Anyone wanting to congratulate Sally Davies on New Year’s Day on her King’s Service Medal (KSM) would have had to head out to Te Awamutu Golf Club.
Sally Davies in Te Awamutu Medical Centre.
Te Awamutu News 9 January 2025
When the Te Awamutu nurse retired last year, she said she would play more golf. On January 1 she was picking up a prize for sixth in the stableford in the New Year’s Day Scramble at Te Awamutu Golf Club and finishing with a birdie on the par four 18th.
Davies, 76, is one of two who live in Waipā – the other being former deputy mayor and Te Awamutu College old boy Grahame Webber who also received a KSM – to be honoured by King Charles III.
Grahame Webber is so committed to the Sister City relationship with Le Quesnoy, he moved into the cul-de-sac named after the French town. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Linda Te Aho: Photo: Erica Sinclair Photography
The others with Waipā links were Linda Te Aho of Ngāti Koroki Kahukura, Paula Baker of Tamahere and Ian Foster of Newstead.
Davies has volunteered at Te Awamutu Sports Hockey Club since 1990 as a coach and served as the inaugural president until 2007.
Her citation says she was instrumental in establishing hockey under the Te Awamutu Sports banner upon the club’s establishment and is still coaching a reserve grade side.
For years she has volunteered and fundraised for all ages of hockey from intermediate to masters.
She is a life member of Te Awamutu Sports and Waikato Hockey and has received the New Zealand Hockey Service Award.
Paula Baker
As a practice nurse at Te Awamutu Medical Centre she became one of the first nurses in New Zealand to specialise in diabetes management. She retired last month after 47 years with the practice vowing to play more golf, join a Mahjong group, spend more time in the garden and continue coaching hockey.
Webber, 76, honoured for his services to local government and farming governance, retired from the council just over two years ago after he revealed he was battling myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells that usually arises in the bone marrow.
Describing himself as a “can do, will do cow cocky”, he has contributed to farming and local government since he was a teenage member of the Young Farmers Club in Te Awamutu.
Stints in various Federated Farmers positions and as a director of the now defunct New Zealand Dairy Group followed before his election to the Cambridge Community Board in 1998 and Waipā council three years later.
Webber is no longer having chemotherapy but takes daily pills which have various side effects. He is philosophical: “It’s one of those diseases that’s going to get you. It’s in the blood.”
When his parents met, his father was a policeman in Te Aroha and his mother a hairdressing apprentice from Taranaki. They settled in Auckland where Webber was born, the first of six children.
“They thought a rural place was the place to be rather than be stuck in Mt Albert.”
Webber firstly attended Tokoroa Central School – their farm was near the town – and then Te Awamutu College when the family moved to a dairy farm in Pokuru.
Those links to Te Awamutu – despite not living there for 57 years – marked him as a councillor able to straddle that Cambridge v Te Awamutu divide.
In 2001, he beat a crowded field, including incumbent Ron Cooper, for the Maungatautari ward and switched allegiances to Cambridge for three terms when he and Jenny moved into town.
He was mayor Jim Mylchreest’s deputy and chaired several committees, but his favourite was Service Delivery where he kept well informed.
“The years that I spent at Te Awamutu were invaluable. I didn’t want a them and us.”
He has a message for central government.
“Local government gets hounded by central government. We can’t do this; we’re not allowed to do that. They should bloody well leave us alone.”
And to prove there is still a politician in him, he points to the Waipā decision to go into a water entity without Hamilton City Council citing water meters as a good reason.
“That’s their (Hamilton) biggest stuff up – they didn’t put them in, we did. We took the water and made it a separate entity. We were ahead of the eight ball, not them.”
Karāpiro, Jewel in the Crown: Grahame Webber with the Gavin Smith wa-tercolour presented to him on his retirement. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Former All Blacks coach Ian Foster, 59, was born in Putāruru and attended Forest View High School in Tokoroa.
The highest capped Waikato rugby player, with 148 appearances at first five, began his club career with Te Awamutu Rugby Sports and Recreation Club, was the assistant coach of the All Blacks from 2012 to 2019, before becoming head coach from 2020 until 2023.
Foster becomes a companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to rugby.
All Blacks coach Ian Foster, wife Leigh and daughter Michaela watching the action sideline between Hautapu and Hamilton Old Boys at Memorial Park in Cambridge. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
Linda Te Aho is the daughter of Tioriori (Wally) and Vivienne Papa who raised five children – Ataahua, Linda, Pānia, Rahui and Wiki – from the Pōhara marae not far from Tokoroa. She attended Tokoroa High School and studied law at Auckland University.
She became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to Māori and legal education.
She is a member of the Te Arataura tribal executive for Waikato Tainui, a trustee for Ngāti Koroki Kahukura and was previously a negotiator for the iwi’s treaty claims.
An associate professor at Waikato University, Hamilton-based Te Aho contributed to legal education at Te Piringa Faculty of Law and has served as associate Dean Māori.
She is a technical advisor on Māori legal issues in relation to lands and freshwater for iwi, Crown agencies and government departments.
Paula Baker, 57, also gets an MNZM for her services to health governance and the community.
Looking at the list of organisations she has been involved with – starting with Plunket as a new mother – to her new role at Waihikurangi Trust, the charitable arm of Ngāti Maniapoto’s post-settlement governance entity Te Nehenehenui, one thing stands out.
While they are all different entities, the work they do has that common thread – making a difference in people’s lives.
Shas been a trustee of the Braemar Charitable Trust since 2014 and general manager since 2016.
With Braemar Trust, Baker has championed such initiatives as the charitable surgery programme, providing free surgeries for those in need at Braemar Hospital, and the creation of several training programmes and scholarships for health education.
She and husband Stuart – chair of DV Bryant Trust in Hamilton and born in Te Awamutu – are both naturally drawn to philanthropic organisations except for her involvement in cricket.
It was second daughter Emma, 23, who got her into cricket administration when she started playing the game at St Peter’s School in Cambridge.
She chaired the Hamilton association and then sat on Northern Districts’ board, standing down early last year when she felt herself getting stretched thin.
She is still on the Alandale Foundation, Waihikurangi, New Zealand Dental Council, Braemar, a trustee of Sky City Hamilton Community Trust and a member of the Waikato Community Lotteries distribution committee.
Sally Davies at golf where she picked up a prize in the New Year’s scramble to go with her King’s Service Medal. Photo: Te Awamutu Golf Club.
