Blog Archives

Diversity Under the Gold Coast Sun

Diversity Under the Gold Coast Sun

Controversial New Zealand reality television show The GC, about young Maori living on Australia’s Gold Coast, has prompted comparisons to America’s Jersey Shore, and heated debate about whether the show was seen as a…

Super Image of Cosmic Lunar Event

Super Image of Cosmic Lunar Event

Auckland photographer Simon Runting captured this once-a-year cosmic event which lit up the New Zealand night sky as the full moon passed at its closest point to Earth, making it appear 14 per cent…

Arrival Delights Korean Audience

Arrival Delights Korean Audience

Award-winning play, The Arrival, performed by New Zealand’s Red Leap Theatre and based on Shaun Tan’s graphic novel, “fascinated” a Korean audience at the LG Arts Center in Seoul recently. The Arrival,…

Chopper Ride into Cloudless Bliss

Chopper Ride into Cloudless Bliss

“It’s supposed to be ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’”, but when Helen Parker of The Australian visited the North Island’s east coast “there wasn’t a cloud in sight – or people for that…

Introducing a Guardian Fan

Introducing a Guardian Fan

New Zealander Roger Cowell, a UK-based freelance writer and registered nurse, features in the Guardian’s reader series, ‘Good to Meet You’. “In 1974, aged 23, I came to the UK from New Zealand and…

Homemakers Reunite in Indiana

Homemakers Reunite in Indiana

Apparently, when a New Zealander makes a promise, it’s a vow to remember – even if it means travelling halfway around the world to attend a birthday party. That’s just what Yvonne Moore (left)…

Dr Bogan No Dimwit

Dr Bogan No Dimwit

Dave Snell has graduated from Waikato University with a doctoral degree that examined the social habits of bogans, who are typically portrayed as “dimwitted, uncultured, and unworthy of serious academic study,” Snell writes in…

Headrushing Pop Fusion

Headrushing Pop Fusion

Ladyhawke’s May concert at the Ruby Lounge in Manchester is reviewed in the Guardian by Dave Simpson who says that “the verdict from the front row is a shouted: ‘This is good…

Top Prize for Robotic Whizz Kids

Top Prize for Robotic Whizz Kids

Onehunga High School has won the VEX High School Robotics World Championships, which were held in Los Angles in late April. The team has qualified for the world championships almost every year since it…

Local Wineries Entice Chinese Market

Local Wineries Entice Chinese Market

New Zealand winemakers are preparing for a major push in China this month with their biggest-ever road show taking place in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. The New Zealand government and wine industry are…

Border Control Arguments

Border Control Arguments

New Zealand may be one of the most geographically isolated nations on Earth, but its leaders say the country is not immune to the risks of refugees arriving by boat and have now drafted…

Fashionable Favourites

Fashionable Favourites

Wellington band The Black Seeds latest album Dust and Dirt featured at No 4 in Deutsch Vogue’s May Playlist. “Reggae from New Zealand?” the publication questions, “Yes,” mentioning the “airy” title track, sure to…

Fitting Local Tastes

Fitting Local Tastes

Auckland café and bar The Imperial Lane features in the Travel Edits section of Monocle’s May issue. “Since December last year the cobblestone passage of the historical Imperial Buildings has been home…

We’ve Heard of Her

We’ve Heard of Her

Former prime minister Helen Clark, who is now administrator for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), has topped a list of 25 women in a Foreign Policy magazine article called, “The most powerful women…

Royal Dons NZ Designer

Royal Dons NZ Designer

An indigo tweed skirt suit designed by New Zealander Rebecca Taylor was recently worn by the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton when she stepped out for an event at Goldsmiths’ Hall in London. When…

Art the Lifeblood on Waiheke

Art the Lifeblood on Waiheke

“‘There’s something about this stretch of water that changes everything,’ sculptor Chris Bailey says, gesturing towards the Hauraki Gulf. ‘It has an almost cleansing effect.’” “Clambering out of Bailey’s cluttered ute, we…

Banking on Nigeria

Banking on Nigeria

Stephen Jennings, the New Zealand-born founder and chief executive of Moscow-based investment bank Renaissance Capital, is setting up a consumer finance business in Nigeria with hopes to tap the fast-growing economy’s rising…

Ballistic on AFL Boundaries

Ballistic on AFL Boundaries

New Zealand Olympic hopeful Aucklander Veronica Torr, 24, who is on the brink of qualifying for the London Games in the heptathlon, has been head-hunted by the Australian Football League (AFL) as a boundary…

