Six-year-old writes to council begging it to clean pond in much-loved park
From reporter Tina Law:
A decaying pond in a city park has been transformed after a 6-year-old girl wrote to the council begging them to clean it up.
Every time Sophie Marston visited Holliss Reserve in south Christchurch she would get upset about the state of the pond.
It was full of mud, leaves and rubbish, and she felt sorry for the ducks and eels.
She felt so strongly about it that she decided to write a letter to the Christchurch City Council.
In the letter, which she wrote in July, Sophie asked the council to come and clean the pond up so the ducks could have somewhere clean to live.
“Whenever I go to Holliss Ave Park and I look at the pond I feel sorry for the ducks and eels because it is full of mud, leaves and rubbish.
“Please could you clean the pond up and so the ducks can have somewhere clean to live.”
In early December, about five months after receiving the letter, the council cleaned out the pond.
Sophie, who is now 7, said she was happy the ducks had a nice clean home to live in again.
Her father Tim Marston said Sophie was quite proud of herself.
They were at the park on Saturday and overheard a family talking about how good the pond was looking.
“I said to Sophie that ‘even a little 7-year-old can make something really cool happen’.”
Council community parks manager Al Hardy said the pond had accumulated excessive amounts of organic matter which had detracted from the pond’s visual quality.
“We found the pond otherwise healthy, with roughly 600 fish (including eels) being re-homed to the Heathcote River, as part of the clean-up of the pond.”
He said the council received Sophie’s letter at the same time the team was working to resolve the issue.
“It’s great to see young people taking an interest in community parks and we want to thank her for highlighting this issue to us.”
Cashmere ward councillor Tim Scandrett said the state of the pond had been an issue for a while, with a number of people commenting to him about it.
He had previously raised it with staff and it was likely to be an ongoing problem.
He said it was wonderful that Sophie was concerned enough to do something about it and that she had the family support to do it.
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Kalle
"Sports and travelling run in the family, and that's kind of what's led me to come to New Zealand."
"I grew up in a small town in Finland. My dad was involved with sports all his life, he was a shot putter, discus thrower, powerlifter, we traveled quite a bit when I was a kid. He never mentioned much of the rugby days. He just said he broke both of his shin bones playing rugby, so he said, ‘never play the sport, It's crazy.’
I started playing when I was 18. I played my first cap for the Finnish national team in 2014, we won the Finnish championship with my club. Rugby is not a big thing in Finland.
I moved here to play rugby in 2017. The club that wanted me to come over was Methven Rugby Club. They got me here and they were like, ‘what do you do for work? I’d just finished chef school in Finland. ‘We'll get you a job at Mount Hutt as a chef, you can do that while you play rugby with us.’ I said, ‘Perfect. Yeah, I'm in’.
I've always loved food. My mum was an amazing cook, and still is. When I was studying tourism I worked in some hotels in Finland, and I saw how the chef's worked. I just loved the kitchen vibe and I was like, Yeah, that’d be something I'd love to do.
I've had more of a culinary journey In New Zealand than in Finland. I started at Mount Hutt, after that I worked at The Dubliner in Methven. I worked as a senior pizza chef at Sal’s for maybe six months then worked as chef de partie at Cellar Door. At Eliza's Manor, I worked myself up to a junior sous chef. Then the opportunity came to work my first head chef job at Moon Under Water.
We're privileged to have a busy atmosphere, we can try new things and get a bit creative. There are no TV’s, just come here with your family or with your mates, play board games, to socialise.
I really want to drive the local food and ingredients through the menu. We don't mind spending more for quality ingredients as long as it's supporting New Zealand businesses. We just love to use local. And it's pub food, but I feel like it's elevated.
I play club rugby here for the Christchurch Football Club, the oldest club in New Zealand and I still play regularly for the Finnish national team, whenever they can fly me over to play."
- Kalle
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