A local company with historic connections to Hastings is stepping up to help Hawke’s Bay residents affected by Cyclone Gabrielle.
The Ross brothers of Cambridge’s C & R Developments have started collecting donations for those displaced by the floods and are urgently seeking warehouse space in which to house the goods before transporting them to Hawke’s Bay.
C & R Developments managing director Mike Ross said that together with friends and colleagues Dave Peake and Chris Minnee, the company decided on Friday to fill one of their large trucks with a range of goods required for those desperately needing help. He said the idea came to him in the early hours of Friday morning.
“I was awake at around 2am and thought I’d like to find a way to do something. We have a spare truck that’s available and ready to go. We have a lot of people wanting to donate and a driver who is keen to transport it all to Hawke’s Bay,” he said. “A lot of today [Friday] was spent trying to work out the details … we made a lot of phone calls, contacted a lot of organisations, agencies and individuals. It’s important at this stage to be careful and make sure we collect what is really needed down there. At this stage, what we need is an empty warehouse in which to put the stuff we collect before driving it down next week. Could anyone with available warehouse space please contact us.”
People can ring either Mike Ross on 027 4342 129, or Philip Coles on 021 432 767.
The initiative has special meaning for the Ross brothers.
Their great-grandfather Francis Hicks was one of the founding settlers of Hastings. In 1873, the Cornish-born immigrant who had started farming in the area presented the then government with a section of land for the site of a railway station, and decided to lay out 40.5 hectares (100 acres) near that site for a township to be called Hastings. Later on, he moved to the Waikato where the family has been ever since.
