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Archive >> December 2011
Toward A Takeaway Solution
Head of purchasing at pioneer Wellington coffee roaster Cafe L’Affare Zeke Alley says New Zealand is “screaming out for a solution” to the ever-increasing problem of disposing of paper…
Henry Receives Knighthood
Rugby World Cup-winning All Blacks coach Graham Henry, 65, has been awarded a knighthood in New Zealand’s annual New Year Honours List. Henry, a former school teacher, who resigned…
Motorcycling’s Ultimate Race
New Zealand’s top motor sports rider Chris Birch, 31, who recently took second place at the 2011 Roof of Africa race, will ride in the 34th running of the…
Orca vs Shark vs Dog
On Boxing Day at Blue Cliffs Beach near Tuatapere, residents witnessed a group of orca whales attacking a shoal of sharks. One shark desperate to escape from the enormous…
Spencer Drives The Thing
The glamorous 48.5m super yacht T6, custom built for New Zealand paper magnate John Spencer, creates a fuss wherever it goes, whether Monaco, the Caribbean or the hazardous North-West…
Underworld Holistics
Rotorua’s Tikitere looks so much like a trip to the underworld that when Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw set his eyes on the area he immediately dubbed it “Hellsgate”….
Feel And Scale Of Earlier Times
“ downtown is dominated by 21st century high-rises, but neighbourhoods like Ponsonby retain the feel and scale of earlier times,” Allan Seiden writes for the Hawaii Reporter, “with galleries and…
Tracing A Seabird Legacy
Dunedin-born author and photographer Neville Peat’s latest book Seabird Genius: The Story of L.E. Richdale, the Royal Albatross, and the Yellow-eyed Penguin, is included in the Guardian’s Christmas ‘Birdbooker Report’….
Taste For The Finer Things
The intestinal transplant New Zealander Matisse Reid, 11, received a year ago at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh came with an unexpected surprise. The fifth-grader (Year 6) developed a…
Time Is Really Money
Kapiti-born screenwriter, producer, and director Andrew Niccol’s latest blockbuster In Time, “a fiendishly clever sci-fi concept,” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is reviewed in the Cyprus Mail. “The setting’s the…
Memorable In Margaret
New Zealand-raised True Blood star Anna Paquin, 29, graced the cover of LA Weekly’s Winter Film Issue, which named Margaret — Paquin plays the lead as teenager Lisa — as the best film of the…
Cliff-Top Perfection
The Lodge at Kauri Cliffs has been named the No. 1 Lodge in Australia and Pacific Nations on the 2012 Gold List, ‘The World’s Best Places to Stay’ selected…
Pecking Good At Math
Dr Damian Scarf, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago, and two colleagues have discovered that pigeons can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability that until now…
Frighteningly Festive
Auckland’s Whitcoulls Santa statue, which was built in 1960, is the world’s most unintentionally creepy Christmas ornament according to American humour website Cracked. Before a 2009 makeover, the statue…
#142: Big Xmas Read
THE GLOBAL LIFE OF NEW ZEALANDERS
From Brian Sweeney, producer NZEDGE.COM…
Gourmet Best On Sundays
Two of the country’s most well known weekend farmers’ markets, Central Otago Farmers’ Market and Auckland’s La Cigale, are represented in a Jaunted article. “On Sundays from 9:00 a.m….
Optically Pure Blue-Violet Hues
Scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) say that Blue Lake in Nelson Lakes National Park might be the clearest freshwater body in the world….
Oddball Wins Over Director
The Peter Jackson-produced and Steven Spielberg-directed 3-D performance-capture film The Adventures of Tintin opens in the United States this week just ahead of the film’s New Zealand release. The Adventures of…
Boeing Gets A Paint Job
The new Air New Zealand Boeing 777-300ER, unveiled at Boeing’s paint hangar facility in Seattle, is the world’s largest commercially operated aircraft to be painted entirely in black. The…
Ridiculously Handsome Nomads
The biggest thing to happen to New Zealand since Peter Jackson’s makeover is Auckland band The Naked and Famous according to Aidin Vaziri writing for the San Francisco Chronicle. “[The…
Leave Your Inhibitions Behind
“Hector’s dolphins may be the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world, but they will seem larger than life when you are swimming nose-to-nose with them in the Pacific…
Executive Eye For Detail
Auckland-raised executive chef Ryan Arboleda shares some two of his favourite recipes with the Bangkok Post: Slow cooked New Zealand lamb breast with shaved fennel and pureed peas and Tiramisu…
Courageous Man To The End
Nelson-born Jason Richards, V8 Supercar champion “to the last”, has died in Melbourne. He was 35. Peter Kogoy writes Richards’ obituary for The Australian: “His duel at the wheel of…
Tales Of Vineyards And Vintners
Four days are not enough time to fully immerse yourself in the land of the long white cloud, writes Kari Gislason for Adelaide Now. Gislason spends two of her three…
Heirlooms Of Past For Future
‘Maori — Their Treasures Have a Soul,’ an exhibition of Maori art and artifacts at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris on through 22 January, juxtaposes ancestral heirlooms with…
Pupils Staying Strong
Students from Fendalton Open-Air School in Christchurch are the first group members — calling themselves Faultline Fiction — of the Guardian site to vividly recount what happened when earthquakes…
Hansen Replaces Henry
The New Zealand Rugby Union have appointed 52-year-old former policeman Steve Hansen as their new coach, replacing Graham Henry who stepped down after winning the World Cup. Dunedin-born Hansen…
Whimsical Fashion Wanderings
