Palpable Landscapes
Winemaker and international landscape photographer Kevin Judd’s book The Landscape of New Zealand Wine is one of seven of the “best wine reading on offer this year” according to Jeni Port of Melbourne newspaper,…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Christmas and Cows
New Plymouth physical education teacher Tracey Dravitzki explained New Zealand Christmas celebrations to a York News-Times journalist while stopping off in the American country town to participate in a local primary school’s classes with…
Two Globe Nominations
New Zealand-raised actress Anna Paquin has been nominated for two best actress Golden Globes in her roles as Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood and playing the lead in made-for-TV movie The Courageous Heart of…
House of Pallets
Auckland sculptor Aaron McConchie’s Chep pallet installation “c” is on display at Manukau City’s Highbrook Business Park through January 9. The exhibit consists of nine pyramid-like structures that resembles a house of cards. Each…
Defining Experience
“The New Zealand lodge is almost a travel genre in its own right; and, like the safari lodge, the ranch and the spa resort, it comes with a set of defining experiences,” writes Max…
Hatchery to Home
In the last eight years, 89 chicks have been returned to the wild by the Whakatane Kiwi Project, and on a recent holiday to New Zealand, Vancouver-based freelancer Jennifer Laidlaw joins a crowd of…
Working to Live
New Zealander Michelle Clark-Smith, 32, who is now based in Durango, Colorado, is “building a semi-professional ski career for herself in tandem with her partner-in-crime and husband, longtime local photographer Scott DW Smith”. In…
Quality Not Quantity
New Zealand’s wineries are “fighting to preserve their reputation as premium wine producers, even as bumper harvests and thrifty drinkers pull them in the opposite direction,” writes Alexandra Harney for The New York Times….
Return to self
Flight of the Conchords duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement have ended their HBO series after two seasons. On their website, the pair said: “We’re very proud of the two seasons we made, and…
Gimblett Amongst the Best
“New Zealand has been one of the great success stories of the Noughties,” writes the Telegraph’s Jonathan Ray in a wine trend review of the decade. “It’s a country that I simply adore and…
Revered Geochemist
Port Chalmers-born Smithsonian scientist Brian Harold Mason, who was internationally known for his study of meteorites and moon rocks and who was the first to discover that a rock found in Antarctica came from…
Icy Conundrum
New Zealand is one of the dozen founding members of the Antarctic Treaty, along with the United States, Russia, Britain and others, and is among those leading the push for shipping regulation – particularly…
Boondigga takes on US
Wellington band Fat Freddy’s Drop recently played three sell-out shows on the West Coast of the United States. The seven-piece dub outfit has been together for nearly a decade, yet only recently released its…
Eastern Tastes Approve
Many newcomers drawn to New Zealand’s quality of life are of Asian descent observes Ming Wong writing for the Chinese publication Global Times. “This explains why cities such as Auckland and Christchurch now offer…
Meeting of minds
New Zealanders director Jane Campion, 55, and actress Kerry Fox, 43, tell The Independent on Sunday how they both came to meet. Fox recalls: “I walked into the audition for An Angel at My…
O’Brien to Middlesex
Black Caps seamer Iain O’Brien, 33, has retired from international cricket and joined Middlesex as their overseas player for 2010 having spent last season at Leicestershire. The right-armer, who is also a prolific blogger, made his…
Smooth operator
New Zealand-based bus manufacturer DesignLine, which already has three 37-seater vehicles valued at $784,000 operating as part of a pilot scheme in New York City, may be joined by 87 more buses by the end…
Picking Up the Protocol
“New Zealand may be best known for adventure tourism including sky diving, bungee jumping, gliding and ‘Zorbing’ ó rolling downhill in a 10-foot-tall inflatable sphere cushioned with water.” Yet the most enriching part of…
Chain Reaction
New Zealand-invented coffee the flat white will now be offered to British Starbucks customers from December 7, the first new type of coffee the company has offered to British consumers since it opened up…
