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Artist impressions of how the Countdown Supermarket at the new Showgrounds Hill development will look. The go-ahead for a retail development for Showgrounds Hill, the SC RSA building's demolition, and the return of a beloved cat missing for two years, all made the headlines in December, as Doug Sail discovered in the final instalment of our series looking back at the year that was. The controversial Timaru retail development proposal at Showgrounds Hill was granted resource consent on December 11, less than a day after a ruling that the application was not headed for public consultation. Pe...

Supplied The size of the hail that hit Timaru in a storm in November 2019, causing more than $170 million in damage. Multi-million dollar insurance payouts for fires and a storm were big news in The Timaru Herald during November, writes Doug Sail in an ongoing review of 2020. The insurance bill for Timaru’s 2019 hailstorm reached $170.98m in November making it New Zealand’s costliest weather event this century. The Insurance Council of New Zealand’s (ICNZ) figures released a few days before the one-year anniversary of the storm, listed the hailstorm in the top five of the most expensi...

JOHN BISSET/Stuff Election night joy as Labour's Jo Luxton, with husband Matt, and supporters celebrate her win in the Rangitata electorate. A general election and a devastating fire dominated October’s headlines, writes Doug Sail in the 10th of our series looking back on the year that was. Jo Luxton was feeling ‘‘pretty damn good,’’ after winning the Rangitata electorate for Labour in a surprise general election result on October 17. Luxton, who lost to Andrew Falloon in 2017 by a massive 6331 votes, secured an election night total of 18,876 well ahead of National candidate Megan...

The simple announcement of a show for children sparked two petitions, a series of articles and plenty of community comment that stretched nearly two months, Doug Sail discovered when he reviewed the news that made headlines in August 2020 as part of our series looking back on the year that was. A Timaru woman launched a petition calling on the town’s library to cancel an event which would have seen a drag queen duo address children on diversity. Taranaki-based drag queens Erika and Coco Flash were due to visit Timaru on August 20 to deliver their Rainbow Story Time NZ session as part of a...

BEJON HASWELL/Stuff Rangitata MP Andrew Falloon, pictured in Timaru on July 8, 2020, 12 days before his resignation over allegations of sending an indecent image. A scandal involving former Rangitata MP Andrew Falloon was a dominating feature of July’s news writes Doug Sail, as we continue our series looking back on the year that was. Rangitata MP Andrew Falloon resigned in disgrace in July after it was revealed he had sent an indecent image to a young woman. The 37-year-old National Party MP, elected to Parliament in 2017, announced in a press release on July 20 that he would not be cont...