Blog
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Book Reviews: A Biker’s Tale and A Life of Extremes
A Biker’s Tale by John Hellemans IT’S PROBABLY MY BAGGAGE, BUT I’M SUSPICIOUS OF THE PLETHORA OF “HEY-LOOK-WHAT-I-DID” BOOKS WEIGHING DOWN ‘OUTDOOR ADVENTURE’ SHELVES IN BOOKSTORES AROUND THE WORLD. (REALLY? I WAS IN LABOUR FOR TWO DAYS, GAVE BIRTH TO A NINE-POUND BABY, THEN DIDN’T GET A FULL NIGHT’S SLEEP FOR THREE YEARS. BUT THAT’S…
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Book Review: A Life of Extremes and A Biker’s Tale
A Biker’s Tale by John Hellemans IT’S PROBABLY MY BAGGAGE, BUT I’M SUSPICIOUS OF THE PLETHORA OF “HEY-LOOK-WHAT-I-DID” BOOKS WEIGHING DOWN ‘OUTDOOR ADVENTURE’ SHELVES IN BOOKSTORES AROUND THE WORLD. (REALLY? I WAS IN LABOUR FOR TWO DAYS, GAVE BIRTH TO A NINE-POUND BABY, THEN DIDN’T GET A FULL NIGHT’S SLEEP FOR THREE YEARS. BUT THAT’S…
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Book Review: Railways Studios
How a government design studio helped build New Zealand By: Peter Alsop, Neill Atkinson, Katherine Milburn and Richard Wolfe For 65 years, the go-to designers who produced advertising for any-and-all clients was Railways Studios, the design studio of the New Zealand Railways. The Railways Studios decorated every city and town in New Zealand with outdoor…
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Book Review: Scenic Playground – The story behind New Zealand’s mountain tourism
Scenic Playground (Te Papa Press) explores the story behind the promotion of New Zealand’s mountains from the 1890s onwards. With an exquisite gallery of photographs, paintings and posters the book explains how the country built its reputation as an alpine playground. The ultimate coffee table book for a mountain bach, Scenic Playground is a lavish,…
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Review: Alchemy Café Cinnamon Scroll
THE WINE WORLD HAS SOMMELIERS, BEER HAS CICERONES, RESTAURANTS HAVE MICHELIN STARS AND CINNAMON SCROLLS HAVE, WELL, ME. LIKE SOMMELIERS, I HAVE BEEN A STUDENT OF MY CRAFT FOR DECADES, WORKING COUNTLESS HOURS TO FINE TUNE MY PASTRY PALETTE. Rumours have been swirling in the cinnamon scroll community for months about a new chef in…
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Book Review: Common Ground – Garden histories of Aotearoa by Matt Morris
Here’s a thing I didn’t know before I read Matt Morris’ Common Ground: gardening is more than an expensive pastime that mostly causes back pain and a seasonal cycle of frost-damage-induced disappointment. Gardens are, in fact, frickin’ fascinating. This isn’t a long version of one of those Home & Garden profiles featuring properties owned by…
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Chapter one: Seasons
Kawerau, New Zealand is not your typical holiday destination. As Aotearoa’s youngest town (just a baby, established in 1953), it was set up purely to service a timber mill. Tasman pulp and paper mill was responsible for the birth of this little North Island town, made up initially of mostly factory workers. Kawerau very nearly…
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Book Review: Is This the Promised Land? by Peter Simpson
“DRIVING ONE DAY WITH THE FAMILY OVER THE HILLS FROM BRIGHTON OR TAIERI MOUTH TO THE TAIERI PLAIN,” WRITES COLIN MCCAHON, “I FIRST BECAME AWARE OF MY OWN PARTICULAR GOD, PERHAPS AN EGYPTIAN GOD, BUT STANDING FAR FROM THE SUN OF EGYPT IN THE OTAGO COLD.” This is a sensibility that drove McCahon’s life work…
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Book Review: The Wilder Years – Selected poems by David Eggleton
YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW THAT DAVID EGGLETON WAS CROWNED LONDON TIME OUT’S STREET ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR IN 1985, BUT THAT’S AN ENVIABLE BIO NOTE AND ALSO A GREAT REMINDER TO TAKE TO THIS, HIS LATEST COLLECTION. The Wilder Years, Selected poems, comes to you in ten sections, spanning 1986 to the present. It’s an…