Model of all things
“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.” So said the mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary. In the pursuit of the extraordinary, the dean of private business school INSEAD Frank Brown has…
Aotearoa soul infectious
“There’s a place far from Jamaica where old-school reggae still rules: New Zealand,” writes Cary Darling for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Such traditionalists as Katchafire and the Black Seeds, as well as more electro…
Pinot pleases
New Zealand pinot noir Craggy Range is surpassing its American equivalents in blind tastings for critics. This autumn, at New York restaurant Eleven Madison, six top pinot noirs from California, Oregon and Burgundy (the…
Watch Out for Laulala
New Zealand centre Casey Laulala, 27, signed with the Cardiff Blues in July, having turned down Magners League champions Munster. Samoan-born Laulala is described by many as one of the hardest players to contain…
Pricey Contest
A New Zealand sauvignon blanc was the biggest selling wine in Australia last year, with three out of the five top selling wines coming from this country. New Zealand Winegrowers data shows the country’s…
Watch out for Laulala
New Zealand centre Casey Laulala, 27, signed with the Cardiff Blues in July, having turned down Magners League champions Munster. Samoan-born Laulala is described by many as one of the hardest players to contain in broken-field…
Place for NZ in Chile
The New Zealand government has gifted the Chilean capital Santiago a new plaza in the municipality of Providencia. Plaza Nueva Zelandia aims to represent New Zealand culture, landscape, flora and fauna, and to provide…
Angelic sequel
Wellington author Elizabeth Knox’s latest – a sequel to her 1998 prize-winner The Vintner’s Luck entitled The Angel’s Cut – has been “published to strong praise” writes the Courier Mail’s Kathleen Noonan. The Vintner’s…
Dispelling The Dark
An exhibition featuring New Zealand designers Nom*D, Doris De Pont, World and Zambesi is on now at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. The exhibition, entitled, Together Alone: Australian and New Zealand Fashion,…
Home to Rest
Wallabies coach Robbie Deans heads home to Christchurch for some jet boating and a family catch-up having been at the helm of the Australian team for two seasons. Deans and the Wallabies flew out…
Pursuing World Domination
The Christchurch-designed YikeBike has been named one of Time magazine’s 50 Best Inventions of 2009, making the cover of the publication’s Asia edition. “It’s like getting your first Big Wheel all over again — and you don’t even…
Together in recovery
Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox, a benefit compilation for the Auckland musician who suffered a debilitating stroke in June, has been released in New Zealand on Knox’s own A Major Label, proceeds of which…
Bevan Honoured in NY
Queenstown-born, London-based Academy Award-nominated film producer Tim Bevan will be presented with a career tribute at the 19th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York on November 30. Bevan has worked as producer…
Planet Earth is blue
From Great Mercury Island, 18km off the Coromandel Peninsula, Mark Rocket and Peter Beck of privately-owned company Rocket Lab successfully launched the 6-metre rocke Atea-1 into space. The rocket, which was carrying a 2kg payload of…
Top 50 title for Wright
Ghost Dance, the 2004 memoir by dancer and choreographer Douglas Wright, has been selected in Richard Canning’s Fifty Gay & Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read (Alyson Books, New York, 2009). ‘This untypical…
In living memory
“Three decades ago, New Zealand was a mass of tears. The country suffered its worst air tragedy ever when, on November 28, 1979, an Air New Zealand plane on a sightseeing flight over Antarctica…
Catton shortlisted
Wellington author Eleanor Catton, shortlisted for the 2009 Guardian first book award for her debut novel The Rehearsal, talks to the newspaper about the book’s beginnings, its inspiration and the “hardest bits”. “In…
No hope for French
The All Blacks “overwhelmed” France 39–12 at Stade Velodrome in Marseille completing their four-test campaign in Europe without conceding a try. A rampant All Blacks wearing white jerseys to avoid a color clash scored…
