49 Cook Islanders fly our flag at the Delhi Commonwealth Games
Local link to Niagara sinking
Edgewater lays it on for lucky guests
A step up in sausages
Kikau Hut a work in progress
OM Nite at Raviz
Raro Idol starts tonight

Junior weightlifters Luisa Peters and Sirla Pera are pumped and ready for Delhi. 10092420

Local netballers and the most recognised Team Cook Islands athletes Curly George (left) and Luciana Matenga in their Delhi strip. 10092422

If more teams and athletes pull out of the Delhi Commonwealth Games – the Cook Islands are sure to win medals!

That’s just one of the light hearted comments being bandied around as Team Cook Islands prepares to fly out to the games being branded the ‘Delhi dilemma’ by international media.

Jokes aside – chef de mission George George has taken all international concerns about the preparedness of Delhi and the security very seriously.

These same issues have seen the withdrawal of a number of world champion athletes from the games including Australia discus world champion Dani Samuels, and English world triple jump champion Phillips Idowu.

Even Olympic and world champion sprinter Usain Bolt of Jamaica has pulled out of the game though not because of the security scare but rather because he doesn’t rate the Commonwealth Games.

But over the last week – team administrator Siniva Marsters has been on the ground in Delhi making sure the needs of the team will be met while in India.

In her reports, Marsters has assured the team that their accommodation in Tower 10 of the Delhi Games Village is ready – apart from some cleaning that still needs to be done.

Her report that seven New Zealand police officers will serve as security for Team Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau and Team New Zealand has boosted the confidence of the 49 members of the local team of athletes and officials.

With that reassurance – Team Cook Islands departs for Auckland early tomorrow (Sunday) morning for a day before flying to Delhi on a chartered Air India flight along with fellow athletes from the Pacific.

- The sports side of things.

Despite the news of unpreparedness, collapsed bridges and dengue fever scares – Team Cook Islands athletes have continued their training and preparations for Delhi.

The Cooks will have a total of 33 athletes competing in boxing, lawn bowls, netball, tennis and weightlifting.

The Cook Islands has competed at the Commonwealth Games since 1974 and over that time no medals have been won, yet.

However, some great performances were seen at past games including a credible quarter final finish for the 2006 Commonwealth lawn bowls team.

And should the Cooks win medals at the Delhi games – they will come from the bowls green.

This year’s lawn bowls format is said to be a ‘tough’ one by Cook Islands Bowling Association president George Paniani.

Unlike the 2006 games where lawn bowls was played in four sections of 16 teams which saw the Cooks finish in the top 8 – the Delhi game format could be played in the format of four sections of 6 teams.

If so, only the top team in each section will move on to the semi finals and medals play off – so the local team will need to polish up their bowls if they are to better their performance in 2006.

Seventeen-year-old Patricia Taea is the team’s sole track athlete.

Just this week the Titikaveka College student picked up a gold medal at the Oceania Area Championships in javelin but Taea will only race the 100m in Delhi.

She is not expected to break or set any records but the experience is sure to ensure the youngster remains inspired in her chosen sport.

Boxers Mathew Titoa and Jubilee Arama have been cleared to box in India after early eligibly issues.

Both boxers have been training in Tahiti with some of the region’s top boxers and are sure to be bruising opponents.

Junior weightlifters Sirla Pera and sole female lifter Luisa Peters are looking for personal bests at the games but could well be in with a chance of a medal in the junior divisions.

Ranked 10th in the world – the netball team local based players Luciana Matenga and Curly George are shooting for a better ranking.

The team will face the Silver Ferns in their first match at the games which is sure to get the local team fired up for the two-week tournament.

Sole tennis player Britany Teei is going to make history.

This is the first time tennis has been part of the Commonwealth Games and Teei will become the first Cook Islander to represent the country in tennis at a Commonwealth Games.

The team is not expected to bring home a huge medal haul but while in India the team’s number one aim is to fly our nation’s flag with honour and to showcase the Cook Islands as a proud sporting nation.

