Contributors
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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Our duty of cairn
Rocks and hard places. “This can’t be the way.” I emerge, scratched and panting, onto a blessed patch of open tussock. I’m in the middle of Fiordland, painstakingly extracting myself from the alpine scrub that’s had me hemmed in on all sides. The toothy, snow-draped peaks of the Darran Mountains tower over the lush valley…
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Harder than ice
The rise, fall and resurrection of the Bush Creek Rink. Cold fingers pull laces on stiff leather – breath hanging in the air, the waft of woodsmoke, the cackle of childish laughter. I flip my collar and sink into the wool of my jersey. This isn’t the time or place for modern fabrics. Grabbing my…
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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…
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Fishing in the Styx
In memory of Brian Turner. Around four in the afternoon, one day in early December, I rest on a bank of the Taieri River, a kilometre or two upstream of the bridge on Loganburn Ford Road. I feel a light breeze on my face and hear it rustle the tall grasses on this otherwise calm…
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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…