One day , nearly 140 million years ago, towards the end of the Jurassic epoch, a male locust was blown offshore from the Australia-Antarctic coast of Gondwana in a westerly storm. Or perhaps it was carried out to sea in a volcanic ash cloud, or maybe it was just trying to emigrate. Whatever the case, […]...
Deputy editor and longtime beachcomber Warren Judd pays a visit to a museum where the exhibitions are changed daily and entry is free....
In late july of this year, a family on a fishing expedition to the northern end of Muriwai Beach, northwest of Auckland, came upon the carcasses of two freshly dead whales. With the aid of a cellphone, they notified the Department of Conservation (DoC) of their find. It turned out that the whales belonged to the […]...
Peter Quinn, who has previously photographed whitebait (Issue 17), West Coast coal (Issue 26) and Highway 35 (Issue 28), was moved to photograph the North Island main trunk rail story on account of his grandfather. “He left the merchant navy between the wars and settled in Frankton, where he worked as a guard on the […]...
No sooner had meteorological instruments such as thermometers and barometers been invented than experimenters wanted to take them up into the sky to study the atmosphere. The easiest way to accomplish this was to carry them up a mountain. Perier was the first to do so when, in 1648, at the request of his brother-in-law, the […]...
A desolate exclamation mark off the west coast of Pitt Island in the Chathams, wind-scoured, wave-lashed Mangere Island is the last outpost before extinction for a variety of unique animals and plants....
The Green crown of Hunua State Forest arched above me, a remnant of New Zealand’s ancient wooded past, and home still to that rare and operatic wattlebird, the kokako. At my feet, a possum struggled in a trap, a creature which has lived in these islands barely 100 years, yet whose depredations threaten the very forest […]...
The delicacy and brilliance of a hummingbird wedded to an industrial-strength beak that would do a woodpecker proud, the chimeric little kingfisher stakes a claim in our hearts. Returning with a snack for his family, this male prepares to land in the entrance of his nesting burrow in an old tree....
An enthusiasts’ steam train rides the Main Trunk Line across the Waikato River at Ngaruawahia. Conceived by the visionary politician Julius Vogel in 1870, the North Island rail trunk took almost 40 years to complete; a hard-won link piercing the heart of the land. Now, after close to a century of use, it remains a […]...
Mere minutes to full time, with the All Blacks and their arch rivals the South African Springboks tied 12-12 in the 1995 World Cup final, faces at the Ponsonby Rugby Club reflect the strain of the national game. For many New Zealanders, rugby is the silver fern on the jersey of life....