International Success Story

International Success Story

New Zealand filmmaker Anna Cottrell has been filming the story of Ethiopian refugee Terefe Ejigu since he was 16, when newly enrolled at Wellington College he began running. Ejigu’s talent as a runner was…

Spotlight on Adolescent Health

Spotlight on Adolescent Health

New Zealand has the second highest overall mortality rate and the highest suicide rate in those aged 10-24 years among developed countries, according to recent analysis undertaken by medical journal The Lancet. In the…

Ultimate Legend Remembered

Ultimate Legend Remembered

Rugby legend Fred “The Needle” Allen – who at age 92 was the oldest living All Black and one of the rare group of players to have both played in and coached the national…

Making Records Trumps Study

Making Records Trumps Study

Kimbra started writing songs at the age of 10 as a “natural way to express myself as a kid” she tells Mel Evans of the Sunday Magazine. “It wasn’t until I started listening to…

Gobsmackingly Good Wine

Gobsmackingly Good Wine

“Martinborough, at the bottom of the North Island, is alter ego: small, intimate, friendly and with gobsmackingly good vino,” Ian Verrender, business columnist, writes in The Age. “Marlborough produces the bulk of New…

Cup Makes Television History

Cup Makes Television History

Last year’s Rugby World Cup final, in which the All Blacks beat France, was the most-watched event in New Zealand television history “attracting a 98 per cent audience share,” Rugby World Cup Limited (RWCL)…

#146: The Global Life of New Zealanders

#146: The Global Life of New Zealanders

  THE GLOBAL LIFE OF NEW ZEALANDERS From Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM | 27 April 2012| #146 |…

Terrifically Exciting Force

Terrifically Exciting Force

When chef and author Robert Oliver was growing up in New Zealand “restaurant culture was just beginning and eating out was considered to be an indulgence, a rare treat.” “Ironic really, considering that, as…

Technologically Outnumbered

Technologically Outnumbered

Mobile phones in New Zealand outnumber the country’s population, according to a study conducted by global market research firm TNS, which surveyed 48,000 people in 58 countries finding that almost half of New Zealanders…

Short Sequence, Sharp Response

Short Sequence, Sharp Response

A 10-minute sequence from Peter Jackson’s forthcoming two-part Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit has been shown to conference goers at the annual CinemaCon in Las Vegas. The conference featured a presentation from…

Time to Pause for Thought

Time to Pause for Thought

An estimated 15,000 flocked to this year’s dawn service ceremony at the War Memorial Museum in Auckland to mark the 97th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli and to remember fallen servicemen and women….

Taking on the World

Taking on the World

In the worldwide food shortages that developed at the end of the Second World War, tiny New Zealand grew fabulously rich. New Zealand dairy farmer Thomas Lambie recalls: “ had the second-highest per-capita income in…

Joyfully Optimistic

Joyfully Optimistic

“New Zealand is an otherworldly mash-up of climates, geologies, adventures, and luxuries. (Oh, the things you can do!)”, writes Condé Nast Traveler’s Susan Hack, who “tries it all in the Southern Hemisphere’s hot zone”,…

Mad for it in Wellington

Mad for it in Wellington

Wellington’s St James Theatre heaving with a full-capacity crowd features in the Guardian’s ‘24 Hours in Pictures’ as One Direction fans watch the British boy band perform. One Direction’s 2012 tour of New Zealand…

#145: Rock Around the World

#145: Rock Around the World

  THE GLOBAL LIFE OF NEW ZEALANDERS From Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM | 20 April 2012| #145 |…

Kimbra Feat. Mark Foster: Warrior

Kimbra Feat. Mark Foster: Warrior

Kimbra Feat. Mark Foster’s hit track, Warrior.

Six60: Forever

Six60: Forever

Six60 perform their hit single, Forever.

#144: Around the World in 49 Headlines

#144: Around the World in 49 Headlines

  THE GLOBAL LIFE OF NEW ZEALANDERS From Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM | 9 March 2012| #144 |…

Marmite: Don’t Freak

Marmite: Don’t Freak

Graham Henry helps New Zealand’s get through the 2012 Marmite Shortage.

