rare gem in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery's new exhibition "Ladies and Gentlemen: At A Glance"

The opening race on the triathlon calendar was one of changing fortunes at Macandrew Bay yesterday morning.

A design defect in a helicopter which crashed on Homestead Peak near Wanaka almost six years ago was the likely cause of the accident,in which two men died, a coroner's inquest has found.

The Otago Heritage Bus Society will operate a Christmas Day shuttle service between St Clair and Normanby this year.

As Doreen Umbers watched her aunt and uncle's modest former home being reduced to a pile of rubble on Wanaka's lakefront shopping precinct yesterday, she felt more than a hint of sadness as she reflected on decades of family history tied up in the old block cottage.