Sizzling snags for 25 years
What could be New Zealand’s longest running sausage sizzle has only been cancelled once in its 25-year history.
In 1993, the Stratford Rotary Club held a sausage sizzle one Saturday and the snags proved so popular, the men kept cooking.
‘‘It was meant to be a one-off, but it was so successful it continued,’’ said club treasurer Gordon Gibbons, who has been involved since the beginning.
‘‘We’ve never been there when it was snowing but it has been pretty bloody wet,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ve only put it off the once because it would have been absolutely impossible but there are times I wonder what we are doing there.’’
Gibbons is generally the man cooking the sausages in their usual spot outside Paper Power bookshop on Broadway. Fellow Rotarians Barrie Smith or Peter Doyle handle the orders and take the money.
Although summer is the traditional barbecue season, business is brisker in chilly weather, of which Stratford has plenty. ‘‘When school sports are on, we get a lot of children and mums coming along shivering, and holding their hands out for sausages,’’ Gibbons said.
They are at their spot outside the bookshop by 9am and cook steadily until pack up time just before midday. The humble but tasty tucker has retained its appeal over the years even with competition from nearby cafes.
‘‘We have a lot of regulars,’’ he said. ‘‘They’re a damn nice sausage, a good pre-cooked, skinless, barbecue sausage.’’
The club buys the sauce, oil and onions as well as the sausages. Caltex provides the gas and bread is donated by Stratford Four Square.
They sell around 3000 sausages a year, about 60 of them every Saturday. At $2 each, it nets the group about $120 a week.
While Gibbons wouldn’t say how much they’d raised in 25 years, he said it provided a steady income for the club’s projects.
Gibbons thought the sausage sizzle could be the longestrunning barbecue fundraiser in New Zealand. ‘‘We probably are, I wouldn’t know but I would think so.
‘‘It’s an institution in Stratford on a Saturday.’’ Taranaki’s regional economy grew 1.8 per cent more in 2018 compared to the year before, an independent economic report shows.
The Infometrics report found the region’s GDP was $7.82 million in 2018 and followed the 2.6 per cent jump in GDP recorded in 2017.
Report author Benje Patterson said Taranaki’s expanding population, based on primary health providers enrolments, helped push up spending on goods and services throughout the region.
Infometrics data showed health enrolments in Taranaki grew 2.2 per cent in 2018, with about 111,603 enrolled in primary healthcare in the region last year, compared to 107,233 in 2013.
The same data showed the population nationally grew 1.9 per cent in 2018. Alongside population growth was a jump in electronic card spending in the region, which climbed 5.4 per cent last year. Visitor spending rose 8 per cent to $408m in Taranaki, compared to 4.3 per cent nationally, and helped fuel an