- Matariki Wilson is travelling with Team Cook Islands

- Team Cook Islands

George George Williamson (chef de mission)

George Hosking (general team manager)

Siniva Marsters (team administration)

Rangiau Fariu (team doctor)

Charleen Silcock (team physio)

Paul Aitu (team physio)

Ariane Whareaitu-Carroll (team physio)

Matariki Wilson (team media)

Team athletes and officials are:

- Athletics – Patricia Taea, John Teiti (team official)

- Boxing – Mathew Titoa, Jubilee Arama, Navy Epati (team official), Tom Marsters (team official)

- Lawn bowls – Matangaro (Irene) Tupuna, Tangata (Mou) Tokorangi, Ngatungane (Nane) Tere Porea Elisa, Teokotai Rahui (Tai) Jim, Mata (Kanny) Vaile, Denis Tokorangi, Tupou Okirua Farapotea, Kairua Takai, Vaine Henry, Ioane (Vou) Ina Tou, Munokokura (Peter) Pita, Anna Kairua (team official), Nelson Akava (team official)

- Netball – Poomaikelani Matapo, Eleanor Taputu-Crombie, Luciana Matenga, Melissa Pittman, Celeste Brunton, Holly Solomona, Ritua Ali'iva'a, Paula Te Huna, Curly George, Patricia (Patty) Te Huna, Noeline Davida, Ngatokorua Ellis Tuitupou, Lynette Alison Hagai (team official), Patricia Jean (PJ) Hockin (team official), Ngatokoa Gifford (coach/team official), Gareth Kenneth Rapson (team official)

- Tennis – Brittany Teei

- Weightlifting – Luisa Peters, Sirla Pera and Sam Pera Snr (team official)

The RMS Niagara, a 13,415-tonne two-funnelled steamer sunk by the first German mine in the Pacific. 10092011

Keith Tombleson steering the SV Southern Cross as Captain Paul Green looks on. 10092009

Keith Tombleson recalls when

mine brought war close to home

In June 1940, Keith Tombleson was a fresh-faced 15-year-old, a deck boy on the RMS Niagara.

Following in the footsteps of his older brother Geoff (who at the time was working alongside deck boy Stan Dearlove), he’d swapped life on a South Taranaki farm for life at sea – “from way down in the bush to the wide world” – and he’d been crewing with the two-funnelled steamer for six months.

Just before 4am on June 18, Tombleson was jolted from sleep, blown clear out of his bunk by the first German mine to make its mark in Australasian waters. Until that point, to New Zealand the war in Europe seemed a million miles away – the blast that sent Tombleson crashing to his cabin’s cold metal floor was the blast that brought World War II to New Zealand.

Tombleson, now 86, lives in Arorangi. A whale-watching excursion with the Southern Cross last week was his first trip past the reef in all of the 11 years he’s resided on Rarotonga.

“He enjoyed it so much that the whales were just a bonus,” his son Trevor said. “What I saw when he took over the wheel – what came into my mind – I saw his youth return and it made me very proud. It was almost like an important part of his life was flashing before my eyes.”

Captain Paul Green handed Tombleson the wheel, and for half an hour Tombleson was again a young man on the open ocean.

“The best years of my life I spent at sea,” he said.

The 1940 explosion didn’t scare him away from the sea – he continued to work on ships, travelling to Vancouver with the Aorangi and loading oranges, bananas, pineapples and tomatoes from Rarotonga onto the Maui Pomare. “Of all the islands I visited, this is the one I liked best,” he said.) When Tombleson gave up life as a seaman, he fished off the coast of Auckland.

But no other at-sea experience is seared into his memory like the RMS Niagara explosion, the ironic twist of history that tagged the RMS Niagara – the first ship Tombleson worked on – as the first ship in the Pacific to be sunk by a Nazi raider.

Tombleson remembers the Orion, the German raider that snuck into New Zealand waters disguised as a cargo vessel, its plan to lay mines in the shipping lanes. (Five years later, as fate would have it, a bomb sunk the Orion.)

“We didn’t realise the Germans had laid mines,” Tombleson said. “It was eight or nine months into the war – it hadn’t come out to the Pacific. We never realised they came so early and so close (to New Zealand).”

But the RMS Niagara, carrying 136 passengers, 202 crew and eight tons of gold bullion belonging to the Bank of England, struck a mine, and proved otherwise.

“We didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “We didn’t know about the mines. We thought it was a torpedo and I remember waiting for the next one. I remember being scared of that.”

He threw on pants and a jersey, and escaped through the door that was seconds later sealed shut. Thirty minutes later, water was pouring into the hatch, quickly filling a hole so wide that a car disappeared without a trace, and the captain issued the ‘abandon ship’ signal.

Tombleson clambered into a lifeboat – one of the last half dozen in the water – and by the light of the moon they watched the RMS Niagara stand on end, and sink.

Sitting in one of 18 lifeboats, surrounded by people silently watching the 13,415 tonne ship sink, its lights ablaze, Tombleson reacted the way any 15-year-old would.

“I thought, no work tomorrow. It wasn’t any big drama. I remember thinking that,” Tombleson said of New Zealand’s most historic WWII episodes.

(His son swears he’s the most humble of men – “a reporter’s worst nightmare” with a flair for understatement, Trevor said.)

