Around 45,000 years ago, when our ancestors were neighbours to the Neanderthals in Ice Age Europe, there was a kahikatea tree growing beside a stream which flowed out of the eastern side of the Rimutakas. Erosion being very active during the Ice Age, the stream carried large quantities of shingle out of the ranges when it […]...
Mars has always fascinated humankind. Its baleful colour and striking hundred-fold variation in brightness, from second only to Venus to dimmer than amma Crucis, the star at the head of the Southern Cross, make it remarkable amongst the planets. Also, as the Earth swings past it on the inside track, for a while Mars appears to reverse […]...
Every year between January and May the East Australian Current delivers an influx of unusual marine visitors to New Zealand waters. Among them are several species of marine turtle, sightings of which are becoming increasingly common. Some 250 species of turtle are known, most occurring in tropical zones. Large land-dwelling species are often referred to as […]...
Over the last century, New Zealand’s natural habitats have come under great pressure from a wide range of introduced plants and animals. Much has been written about the demise of our forests as a result of browsing animals such as possums and deer. Dwindling numbers of native species such as kokako, kaka and kereru (pigeon) […]...
One of the exquisite frustrations of editing a magazine like New Zealand Geographic is knowing that there isn’t enough room to say everything one wants to say. We are information magpies, my associate Warren Judd and I, picking up all manner of shiny oddments of fact and anecdote in the course of our research. Many […]...
We hear the birds even before we reach the island: a raucous, unconducted symphony of screeches and whistles. Tui, bellbirds and saddlebacks contribute to the sound, but it is the kaka that stand out: their calls, like their name, loud, staccato and unmistakable. A burst of red flashes out among the foliage as one lands […]...
Professional photographers whose work spanned nearly 50 years around the turn of the century, brothers William and Fred Tyree started what is now one of the most important pictorial archives in the country. The Tyree Collection is an extraordinary provincial insight into a colony struggling towards nationhood....
Suspended between two worlds, a caver ponders the enormity of Harwood’s Hole—one of the grander entrances to the unseen labyrinths that riddle the marble mountains of north-west Nelson....
