Blog Archives

Painted loneliness

Painted loneliness

Christchurch-born painter Euan Macleod has won the 2009 Gallipoli Art Prize, a prize valued at $20,000 for Smoke/Pinklandscape/Shovel which portrays the muddy trenches of World War I. Competition judge John McDonald said: “This year,…

Embassy Glamour

Embassy Glamour

New Zealand High Commissioner Rupert Holborow hosted a World of Wearable Art show for this year’s Indian contestants at his residence at Chanakyapuri. Blurring the boundaries between art and fashion, of the 10 sculptural…

Ratting Out the Weasels

Ratting Out the Weasels

Stoats, which were first introduced to New Zealand in the 19th century to combat the spread of the rabbit, have  decimated the kiwi population reducing little spotted kiwi and Rowi or Okarito brown kiwi…

Pro and ready for PGA

Pro and ready for PGA

14 April 2009 – Eighteen-year-old New Zealand US Amateur Champion Danny Lee has turned pro, signing a deal believed to be worth $US10 million with IMG. Lee will make his professional debut at the…

Whisked Debate

Whisked Debate

Helen Leach, an academic at Otago University, is hoping to settle the origins of the pavlova with recipes found in a 1933 Mothers’ Union cookbook and in a 1929 rural magazine, both calling the…

To Save the Queen or Not

To Save the Queen or Not

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark, 59, who has given her valedictory speech to the House after 27 years as an MP, said the country’s institutions had “evolved a long way from our colonial heritage”….

Designing the Future

Designing the Future

British-born, Hawkes Bay-based designer David Trubridge, takes part in a Q&A for the latest issue of Dwell, where he quizzed about number of things like his ideal working environment, what music keeps him…

Stormy Outlook Ahead

Stormy Outlook Ahead

New Zealand’s economy contracted in the fourth quarter at its fastest pace in 16 years as the global turmoil worsened a domestic slump, putting interest rate cuts back on the agenda. The Reserve Bank…

Barrier’s best bachs

Barrier’s best bachs

The improvisational shacks of the Great Barrier Island have inspired a new breed of bachs, collecting rainfall for water treating waste for irrigation, harnessing the sun with solar panels, and generally creating a space…

Copywronged Righted

Copywronged Righted

New Zealand’s Creative Freedom Foundation, opponents of an amendment to the country’s copyright law, Section 92a, have secured victory with the scrapping of the plan which would have required Internet service providers to implement…

Passing Through the Idyllic

Passing Through the Idyllic

For three weeks over the summer, private gardens throughout New Zealand opened their gates to a tour group of 28 Arkansas Master Gardeners beginning at Totara Waters, a 2 acre garden owned by Peter…

Across the waves

Across the waves

Auckland-born Sara Seruvatu, 28, hosts a mid-morning lifestyle show on Fiji’s Legend FM station and says radio has enabled her to meet and greet people from all walks of life. In an interview with…

Accent on Mr Big

Accent on Mr Big

Auckland University of Technology language expert Andy Gibson says Australian actor Matthew Newton, who plays New Zealand drug lord Terry Clark in the series Underbelly, is using “fush and chup” vowels where real New…

Built to Sway

Built to Sway

21 February 2009 – “Wellington, full of steep and newly formed hills held together by grass, gorse bushes and stunted ngaio trees … shares with its better-known counterpart San Francisco an engaging characteristic: it’s…

Trailer: The Piano

Trailer: The Piano

Ernest Rutherford’s Famous Experiments

Ernest Rutherford’s Famous Experiments

Two of Ernest Rutherford’s famous experiments are explained.

Writings of here and there

Writings of here and there

Author Kapka Kassabova moved to New Zealand from Bulgaria in 1992 at the age of 17 “having suffered the full experience of ‘Socialism with a Human Face’ that was the notional premise behind the…

Courting Comparison

Courting Comparison

New Zealand netball is the “main ‘girl’s game'” and has a “‘World Championships’ that only Australia and New Zealand can realistically win,” writes Frank Shanly in a profile about the sport in Indiana daily…

Madonna’s mad for it

Madonna’s mad for it

Wellington-based company “Phil & Ted changed my life,” writes Examiner.com’s Kate Byrd of the New Zealand “stroller gurus”, going on to give ten reasons why she loves her buggy. “I researched double strollers for months….

