Issue 17: Autumn 2024
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Above par: The 1964 guide to Aotearoa’s best rural golf courses
Our resident golf writer Phil Hamilton tours the nation’s village greens. Golf is big in Aotearoa. By some metrics, we have the second-most courses per capita after Scotland, the birthplace of the sport. Flash resort courses continue to be built at pace and to suck up overseas attention, but the heart of golf in this…
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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…