The Association extends its sympathy to our near neighbours affected by the Priscilla Crescent lanslip.  The slip, near the Berhampore golf course, happened, with what appears no warning, at about 4.30am on Saturday 1 June 2013. As a result the Council and emergency services evacuated a number of houses above the slip in Priscilla Crescent and Breton Close.
A phone call at 6am with a request to open Newtown Hall in Daniell St in Newtown marked the start of a further step in the response of the Wellington City Council to assist affected resident who were unable to return. Cups of tea and toast were provided in the reasonably warm shelter of the hall by volunteers and Wellington Region Emergency Management staff.  About a dozen people took advantage of the help provided at Newtown Hall.  These folk were allowed to return to their homes around 11am.
Initial reports were that around 90 people were evacuated before daybreak, including about 30 residents of the Kilmarnock Heights Rest Home which was near the foot of the slip. The residents were evacuated to Huntleigh Rest Home in Karori but were allowed to return to Kilmarnock in the late afternoon. Access to the premises is limited due to slip rubble across the road. Anyone visiting Kilmarnock is asked to take care.
However, about 30 residents were unable to return to their houses. Council welfare and housing staff have found accommodation for those residents who could not find their own temporary accommodation. Residents were allowed to quickly go into six of the houses to gather essential items. However two of the houses are deemed too unsafe to enter given the fact the slip has undermined parts of their foundations.
CityCare, Council staff and many other experts are are still investigating the cause which at the time of writing has not been finally determined.

The Dompost reports that Netsafe has surveyed Newtown and found 55 wireless internet connections they could access freely.

Unsecured wireless internet means that your wireless router provides others with free downloads, and it allows hackers to access everything on your network !

The Dompost story on stuff has more details of Netsafe’s survey, and sensible advice on security.

Getting it sorted should not be a problem for those who are members of the Wellington Timebank.  The Timebank has several IT savy people on its books capable of giving advice and assistance ins securing your wireless.   To learn more about the Timebank and how to join see check out their website or drop Hannah a line at wgtn.timebank@gmail.com

Council staff and Cityhop have consulted the Newtown Residents Association and the Newtown Business Group over trialling a designated car-share carpark in Newtown’s Wilson Street shoppers’ car park.

You can view the City Hop Proposal from WCC  and  our Newtown Residents’Association Submission  here.

What is Car Share?

It is a convenient and reliable way for people living in the city and for businesses to have access to a car when they need one, without the cost and hassle of car ownership. Cars are parked at a central location and can be booked online for an hour or a few days at a time.

Car Share works well for all road users

Car share is the fastest growing congestion-buster in the world which takes many private cars off the road – and out of parking sites. Research shows up to as many as fifteen cars are removed from roads by each car share vehicle.

Cityhop is the only car share company operating in New Zealand so far, and their presence in Wellington is at a very early stage. It’s a fantastic opportunity that innovative Newtown will be the start up of a fledgling transport hub – a key part of establishing this new initiative in Wellington.

Across the Tasman, Sydney provides nearly four hundred on-street car share parks.

With 22 Cityhop cars operating successfully Auckland has championed car share as an important traffic management strategy

How does Car Share work?

People join up to the car share club and receive an electronic smart card which acts as the access to the car. Once booked the device unlocks and locks the car door so that the user can then turn the key in the ignition and drive off – very easy. Cars are parked on street and in convenient locations. Users return the car to the location they got the car from.

Members are charged on a per hour basis that includes petrol, servicing and all the other associated costs related to car ownership. Instead of thousands of dollars just to keep one privately owned car on the road each year, Cityhop has a modest membership fee, then $15 per hour of car use during daytime (that’s petrol included).  The best deal is a yearly membership at $10 per month, no application fee and free membership for other family members. (six monthly membership is also available).

What are the gains from Car Share?

Car share cars are within one to three years old, so have all the benefits of modern technology, energy efficiency safety features and cleaner fuel . (The median age of vehicles shed by car sharing households is eleven years)

Not investing in a car also frees people to choose the best way to travel each time – whether that’s a walk in the fresh air, jumping on a bus without parking hassles, enjoying a cycle ride, travelling with others, hiring a taxi or driving a local Cityhop car with a maximum 100km daytime limit

The transport money saved by individuals who car share can be then saved or spent in the local economy.

