My Account
Hibiscus Matters wants to thank some of the workers who kept essential services operating during lockdown. There were many more types of workers than we could include here, but here is a shout out to a few of the locals:
Recycling truck driver/owner Vijay Samy
“I worked the whole lockdown. People were very friendly – clapping and smiling. The children were watching the process, waving, and I am going to miss making them happy. For me it was very different from normal and very enjoyable. There was a lot more recycling – it was like Christmas in terms of volume because everyone was home. The company looked after us and I felt safe.”
Love Soup volunteer Xavier Mika
Fifteen-year-old Whangaparaoa College student Xavier Mika was one of many new volunteers who helped out at the food rescue charity Love Soup during their busy lockdown period. Doing this was part of his Duke of Edinburgh award service.
Local dairies
Thanks also goes to the local dairy owners, staff and suppliers who provided the community with a small business alternative source of essential items – including flour!
Tony Rickerby, Bowls Orewa
“As well as being the club’s president, I am also the greenkeeper and was deemed an essential worker. Under lockdown we were given the okay to go back in and do spraying and cutting. If fungi gets in, we could lose the whole green in 48 hours. With the dry weather, it goes rampant and golf was worried about that too.”
Denise Davies Whangaparaoa College teacher/head of technology
“I was one of many teachers who, before lockdown, had never heard of Zoom. Now I zoom in and out of my students’ lives all day. I started day one with my Kaiarahe (Academic Counselling Class) setting the Covid-19 push up challenge, and uploaded a video of myself doing 19 very poor push ups – over half my class uploaded theirs. We have had ‘staycation’ photos, crazy hat day and shared Anzac Day morning tea via Zoom. My senior classes moved very quickly to working online, with 80 percent tuning into lessons. The biggest change was sitting many hours in front of a computer. I learnt that it’s not only the learners who are adaptable, but so are we teachers.”
Whangaparaoa Lodge owner Troy Clarry
“Upon digesting all the information out there at level 2, 3 and into 4 and with the guidance of Hospitality NZ, the team made the decision to operate our hotels as an essential business. This was time to step up to assist guests who needed us. We had a number of distraught phone calls from guests who had stayed with us before desperately trying to find accommodation, as they were either being asked to leave their current place, or given no guarantee of being able to stay. We knew of others arriving back to NZ who would need to self isolate, so we went into action creating processes to keep everyone safe. We then helped them start the process of getting home. Emotionally, handling the guest experience was one issue, we also needed to urgently look at what this all meant for our business. We had two weeks of rolling future cancellations, wiping out all the business on the books for 2020. Late nights were spent on cost saving plans, negotiating with landlords, preparing financial forecasts and ongoing, fruitless discussions with banks. We have been trying to predict what each Alert Level may mean to us – in the hope that it can bring in some business.”
Unichem Manly owner, pharmacist Tania Adams
“Lockdown was like nothing I have ever seen before. To protect our patients from us, us from our patients and our patients from each other we came up with a ‘contactless pharmacy’ involving perspex and paywave. It might have been annoying to stand in our queue, two metres apart and wait, however people who visit our pharmacy are often frail and/or sick and we were seriously worried. Before we did this, despite our best attempts at questioning people at the door, we had people who were at high risk of carrying the virus still coming in. Another big reason for a contactless pharmacy was so that we could stay open. If any of the team got infected, we would have had to close, so we started running two shifts with no contact between. This meant that if one of us became sick, the other team could still be operational. The teams worked really hard and long hours. With initial threefold volumes of prescriptions arriving we were seriously overloaded at the start but put in systems to make things easier. I remember standing in the dispensary at 1am, devastated because I still had 300 prescriptions that I hadn’t done and I just had to go home and sleep, but we came out the other end with new ways of working, communicating and interacting with our community. We have very much appreciated our patients’ patience and understanding.”
Cerise Jordan, Manly Fire Brigade Volunteer Support
“During Alert Levels 4 and 3, volunteers from the Manly Fire Brigade continued to provide a 24 hour emergency response. Manly enacted a full pandemic plan prior to entering Level 4. This included creating crew based ‘bubbles’ and arranging online training or catch up sessions. The Brigade welfare team found contactless solutions for ensuring our members felt engaged and supported during this period. Certainly we have come up with novel ways to ensure morale is lifted! We are looking forward to when opportunities for physical training and comradeship increase. We would like to thank our wider community for their commitment to keeping the Coast safe by following government’s advice and guidelines.”
Detective Inspector Scott Beard, Hibiscus Coast AFC president
“I have been working though out the lockdown, including the odd day working from home. It has been busy, and I’ve run a fatal police shooting critical incident investigation in Counties and a couple of weeks later was involved with the Mt Roskill homicide. There were also a few family birthdays during the lockdown, where we caught up on Zoom. Along with other football club members we have been planning for a return to training and eventually playing when restrictions make that possible. While I have stayed fit running and cycling, I’m really looking forward to getting back out on the football pitch: coaching and playing.”
