Pacific Islands range from coral atolls and smoking volcanoes to pieces of a lost continent. Discover the wildest stories of adaptation and survival on these Islands of Life....
Magazine
Issue 200
Jul - Aug 2026
Solar power
Horses of Huntly
Forget me not
Whaling
Red admirals
Tongariro is by far the most popular national park in the North Island, attracting tens of thousands of skiers, walkers and trampers every year. The park centres around three active volcanoes: Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu, all of which are considered by local Maori to be sacred ancestors. In 1887 the chief of the local iwi Ngati […]...
Seafood is healthy and the world wants more. Too bad that most wild fisheries are overfished and collapsing. Over the last few decades, aquaculture has begun to offer a solution to this difficulty, but it’s not a solution that wins universal acclaim. In New Zealand, the black floats that mark mussel farms (above)—our main form […]...
As 2006 came to an end, stories of record warmth around the world contrasted strongly with the cold temperatures New Zealand experienced in December. Averaged over the whole country, the month was 1.9°C below the long-term average. Although nationwide it was not the coldest December on record—December 2004, for example, was 0.3°C colder again—many places […]...
That Earth’s humblest materials can be transformed into sublime and beautiful objects is part of the romance of the potter’s art. But it takes patience and strong hands to work such miracles. Barry Brickell, the doyen of Coromandel potters, has shaped clay dug on his property at Driving Creek for close to 40 ears. His […]...
Mt Owen in Kahurangi National Park deserves a three-day weekend in order to fully explore the various nooks and crannies this complex massif has to offer. It is the marble mountain par excellence—the original Ordovician limestone which formed 500 million years ago has been metamorphosed through intense pressure and temperature into a recrystallised marble. More recently, […]...
