Open up and say ah
The New Zealand Department of Conservation will perform a two-hour necropsy on a 10ft female great white shark at the Auckland Museum in a live operation streamed online, reminiscent of that performed on the…
Blog Archives
Bush’s Pacific Monument
Large areas in the Pacific near New Zealand territory have been designated as American national monuments by outgoing U.S. President George Bush. The areas include the Mariana Trench and northern Mariana Islands, a chain…
2000: All Blacks vs Wallabies
See why this match was described by many as ‘the best game of rugby ever played’.
World’s Best Walk
The Tongariro Northern Circuit and Heaphy Track are two of the world’s best unknown treks, an 82-mile “one-two punch that delivers the full range of Kiwi highlights in nine perfect days — and without…
Seven and Rising
Auckland model Zippora Seven, 17, who has been lauded as the fashion industry’s new Kate Moss, is the new face of Swedish clothing label H&M’s spring/summer 2009 campaign. A topless shoot of the teenager…
Swamp Style
Auckland-based fashion designer Karen Walker is included in Russh Australia’s January/February edition as one of the magazine’s “favourite creatives” asked to share her current obsessions and influences. The inspiration for Walker’s last collection ‘The…
Around New Zealand in 30 Days
Sherman’s Travel offers up a primer on New Zealand’s “stunning landscapes … fantastic wine scene, unbelievable lodges, and happening cities,” charting a course through the premier attractions of Auckland, The Wine Trail and The…
In the Manner of a Woman
Having spent the year taking the art world by storm, New Zealand resident and south-pacific artist Shigejuki Kihara is one of artasiapacific’s “five artists for 2009”. Kihara, a Japanese Samoan made a name for…
A Creative New Zealand
New Zealand’s contemporary art scene “boasts established institutions, a healthy commercial scene, and a flourishing network of artist-run spaces,” as catalogued in this year’s artasiapacific Almanac. The Arts Council, Te Waka Toi, and the…
Unlimited Potential
After the multi-blockbuster book The Learning Revolution, Gordon Dryden returns with his latest book Unlimited: The New Learning Revolution and The Seven Keys to Unlock It. The new book, according to Dryden – whose…
Creative King of Berlin
Paul Snowden – a New Zealand creative director and designer based in Berlin – has just completed the visual identity and overall design for the 59th Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale. The Berlinale…
Helli Vacation
Jean-Michel Jefferson heads Ahipara Luxury Travel, offering personalised helicopter tours of New Zealand, custom-fitted to a ‘”clients’ interests, tastes, and aspirations.” The tours typically start at the Cavalli Island Retreat and Spa, in the…
Divine Dwellings
Nelson’s Lodge at Paratiho Farms is on the market for $14,500,000 and features alongside a $16,000,000 Coromandel property, both properties included as part of a New Zealand promotion in the autumn edition of Century…
An Honourable Year
New Zealand’s 2008 Beijing contingent was well represented in the New Year’s Honours list and included Christchurch Paralympics swimmer Sophie Pascoe, 16, board sailor Tom Ashley and shot putter Valerie Vili. In total, seven…
Lodge One of the Top
Five New Zealand hotels and resorts have been included in Travel and Leisure’s list of 500 World’s Best Hotels for 2009 with Rotorua’s Treetops Lodge and Estate the highest rated. “This is the list…
Flying High
Air New Zealand has made a bold move into the world of sustainability, becoming the first commercial airline to fly using an alternative fuel made from the jatropha plant. The airline recently conducted a…
Fondly Remembered
Sir Edmund Hillary is one of 45 individuals remembered in Time magazine’s 2008 ‘Fond Farewell’ tributes. “On May 29, 1953, Hillary, with the help of his Sherpa guide, became the first person to reach…
Drilling For Knowledge
Victoria University’s Tim Naish is one of a hundred scientists from 40 different countries working on a map of climate change. The Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL) is digging deep below the Ross Ice Shelf to determine…
Better off before
New Zealand historian David Thomson was one of the first people to write about the “phenomenon” of the “lucky generation” born during the period from the late 1920s through the 1930s according to The…
Aiding an Avian Identity
Though the battle to save New Zealand’s famous national symbol the kiwi is “conceded unwinnable on some fronts”; the bird’s existence is mounting with the help of Zealandia, Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, which expects…
Coastal reflections
On March 1910 Katherine Mansfield arrived at the English seaside town of Rottingdean in Sussex where she took a room above the local grocer. While Mansfield craved library books “the sun shone and the…
Zoë the turncoat
Auckland stuntwoman and actress Zoë Bell, 30, stars in American web action series Angel of Death alongside fellow New Zealander, Lucy Lawless. Bell plays a mafia assassin who suffers a catastrophic head wound and…
Dining with the Birds
For one month from 9 January until February 2009, in a redwood plantation north of Auckland, between Puhoi and Warkworth, and 10m up a tree, the Yellow House restaurant will serve three-course meals…
In love in Fiji
Hamilton-born Shortland Street star Ben Mitchell, 27, has been in Fiji for the premiere of his latest project, the film Love Has No Language in which he stars opposite Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley….
