“Go to Marton,” we were urged during a recent stop in Bulls, two hours north of Wellington. “It’s only 14km away and they’ve got the most amazing heritage buildings in the town centre. They’re all earthquake prone though and may need to be demolished at some stage, so see them while you can.” So off [...]
I can still remember when I clicked on a video link and discovered the Link Pathway of the Marlborough Sounds. What I saw was cyclists whipping along a forest path following the turquoise coastal arms that wrap around headland points and seemingly endless bays. The drone footage of hikers and bikers looked surreal. Their joy! [...]
Richie Clark and his dad Dave stood at the top of the hill surveying the 80-hectare block of land they had just purchased. It was mid-winter and heavy rain had turned a low-lying paddock surrounded by a horseshoe of hills into a bit of a bog. Dave casually commented to Richie, “You know, a few [...]
Several years ago a radio jingle regularly promoted Kerikeri as the ‘sunshine centre of the Bay of Islands’. Irritating as that ear-worm was, its effectiveness helped to cement Kerikeri’s persona as a fruit-filled tropical paradise. It conveyed an image of blue skies, golden sun and the citrus for which the town is justly famous, an [...]
To be honest I really hadn’t given a lot of thought to Eltham, apart from stopping there to pick up cheese from the Eltham Cheese Shop, until at a photographers Christmas dinner some years ago when Mark Bellringer and his partner Barbara Valintine started talking excitedly about buying the Bank of New Zealand building in [...]
I’d been to the Edendale Crank Up before – two years ago when I was invited as a passenger on the Ferrari Owner’s Club annual run when the Italian marque was the ‘featured car’. Ferrari, a glittering (slightly misplaced?) jewel in an ocean of beloved old tractors, stationary engines, sheep shearing displays and other old [...]
I’ve always had an interest in history and recently decided to delve into my own background. All I knew was that my great-great-grandparents lived in the Whangaroa area and their graves were somewhere near the harbour. Missionary James Shepherd arrived in New Zealand in 1818 to be joined by his wife Harriet some years later. [...]
I ticked that off my list last summer, as my wife and I meandered back to Martinborough after spending a weekend in Napier. Months earlier I had taken a road map of New Zealand and had gone over it with a felt pen tracing out all the roads I had travelled. Of course, the major [...]
Up until the mid-1930s, travelling around New Zealand was still an adventure. In fact, as late as 1950 when the Dicks and the Dickettes moved from Auckland to Dunedin, I can remember my father poring over his book of Shell Road Maps of New Zealand to try and plot a safe route for the huge [...]
With its big skies, majestic mountains and rugged coast, the Wairarapa region is rich with natural beauty, and to top it all off, the local wines aren’t bad either. Located at the heart of the Classic New Zealand Wine trail, Wairarapa is home to some of the world’s best pinot noir, and the number of [...]