Contributors
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Book review: Marilynn Webb – Folded in the hills
To hold this book is to realise a dream that can’t only be mine about Marilynn Webb’s work, to stroke the very lines she made. The hardcover soft with its raised cloud lines, an invitation to fold ourselves in. Marilynn Webb: Folded in the hills is a bilingual companion book to the phenomenal exhibition of…
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Natural Born Campervanners
May 2020. First week out of lockdown. We were trucking along nicely when my wife made an announcement: “I’ve done something. I’ve booked us a campervan for ten days!” I had many thoughts, largely circling around the theme of whether or not she had paid any attention AT ALL in the 24 and three-quarter years…
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Moonlight Mondays
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Maybe not. It started on a warm summer Monday just over a year ago. I was probably trying to work off some holiday ham, mourn the whisky from the night before or just get out of…
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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a squid boat
Laura Williamson revisits a close encounter in the skies above Kaikōura. It was sometime after 2am on December 21, 1978. An Argosy turboprop freight plane was en-route from Wellington to Christchurch with a hold full of newspapers when the crew saw something strange off the Kaikōura coast. A set of lights seemed to be following…
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Talking points
It’s been a hot minute. The last time Wānaka’s Aspiring Conversations Festival of Ideas & Kōrero took place was in 2018, which was only six years ago, but jeez, what a six years. Aspiring Conversations is the biennial off-year sibling to the also-biennial Festival of Colour, which has been running for almost two decades. The…
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Chasing the New Zealand Mountain Dolphin
It started as a light-hearted investigation. It became a fervour of curiosity and madness in the South Island bush. I first heard of the beasts in 2021. In a DOC hut near Murchison, I caught a passing comment about a creature known as the Ruahine Mountain Dolphin. “The what?” I asked. My question was met…
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KATs and Dogs
Leia (yes, as in Princess) trots happily alongside me. We are headed towards a sign-up table in a gravel carpark in Haast, where Anya-Lucia Kruszewski, a Department of Conservation (DOC) trainer, is waiting to receive dogs and their owners. Leia, an 18-month-old border collie, completed her first Kiwi Avoidance Training (KAT) with Anya and my…
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A date with death
There’s no telling when death might tap you on the shoulder. When your name is called, there are no ifs or buts; as the saying goes, “you can be a king or street sweeper, but everyone dances with the Grim Reaper.” Many of us spend our time avoiding this fact. Others, however, invite it in…
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The scientist
It was nearly twenty years ago when retired zoologist John Darby, having spent hours at his computer summarising his data on Antarctic and yellow-eyed penguins one day, wandered the short distance from his home to the Wānaka lakefront. There were the usual waterbirds ̶ mallards, black-billed gulls, scaups, shags ̶ but then he saw…