Years ago, I heard the wife of a lighthouse keeper talking on the radio about the weather at Puysegur Point, in Fiordland, where she and her husband had been stationed for a time. Six months or so before they arrived there, a fishing boat had gone down in a storm with all hands. One day, […]...
Driving down State Highway 1 from Auckland it is easy to miss the loop road to Rangiriri, just beyond Te Kauwhata, where 140 years ago a bloody showdown took place between entrenched Waikato Maori and advancing British troops. Though the outcome was less than the outright victory British commander General Duncan Cameron had hoped for—there […]...
In the hills behind East Cape the forests are falling. Radiata pine planted 25 years ago is ready for harvest, and logging gangs are hard at work. Punishing labour, extreme weather and days way from home and family are the lot of the men on these remote blocks, but it’s a way of life they […]...
Unpredictable and treacherous, New Zealand’s harbour bars are the mariner’s dread....
Nearly a century ago, farmer and plantsman Douglas Cook took 250 ha of dry, bare Poverty Bay hill country and created a dream: Eastwoodhill Arboretum. Today the collection of some 4000 Northern-hemisphere tree and shrub varieties is acclaimed as one of the finest south of the Equator, and the autumnal display of its deciduous species is a wonder to behold....
Operation Nest Egg, launched almost 10 years ago to try to boost the dwindling numbers of kiwi on the mainland, has proved to be a profitable investment in the future of our national bird....
Long neglected as a chilly, hilly backwater, the Catlins, in the south-eastern corner of the South Island, is coming to be appreciated for its wild coastline, lush forests and uncrowded settlements. Although in downtown Owaka—the commercial heart of the Catlins—destinations seem to outnumber dwellings, development is coming to this remote region, and the soon-to-be-completed sealing […]...