#143: Lloyd Morrison Tribute; Global Headlines

#143: Lloyd Morrison Tribute; Global Headlines

  THE GLOBAL LIFE OF NEW ZEALANDERS From Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM | 24 February 2012| #143 |…

Unprecedented After-Shock

Unprecedented After-Shock

Deon Swiggs, 25-year-old director of the fledgling nonprofit Rebuild Christchurch, talks to the Los Angeles Times about how New Zealanders are coping one year after a massive magnitude 6.3 earthquake killed 185 people and…

Up to No Good in the Caitlins

Up to No Good in the Caitlins

Flight of the Conchord Bret McKenzie and Australian comedian Hamish Blake star in a screwball manslaughter comedy who end up on the road trip of their lives in the feature film Two Little Boys,…

Thrilling Win for Paddison

Thrilling Win for Paddison

Wellington golfer Gareth Paddison, 31, held on in a nail-biting finish to win the Victorian PGA Championship at Creswick’s Forest Park by one shot ahead of Australian Leighton Lyle. Forest Resort pro-golfer Ben Roberts…

We Bought a Marina

We Bought a Marina

Three years ago, Wellingtonian Boyd Tomkies, 38, combined his childhood passion with a way to support his family – buying what he described as a “failing” inflatables business and recently becoming the owner of…

Buying Up the Grammar Zone

Buying Up the Grammar Zone

The campus of Auckland Grammar School, designed in the Spanish style of the California missions, is one of New Zealand’s largest, oldest and most prestigious schools for boys, established in 1868. By…

Homes Bring Hope in Cambodia

Homes Bring Hope in Cambodia

Palmerston North City Council civil engineer Kelvin Au (left), 25, is putting his skills to  good use in Cambodia as part of a Habitat for Humanity one-year placement, organized via Engineering Without Borders, building…

Bret McKenzie Nominated for Oscar

Bret McKenzie Nominated for Oscar

Bret McKenzie speaks to Conan about his Oscar nomination and acting in Lord of the Rings.

Nous Magazine

Nous Magazine

Brian Sweeeny explains why “Buggering off” is only a bad thing if we let it be in Waikato business magazine, Nous.

#142: Big Xmas Read

#142: Big Xmas Read

  THE GLOBAL LIFE OF NEW ZEALANDERS From Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM | 21 December 2011 |…

Deck the Halls

Deck the Halls

On Election Day I worked at the Waiohiki Arts Village with my nephew Lawrence Kingi-Miki, Nathan Rose, Gerard Gunn, and Tipu Tareha. We were digging…

Cycle Team Signing Coup

Cycle Team Signing Coup

Takaka native Jack Bauer, 24, represents a “signing coup” for CEO Jonathan Vaughters of Boulder-based cycling unit the 2012 Team Garmin-Cervelo. Vaughters went deep into cycling’s hinterland to find a possible star for Europe’s…

Recapturing the Glory Days

Recapturing the Glory Days

Papakura-born fly-half Stephen Donald, 27, who signed a two-year deal with Premiership club Bath in August, says he wants to help the team recapture their “glory days”. “They’re very ambitious. I’d love to contribute…

Horse Whispering

Horse Whispering

An image of Hurricanes assistant coach Alama Ieremia working with his horse during a leadership programme run by Talkinghorses in Te Horo, is included in the Globe and Mail’s ‘Day in Photos’. The publication…

Bret McKenzie Sings with Kermit

Bret McKenzie Sings with Kermit

Bret McKenzie and Kermit the Frog sing ‘Life’s a Happy Song’ from The Muppets.

Rats Not Such Pests After All

Rats Not Such Pests After All

Invasive rats are compensating for the loss of native pollinators in New Zealand, scientists report in a paper published in a Royal Society journal. “New Zealand offers a really interesting and rare opportunity to…

Jaw-dropping Triumph

Jaw-dropping Triumph

Player agent New Zealander Tyran Smith, 37, knows he’s set himself a tough benchmark by brokering perhaps the NRL’s most extraordinary contract — a two-year deal worth A$1.7 million for 19-year-old Will Hopoate who…

True Technie Tonic

True Technie Tonic

“Geeks will love the stereoscopic cameras and 3D methods” on Peter Jackson’s fourth video blog and “most people wouldn’t care if it was shot on a hand-held,” according to Guardian film blogger Ben Child….

Index Up and in the Black

Index Up and in the Black

New Zealand is the only MSCI developed country index still to be in the black over the past year. Throughout the year, global economies have been rocked by the eurozone sovereign crisis, rising US…