2000: All Blacks vs Wallabies

2000: All Blacks vs Wallabies

See why this match was described by many as ‘the best game of rugby ever played’.

Neill’s canine enactment

Neill’s canine enactment

Sam Neill, 61, plays the title role of Edwardian clergyman the Dean in Paramount Pictures film Dean Spanley, which opens in UK cinemas on December 12. In a Guardian interview Neill discusses…

Top Spot for Teen

Top Spot for Teen

Oakura surf champion Paige Hareb, 18, has earned herself a spot on the professional $US1 million World Championship Tour, one of only 18 places for the world’s top female surfers. From the 2008 Reef…

Key In Clark Out

Key In Clark Out

8 November 2008 – National Party leader John Key, 47, has ousted Labour’s Helen Clark from office and a nine-year term, with a mantra of change. Prime Minister Helen Clark conceded defeat. Clark, 58,…

Pig Cell Go-ahead

Pig Cell Go-ahead

New Zealand’s Living Cell Technologies, a company founded by Aucklander Professor Bob Elliott, who has pioneered research in the treatment of type-1 diabetes, has been given approval to trial the transplantation of insulin-producing pig…

Through Cloud and Snow

Through Cloud and Snow

From Wellington Railway Station – “a symphony of towering columns, vaulted ceilings and marble terrazzo floors” – travelling by train north up the west coast “the track squeezes between wild, rocky shoreline and precipitous…

Success on the periphery

Success on the periphery

Dunedin noise-rock trio Dead C formed in 1987 and over the past two decades has made more of a reputation outside of New Zealand music circles. They’re on the fringe, and they don’t plan…

Caged Art Debut

Caged Art Debut

Auckland artist Sharon Finn is illuminating Sydney’s Simmer on the Bay with her first exhibition, ‘The Gilded Cage’, a collection of bejewelled chandeliers and bodiced mannequins, one adorned with antique watchfaces . For the…

Digging Up the Sandpit

Digging Up the Sandpit

Former Dunedin musterer Ed Mumm moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and in November 2007 opened the first earthmoving sandpit in the United States, Dig This, where enthusiasts pay top dollar to operate heavy machinery…

Memories of Bledisloe

Memories of Bledisloe

In 2000, in front of 109,874 spectators jammed into Sydney’s Stadium Australia, Jonah Lomu landed the tenth try in a nerve-racking Bledisloe match beating Australia 39-35. Swerving in towards his wing opponent, Andrew Walker,…

Introducing Tauwhitu

Introducing Tauwhitu

In a Kerikeri pub sometime in the 1980s, Boston author Christina Thompson met a group of Maori having pints after a day spent diving for crayfish and uses this first encounter with native New…

Trailer: Once Were Warriors

Trailer: Once Were Warriors

Piercing Revelation

Piercing Revelation

Janet Frame’s 1963 novel, Towards Another Summer, written in London and first published posthumously in New Zealand in 2007, is considered by Guardian reviewer Rachel Cooke. Towards Another Summer is based on a weekend…

Touring the Terroir

Touring the Terroir

New Zealand wineries are preferable to those of France and California, for first-class tastings, scenery and cuisine, according to the Telegraph’s wine correspondent Robert Joseph. “This is a great place for wine tourism. In…

Shocking Advance

Shocking Advance

Auckland pop band the Shocking Pinks have signed a four-album deal with New York label DFA Records, which also represents LCD Soundsystem and Hercules & Love Affair. Founder and ex-Brunettes member, Nick Harte says…

Rodents Settle Debate

Rodents Settle Debate

The arrival of Pacific rats in New Zealand decides the debate about the settling of the country by Polynesians; the findings confirm that settlers arrived here some 1,000 years later than was previously thought….

Search Engine Commemoration

Search Engine Commemoration

The anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Mount Everest in 1955 has been honoured by search engine giant Google. Google periodically changes its logo to celebrate special events and…

Touting the Youth

Touting the Youth

New Zealand ‘the youngest country’, is the new focus of Tourism New Zealand’s international branding. Tourism chiefs have called in London PR agency Henry’s House as they revive the country’s popularity post-Lord of the…

Weathering the Storm

Weathering the Storm

Rotorua-born and Ruatoria-raised political campaigner and artist Tame Iti has the leading role in a Europe-bound performance based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Iti will perform in Tempest II with the 15-member Mau Dance Company….