This Newtown start up will be convenient for local residents and good for local businesses and as support grows there will be more cars available in our Newtown hub.

With Newtown pro-actively leading the way Cityhop car share will in time expand like a snowball through Wellington!

To keep Gap Filler’s famous Christchurch Pallet Pavilion for next summer the Gap Filler Trust need money to cover things their Pavilion’s building consent requires:

• Security (the pallets are deemed a fire hazard)
• Toilets
• Power
• Maintenance
• A summer venue manager

They are trying to fundraise $30 a pallet [there are 3,000 pallets]. This is a people power event venue – organised by the community like Newtown’s Festival – Please help spread the word.

Gap Filler’s Pallet Pavilion was built in late 2012 by 250+ volunteers using 3000 wooden pallets. It was conceived to respond to the loss of venues for live music and community events in post-quake Christchurch. An extremely ambitious project, it has been an incredible success. It has had amazing media coverage, too with features n Australian Geographic, Cuisine, the Daily Mail, the Weekend Australian and more.

More than 25 000 people have visited in just 5 months and it has hosted more than 100 events from live music to markets to children’s parties to lectures. 45 volunteers have contributed to it running across the Summer.

The Pavilion is a temporary project and its deconstruction was due to take place in May this year. So NOW in other words. But across March and April many people have asked if we can keep the Pavilion in the space for another year.

But Gap Filler can’t afford to keep it. So they’re putting it to you, their friends, fans, supporters and community to help raise the money needed and also spread the word.

If you would like to support the Pavilion please go to https://www.pledgeme.co.nz/1064and watch a beautiful little video about it.

This is Gapfillers public campaign where they are trying to raise $80 000. As well as the film, they’ve organised some special rewards for all those lovely people who can give to the campaign.

If you or your company might like to donate directly outside of the Pledge Me campaign sponsorship that helps save the Pallet Pavilion can be acknowledged  on the pallets. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Claire@gapfiller.org.nz

Gap Filler thank you for your support. Even if you can’t donate yourself, please share this with as many people as you can. The only way we can raise the money we need is through the community pulling together in a combined effort, much like the way in which it was built.

Don’t click on any links sent to you by our yahoo email

Somehow our email address has been compromised. Please delete any email sent to you from nrawgtn@yahoo.com.au

Newtown Residents’ Association now has a new email address newtownwellington@gmail.com

Some of us think that we live in a bubble, and firmly believe it’s a couple of degrees warmer in Newtown than in the rest of Wellington, this week Local Illustrator Kelly Spencer was been able to represent that exact feeling in a clever image entitled, Welcome to Newtown.

“I just wanted to express what a wonderful home Newtown is..”, says Kelly,  “..and that I’m pleased to know it’s there waiting for my return.” 

Kelly has recently moved to the Sunshine Coast in Australia, is fast making a name for herself worldwide as an award winning literary Illustrator, painter, and graphic designer. The Newtown Festival was lucky enough to have Kelly work on the design and print newspaper layouts for the 2013 Fair, where she illustrated 7 festival “characters” representing each performance stage.

In 2012 Kelly was one of 6 artists sent to Auckland for the Redbull POPLIFE artist in residence programme, and in 2011 completed illustrations for award winning children’s book Taketakerau – The Millenium Tree.

Welcome to Newtown has been entered into a poster competition by hip design exhibition and lifestyle media gurus Semi-Permanent, who are bringing an exhibition to Auckland in May 2013.

The Newtown Residents’ Association is upgrading how we web post news and send email updates.

Thanks to Andrew Leggott, James Coyle, Don Mackay and Martin Hanley we have just sent out our first new look email based Newtown Newsletter  – linked in tandem with stories here on the website

We have unified our email database and the Newsletter has been emailed to everyone who is an Association member and to everyone who had given us their email for receiving Newtown updates.

Please click here to become a subscriber to future Newtown Residents’ Association emails.

If you have an item of interest for the next Newsletter edition, or for this website, please email:  newtownwellington@gmail.com

The 2011 Newtown Festival Street Fair was a week and a half after the devastating Christchurch Earthquake. So on Fairday that year with the help of Fire Service Volunteers we bucket collected donations from the crowd, with Westpac’s help we raffled signed Phoenix Shirts, and we also sold Newtown Festival Calendars.