Return to Form (Momentarily)
Christchurch fast bowler Shane Bond’s return to Test cricket has seen the Black Caps score a 32-run win over Pakistan in the first Test at Dunedin’s University Oval. Bond, 34, took eight wickets and the man-of-the-match…
Armed with laughter
“Going to a Topp Twins gig in New Zealand is a bit like going to a thousand-strong family reunion,” writes Stephanie Bunbury for The Age. “Up front are Jools and Lynda Topp, 51-year-old identical…
Blissful ending
The Phoenix Foundation’s latest album Happy Ending has been given five stars by The Independent’s Andy Gill who says the Wellington sextet “are surely the most potent band to come out of New Zealand…
Arias for Chanteuse
Ladyhawke picked up two awards in the breakthrough single and album categories at the recent 2009 Australian Music Awards (Arias). The 30-year-old singer, originally from Masterton, performed her single ‘My Delirium’ live at the…
Challenging Tradition
Wellingtonian Felicity Lusk, 53, has been appointed head of the prestigious 753-year-old Abingdon School, in Oxfordshire — the first female to ever run a boys’ public boarding school. “I don’t know why they chose me,”…
Miniature by might
A 25-hectare replica New Zealand city, dubbed “Little New Zealand” is being constructed in the northern Chinese city of Qufu. The $4 million New Zealand Gardens initiative will come with its own Maori village…
Out Damn Pests
New Zealand’s possum population has halved over the last 20 years down from 70 million in the 1980s to approximately 30 million. Possum control is carried out over 13 million hectares, which is about…
Phar Lap Home to Rest
A bronze statue of Timaru’s most famous resident Phar Lap has been unveiled at the entrance to the city’s raceway on State Highway 1. Timaru Herald sports editor Stu Piddington talks to the ABC’s New Zealand correspondent Kerri…
Books come to life
Colenso BBDO are behind a stop-motion animated film developed for the New Zealand Book Council called Going West, which was created by UK design team Andersen M Studio and launched on YouTube in…
Televised Aliens
Wellington-based Weta Workshop is working with Disney XD on a television movie called Skyrunners creating, what the star of the show American Kelly Blatz describes as, a “unique and frightening … transparent” alien “with…
Common Southern Goal
Twizel pilot Kylie Wakelin, 36, is one of eight women skiing to the South Pole in a trek to mark the anniversary of the Commonwealth grouping of 53 former British colonies. Skiing six to…
Parliamentary eyesore
The Beehive has been rated among the world’s ten ugliest buildings, coming in at number three on a list decided by editors and members of the popular online Virtual Tourist travel network. Virtual Tourist’s…
Walker the Idol
New Zealand-raised eighteen-year-old Stan Walker has been crowned Australian Idol winning a AU$200,000 artist’s development fund and a recording contract with Sony. Described as a soul singer, Walker, who is a shop assistant in…
Slink Into Style
The Wairarapa’s Wharekauhau Lodge & Country Estate is one of five “sexy and stylish retreats” recommended by the Observer’s Mr and Mrs Smith who travel throughout New Zealand and Australia looking at the best….
Claim to Fame
Napier antiques dealer and former New Zealand hockey representative Kevin Percy, 74, is claiming to be the rightful heir to Alnwick Castle, the family home of the Earl of Northumberland, on an estate conservatively…
Marlborough in Seoul
Head winemaker at Jackson Estate Mike Paterson was recently in Seoul promoting the winery and hosting a wine-tasting event at the hotel W Seoul, which was interested in matching their food with Jackson wines….
Arguing the Green
“Sometime in the 2020s, New Zealand will become responsible for a massive surge in emissions from its forests,” writes Fred Pearce in his Guardian series ‘Greenwash’. “The central problem seems to be that when…
Least bent
New Zealand is the least corrupt country in the world according to the annual Transparency International index which ranked 180 countries on a scale of zero to 10 with zero being perceived as highly…
Travel Trailer Legacy
New Zealand-born entrepreneur Wade F. B. Thompson, who made his name reviving the American Airstream brand of travel trailers, has died at his Upper East Side home, aged 69. Raised in Wellington, Thompson dreamed…