War and Peace

War and Peace

I start this blog on a Friday night in mid April and I’ve not long pulled into the homestead at Waiohiki after a long long drive to…

From One Village to Another

From One Village to Another

New Zealand journalist Thomas Butson began his career in copy at New Zealand’s Truth, followed by positions at The Toronto Star and from 1968 at The New York Times. In 1992 Butson and his…

Bond Says It Like It Is

Bond Says It Like It Is

Shane Bond, ex-Black Cap fast bowler and now in the money at the Indian Cricket League’s Delhi Giants, says the decision to go to India is a “no brainer“. Though he will double his income,…

The Mutton Birds: Nature

The Mutton Birds: Nature

The video for the Mutton Birds hit song, Nature.

Sydney Sees Red

Sydney Sees Red

Established in 1953, the Royal New Zealand Ballet had humble beginnings, performing nationwide with a company of three and a pianist. Now 32-strong, and with an international reputation to boot, the RNZB…

Right-hander’s Ultimate Innings

Right-hander’s Ultimate Innings

Walter Mervyn Wallace, one of New Zealand’s greatest batsmen has died, aged 91. As a young man Merv Wallace appeared such a prodigy that the New Zealand press did not scruple to make allusions to Don…

Lightning Success

Lightning Success

Liam Finn is currently touring the United States promoting his 2007 solo album I’ll Be Lightning, and is mesmerising critics there. In Texas, former Dirty Vegas frontman, Steve Smith was impressed with how Finn…

Bridging the Gap

Bridging the Gap

On New Zealand’s Chatham Islands researchers have discovered the country’s oldest known bird fossils. The find  represents four new seabirds dating back some 65 million years when New Zealand separated from supercontinent, Gondwana. Excavation…

Black Beauty Tops Rankings

Black Beauty Tops Rankings

Team NZ has won its first A1 Grand Prix race on home soil in Taupo, and is now the overall series leader. Black Beauty driver Jonny Reid won the Sprint Race and finished…

Farewell to a Literary Legend

Farewell to a Literary Legend

Hone Tuwhare, one of NZ’s most distinguished and best-loved writers, has died in Dunedin aged 86. Tuwhare was the first Maori poet to be published in English (No Ordinary Sun, 1964) and one…

Worthy Splurges and Brilliant Bargains

Worthy Splurges and Brilliant Bargains

Two NZ luxury lodges feature in Tatler’s annual hotel guide for 2008. Otahuna Lodge, Christchurch, and Matakauri Lodge, Queenstown, were named two of the world’s 101 Best Hotels by the British society…

Award Winning Airmanship

Award Winning Airmanship

A Te Anau helicopter pilot has been awarded the Federation Aeronautique International (FAI) Outstanding Airman Award. Richard “Hannibal” Hayes received the honour for single-handedly putting out a bush fire in Queenstown in November…

NZ ceremony honoured in UK

NZ ceremony honoured in UK

The dedication ceremony for the New Zealand Memorial at London’s Hyde Park has won a major British award. The event won the International Visual Communication Association (IVCA) award for projects that inform and…

Police Laws Go Wiki

Police Laws Go Wiki

The NZ police force has used wiki-style online collaboration to update its 1958 Police Act. In September, they posted the Act online and invited contributors from all over the world to suggest their own…

Second Chance for Henry

Second Chance for Henry

Graham Henry has been reappointed as the All Blacks’ head coach, despite widespread criticism of his 2007 Rugby World Cup campaign. Henry, who has vowed to learn from his World Cup mistakes, has signed a two-year…

Bright lights beckon for Wellington student

Bright lights beckon for Wellington student

Wellington student Landen Hale-Brown has a lead role in the Australian production of Billy Elliot the Musical. Hale-Brown, 12, won the role of Billy’s best friend Michael over 3000 other hopefuls. He made…

An appreciative audience

An appreciative audience

The Telegraph describes Crowded House’s performance as “just like old times” and Neil Finn’s voice as “Lennonnish” in a review of their show at Manchester’s MEN Arena. “There’s a long tradition of audience participation…

Enlightened dining

Enlightened dining

NZ-owned restaurant Seamstress has won over critics and diners just weeks after its opening in Melbourne. The four-storey modern Cantonese eatery is co-owned by Dunedin-born Jason Chan, who runs the successful NZ-themed cafe…