Life + Style 3 February 2017

21 August, 2015

life+style The Weekend Sun 1

An insight into architecture See page 2

THE WEEKEND

Featuring

Design & build | Food | Entertainment | Gardening

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life+style The Weekend Sun 21 August, 2015 3 February, 2017

Creating the extraordinary Architecture to enrich and inspire They stand out from the crowd. The one at the Mount nods to the timeless style and history of a weatherboard villa, while creating a relaxed vibe in keeping with it’s beach location.

The one in Omokoroa is commented on time and again for its stunning riverstone features. Each are something extraordinary.

That’s what Insight Architecture Ltd is all about, creating unique architecture to enrich and inspire.

“We understand that each project is unique,” say founders Richard Hale and Matt Hodson, who have designed homes across New Zealand from Auckland to Queenstown.

“Great design is about listening to our clients’ needs, understanding their lifestyle and plans for the future.”

Insight Architecture Ltd is an awardwinning architectural practice with an exceptional portfolio of work, including residential homes, retirement resorts,

apartments, school and commercial office and industrial developments.

Insight’s numerous award-winning designs produce sustainable, functional and aesthetically pleasing spaces and buildings that have enduring quality over time.

The professional team at Insight Architecture supports clients through the process and beyond.

“We work with you to realise your project’s full potential,” says Richard. “Our experience means we can personalise the design process to suit your project.”

They tick all the boxes when it comes to technical resources and experience, but what makes Insight different is the ability to work outside of the box.

“We have the necessary experience and a real in-depth knowledge of the building design process to successfully support our clients.” says Sarah Bacon of Insight Architecture.

“We’re really open to receiving the ideas our clients bring to the table. We understand it’s their space, and it’s the guys’ experience in design that can enhance that idea and create something unique.

It flows with the company’s motto: ‘Your space, our creativity’.

The team at Insight Architecture can help clients decide what they want, bringing their creativity, experience and vision to clients’ ideas to avoid common mistakes and predictable design. “We interpret your ideas and apply them accurately.”

They offer estimation of building costs but they respect the client’s budget, they don’t blow it.

They listen more and talk less.

They keep up with the pace of new technology and design innovations, and stick to agreed project deadlines.

They tender your project to builders and supervise and manage your build during construction.

They can help you at any stage of the process from the plan, design, and right through to the build.

The planning stage includes master planning, feasibility studies, resource consent and estimation.

The design stage involves preliminary design, concept design/3D rendering, detailed

documentation and interior design.

The final stage of the build includes procurement, contract administration, maintenance plus, and project coordination.

“We don’t rush into pushing our design ideas onto you, we discover the real you and then the design follows,” say Richard and Matt.

“We start by visiting your site to consider the environmental conditions such as sunlight, views and prevailing winds.” Creating an architectural practice that would deliver clients the innovation,

service and attention to detail they deserve was the vision Richard and Matt had when they founded Insight Architecture in April 2003. Today, they’re proud to consider themselves one of Tauranga’s largest architectural practices, with a team of 12 designers who are passionate about great architecture and have a desire to exceed clients’ expectations every step of the way.

“With our large architectural design team and experienced contractors, we provide sound solutions resulting in a successful build,” say Richard and Matt.

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321 February, August, 2017 2015

Heard of Duck Island?

Out-of-the-ordinary ice-creams If you like ice-cream, hold on to your cone as you are going to fall in love with Duck Island ice-cream.

With 17 flavours to select from, there will definitely be a favourite amongst them that will keep you going back! The most tempting for me are the cacao cardamom yoghurt a dairy-free product; a very close second is the salted caramel and cacao crumb, and third on my list is strawberry, coconut and kaffir lime.

If I haven’t already got your taste buds reeling then here are a few more to take your fancy…

Orange blossom chocolate chip Cinnamon smoke apple pie Chocolate cherry crunch Roast white chocolate and miso Raglan coconut yoghurt

Cacao cardamom yoghurt Black sticky rice Blackberry, sage and honey Duck Island Ice Cream parlour came about because the owners felt there was a market and there weren’t enough of them around in a country that eats a lot of ice cream.

“We like to make slightly out-of-theordinary ice-creams while at the same time sticking to some of the classics like vanilla bean and salted caramel. Any herb or flavour can be infused into milk and cream then churned into ice-cream so we like to experiment,” says Duck Island Ice Cream director Morgan Glass.

“We are primarily an ice-cream parlour but our ice-cream is available wholesale in a few different locations around the country, now in 500ml tubs, including most Vetro stores and

Manager, Jamie Laurie at Coco’s

Liz Gore from Vetro

Farro Fresh in Auckland.

