Back to Blog

A creative highlight at Fieldays

An exciting new creative initiative for Fieldays 2026 begins at the Heritage Barn. Representing the David Henshaw Family Art Trust and working in collaboration with New Zealand National Fieldays Society, Caroline Peacocke of Copper Mesh Creatives presents David Henshaw’s Rural NZ: Jock, Landscapes & More. Featuring the much-loved Jock cartoons, published in NZ Farmer magazine for more than 34 years, Henshaw captured the realities, humour and heart of rural life and became a familiar voice ...

Reimagined Cambridge Town Hall

There are buildings across New Zealand that quietly hold a town’s memories. Cambridge Town Hall is one of these.  Since 1908, it has been the backdrop to moments that matter. Meetings that shaped decisions. Performances that brought people together. Conversations that sparked new ideas. It has long been a place where the community gathers and, following the first stage of its revitalisation, it continues to play that role in a way that feels both familiar and refreshed. Reimagined for tod...

Bringing business to Hautapu

Waipā District Council is backing Hautapu’s transformation into Cambridge’s main industrial hub through targeted infrastructure investment.Hautapu is drawing businesses that mean business.Comins Plumbing and Gas relocated its 24-vehicle operation to Hautapu Road from Leamington in 2023 and hasn’t looked back.The Bale café opened on Parakiwai Road two years later, creating a dozen jobs to serve the growing industrial community around them.Both businesses made a de...

The remarkable legacy of the Cambridge Fire Brigade

Fire Chief Dennis Hunt, who has served 38 years with the Cambridge Fire Brigade, has lost count of how many times he’s left his wife, Tricia, sitting at dinner alone to attend a callout. It’s a reality she’s lived with over the years and one shared by dozens of families across Cambridge.When you volunteer for the Cambridge Fire Brigade, your whole family, friends and workplace volunteers with you. They just don’t get the uniform. “We try to make it very family-oriented,” Dennis expla...

In it for the long game

When Kevin Burgess arrived in Cambridge in 1981, he came looking for a place to plant himself, to contribute, and to belong. What Cambridge gave him back exceeded anything he might have hoped for. “I fell in love with the Cambridge community,” he says, without a trace of hesitation. “It’s got to be one of the coolest places in New Zealand.” Together with his wife Jane, Kevin devoted 42 years to the pharmacy profession in Cambridge, steadily building a career and business that eventuall...

Mayor Mike Pettit - What I love about Cambridge

I’ve lived and worked in Cambridge for a long time, always connected to the education field. For many years, my world was the playground, the classroom, the morning drop-off and the quiet conversations at the school gate. Being part of Cambridge Primary School for 17 years meant watching children grow, learn, and find their feet, while getting to know families across generations. That stays with you. What I love about Cambridge is that sense of continuity. People don’t just pass through...

20 years of Cambridge Park

On a quiet afternoon, Cambridge Park reveals itself best on foot. The edges are soft. Streets feel scaled for people, not just cars. There’s a sense that the neighbourhood knows where it sits in the wider fabric of Cambridge, edging naturally alongside the Town Belt, within easy walking distance of Cambridge township and Leamington, and open rather than turned inward. That feeling was intentional. Twenty years ago, as Cambridge began to grow beyond its traditional boundaries, the land that wou...

Lights on, Cambridge keeps moving

When electricity works as it should, most of us don’t give it much thought.The lights turn on. The jug boils. Shops open, schools run, and homes tick along as they should. Behind the scenes, a community-owned network is working around the clock to keep power flowing to homes and businesses across Cambridge.That’s how Waipā Networks views its role. With Cambridge growing faster than ever, local energy infrastructure is playing an increasingly important role in shaping the town’s future. It...

Cruising for a cause

When the rumble of hot rods and classic American muscle fills the streets, you know the Stragglers are at work.  It’s not just a show of chrome and horsepower. It’s also the sound of a local club raising tens of thousands of dollars for local community causes every year. What began as a small gathering of car enthusiasts in 2006 has grown into one of New Zealand’s most celebrated automotive clubs, and one of its most generous. Through regular cruises and an annual charity car show, th...

Cambridge’s streets then and now

Take a slow walk along Victoria and Duke Streets in Cambridge, and Shakespeare Street in Leamington, and look closely. You’ll notice small clues everywhere that point back to how these streets first came together more than 150 years ago. The towns we know today were laid out by surveyors in the 1860s, following the New Zealand Wars. But long before streets were formed and shops were built, this was already a place of movement and trade.  Mana whenua, Ngāti Koroki Kahu...

Blair and Tayler Paterson - The heart of Homebrew

Homebrew was always meant to exist. Blair and Tayler Paterson were just waiting for the right moment and the right site to bring it to life. Before they ever had a café, they had a plan. They wanted a drive-through coffee bar. Fast, energetic, and built for connection. And they were bold enough to chase it. They drove around Hamilton, spotting potential sites, knocking on landowners’ doors and pitching a dream with optimism. They were young, running on determination, and “a bit delusional i...

A word from the Chamber

There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this, Cambridge already means something to you.  You may live here, run a business here, visit regularly, or perhaps you’re discovering the town for the first time through these pages. Wherever you sit, you are part of the story of Cambridge. It’s a town that continues to grow while holding tightly to the community spirit that makes it so special.  Cambridge has long been known as the Home of Champions, and while sport is proudly par...

The Tavern

Since premiering at the Tivoli Cinema in May 2025, The Tavern has become one of New Zealand’s biggest independent film success stories, and it all began in Cambridge. Written and produced by local filmmaker Matt Hicks, The Tavern is a raunchy R16 comedy about five small-town guys racing to save their rundown pub from an Auckland property developer.  Packed with humour, heart, and unapologetically wild Kiwi energy, one critic described it as “if Flight of the Conchords and South Par...

