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,…

Cold omparisons

Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand “is like…

A bright future

23 March 2009 – New Zealand was breaking its own records for renewable energy production in the final quarter of 2008, creating 74 percent of its energy from renewable…

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…

Long Distance Teamwork

Tintin collaborators Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are in touch across the world via a video-conferencing setup for the first installment of the film, using a custom-made iChat-type system…

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…

With glass and steel

David Hovey, the New Zealand-born, award-winning architect who owns Optima Inc. in Arizona says his dream home would be a contemporary home built of steel and glass built near…

Advice from two experts

Auckland identical twin sisters Matilda ‘Tilly’ Hanlon and Beryl Baguley recently celebrated their 100th birthday, a rare occasion indeed with the mathematical chance of identical twins reaching the age…

Coup for Longevity

A one-month old tuatara has been discovered at Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary Zealandia, the first baby tuatara to be seen on the mainland in two centuries. “We are all…

The Racing Reverend Rests

Legendary racing announcer Darren Tyquin died in a car crash in Christchurch recently, at 41. Tyquin had been calling races since he was fifteen, when he began covering greyhound…

Harbour-side Haven

Hokianga is “the perfect place to build a prototype of a new type of community to model a more visionary idea of how the world can be” writes Kimberley…

Prophetic words

Thirty years ago, founder of Montana wines Frank Yukich planted the first commercial vineyard of the modern era in Marlborough introducing the world to the delights of New Zealand…

Booming Population

The kakapo – star of a recent BBC documentary presented by British actor and raconteur Stephen Fry – is one of the world’s most endangered birds the kakapo, but…

One Fine Fishing Boat

New Zealand naval architect and multi-hull specialist Roger Hill has designed the Montebello, a luxury 12.5m planing power catamaran for a group of Gold Coast businessmen who – headed…

Where There is Snow

Mt Hutt has acquired three state-of-the-art snow-making snow groomers and new snowmaking compressors to help produce more snow and improve trails for the 2009 season, scheduled to open June…

Tackling Genres

New Zealand band Cut Off Your Hands is interviewed by American indie music publication Sentimentalist Magazine before the four-piece played the United States’ largest music festival, Austin’s South by…

Nabbed online

Wellington High Court judge Justice David Gendall has granted approval for the serving of papers via Facebook, the first time a New Zealand court has allowed such a step….

Sensitive Subject

Gisborne-born adventurer Graeme Dingle has said British author Jeffrey Archer is “dreaming” after Archer claimed that George Mallory, not Edmund Hillary, was the first to reach the summit of…

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…

High on the Piste

Jane Peak is on a remote station in the Southern Alps accessible only by helicopter and “just begging for a beating” in the ski season when the slopes are…

Mother of gore

Peter Jackson’s 1992 zombie horror Braindead — released as Dead Alive in the United States — is, according to the Tri-City Herald’s Ed Robertson, “unless someone has video of…

Small With Might

14 March 2009 – In an unprecedented move, Lincoln University, New Zealand’s smallest with just 2,600 full-time students and 610 staff, will merge with government-owned AgResearch “in order to capitalise on…

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…

Marlin mayhem

Weymouth-raised stunt fisherman Matt Watson — who famously dove from a helicopter onto the back of a cruising marlin in the Pacific Ocean wrestling the giant fish to the…

Commonwealth win

Auckland author Mo Zhi Hong has won Best First Book Prize for South East Asia and the South Pacific at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2009 in London for his…

Taste the Day

Cloudy Bay winemaker Tim Heath is putting a “sense of glass”….

Wing on a Current

Queenstown BASE jumper and cameraman Chuck Berry, famed for the longest unassisted ‘wingsuit’ flight, has leapt off the top of Terror Peak in Milford Stand once again with wings…

Art for all times

Contemporary Pacific art exhibition Le Folauga is showing at Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts until April 5. Le Folauga features a representative sample of the best artwork being…

Down but not out

Sir Bob Charles and US amateur champion Danny Lee, 18, were amongst the line-up at the New Zealand Open, with Charles, “believed to be the oldest golfer to make…

Memorial at Shore’s Edge

Missing Warriors rugby league player Sonny Fai, 20, is remembered with wreaths and garlands at a memorial on Te Henga, Bethells Beach, in Auckland, a poignant image included in…

Barbie The Muse

New Zealand fashion designer Karen Walker has recreated several outfits from her Autumn Winter ’09 collection ‘she’s cracked’ to dress Barbie in celebration of the iconic doll’s 50th anniversary….

