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 [...]
“If our food, drinks and service aren’t up to your standards, please lower your standards,” and “Free Idiot Test $50” declare two of the many signs in the Puhoi Pub. The walls and ceiling inside the two-storey wooden building, established in 1879, are crammed with collections of artefacts that include bras and bikini tops, caps, [...]
This now expensive inner city Auckland suburb was named in honour of the Mother of God by New Zealand’s original Roman Catholic leader, Jean Baptiste Francois Pompallier. The Catholic Bishop of Auckland still lives here. But strip away the neighbourhood’s deeply religious name and you find a suburb with a past often dominated by sly [...]
Devonport is a 12-minute ferry ride across the harbour from bustling downtown Auckland and yet it retains the ambience of a quaint seaside village where much remains the same. Certainly, on the surface, it seems that little has changed since I lived there 25 years ago. The flagstaff stands tall, and heritage buildings still line [...]