Five members of the Whakaki Whānau ki Heretaunga Committee went armed with cash in hand to the Old Rattreys building in Hastings on a mission to secure a fridge for our marae. We had all gotten together the previous Sunday to discuss the possibilities of going to this auction and only really made a full commitment mid week. Thank you to our Heretaunga members who allowed us to access the necessary funds and offered us their full support. We set ourselves a goal; purchase a good quality double door fridge for $2000 or under. A couple of us went along the day before the auction to register, get some tips on bidding as well as suss out what was to offer. We identified a couple of double door options and a few potential single door options too. With these in mind we were all focused for Saturday morning. In attendance were Ngaro and Jilly Brown, Makere Brown and my wife Grace and I. Both Grace and I were a bit nervous because we were holding the bidding number we’d been given when registering (No 103) and we’d been told to hold up that number when we wanted to make a bid for an item. I actually almost cost us $2000 for an item we weren’t bidding on after I decided I would take a photo of us all on my camera phone. In the process of holding it up above my head during an auction the whānau behind me whispered “Hey what the hell are you doing?” Luckily I don’t think the auctioneer took my hand above my head as a serious bid anyway…luckily! Our items were somewhere around Lot’s 163 - 167 and so we sat through the first 159 or so just warming up and getting used to how the auction worked. What we realised is that there was more than 1 of each item (for instance 4 toasters) and the successful bidder could decide how many of that item they wanted. If they only wanted 1 then the remaining items could be offered to other bidders for the same price. So as the auction progressed most bidders realised that you only needed 1 person to make a first bid, don’t make anymore bids and then all you had to do was wait until the auctioneer hit his hammer on the table. That way everybody won and in a lot of cases some items were getting sold really cheaply. However you did get the odd BIDIOT trying to push the price up, not really understanding that everyone was losing out! When it eventually got to the first of our lot numbers we had to make an instantaneous executive decision as we found out the single door fridges were up for auction before the double door ones. We either went for one or the other. In the end though price was the final decider and at $1200 plus gst we chose to purchase a single door fridge. Just as well because we didn’t quite have enough to buy a double door anyway. The other advantages of buying the single door fridge were that it would be easier to cart home and would use less power. Cousin Ngaro volunteered his vehicle to transport it home on and after hiring a trailer and essential nourishment, we headed back to Whakaki that afternoon to quickly drop it off and returned back to the Bay happy with our purchase. On behalf of our committee I would like to thank everyone who has bought Whakaki t shirts or polo shirts over the past year, the profits of which helped to purchase this essential item for our marae and without you all we couldn’t have achieved this. Thank you to our Whakaki Whānau ki Heretaunga Committee for letting us fulfil one of our objectives for our committee and also to cousin Ngaro for getting it safe and sound back to Whakaki. Next auction…COMMERCIAL TOASTER