A new era for iconic Fieldays

Fieldays isn’t just a feel-good fixture on the rural calendar. It’s big business. It’s a national showroom where New Zealand agribusiness is commercialised, exported, and scaled.   With new CEO Richard Lindroos now at the helm, he says expect less nostalgia and more execution: a harder-edged strategy, clearer commercial partnerships, and a push to turn Mystery Creek into a venue that can win bigger events and bigger dollars, year-round. Stepping into the role, what surprised Rich...

Discover your own backyard

It’s funny how it sometimes takes visitors to remind us what’s right on our doorstep. Recently, I have had friends and family in town, and like many of us do, I slipped into host mode. Planning where to go, what to see, where to eat. And in doing so, I found myself rediscovering Cambridge and the wider Waikato all over again. We often talk about Cambridge as a destination, and it is, but it’s also home. And sometimes, it takes a fresh set of eyes to see it that way again. Fa...

Events in Cambridge & The Waipā District - A town that comes alive

There’s something special about a town that knows how to gather. In Cambridge and across the Waipā district, events are more than just dates on a calendar. They are the rhythm of our community and across the year, our district punches well above its weight. At the heart of it all is Fieldays at Mystery Creek Events Centre (read more on page 31), the Southern Hemisphere’s largest agricultural event. It’s a powerhouse for the regional economy, drawing tens of thousands of visitors and ...

Family camping in Cambridge - Pitch, play, explore

Camping is about getting back to basics, not going backwards. The days of heavy canvas tents and uncomfortable stretchers are long gone. What remains is the good part: space, freedom, and time together.For kids, it’s a chance to step away from devices and into the real world. To explore, get dirty, make friends, and figure things out for themselves, all in a safe, open environment where adventure still feels natural.Cambridge makes that easy.Set up a tent, park the caravan, or book a cabi...

The Maunga that sings

When you sit quietly within Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, the forest begins to speak. The undergrowth rustles, the kōkako call, and kererū drop onto tawa branches. You’ll also hear the steady call of a kiwi, claiming its place in the night.  This is a maunga (mountain) that remembers Aotearoa New Zealand as it once was: alive, loud, thriving, singing. And today, it’s finding its voice again because our community chose to protect it. Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari sits within a 4...

Ellesse Andrews - Where world champions train and stay

Cambridge is no stranger to excellence, but even by its high standards, Ellesse Andrews stands apart.An Olympic champion. A world champion (in 2023). One of the globe’s most dominant sprint cyclists of her generation, Ellesse Andrews is not just a successful athlete living in Cambridge; she’s a product of the high-performance environment that the town has intentionally built.  And she’s choosing to stay. Ellesse’s rise through international cycling has been rapid and emphatic. ...

A conversation with Matt Smith - Building neighbourhoods that work for Cambridge life

As Cambridge grows, the difference between housing and a neighbourhood becomes ever clearer. In this conversation, local developer Matt Smith reflects on planning, infrastructure investment, and what it takes to build places that support everyday Cambridge life, now and into the future. Cambridge has learned a few things about growth. We’ve learned that adding houses is easy, but building a neighbourhood that actually works takes longer. We’ve learned that traffic doesn’t resolve itself, t...

Cambridge’s love affair with gardening

In Cambridge, gardening is part of how people express pride in their homes, care for their neighbourhoods, and mark the passing of the seasons. From traditional cottage gardens and productive backyard plots to modern, compact spaces blending food, structure and natives, gardens here reflect patience, creativity, and a deep connection to place. One of the people who has shaped that culture is Robert Clancy.Robert is the second-generation director of Amber Garden Centre, a family run business...

Quietly world-class - The Cambridge company supporting the world’s biggest tours

Tucked down a quiet street in Cambridge’s Aotearoa Park industrial area, there’s no neon sign or fanfare. But inside Fiasco’s workshop, road cases are being built that will soon roll across the stages of the world’s biggest music tours, packed with the gear of legends.Universal Studios, Disney, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Linkin Park. Fox Sports’ Super Bowl and FIFA World Cup broadcast. These are just some of the names trusting the equipment designed and engineered right here...

Two decades of delicious

Not many catering companies can say they’ve fed a future King and Queen, supported New Zealand at three Olympic Games, and still have their roots firmly planted in a small New Zealand town. Gourmet Delicious can. Twenty years on from their modest beginning as a two-person operation, they have built something that quietly defies expectation at every turn. Where it all began In 2006, Kim Moodie and her business partner Noeleen Christenson looked around at the catering landscape in Camb...

Art, nature and discovery - A creative escape to Cambridge

Nestled in the heart of the Waikato and just moments off the expressway, Cambridgeinvites you to slow down, explore, and stay a while. Whether you’re visiting for a weekend or lucky enough to call it home, you’ll find a vibrant blend of art, nature, and community spirit woven through its streets and river paths.At the centre of it all is the Te Awa River Ride, where an ever-evolving outdoor gallery brings creativity to life. Designed as a series of curated precincts, the trail can be explore...

Roots before foundations

How Ngāti Koroki Kahukura kaumātua Harry Wilson tends the history beneath Cambridge’s newest developments, and why he says the land must be acknowledged before the building can begin. Long before Cambridge was Cambridge, it was Horotiu Pa, built by the infamous ancestor Koroki. It was the central hub to the Kīngitanga, with gardens as far as the eyes could see. And long before the roads, the roundabouts and the retirement villages, there were people who knew every bend of the Waikato River,...