Laura Williamson

  • It’s only natural: The 1964 guide to nude tramping in New Zealand

    It’s only natural: The 1964 guide to nude tramping in New Zealand

    If you’re wearing boots, are you really naked? It started with an Instagram post. A tramper on Mount Taranaki posted a photo of a fellow hiker. Taken, thankfully, from afar, and, also thankfully, from behind, it showed a man descending the mountain wearing nothing but a backpack, socks and boots. You could almost hear the…

    Read More …

  • A skier’s a skier

    A skier’s a skier

    The meaning of adaptive. Bailley Unahi knows all about the journey from beginner to competitive athlete. Originally from the Southland town of Winton, Bailley was 19 when her spine was broken in a balcony collapse at a Six60 concert in Dunedin. She had been athletic before the accident, playing “every team sport possible”, including netball…

    Read More …

  • Clay Eaters 

    Clay Eaters 

    By Gregory Kan (Auckland University Press, 2025) Clay Eaters is Wellington-based poet Gregory Kan’s third collection. In it, he takes us far from here in space and time to a jungle island, one that is both figuratively and literally hard to navigate due to the tangled nature of memory, and the unreliability of maps. It…

    Read More …

  • How to Darn a Salmon

    How to Darn a Salmon

    By Barry G Barry Grehan, performing as Barry G, is an Irish folk singer who was, for a time, a regular on the Wānaka and Queenstown music scenes. How to Darn a Salmon came out of Barry’s practice of writing short poems for 15 minutes at the start of each day, which he kept up…

    Read More …

  • Book review: Southern Faces – An introduction to rock climbing in Ōtepoti Dunedin

    Book review: Southern Faces – An introduction to rock climbing in Ōtepoti Dunedin

    Edited by Riley Smith (Wildlab, 2025) Although it’s subtitled ‘An introduction to rock climbing in Ōtepoti Dunedin’, Southern Faces is more than a climbing guidebook. As you would expect, it is packed with helpful technical information covering the cliffs, boulders and pinnacles of greater Ōtepoti – grading, number of bolts, approximate route and rappel lengths,…

    Read More …

  • Stuffed animals

    Stuffed animals

    The 1964 guide to the everywhere-taxidermy of the South Island. Rural Aotearoa and taxidermy go together like an all-you-can eat sausage sizzle and tomato sauce. There’s a lot of it, and both involve getting stuffed. However you feel about taxidermy, it’s an impressive craft, one which involves fitting the clean and treated skin of an…

    Read More …

  • For those who wished to dance

    For those who wished to dance

    Revisiting the Ruby Island cabaret. In October of 1928, the Wānaka correspondent for the Cromwell Argus reported on developments at a local island: “This peaceful little beauty spot is to be the site of a unique and picturesque cabaret. Placed on the highest point, sheltered, yet within full view of the dancing wavelets of the…

    Read More …

  • A Wild Life: Photographs from the backcountry of Aotearoa

    A Wild Life: Photographs from the backcountry of Aotearoa

    By Shaun Barnett (Potton & Burton, 2024) The epilogue of Dave Hansford’s Kahurangi closes with some words from one of Shaun Barnett’s last interviews, before he died from cancer in 2024. “The more I learn about the connectivity of diversity, the connectivity of things,” he said, “it gives me a profound sense of joy.” A…

    Read More …

  • Book review: Kahurangi – The Nature of Kahurangi National Park and Northwest Nelson

    Book review: Kahurangi – The Nature of Kahurangi National Park and Northwest Nelson

    By Dave Hansford (Potton & Burton, 2024) Aotearoa’s second largest national park, Kahurangi National Park is known for its epic tramping, diverse landscapes, wealth of fossils, and extraordinary range of flora and fauna, including great spotted kiwi, cave spiders and a giant carnivorous Iand snail (the Powelliphanta, which can grow as big as a gym…

    Read More …