My father would tell us about the clever dog who rescued a family from a burning house in the middle of the night. First, Rover woke up Dad, who unfortunately rushed outside before he realised that Mum wasn’t with him. But all was well; for in a few moments Rover appeared leading Mum to safety. Then […]...
In Tamihana Te Rauparaha’s book about his father, he tells a story that shows the deep respect Maori people had for Cook Strait, or, as they called it, Ruakawa. When someone made their first crossing of this dangerous stretch of water, a blindfold was tied over their eyes, and they paddled the whole way across […]...
There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and main sequence dwarves (such as our Sun) are one of the most common types. Which is to say there are some tens of billions of stars having similar chemistry to the Sun’s, and formed in very much the same way. It strains credibility, therefore, […]...
According to anthropologists, hankering for the blemish-free look that only make-up can give goes back 1.5 million years, when our ancestors began plastering each other with red and yellow ochres, brown limonites and black manganese oxides. Initially, what they were probably after was protection from the harsh elements and from irritating insects, but the smearing […]...
In a world where mayhem is passe, not many items pique the curiosity of the satiated consumer. One that may apparently still do so is the giant squid. Reports of the local recovery of a large specimen recently have generated a wave of media interest worldwide. Wildlife documentaries regularly disclose the courtship rituals of chimpanzees, social […]...
Poised to pounce, the praying mantis takes its name from a fancied,but not altogether appropriate,resemblance to the folded arms of the prayerful....
Travellers in some parts of New Zealand could be excused for thinking they’d taken a wrong turning many of the names of our streets seem to be pointing somewhere else. In most cases that other place is the British Empire, which once ensured that much of the globe was coloured red. New Zealand couldn’t avoid this influence, […]...
A razor-edged summit crest that slices across the heavens for almost two kilometres crowns New Zealand’s highest mountain. Aoraki/Mt Cook’s icy flanks (viewed here towards the south from Mt Haidinger) have enticed and challenged climbers since 1882, when Irish clergyman William Green and two Swiss companions dragged themselves to within metres of the summit....
Halo of ice on a mountain of fire, this 1.5-metre snow circle was built on the flanks of Mt Ruapehu only days before the mountain erupted in 1995. Transience is an essential part of the environmental art movement, which celebrates nature as alive and constantly changing....
Protected by remoteness, violent seas, steep cliffs and Government decree, the Three Kings Islands north of New Zealand are home to many plant and animal species found nowhere else, and are among our least-known islands. West Island and some of the Princes Islands, viewed from the helicopter’s precarious perch on South West Island, have seen […]...
