Jessica Allen

Jessica Allen grew up across the ditch in Newcastle and always had an interest in all things literature – she was a library monitor at school, who dreamed of becoming a writer. After travelling, she arrived in Aotearoa six years ago. She went back to her roots in the writing industry and started freelancing for various publications, and is now based in Queenstown. On the weekends you’ll find her doing laps snowboarding, hiking, setting up camp by the beach and paddling out for a surf, or indulging in all the fabulous craft beer the region has to offer.
  • Simply breathtaking

    Simply breathtaking

    Taking the plunge with freediver Kathryn Nevatt. “It’s all about the breathing – even though it kind of seems like it’s about not breathing,” Kathryn Nevatt explains. A Queenstown-based architect, Kathryn is also a record-holder in freediving. She can hold her breath for more than seven-and-a-half minutes, and she has dived to a depth of…

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  • Home sweet home

    Home sweet home

    A Queenstown-based film-maker wants us to think globally, shred locally. Sage Kotsenburg once said, “there’s no blueprint to snowboarding, you know? You can really just make your own mark.” In 2014, Sage won the first-ever Olympic gold medal in men’s snowboard slopestyle, and his words still ring true for Ryan Quirke. With the mountains up…

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  • An elephant’s graveyard

    An elephant’s graveyard

    We heard there was an elephant buried in a Southland paddock. When we went to investigate, we found Sally. Riversdale is a small town tucked between the Hokonui Hills and the Mataura River, just northwest of Gore. It has a nine-hole golf course, an annual Mixed Media Art Exhibition and a gloriously restored circa-1880 country…

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