Tombleson and the rest of those onboard survived – with the exception of a man who jumped overboard from the rescue ship, devastated by the loss of all his personal belongings – and reached shore at 9pm.

What didn’t make it back to shore was 2.5 million pounds’ worth of gold bullion – a payment from Australia to America for wartime equipment.

Most of the bullion was recovered a year later, dredged up from 438 feet in a mission that made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the deepest salvage attempted in those years.

About a month after the Niagara sunk, Tombleson went to work on the Aorangi, shuttling between Australia, Auckland and America. He got ten pounds as compensation for what he’d lost aboard the Niagara, and continued to live his life at sea.

Today he’s happily retired, and enjoys the company of his children, grandchildren and four great-grandchildren at his Arorangi home. His son Paul, who works in archives in the USA, has laminated a boxful of 1940 newspaper clippings, RMS Niagara dinner menus and programmes, and on Keith’s shelf still sits a boxing cup he won in a fight against another crew member that he sent home to his mother in Hawera before the ship sank.

• Rachel Reeves

Even arriving after midnight on Thursday night’s delayed flight hasn’t dampened the thrill of being the 300,000th guests at Edgewater.

If the flight had come in on time, Ronald and Debra Adams would have been serenaded by the resort’s musicians and greeted by three members of staff. As it was, a team effort from the airport ground staff and Air New Zealand hustled them through immigration.

“There was an announcement over the plane PA when we arrived saying that passengers Adams had to see ground staff,” said Debra. “We thought our baggage had been delayed! I started checking – I had a toothbrush in my bag and nothing else.”

The couple from Blenheim in NZ’s South Island were whisked through immigration to where Edgewater’s General Manager Chris McGeown was waiting for them to give them the news.

“It was such a lovely surprise,” Debra said. “Rarotonga is our favourite destination.”

The pair married four years ago and had their honeymoon on Rarotonga and are back for their wedding anniversary, so the unexpected upgrade has made a special vacation even more memorable.

“We left a week-long southerly storm and snow from 100 metres on the hills, and arrived to this incredible sunshine,” said Ronald. “And what a reception!”

The couple have had an upgrade to beach front deluxe, a fruit basket in their room, a complimentary island night on Saturday, and a his & hers aromatherapy massage. They also have a free bottle of bubbly on ice – but are saving that till tomorrow night after Ronald has finished the Round Rarotonga Road Race.

Edgewater has been around for nearly 40 years, and McGeown was keen to sum up what that means.

“This means we have had 2 million guest nights, used around 80 shipping containers of loo roll, and 40 containers of cereal,” he said. “If we estimate that those guests are 1.5 metres tall each and we laid them head to toe, they would go round the island 12 times.”

On a more serious note, McGeown expressed his pride in the work being done by the staff. “We rely on our staff to provide a good guest experience. We believe that the Cook Islands is the best south Pacific location, and within that, Edgewater is doing it’s bit.”

• Nerys Case

Specialist sausage maker Dan Forsyth. 10092416

Dan Forsyth and his team at Prime Foods are working hard to offer people the best sausages possible.

Now they have a new machine and around a hundred tried and tested sausage recipes, the team are keen to make sure everyone knows what’s on offer.

“When we first opened Prime Foods I wanted to make our own product,” said Forsyth. “I brought a sausage machine which was made in the 1960s and started making sausages. At first I thought we would get through 50 kilos a week – but after our first week it went up to 500 kilos!”

Forsyth brought in a butcher with 40 years experience in the business to help him learn all about sausage making, and said that he wants to set the same kind of standards as New Zealand for the island. The master butcher has now left, but he left Dan with a book of 100 recipes and the inspiration to start creating his own – like the all new veal, ginger and sage he has rustled up which has been going down a storm with customers.

Other varieties on offer include Spanish chirizo, pork and beef, chicken and herb varieties and the African speciality the Boerwos. This monster sized banger would make any meal and has a special combination of nutmeg and clove flavours.

The first machine didn’t mix the sausages up, so the team used to spend an incredible eight hours mixing 200kg of sausages. Now they have the new machine they are down to four hours – still a lot of dedication to put in to providing high quality sausages.

But because the sausages aren’t mass produced, Forsyth is proud to be offering something with around 15% fat – much less than most processed bangers. And they won’t be bulked up with water either. He puts as much effort into the making of his sausages as he did during his 10 years of chefing on the island. “Any good chef knows that it is all preparation and getting the ingredients right. Making sausages is exactly the same thing.”

• Nerys Case

Kevin Simkin and Cathy Pearman, owners of Kikau Hut, have given the place a new look. 10092411

For Cathy Pearman and Kevin Simkin, 2010 has been about change.

