New Zealand’s longstanding fascination with the weather has been imprinted on the landscape, with curious, cryptic, sometimes humorous titles for places that will forever recall the experience of its first visitors. The screaming northwest gales of Canterbury are celebrated with names such as Windwhistle, near the Rakaia Gorge, Mount Blowhard, near Oxford, and Nervous Knob, […]...
There is not much native forest of any kind left in South Canterbury, but most of it is in Peel Forest. Some massive totara live on the fertile flat below Little Mount Peel, and this walk climbs up through the bush to a high alpine peak, with an eye-opening view of the patchwork plains. From the […]...
It was 1959, Everest had recently been climbed, rock’n’roll was hitting the jukeboxes, the baby boomers were booming and a brand-new house was being built in Te Puke for Peter Welch. A navy man and plasterer, Welch had come to New Zealand from England after the war to work on the gargoyles of Christchurch Cathedral. He […]...
The true gallantry of a knight in shining armour has now been quantified: it took twice the energy, according to new research co-authored by University of Auckland scientist Federico Formenti. Until the advent of firearms in the late 17th century, soldiers were packed into tight-corseted suits of plated steel weighing 30 to 50 kg heavy protection to deflect heavy weaponry. This year,researchers […]...
In July this year, more than 100,000 broad-billed prions perished in the largest seabird wreck in New Zealand since 1974. More birds washed up dead on the west coast and further inland than in the previous 37 years combined. Many others were found alive, though weak, and were rushed to DOC offices and vet clinics, […]...
Earth may once have had two moons, which collided to form one. A new theory has been formulated to explain our moon’s asymmetry—the dark side of our moon is mountainous and rugged, whereas the side visible from Earth has relatively flat, dark lava fields. The cause of this mysterious irregularity was mathematically modelled by planetary scientists […]...
Once, society traded in food, then standardised weights of commodities and property. The cash economy that followed thousands of years later in the Middle East—fuelled a boom in commerce as the abstracted value of these real things was traded in its own right. Bankers preceded banks, and stock markets developed in 12th-century France to regulate the […]...
A thousand kilometres north-east of the mainland, the Kermadec group basks in a subtropical environment and two decades of marine protection. In May this year, scientists scoured this untouched world to catalogue, collect and expand the list of species found there, and discovered an ecosystem unlike anything else in the country....
Look closer. The straggling plants on the riverbank, the so-called weeds in the garden, the insect-eaten leaves on the forest’s edge—often ploughed, sprayed or simply ignored—are finding their way back into the medicine chest. And Māori herbal remedies, once derided and outlawed by an act of Parliament, are revealing their curative power....
A salvo of fireworks opens the Winter Festival in Queenstown, now a key event in the calendar of the rapidly evolving town. It became a centre of trade after gold was discovered in the Arrow River in 1862, and though the commodity might have changed, entrepreneurs and developers are still striking it rich following a […]...
