Contributors
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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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Rhymes of the Mariner
The words of poet, actor, musician and storyteller Noel Coutts roll and rise like the ocean. ONE LOOK AT, OR LISTEN TO, QUEENSTOWN POET AND BLUESMAN NOEL COUTTS TELLS YOU HE IS NOT A MAN WHO HAS LIVED A MAINSTREAM LIFE. A CHAT WITH HIM TELLS YOU THIS IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. HIS IS A TRAVELLING…
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The Best of Bingo
On the footpath outside a Helwick Street café in Wānaka, there is a plaque, a leash hook and a water bowl. Bingo’s back arches, suddenly, like those silly cats when they get a fright. All the hair on his back stands on end as if magnetised. In that moment between surprise and concern, he has…
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She’ll strap on her wings and fly
“Any day now / That joke will turn sour / And she’ll say a sweet goodbye / She’ll pack up her things / Strap on her wings and fly” – Aviatrix, The Lucksmiths IT’S HARD TO PINPOINT, BUT THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN AVIATION IN AOTEAROA MAY HAVE STARTED WITH A BALLOON, A WET SOUTHLAND…
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Glass / Glace
THE OUTSIDE FLOODS IN AND THE INSIDE FLOWS OUT. THE VIEW FROM INSIDE IS TO THE MOUNTAINS WHICH HOLD ONE’S STEADY, WONDERING, APPRECIATIVE GAZE: TO THE LIGHT, AND TO BIRDS WHICH MAY KNOW NOTHING OF THE WONDERING GAZE AND WHICH FROM TIME TO TIME FLY RIGHT INTO THE GLASS. Some of this is seasonal. In…
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A cranking good time
Hokitika socks it to the world. Lurking among the innumerable Facegroups, alongside Genuinely Stoked Goats and the Comic Sans Appreciation Society, there is a 5.5K-member sock knitting community. Not just regular sock knitters. These are Circular Sock Machine knitters, also known as crankers. Conversation centres around yarn tension and brass cylinders, and images show an…
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The greatest outdoors
The 1964 guide to the sweet campgrounds of the South Island. IF NEW ZEALANDERS HAVE A SUPERPOWER, IT’S THE ERECTING, AND DECONSTRUCTING, OF CAMPING INFRASTRUCTURE WITH MILITARY PRECISION. EVERY SUMMER, THEY USE THIS POWER TO SPEND SEVERAL WEEKS LIVING ON A DIET THAT IS 70% SAUSAGES AND 30% FRUJU ICEBLOCKS, DROPPING MANUS OFF WATERLOGGED WHARF…
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Space race
Size matters on the Interplanetary Cycle Trail. I HAVE A PHOTO ON THE LOCK SCREEN OF MY PHONE. IN IT, OUR PLANET IS A PRICK OF LIGHT. THE ONBOARD CAMERA ON NASA’S JUNO SPACECRAFT SNAPPED THE IMAGE OF EARTH IN 2011 WHILE IT WAS ON ITS WAY TO JUPITER. I LOOK AT THE PHOTO WHEN…
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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…