107.3 fm

Riverton's on air, 24/7! Broadcasting from a caravan parked on the main street of Riverton, we're broadcasting live to the town and beyond every day, round the clock. It's an exhausting experience! I've been delt the 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. slot with plenty of interviews, news and everything else that makes up the radio menu. It's very exciting and so far, without misshap (if you don't count the near calamity during the Christmas parade, where I almost totalled the caravan and it's occupants, guest broadcaster included, during an emergency stop before a crowd of hundreds!) The interviews have been very interesting, with discussions from Malcolm McKenzie on off-shore islands and forest remnants, Bob White on restoring Trotter House, Robert Hirsh on cycling in Central America and teaching in Papua New Guinea and Janice Templeton on the era of flax milling in Southland - and it's only day two! If you care to, find 107.3 fm on your radio and tune in to Radio Riverton! It's 9:35 and the weather outside is...

Mudmen

Coinciding with the contraversial removal of Riverton's rail bridge several years ago, the local estuary care group held a festival celebrating the towns most notable feature - the Jacob's River estuary. Huge kites flew, hovercraft hovered, an eight wheeled 'argo' trundled around the sand flats, yellow ducks vied for a place in the duck race and all manner of people watched the street parade as it's giant fish, wheeled yachts, piratical celebrities and assorted weird and wonderful finned, scaled and feathered participants wound their way down Palmerston street to the edge of the water, nearby to where the museum now stands. It was great fun and very well supported by people from all over Southland. Another 'estuary festival' is in the pipe-line and it will feature the oddly popular 'Mudman' race, where runners race a course that takes them out across the sands of the estuary bed at low tide, around a series of far-flung maimai, through 3 or 4 deepish channels and finally across the shelly delta to the finish line. Competition in the first year was fierce and in the second even more intense! As plans for the festival crystalise, I'll keep you informed. It might pay to get into training now, if the idea of a mud run appeals to your sense of adventure!

Water safety

The quality of the drinking water at Riverton has been of great interest to locals for some time now. A recent petition in the town, calling for an end to the spraying of herbicides along the river banks above the intake, attracted over 450 signatures in just 5 days - a notable response considering the small population of Riverton (perhaps 800 adults). The chairman of Environment Southland however was not impressed by the petition and wrote a somewhat scathing article in the Southland Times to that effect. Here is the 'letter to the editor' I sent in response.

Half truths, emotions, entrenched beliefs – Environment Southland Chairman Stuart Collie describes the hundreds of Riverton people that signed a recent petition for safer drinking water. He said Riverton people,‘developed a head of steam’ and’ left little room for facts’, over the issue of riverside spraying, then perversely went on to concede that spraying does affect water quality, as monitoring by his council showed. In a second article, ’Steer clear of polluted water’, EnvironmentSouthland and Public Health South encouraged us to be alert to the potential health risks caused by water pollution and to be ‘water savvy’.
The people of Riverton are showing that they already are.