Victorian Mod-Cons

Greytown in the Wairarapa – population 2001 and New Zealand’s first planned town – is definitely worth a visit writes the WA Today’s Kate Duthie, a town not unlike…

Scaling nature

New Zealander Paul McCathie is a former arborist who in 2005 founded Goodleaf Tree Climbing Adventures on the Isle Of Wight. McCathie “works with only one tree, a 60ft…

New Black Cap

Newly-appointed Black Caps manager Dave Currie – chef de mission of the New Zealand team for the 2004 and 2008 Olympics campaigns and the 2002 and 2006 Commonwealth Games…

Tough Guy Mourned

Auckland talent agent and former professional wrestler Robert Bruce has died, aged 65. The Scottish-born villain could enrage the crowd with a mere facial expression. Such were his talents…

French’s Heaven

It was love at first sight for comedienne Dawn French when she landed on New Zealand’s North Island, falling for a “peaceful, unspoilt and friendly” country that reminded her…

Key Looks Ahead

6 March 2009 – The idea of growing a nation out of recession by improving productivity puts Prime Minister John Key and his conservative National Party at odds with…

Natasha Likes It

Natasha Bedingfield, 27, the UK singer who has sold over ten million records, is currently back in New Zealand — the birthplace of her parents — finding inspiration for…

A Classical Reaction

Waitakere City has been using classical music to deter vandals and loitering youth, driving them away from a local transit hub with remarkable success. Bob Harvey, mayor of Waitakere,…

Fantasy Land

ABC’s new series, Legend of the Seeker, is being filmed in New Zealand, taking advantage of the surreal midland setting. “They have a real respect for nature,”says the shows…

The News with an Accent

Working as a presenter for BBC World news, Taranaki native Lucy Hockings says her New Zealand accent “is a good reflection of the newsroom, which is very international.” When…

A personal charm

Hermann Seifried was laughed at when he arrived on the South Island 40 years ago, looking to make wine. Today, he is the proud owner of an outstanding winery,…

Link Rethink

A Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences study has found that alcohol abuse may increase the risk of depression, instead of the other way around as was previously…

Call to arms

Actor Sam Neill, one of the stars of New Zealand/British film Dean Spanley, has told Prime Minister John Key at the premier of the film that: “George Bush declared…

Dishwashing debut

Founder of Ecostore Aucklander Malcolm Rands has put his household cleaning product range on the shelves in U.S. chain Meijer Inc.’s 185 stores in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and…

Big Easy Baller

Auckland local Sean Marks is enjoying regular playing time on the New Orleans Hornets, one of America’s top basketball teams. Recently interviewed by InsiderHoops.com, Marks describes how he grew…

Girls Don’t Cry

Stuntwoman Zoë Bell, 30, often found it easier to “brawl than bawl” when filming online series Angel of Death, in which she plays assassin Eve. Bell had to display…

Marvelous Middleditch

Sydney-based New Zealander Paul Middleditch, 40, is interviewed about his success as an advertising director in the March issue of Australian Financial Review. “I believe there was a time…

Peter Jackson in action

Six of Peter Jackson’s Oscars quietly share desk space with a grasshopper model from James and the Giant Peach, a Lancaster Bomber, a cardboard replica of Thunderbird One, and…

Time has flown

Auckland watchmaker Malcolm Campbell of Timeshop Watch Repairs, who has been in business in a two metre square Lorne Street premises for almost twenty-two years, is now to retire….

Spare Time For Fine Wine

“I imagined this is how it was in Napa in the thirties – an intimate winemaking community that the world hadn’t yet discovered,” writes Chang-Rae Lee as he tours…

Gray’s marvellous mutants

New Zealand comic book writer and editor of the Marvel Collectors’ Edition line of magazines Scott Gray is interviewed by Comic Book Resources about “his take on the second…

A New Deal

Phillip Alder of the New York Times describes “a tied world record,” charting out an exceedingly rare occurrence at last year’s national bridge congress in Hamilton, 60 miles south…

Sights on California

Actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, 19, and her family are in Los Angeles, considering a move to California, but right now “bunking down at a modest hotel in West Hollywood between…

Promoting Touch

New Zealander Miles Darby, 46, IT project manager at Credit Suisse Singapore, is also president of the city’s amateur Monsoon Touch Football Club. Darby has been playing the sport…

Not Quite the End

When Tim Finn and Split Enz supported Skyhooks and AC/DC at Sydney’s Festival Hall in 1975, they were booed at by teenager Magda Szubanski. “Years later, Magda admitted that…