Minnie Dean Memorialised
Infamous Winton baby-farmer Minnie Dean, the first and last woman to be hanged in New Zealand, will soon have a headstone erected on her unmarked grave in the Winton Cemetery. Dean’s Scottish great-great-nephew Martin…
Possums Made Good
Founder and CEO of fashion label Untouched World Peri Drysdale – who has an MBE for services to manufacturing and export – began selling garments blended fom possum and merino in 1996, later catching…
Out on a Win
Champion Taranaki jockey Greg Childs, 46, is retiring from a 30-year career which began in New Zealand in the 1970s as an apprentice and ended with a win in the Bounty Hawk Handicap on…
Steve Enlivens the Game
Wellington-born caddy Steve Williams has “outraged” everyone “in this politically correct world”, but not the writers at the New York Daily News who say rather than offending anyone, Williams has “spiced up a rivalry…
In vogue in Sydney
18 December 2008 – Auckland songstress Gin Wigmore, 22, has been named one of ten best up-and-coming musical acts in the Metro section of The Sydney Morning Herald. Wigmore is fairly confident she’s the…
Tall Fern Makes UConn
Auckland basketball player Jessica McCormack, 19, who was the youngest member of the New Zealand team at the Beijing Olympics this year, now plays for the top-ranked University of Connecticut (UConn) as a…
Librarian to the Antibodies
15 December 2008 – New Zealand-born CEO of German biotech firm MorphoSys engineer, Dr Simon Moroney is in charge of a different sort of library, an amazing archive containing some 12 billion human antibodies….
Hold the Cash
One alternative form of paper money in New Zealand is the local exchange trading system (LETS) of green dollars, which is a particularly useful means of trade in smaller towns. Swiss national and…
Goodbye to a Good Guy
Former All Black front rower John Drake has died at his home in Mt Maunganui aged 49. Drake was a tighthead prop in the World Cup-winning All Blacks team of 1987. In recent years…
Revolution in the Wananga
Maori educator and chairman of tertiary institution Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith was a key speaker at the World Indigenous People’s Education Conference in Melbourne held in early December. A…
Networking in California
Scott’s Ferry-raised Victoria Ransom, 32, now based in Silicon Valley, California, has won $450,000 in an international Internet business competition for her design application to be used on social networking site Facebook. Ransom’s company…
Stellar win for Brettkelly
Auckland documentary-maker Pietra Brettkelly has won Best Documentary Award for Art Star and the Sudanese Twins at the 2008 Whistler Film Festival. The jury was quoted as saying, “This is a film that…
Northern Expansion
08 December 2008 – Wellington clothing company Icebreaker has engaged a distributor in Germany, Sweden and Norway, having also opened its first Eastern European sales and marketing office in the Czech Republic earlier…
Via the Red Route
Since its opening in 1995, Karori Wildlife Sanctuary – recently renamed Zealandia – has assisted in halting the continued demise of many native bird species, releasing 15 endangered species back into the…
Car of the Century
Gibbs Technologies founder and CTO New Zealander Alan Gibbs, 70, is profiled on Michigan Live.com where the entrepreneur discusses the never-seen-before capabilities of his three-seat sportscar Aquada, production of the Quadski and his partnership…
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…
Of Life and Death
Christchurch Press photographer John Kirk-Anderson’s image of a helicopter about to rescue Japanese climber Hideaki Nara, 51, from Mt Aoraki’s Empress Plateau, features in the SF Gate’s ‘Day in Pictures’….
Pouhaki Relocated
In 1920, Maori carver Tene Waitere gifted Prince Edward an eight-metre pouhaki, or flagpole, carved from a single tree trunk. The Prince then bequeathed the pole to Portsmouth Naval Base, where for the…
Dipping into the Serene
The Whanganui River Great Walk features in the December issue of online magazine InTheFray, which writer Aaron Richner describes as a “river is so peaceful that can stretch into infinity, and time, a…
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…
Leader for Change
01 December 2008 – Time calls John Key’s election win “an emphatic triumph”, and in a Q&A, Key notes that “we are 22nd out of 30 countries in the OECD for average income. I…
Briefing to Incoming Ministers
The wonderful thing about those of us who enjoy democracy, we are currently told, is that we enjoy the fruits of an orderly and peaceful transfer of power between governing regimes. I’ve got to tell…
Jesus Mary and Joseph!
Ka nui te mihi ki a koutou mo te ra whanau a Hehu, me te Tau Hou, hoki. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. My mate wished me ‘Happy Holidays’ the other day…
Melbourne’s King Pin
Taranaki-born Ben Shewry, 31, is executive chef at Melbourne restaurant Attica, where he was named Best New Talent at the 2007 Gourmet Traveller Awards, and where he earned this year’s Melbourne Age Good Food…
For Sale in Central Otago
Queenstown’s 3,000-acre Closeburn Station features in The New York Times international property listings this week. “This six-bedroom three-bath contemporary home has a master suite with views of Cecil Peak. The home’s family wing…
Made for Manhattan
New Zealand designers are now represented at essenze, a store within a store at the Metropolitan Design Center on Broadway in New York, which opened on November 19. Exporting to the US since 2005,…
Contained Holiday Spots
New Zealand-produced port-a-bach, made by Wellington company Atelier Workshop from shipping containers, are reviewed in multi-medium technology magazine Gizmag, which describes the relocatable dwellings as “the perfect home for a disaster situation.” All that…
