PHOTO: Ohinewai’s will radically change if Sleepyhead’s vision comes off. The ultra quiet settlement will be home to 3000 new residents as part of Sleepyhead’s plans
Ohinewai, North Waikato: home to a small school, community hall, a few shy houses dotted on the quiet rural roads. It’s five kilometres north of Huntly, east of the Waikato River, partly bending itself around Lake Waikare. In the next 5-10 years the settlement will transform if The Comfort Group’s plan succeeds to build an entirely new community, including a massive Sleepyhead manufacturing hub and 1100 homes for 3000 new residents. Ellen O’Dwyer meets some of the people whose lives will soon be changed.
Three guys from Huntly clamber out of bed and into a white minibus at 4.30am.
They’re on the road out of town in pitch darkness.
At this point, Ohinewai is just another footnote off State Highway One, its white sign barely glimpsed through the dawn gravel rush to Auckland.
Five weeks into a new job at Sleepyhead’s Otahuhu factory and it’s gruelling hours for Joseph O’Conner, Taonga Kani and Edward Watene.
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