A good cup of tea

Pity the parched train passenger of the early 1900s....

X-ray origins

Suddenly we could take photographs of our insides. And we loved it....

Fire it up

The barbecue has been an integral part of New Zealand social life for—well, not that long, actually....

Maverick

How an audacious young pilot pulled off an aviation first....

Walls of gold

This is thought to be the only photograph that exists of Nenthorn, a bustling town built on a brittle, glinting hope....

Devilfish!

Man versus beast, in a public swimming pool....

Party like it’s -36°C

A happy midwinter to all who celebrate....

A lady’s debut

For decades, young women of New Zealand marked their late teens with ceremonies that looked a lot like weddings....

Brains trust

One hundred years ago, we thought IQ tests could predict the future....

Boo!

The mystery of the Brooklyn Dodger: a ghost, or perhaps just a boy....

Tanked

How one man with a chip on his shoulder changed our waterways forever....

Drink yourself more bliss

For 50 years, punters had one hour every evening to get their booze in. It did not go well....

On the attack

We put bears in zoos and the bears bit back....

Cause of death

Elspeth Kerr was a popular nurse. She was also fond of poison....

Pipe dreams

The fetid origin story of Wellington’s struggling sewerage system....

Bang on

That used to be a 30-ton schooner. We blew it up for fun....

The wall that Frank built

Why is there a knee-high strip of concrete in the middle of Lewis Pass?...

Time in the sun

After decades of snubs and stonewalling, Britain’s monarch finally visits Tūrangawaewae....

For whom the bell tolls

Almost two centuries after its discovery, an enigmatic bell is bringing communities together....

Shades of grey

Five decades ago, a TV show changed the national psyche....

Magazine

Issue 200

Jul - Aug 2026

Solar power
Horses of Huntly
Forget me not
Whaling
Red admirals

Issue 200 Jul - Aug 2026

Trending

When a male South Island robin is in want of a mate, he sings. It’s not a glamorous sound, says ecologist Manaia Pearmain-Fenton. Plee plee plee / chee chee chee. Loud, plinky, like a kid picking at a keyboard. Pearmain-Fenton has whakapapa to Ngāti Hokopū, Ngāti Awa and Te Whakatōhea in the Bay of Plenty. […]...
When the forecast is just right, Irene and Crispin Middleton wake up in the middle of the night and put to sea....
Tararua Forest Park, 2 days...
Charles Alcock and the fate of the universe....
Marine scientist and freediver Kura Paul-Burke on restoring the moana—with action, not just research....
The blast of the harpoon may have given way to the click of the camera, but whales are still the cornerstone of commerce—and the subject of many a decorative mural—in the north Canterbury town of Kaikoura. In little more than a decade, marine ecotourism has transformed a coastal backwater into an international travel hotspot....
The wind tore at the wave tops until they stood up stiff, driving spray from their crests which was carried with the breeze and lit up by the early morning sun until the air itself seemed filled with glitter. Though the forecasters had predicted a gentle zephyr for the final day of a voyage around […]...
For decades, the extinct endemic bird known as the Hodgens’ Waterhen has flummoxed taxonomists—since the first fossils were found in 1955 the flightless species, which favoured swamps and grasslands, has bounced between six different genera. But mitochondrial DNA has now settled things: the bird is a gigantic crake, five times bigger than its closest living […]...
Did you ever get a new Fitbit? Did you then spend the next few weeks compulsively checking your wrist, seeing how ‘good’ you’d been that day? Did you take the dog for an extra walk at 10pm just to watch the device tick over 10,000 steps, and go to bed basking in the glow of […]...
As early as 1793, the Frenchman Nicephore Niepce and his brother Claude imagined a photographic process, and experimented with various light-sensitive substances and cameras. In 1826, Niépce exposed a pewter plate coated in bitumen for eight hours to produce what he called a “heliograph”, or sun drawing, of a view from his window. Unlike his predecessors, who had […]...

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