Wairarapa’s locally owned community newspaper
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
INSIDE: Residents pitch in on ‘what feather ston really needs’ P13
Tackling loneliness Rest home’s best friend P3
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QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY HONOURS
Gong awarded for services to Maori Hayley Gastmeier
Liz Mellish has based her eventful life on manaakitanga, a Maori concept about caring for others. And it is probably because of this grounding that she has been successful in business and helped others along the way. Liz, of Featherston, has been made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to Maori and governance, having made significant contributions to mentoring Maori business in the
Wairarapa, greater Wellington, and Nelson regions. “We have a responsibility not just for ourselves but for our community in which we are active,” she said. “It isn’t just about you and your immediate family, it’s about taking care of everyone in your community — it’s called manaakitanga.” Liz, 67, is a Wairarapa girl through and through. She was born in Masterton, raised and schooled in Carterton, moved on to study in
Greytown at Kuranui, and then married her high school sweetheart, Graham, in 1970 and settled in Featherston. Of Te Ati Awa, Liz started her working life with ANZ Bank. From 1975 to 1997 she and her husband owned a milk run in Featherston, and the pair started Hoki Smoke, a business smoking fish, which they ran for 16 years until 2012. The couple have three daughters and nine mokopuna, who all live within striking distance.
Featherston’s Liz Mellish has been named a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her contributions to Maori in business. PHOTO/PETE MONK
Continued on page 3
Exclusive: Dream car purchase turns into a living nightmare
Couple scammed of $47k Emily Ireland If you want to make a quick $50k, be a scammer – “because no one will come for you”. That’s the conclusion of a Wairarapa couple left “gutted” after losing $47,000 attempting to buy their dream car online. The scammer now has the same car back for sale and the couple have enlisted a close friend in
a bid to try to “shut the scammers down”. The victims, who wish to remain anonymous, thought things in their life were falling into place. They had almost finished paying off their house, and their dream car – a 2009 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 –popped up for sale online on the trade website Trovit – it was $US33,500. Before long, they were in conversations – online and
over the phone – with the seller. He told them he had purchased the car in the United States and moved to Poland with the car, but the law made registration of a vehicle “expensive and difficult”. “Instead of letting it sit in the garage I’ve decided to sell it at a low price,” he told them. The seller even promised the Wairarapa couple
that because of the “high volume of internet scams” they would receive the car at their home address before he even received payment for it. Negotiations continued for about three months, and the couple even asked their accountant whether the seller’s business and the shipping company was legitimate. “Going by their website, it looks like a professional/
legit business,” the accountant told the couple, but they admitted: “I know as much as what you would about the business”. On March 13, the couple were asked to pay a $US8375 deposit to the shipping company. But on March 16, they were told there was a problem because the New Zealand Customs Service requires all vehicles to be fully paid for prior to
shipping. They checked, and this was confirmed by Customs. They paid the money, and the scammer gave them a tracking number and a supposed shipping company website. They tracked the progress of the supposed shipment through the site but on the weekend of April 8, the website disappeared. Continued on page 3
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