Duck Island is a small batch ice-cream shop based in Hamilton. All the ice-cream is made in their on-site kitchen. They use organic milk, free-range eggs and seasonal ingredients. No preservatives, colourings, stabilisers or emulsifiers are in any of their ice-cream. The dairy-free icecreams are made with coconut milk.

“Customers have reacted well to our product, especially children who are great at trying the more adventurous flavours, like raspberry coconut and coriander or popcorn.”

The Duck Island team is currently doing up an old Mr Whippy truck that will hopefully be up and running later in the year.

Duck Island Ice Cream is available at two of my regular stops – Vetro in 3rd Ave, they stock a great range of flavours in two different tub sizes, and if you are coming off the Mount beach and dying for an ice-cream then head directly to Coco’s Espresso Bar, 208 Maunganui Rd – as well as other stockists I have yet to discover.

Claire Rogers

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life+style The Weekend Sun 3

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3 February, 2017 life+style The Weekend Sun 21 August, 2015

A signature sound February in three-part harmony

Tony Hicks is the third part of a three-part harmony. “But only by mistake.”

He’s part of that distinctive amalgam of sound that is the signature of The Hollies – the 1960s pop rock Hall of Famers, who are heading to Tauranga City – or Tower-runga with a hard ‘g’ – as Hicks calls it, this month.

But then the Poms, who invented the language, also say ‘wrong’ and ‘sing’ and the likes with a hard ‘g’.

The air in Papamoa is thick with hard g’s.

Anyhow Hicks, being a Mancurian transplanted to North London can be forgiven. If for no other reason than he is a likeable bugger and he’s spared some time to chat with The Weekend Sun about The Hollies Highway of Hits Tour this month. And he rang me, he paid for it.

Now, when Tony joined the Hollies they were a two-part harmony – Allan Clarke, the original lead singer, and Graham Nash, who would later achieve superstardom with Crosby, Stills, etc.

Hicks, who was a newbie in the band, says he got too close to a microphone one day while recording at Abbey Road. “I was just mumbling away pretending to make a contribution and someone said: ‘That’s it’.”

That’s what? “That same someone said: ‘That’s the bottom harmony and we like that’.” So Tony’s spent the ensuing 50 years being the bottom part of three and mumbling away into a microphone because of one fatal day when he got too close to a microphone.

Up to

Boutique

Mind you, it beats the hell out of the alternative.

He was an apprentice electrician in a cotton mill.

“And at 15, happily so.” Five-and-a-half days a week for two pounds and 50 pence.

“Working over the looms wiring things up, these massive machines crashing back and forth and they never turned them off, production never stopped.”

He suffered some massive shocks. “I was up on a trestle and as soon as it went to earth, it threw me so far across the room I thought I would never come back.”

Life could have been so different for Tony. No concert venues chock-full of screaming, adoring fans demanding ‘I’m Alive’, ‘Bus Stop’ and ‘Carrie Annie’, no international tours, no worldly experiences and none of the Henley-on-Thames trappings of a rock lifestyle.

And if that electric charge in the cotton mill had done its worst, the Hollies would have been a twopart harmony forever.

Instead Tony will be packing his guitar, sandals and knotted hanky and heading down under for a fortnight to escape the northern winter. “What a joy.”

“Bob [drummer Bobby Elliott] and I do it because we love doing it.” For half a century they’ve been “doing it” and Tony has just edged into his 72nd year. “And we all get on so well. We don’t have to stay in separate hotels because we don’t like each other – which is the case for a lot of bands.”

Elliott and Hicks have been there since the

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“I was just mumbling away pretending to make a contribution and someone said: ‘That’s it’.”

beginning. There have been 12 other members along the pop highway, a lot of chefs, but the food remains very palatable, very satisfying and true to the original proven recipe.

I know – because a couple of years ago this reporter’s thinning grey hair was amongst all the grey bobs and spectacles at Auckland’s Aotea Centre for another Hollies gig. I was in the front row, I could have reached out and touched Hicks’ shoelaces, which I probably would have done in the 1960s.

But no. We remained seated, we did not scream or bop in the aisles. The most outrageous behaviour was singing along with ‘The Air that I Breathe’. “The audience always claims the chorus as their own.”

And because we are older and wiser I sat, listened and observed – and I remember Hicks laughing and smiling – no rock star hubris here. He was enjoying it. That only assisted digestion.

As for Tony’s favourite Hollies song: “Anything the audience likes”. But away from ‘work’ he enjoys the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. “As far as the modern stuff, well DJ Calvin Harris puts some good music together.”

Tony stays enthused because they “keep trying things” and they keep up-to-date with technology and what they offer on stage.

And they are assisted by “a clever little devil” Tony’s son Paul Hicks pulled the music together for ‘Love’, Cirque du Soleil’s interpretive circus-based stage show of the Beatles’ music in Las Vegas. The boy keeps the father honest.

