Recent News and Events

Illegal street racing law now in force
Health first for NZ Kids
Find the facts about SARS
Road code on the internet
House prices booming
Richmond to provide a model of care
Annual plans
Richmond to provide a model of care
New approach to reduce immigration service queues
Rangiora/Kaiapoi liquor ban
Wedding Expo
Peace protest in the central city

Sites Added

Apprentice Training New Zealand
Information on employment for apprentices. Includes a bulletin board of situations vacant.

Christchurch Hearing Association
Information on the Christchurch Hearing Association and its staff, About hearing loss, hearing therapy, and devices. Latest news.

Planet Move Management
Relocation service for household, office and commercial relocations within New Zealand or overseas. Information on company, services, packing, insurance, customs. Move planner.

John Chaplin Architects
Well known local architectural firm

City Housing
Christchurch City Council unit providing rental housing

Ronald McDonald House South Island
Provides accommodation for the parents and siblings of children being treated for serious illness at Christchurch Hospital.

Mobile Surgical Services

The Mobile Surgical Project has been in the news with a  keyhole surgery kidney removal performed by Christchurch surgeons in the carpark of Christchurch Hospital. The project provides a specially equipped mobile operating theatre which can bring day surgery facilities to small rural hospitals but also, using high tech video communication, allows  an international exchange of expertise to larger hospitals. This latter technique is called telepresence surgery.

Telepresence surgery teleports surgeons as virtual assistants through internal connections and national links and aims to:

• Enable district and metropolitan hospitals to use national or international links for low volume cases
• Give surgical teams access to current developments and modifications in surgical techniques

The Bus travels on five-week cycles around New Zealand, stopping at district hospitals for one half day and metropolitan hospitals for two half days per cycle. Following an inaugural visit to Te Puia in March 2002, the mobile unit has been very busy. While a certain amount of this time has been involved with refining aspects of the trailer unit,  they  have maintained  scheduled visits to hospitals throughout the country.From an initial roster of seven hospitals the service has expanded to facilitate ten rural hospitals.

The Bus is 20m long, weighs 39 tonnes and is 2.5m wide. It is driven by a specially trained driver and was purpose built in New Zealand. The team behind the project is based in Christchurch and led by Dr Stuart Gowland.

Articles in the media include:

World first operation goes to plan  Press 20 May, 2003

Finding the perfect Venue for Your Wedding

Christchurch and the surrounding countryside provides many splendid venues for a wedding. A number of large country and town houses and their surrounding gardens have now been turned into wedding venues usually offering a garden setting for the ceremony and catering in splendid wood panelled rooms. localeye's Wedding Venues list gives a comprehensive rundown of  places where you might like to celebrate your wedding.

One of the most well known venues in the city is Ilam Homestead. Part of the University of Canterbury facilities, it is famous for its displays of azaleas and rhododendrons and also as a film set for Peter Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures.

Outdoor Wedding Locations is a helpful guide from the Christchurch City Council which lists eight  parks around Christchurch which have specific locations for weddings. These include the famous Edmonds Factory Gardens, Avebury Park in Richmond and of course the Christchurch Botanic Gardens which have five special sites for weddings. The guide also suggests using one of the many reserves around the city and on the Port Hills, and provides information on how to book these or find more information.

Surely the most unusual venue in Christchurch must be the Cave Wine Cellar at Moa Bones Point in Redcliffs. As the name suggests this is an ancient cave which has been turned into a candlelit wine cellar providing a unique atomosphere.