Twenty-two-year-old Christchurch woman Jo and photographer partner Barnaby have begun a fashion blog in which the couple show off vintage finds against “picturesque” New Zealand landscapes. In late 2011…
Magical Early Christmas
The Black Caps celebrated “an early Christmas” with front-page media praise for a seven-run cricket victory in the second Test over Australia in Hobart. Captain Ross Taylor’s remark that…
One Legendary Queen
Transgender icon Taumaranui-born Carmen Rupe has died in Sydney, aged 75. Carmen was born into a family of 13 and was known as Trevor Rupe for about the first…
Foo Fighters Make Earth Move
Auckland GeoNet scientists have said that the recent Foo Fighters concert at Western Springs caused geological vibrations on par with “volcanic tremors”. The vibrations emitted “a strong low signal,”…
It’s Better Than Ever
The Bay of Plenty region has launched a new tourism campaign in an attempt to erase images of oiled beaches and dead wildlife from the minds of potential visitors,…
Festive Season Realities
A billboard outside Auckland’s Anglican St Matthew’s in the City of the Virgin Mary gasping as she examines a pregnancy testing kit has sparked fiery debate. Defending the poster,…
Resetting The Global Compass
New Zealand scientists Tony Hurst and Stewart Bennie will travel to Antarctica on 28 December to reset the global compass. The pair, who work for New Zealand’s Institute of…
Big Crowds In The Bay
“At the close of 2010, members of Auckland rock combo The Naked and Famous were innocents abroad, wide-eyed New Zealanders who — thanks to sudden international interest in their…
Dual-International In Charge
Allrounder Suzie Bates, 24, has been appointed captain of the White Ferns succeeding Aimee Watkins, who retired in July. “I knew there was a chance of leading this team…
Funny Man Loves It Live
New Zealand-born comedian Rhys Darby, 37, who played manager Murray in the in Flight of the Conchords series, recently performed five shows at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. Darby says…
After A Hard Day’s Travels
A Tauranga woman thought she was hallucinating when a clattering noise prompted her to run downstairs to the kitchen and check on the cats, where she found a baby…
Unreal Festive Spirit
“After 14 attempts I am still unable to reconcile Christmas Day with the hot sunshine of the north-east New Zealand city of Gisborne,” Guardian reader John Darkin writes for the publication’s…
Planning Christmas Capers
Now living in Rotorua, Canadian Jill Campbell, from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, is looking for other Capers so they can to get together for a céilidh or a drink…
Alleged Fraudster Arrested
A New Zealander has been arrested in Australia for alleged embezzling $16 million from Queensland Health. 36-year-old Hohepa Morehu-Barlow — also known as Joel Barlow — had been evading…
Jumping Back On Court
Rotorua-born basketball player Taki Te Koi plays as a senior for California’s Dominican University women’s team and after a torn ligament injury “is ready to put it all out…
Exploring The North
Cathedral Cove, “the looming limestone archway seen in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian,” was one of the scenic spots The Tribune’s Sarah Linn stopped at on her tour of New Zealand….
Grass-Roots Campaigning
Bret McKenzie is in Utah, where he’s “picked up some sort of Mormon cold” while filming a scene with a foal for Austenland: he delivers a foal. “We shot it…
Store Openings In California
New Zealand-born fashion designer Rebecca Taylor is “on a roll” according to the Los Angeles Times’ Melissa Magsaysay who was at the opening of Taylor’s West Coast flagship store on Robertson…
Hope Yet For Happy Feet
New Zealand author and entrepreneur Gareth Morgan will join 12 scientists on a 30-day voyage to Antarctica early next year to raise awareness of the importance of the region,…
Where Fear And Awe Collide
Greymouth-born filmmaker and painter Vincent Ward’s exhibition Breath, which is on at New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Gallery through 26 February 2012, is the first survey of Ward’s work within an…
Impressive Pest Control
Sheep, rugby and kiwi were what the director of Canada’s McGill University’s Office for Science and Society Joe Schwarcz associated with New Zealand, not possum, weasel, ferret or rabbit….
More Penguins Return Home
A photograph of a blue penguin moving toward the sea after being released by wildlife workers in Tauranga is included in theGuardian’s ‘24 hours in pictures’ series for 9 December….
Tolkien Tourism In Matamata
The Lord of the Rings franchise is partially responsible for a tourism windfall in New Zealand with global visitor numbers up 40 per cent since 2000. At least five official LOTR-themed…
Streaking Star Trails
A long-exposure image of star trails streaking over Lake Tekapo features on the National Geographic website. The lake was one of the first sites designated as a Starlight Reserve as part…
Moving On From Terrible
Naked and Famous guitarist and vocalist Thom Powers admits to have been part of several “terrible, terrible bands” in his time. “Everything that was terrible about ‘90s rock music…
Weta Leads The Charge
“Wellington: once you come, you stay,” Crave Online’s Grae Drake is told on a visit to Weta Digital. “This is both a threat and a promise, uttered by the…
Fighting Flu In South Asia
Massey University has received $5 million from the World Bank to develop an on-line project which will fight animal-borne diseases that can transmit to humans, such as bird flu…
Florentine Light And Dark
New Zealand artist Pete Wheeler, 33, presents his first Italian solo exhibition, ‘Paths of the Destroyer’, at the Poggiali e Forconi Gallery in Florence. Berlin-based Wheeler says that the…
Album Upbeat She Swears
Ladyhawke has announced the release of her second album, Anxiety, which will be out on 19 March 2012. It has been recorded over the past year at producer Pascal Gabriel’s…
