“Look over here. Not many people know what these are used for,” says Richard Spark, indicating several metre-long steel augers. “Used for drilling holes in rock by hand when you have to place dynamite charges for blasting. I picked them up for $2 each. This longer one was used in limestone. And I actually found that old […]...
The summer of 1995-96 was the warmest for six years. December in particular broke records, with a number of places in Northland, Bay of Plenty, Manawatu and Wairarapa recording highest ever December temperatures. Levin, for example, where records go back a hundred years, had a record 28.5°C on the 21st, and Te Kuiti, where records […]...
In the spring of 1995—maybe earlier—an inconspicuous moth identified as Orgyia thyellina, the white-spotted tussock moth, arrived in New Zealand from the Orient. Perhaps, like many a sailor before, it jumped ship on the Auckland waterfront. By the time the gaudily coloured caterpillars produced by the species were brought to the attention of scientists from […]...
Publishing is invariably a one-sided relationship. You produce words, pictures, illustrations, then print and despatch them, as if tying messages to the feet of so many carrier pigeons. Occasionally a message comes back. And no matter what its content—whether affirmation or disagreement—there is joy in the completing of the loop. That is why any editor […]...
At the sight of the first Endeavour, the natives of New Zealand were amazed and afraid, describing the vessel with its yards of flying canvas as a “bird of great size and beauty” and “a houseful of divinities.” Astonishment quickly gave way to curiosity—the same emotion which drew thousands to wharves around the country this […]...
Nestled between the mountains of the Main Divide and Lake Wakatipu, the Greenstone Valley is verdant home to a wealth of wildlife and plants. It is also something of a spiritual home for former high country shepherd Tony Maturin, who has worked as a part-time Department of Conservation hut warden in the valley for the […]...
After 76 years of ministering to the nation’s children, health camps have become a uniquely New Zealand institution. However, today’s health authorities—awash with reformist zeal—are questioning whether the camps still have a role in providing “healthy bodies and solid citizens,” the founding aims of the movement....
Almost driven to extinction for their meat, oil, bone and baleen, humpback whales are making a comeback, not only in the seas, but in human consciousness. With their haunting songs and evidence of culture—even language—they are now embraced as mysterious long-neglected kin, perhaps a seat of wisdom deeper and more enduring than our own; icons of oceans too long abused....
AIDS, Hepatitis B, Ebola—new health hazards spring up on every side. Now it seems possible that mad cow disease, itself only a decade old, is spreading to humans....
Photographing Endeavour on its recent visit provided moments of magic and fear for Geoff Mason, who has worked on several New Zealand Geographic assignments, including moa, pine and a trek across East Cape. He crossed Cook Strait on the ship to Picton, and then sailed on to Lyttelton. “Welcomes in both harbours were amazing, the sort […]...
