On Thursday night 26 March, the Cooks Beach Community Centre filled with people – residents, family and friends, some travelling long distances, to say farewell and thank you to Alan and Alison Henry. The weather was atrocious, nonstop wind and rain ,but it did not deter the depth of appreciation and affection that the community wanted to show to this couple.
Alan and Alison Henry moved to Cooks Beach in 2002 and they have loved their time and experience ,not just in Cooks Beach but in the wider Mercury Bay. They are reluctant to move homes but it is time to leave with regular attention to some health matters requiring them to be closer to a hospital. They have moved to Hamilton.
Both Alan and Alison have contributed a great deal to the welfare of people and the environment in their years here.
Allison and Alan
Alan set up his legal practice in Whitianga and in that time facilitated a great deal of work for community organisations. They were a team when it came to environmental causes and setting them up to have some legal teeth and a force of energy at the coalface.
Growing up on a farm in Matamata, Alison understood the vital relationship between humans and the sustainability of the environment.
However, it wasn’t until she travelled to America as an AFS student that her passion in protection and restoration took hold. After returning on a family holiday to her host family who were active in the Audubon Society and committed to caring for birds.
She took up a position at the Department of Conservation in Auckland, a long way from her eight years of working as a council coordinator at the family courts in Hamilton.
In Cooks Beach, Alison became known as Mrs Dotterel for the commitment to protecting the dotterel, an endangered species and replanting dunes to provide habitat for them as well as protection of the coastal edge. Up until Alan and Alison left for Hamilton, she spent time almost every day during breeding season checking the dotterel chicks.
Alison continued being an active environmental campaigner in her years here. Her knowledge of the biggest issues the Hauraki Gulf islands were facing became invaluable in 2017 when a panel of experts formed a working group calling for the revitalisation of The Hauraki Gulf. Alison was on the panel including commercial and recreational fishers, Maori and conservationists. They made ambitious recommendations to address the urgent issues through a Marine Spatial Plan called Sea Change.
To this present time, many of those recommendation, be it with many pauses and restarts, are being implemented.
In 2021 at 76, Alison was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for her service in conservation and community.
At the recent closing ceremony of the Kauri Trust 2000 (see page 16) Alison, as the Chair of the Trust, was presented with a beautiful kauri print by DOC Operations Manager Nick Kelly in recognition of her long service.
The Informer spoke to Paul Hopkins, Chair of Cooks Beach Residents and Ratepayers at the farewell ceremony and more recently.
Beach Care Group Cooks Beach
“Alan was a huge help locally with community organisation requirements such as the Purangi Conservation Trust. Just recently he helped our association sort through the new set of rules for incorporated societies and handled the changes. He was a very generous man with his time and skills. He was one of the driving forces with Adele Smales in Dunecare and a good friend to many of us.”
Locals also told The Informer about how Alan was a keen fisherman and in retirement would go out three or four times a week to enjoy his favourite spot off Mercury Bay – advice he got from John Elwood. The Indoor Bowls Club at Cooks Beach will miss Alan. He was a keen bowler.
The community will miss both of them a great deal. They were central to the life and progress of Cooks Beach. However, their focus on community has gathered strength in recent years and there are some champions who have taken up the cause of the environment and are leading the way.
Others will carry the baton and new leaders and futures will emerge in their time. Connecting people meaningfully was important to them. Thank you Alan and Alison for all that you meant to Mercury Bay especially the community of Cooks Beach. Hamilton is not far away.