The couple moved to Rarotonga in December, and assumed ownership of Kikau Hut in January.

Since then, they’ve been revamping the restaurant’s look, and they’re not quite finished.

Kikau Hut has new gardens, and Cathy and Kevin plan to have a mural painted on the restaurant’s exterior. They’ve cleaned up the outdoor dining area, and have rented it out for private functions.

They’ve critiqued Kikau Hut’s menu – though they retained some tried-and-true favourites – and recruited chef Alan Matapo.

The couple first considered the Cook Islands as a holiday destination six years ago. Cathy was teaching management courses for Pacific Islanders at Aoraki Polytechnic in Timaru, and 15 of her students were Cook Islanders, who all urged her to visit Rarotonga.

She and Kevin were invited to stay with a student’s family, who sourced accommodation, car and a phone for them, and stocked their refrigerator with coconuts and fruit.

“That was true Cook Islands hospitality – they welcomed us as part of the family,” Kevin remembered.

They were hooked, and they kept coming back.

Last June, the couple dined at Kikau Hut and struck up a conversation with its then-owners, who indicated that they were planning to sell the business.

Cathy and Kevin, who both have hospitality experience, jumped at the chance to run a restaurant in Rarotonga, and six months later packed their bags.

“Our family thought we’d gone mad – we’d never talked about moving overseas or relocating,” Cathy said.

The pair figured their sons were grown and they didn’t have grandchildren yet, so it was the perfect time to escape to the islands.

“Everyone told us when our children grow up and move out they’ll be back seven or eight times, so we said as soon as they did grow up we’d sell the house and leave the country. That’s been our joke,” Cathy said.

Since they took the plunge, their kids have come to visit, and after two days on Rarotonga could understand why their parents had moved.

Cathy and Kevin are fully immersed in their new business – they live on the premises, and they even plan to marry at Kikau Hut next year.

The couple makes it a point to treat Kikau Hut staff like family, and guests like friends. They’re willing to get down and dirty, cleaning toilets and helping in the kitchen – “we wouldn’t tell people what to do unless we would do it ourselves”– and Kevin said he takes care to introduce himself to every diner that sits down to eat at Kikau Hut.

“Our view with Kikau Hut is it’s a lifestyle – we try and get around and meet all the people that come in. So many are first timers and it’s neat to hear their positive feedback about the island. We really enjoy that side of (running Kikau Hut),” Kevin said.

He and Cathy frequently offer drop-offs to diners, free of charge – to allow guests to enjoy a couple of drinks without worrying about getting home.

“If people can enjoy the Cook Islands experience, if you can make them really enjoy it, they’ll come back,” he said.

Cathy and Kevin are enjoying Rarotonga’s beauty, and want to stay awhile.

“Going down to the beach, standing between the trees, looking at (the sea) is really priceless,” Cathy said. “I hope we never take it for granted.”

Their overriding goal is to leave the business in a better state than it was when they bought it – “be it that the buildings are in a better state of repair or the business is financially more secure”, they said.

Kikau Hut is open every day of the week except Wednesdays for dinner from 6pm to close.

• Rachel Reeves

Chris Bold and Ti Kamana perform at Banana Court at OM Nite last month. 10092329

Mike Moreland, first mate on the visiting Picton Castle, was “fantastic” on the guitar, Ruaine said. 10092330

Joanne Mistry singing her heart out at OM Nite last month. 10092331

It’s Open Mic Nite time again, so dust off your guitars and prepare to perform at Raviz Indian restaurant on Monday night.

OM Nite kicks off at 7pm, and all aspiring and established musicians are welcome to come along.

“Use it as an opportunity to try out that new song you've been working on, or that Lady Gaga number in front of an appreciative live audience. Nothing to lose but everything to gain,” OM Nite organiser Nooroa Ruaine said.

He noted that a number of performers who started out testing the waters at OM Nite “have since gone on to bigger and better things”, and some have weekly gigs at restaurants around the island.

“You could be next,” he said.

For information, contact Ruaine on 71216.

• Rachel Reeves

The official Raro Idol competition begins today.

Staircase held auditions last week, and 15 vocalists went into the running to be Raro’s newest singing sensation. The competition proper starts at 8.30pm today at Staircase.

For 10 weeks afterward, the competition will be at the same time, same place. To watch the live show at Staircase, it will cost $5 or $25 with dinner option.

The shows will be televised the following day – Sunday – and voters will have until Friday of that week to submit their votes.

Telecom Cook Islands will assign a number to each contestant, and viewers can text in with the number corresponding to their favourite contender.

• Rachel Reeves