After much deliberation, and research into Christchurch un-funded needs, the Newtown Festival Committee decided to use the $1520 raised to support Christchurch performance artists and events.

So far in 2011, 2012, and 2013 we have funded 12 Christchurch acts to come up and perform at the Newtown Festival (plus accommodation). Each of those 3 years we have also supported 2 or 3 technical crew members (who have flown in at their own expense) to assist in the Newtown Festival. www.newtownfestival.org.nz  Each year our general Festival funds have been sufficient to pay the acts to perform and those involved insisted on donating the accommodation. The acts, and the tech crew have all suggested we keep hold of the money and use the funds on someone more deserving!

Successfully hosting the first years ‘refugee’ artists and tech crew without spending any of the donated funds the Festival then pledged funding to Gap Filler initiatives to be staged in Christchurch that year. The Gap Filler Trust temporarily activates vacant sites within Christchurch with creative projects. www.gapfiller.org.nz

Gap Filler were delighted with this seed funding, but with them becoming more and more popular  with funding agencies, and with donors who liked their quirky projects they also didn’t need to use our funds, suggesting instead we made the money available for other artists who couldn’t gain funding. Our potential funding continued to underwrite Christchurch creative events in 2012 again without needing to be spent….. so in February 2013 Newtown Festival helped fund the launch performances staged for the fundraising album “Songs for Christchurch“. This launch included 2 Wellington bands who have played past Newtown Festivals.

www.songsforchristchurch.org  This compilation album is by a collective of people from Melbourne, San Francisco, Christchurch and Wellington, with tracks donated by twenty one local and global artists. The album is fundraising for community projects in the rebuild of Christchurch. This way the spend of some of our fundraising is a catalyst, helping to generate further funds.

Newtown Festival intends to maximise the effectiveness of the remaining donated moneys and will continue to underwrite performance initiatives that may or may not draw down on our funds….. Currently we are investigating supporting outdoor circus performance.

The minutes of the April Public meeting of the Assoociation are available here.

At the April meeting History Honours student Jessie Annett-Wood explained the Laura Rosier book archive and showed printed examples of the methods being used as she helps recover the archival material and formats it into a digitally editable form.

Laura Rosier spent the 1980’s and early 1990’s researching and compiling a history of Newtown, collating historical photographic material for a Newtown History book.  Laura had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the dates of photos and the dates of landmark structures that appear in them.

Laura and her husband Vaughan Rosier were active members of the Newtown Residents’ Association. Vaughan was the Newtown Residents’ Association treasurer for many years, and made grant applications for assisting the publishing the Newtown book.

Unfortunately with her book very nearly complete Laura Rosier died suddenly in February 1994

After Vaughan Rosier died in 1996 the book material was bequeathed to Martin Hanley and Anna Kemble Welch, neighbours and friends of Vaughan and Laura.

Preparing the final edits for publishing has been a long protracted process including nearly losing the material with an editor collaborator of Laura’s who suffered from progressively worsening dementia while working with the archive.

The very muddled archive material came back in 2012, and with Jessie and other university students’ help Martin and Anna have re-activated the publishing project.

The intention is to compile a digital copy ‘time capsule’ edition exactly as Laura Rosier intended.  With an additional supplementary digital edition that includes footnotes and annotations highlighting any areas of incompleteness, or where significant changes over the last 20 years make the written descriptions confusing.

FROM LAURA’S ARCHIVE:

November Quiz: What is happening in this 1904 photo

July Quiz: Where is the grand Newtown residence shown in this image from around 1910?  Bonus points if you know who lived there.

The correct answer is: The photo is 320 Mansfield Street, behind  in the background can be seen a house on Russell Terrace. Today this site is part of Newtown Park Flats. The ornate fence is all that remains of the Transport Manager’s House.  [ At the southern end of the Newtown Park Flats  complex,  before the entrance to Newtown Park ]

June Quiz: Guess the location & purpose of this chimney.

Yes I know we told you at the May meeting – but its such an amazing photo, especially when you click on it to enlarge it & see the people up it !

 The correct answer is: The Brick and Tile works at 291 Mansfield Street. Some of the remains of the kilns can still be seen down the  laneway at 291.

May Quiz: The location of this 1965 photo

 The correct answer is: John Street, with the Dairy being the north west corner of Countdown.