Operation Mercury—the invasion of Crete by Nazi Germany—began on May 20, 1941, when gliders and paratroops swooped through the dust and smoke thrown up by Luftwaffe bombs and cannon. On the ground, a mixed British, Dominion and Greek army raised its guns to meet them. Mainstay of the Allied defence, where the conflict was most […]...
Behind Matapouri Bay, north-east of Whangarei, a small estuary flanked by mangroves runs quietly inland, ignored by the scores of visitors who crowd the clean sand of the main bay. Yet towards high tide (when it is easy to float about), there is much for the patient snorkeller to enjoy amid the mangroves....
In May 1955 New Zealanders Norman Hardie was one of four mountaineers to reach the summit of the world’s third-highest mountain, Kangchenjunga. His climb came just two years after another New Zealander, Edmund Hillary, had succeeded in climbing the world’s highest peak, Mt Everest, with Tenzing Norgay. Both ascents rate among the finest of the 20th […]...
Unprotected, harassed, maligned and even culled by its human neighbours, the handsome southern black-backed gull continues to loiter round the edges of settlements and farms, always on the lookout for an easy meal....
With our stone canoe anchored in the zone of the persistent mid-latitude westerly winds, we New Zealanders can be surprised and discomfited by the sort of weather a good period of easterlies drags in. Fog, for example, is not common in Wellington, yet at the beginning of February there were five days of low cloud […]...
Catching the train seemed the proper mode of travel for my first visit to Featherston’s Fell Locomotive Museum. The museum houses the only remaining Fell locomotive in the world. As the early-morning passenger train rumbled through the 8.8 km tunnel that pierces the heart of the Rimutaka Range, I realised that this very tunnel was […]...
Stoats kill two-thirds of all kiwi chicks that hatch, while dogs and ferrets frequently attack and kill kiwi of all ages. To counter these threats in the northern Coromandel, in 2001 the local community and the Department of Conservation (DOC) began setting traps throughout the district. This ambitious project, known as the Moehau Kiwi Sanctuary […]...
As I write this, Easter beckons and the stores are awash with Easter eggs. Eggs have traditionally been associated with new life and, in Christendom, the resurrection of Christ. In some countries, such as Russia, Easter is the most important festival of the year and eggs have long been a traditional Easter gift. The series […]...
At the end of February 2004, the tail of Cyclone Ivy whipped into Papamoa Beach in the Bay of Plenty, transforming the sea into a grey cauldron of foaming currents and swirling debris. As monstrous waves slammed into the coastline, some feared not for houses, but that the storm would wipe out one of the […]...
Campbell Island’s snipe flew home from its precarious refuge on tiny neighbouring Jacquemart Island recently and onto prime-time television news. Less than four years after the extermination of 200,000 brown rats on Campbell Island in the largest operation of its kind anywhere in the world, the snipe’s return was an astonishing and important event. It […]...