Apprentice to popstar – Tony Hicks circa 1960s.

Fifty years down the pop highway.

Paul works with George Harrison’s son and has won three Grammys. Clever little devil indeed.

“Three Grammys more than his dad’s got,” says Tony. “Which annoys me a great deal.”

I had an inkling but I didn’t know – the Hollies were named for the Christmas garland and an admiration for Buddy Holly?

The Hollies Highway of Hits tour plays at ASB Baypark Arena, Mount Maunganui, on February 26, at 7.30pm. Tickets are available through Ticketek.

Hunter Wells

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February, 2017 life+style The Weekend Sun 213 August, 2015

Jo’s free labour of love Unearthing the quarry’s beauty A special place of breath-taking beauty now stands where a quarry once scarred the hillside of Te Puna.

And Jo Dawkins has been on the entire journey of its transformation from a dis-used rock quarry to the world class facility it is today.

And mostly she’s weeded her way through the years – quite literally.

Jo’s been involved “since day one” when she lived on Te Puna Quarry Rd, with park founder Shirley Sparks just around the corner.

Te Puna Quarry Park was a rock quarry in the early 1900s, through until 1979. Ten years later, the council planted some pine trees, and the Te Puna Quarry Park Society was formed in 1993, beginning work on the park three years later.

Now, 24 years later, Jo remembers the early days with fondness and pride.

“Shirley came to me one day said: ‘We’re thinking of doing something at the quarry and would you like to involved as the horticultural expert?’ I took a great big gulp and thought…” laughs Jo. “Then I had a nurseryman friend, from Auckland, who I took up there. And I asked him: ‘Do you think we can do anything here?’

“He said: ‘This could be the best botanical garden in the world. You can bring in water, you can bring in soil, but you’ve got this fantastic north-facing aspect’. Those thoughts have kept us going,” says Jo. “Now we are botanically interesting.”

Today the park boasts a myriad of native and exotic offerings – and they extend past plants.

Jo Dawkins

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There’s an artistic feast of sculptures, numbering more than 30 works of outdoor art.

There’s a dedicated Australian area, a palm grove, a South African area including 80 strelizia with a continual display of flowers, while the entrancecarpark area showcases New Zealand natives.

There’s heritage roses, more than 50 Nikau palms, plus cabbages trees, an interesting selection of cacti and succulents, an attractive collection of bromeliads, orchids, Rhododendrons, mixed ornamentals, a herb garden, a fuchsia area offering a colourful display year-round, magnolias, clivias and a butterfly garden.

But all of these varied and beautiful flora and fauna offerings bring with them weeds and maintenance work needed at the park.

So Jo’s up at the quarry at least three days week, weeding and preening the park.

She’s at the weekly volunteer meet-up on Tuesdays, there Thursdays with a smaller group “and I go up Saturdays, because my husband plays golf all of those days”.

Fellow volunteer Athol Harvey says Jo is a crucial part of the team. “Jo’s there rain, hail or shine. And she’ll go up there by herself some days – and she’ll be there all day. But her work goes beyond weeding.

“She also networks with all of our plant suppliers and uses her van to transport plants etc.”

So what got Jo hooked? “Well, I’m not very good at sitting still. And it’s just a fantastic place to be.

“And to work and meet people.”

And Jo would love to see more volunteers get involved with the quarry park – they desperately need them.

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So what got Jo hooked? “Well, I’m not very good at sitting still. And it’s just a fantastic place to be.

“And to work and meet people.”

“Especially men,” says Jo. “Because we’ve got a tractor they drive and other sort of tools they can use. And they don’t just have to weed.

“Some people – about half to them – have their specialised area to go to, whether it is the butterfly garden, the cactus and succulents, the bromeliads, or rose garden or herb garden.

“While others sort of go everywhere, where they think it is needed.”

And Jo says December has been challenging, thanks to November’s rain feeding the weeds.

“But we’re not going to be a pristine garden – we’re not going exactly for the wild look but the natural look.

“And people appreciate that – they feel comfortable there.”

So is she proud at what lays before her eyes today?

“Yes, yes, mmm,” says the woman who’s been involved with plants and flowers all of her life.

Jo says volunteer work at the quarry is good chance to make new friends “and you don’t have to be an expert on plants”. And the time you can spare can be flexible and infrequent.

“I was talking to a mum of two children up there recently. They spent two hours walking around; the children just loved it. The little girl likes flower and the little boy likes the shape of leaves and plants. It’s just a fantastic place for kids and families.”

Those interested can turn up on a Tuesday morning to meet fellow volunteers and see what happens around the park. The day starts about Merle Foster 8.30am.

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life+style The Weekend Sun 21 August, 2015

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