New Year fireworks Te Kai Whakarongo 6 January 2026 | Proudly locally owned and operated Issue 1191 Circulation 9800
theinformer.co.nz
@theinformernz
See page 3
Clique Gallery - Photography by Paul C Schrader
(07) 866 2090 info@theinformer.co.nz
CONNECTING COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE COROMANDEL PENINSULA
Happy N
ew Year e
www.basker.co.nz
3A Reweti Drive (opposite Mobil)
info@basker.co.nz | Ph 07 866 0645 | Open 8.00am to late
Our local New Year Honours List author
veryone!
Serving beach, food and drinks since 2023.
CORO CLASSIC
– the biggest event on The Coromandel
Photo Garry Brandon.
INTERVIEW WITH DAWN MARY MCMILLAN-MNZM BY PAULINE STEWART
D
awn was born in Te Kuiti, King Country. She grew up in the Bay of Islands – lived in Matamata and in 1998 moved to Waiomu with her husband Derek.
Dawn has lived in Waiomu, a community of about 400 people, for almost thirty years and it is where she started writing. She is an internationally recognized writer of Children’s books and has been translated into seven languages with best sellers in the USA and United Kingdom, as well as New Zealand. She
writes both serious and silly books, non-fiction and fiction. The Informer enjoyed an interview with Dawn following her being awarded an MNZM (Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit) for Services to Children’s Literature in the New Years Honours. We started with why her writing only began as a mature
adult. Dawn is a teacher and loves that profession, but she had been a teacher for many years and not written a book. “My children had grown to adults well before we came to Waiomu so it wasn’t the fact that the family had grown and I had more time. The stories just started to happen.” Continued on page 7
See page 13