Magazine Articles

  • The Cabin

    The Cabin

    The unlikely journeys of an Antarctic hut. The fawn-coloured, three-by-four hut perched atop Godley Head is neat and unassuming. It sits quietly, overlooking the Pacific and the Kaikoura Ranges, but if walls could talk, these ones might just chew your ears off. This cabin has been to Antarctica and back, weathering relocations, heartbreak and more

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  • Isn’t it beyond words: Essie Summers

    Isn’t it beyond words: Essie Summers

    Between the covers with Aotearoa’s Queen of Romance. IN THE BEGINNING WAS ESSIE. ESSIE SUMMERS. THE MOST FAMOUS NEW ZEALAND NOVELIST YOU’VE MAYBE NEVER HEARD OF. TO VERIFY THIS CLAIM, IN A HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC SURVEY, FOR A PERIOD OF A WEEK, I ASKED EVERYONE I KNEW OR MET WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF ESSIE SUMMERS AND

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  • You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet

    You’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet

    A sailor in the hop gardens of Nelson Tasman. THE SCENT LURED ME CLOSER TO THE BRICK WALL IN THE GREENHOUSE. LIME GREEN BINES CREPT UP THROUGH THE GRAVEL AND CLIMBED FIVE METRES TO THE GLASS ROOF. I REACHED OUT TO PRESS A DELICATE, FLUFFY CONE AND YELLOW POWDER COVERED MY FINGERTIPS. I brought the

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  • Pants on fire

    Pants on fire

    Revisiting the great exploding trousers epidemic of the 1930s. It was strange behaviour for “a quite respectable garment”. According to the Hutt News, “not long ago, in a country township, a man’s pair of trousers exploded with a loud report.” Fortunately, he wasn’t wearing them at the time and was able to throw the offending

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  • Eden Hore: The fashionable farmer

    Eden Hore: The fashionable farmer

    The South Island high country is often associated with beauty, but it is rarely associated with fashion. Yet there, in the heart of the Maniototo, glamour found a home with a farmer named Eden Hore. IN 1975, A NEW ATTRACTION OPENED ON A FARM IN THE TUSSOCKED HILLS NEAR NASEBY, IN THE MANIOTOTO REGION OF

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  • Body of work: Ivan Lupi

    Body of work: Ivan Lupi

    From Italy to the Southern Lakes, performance artist Ivan Lupi is scratching at the surface of us. TIME BEHAVES STRANGELY IN STRANGE TIMES. WE KNOW THIS NOW; OUR LIVES HAVE BEEN PAUSED, OUR FUTURES ALTERED, OUR HORIZONS MADE UNCERTAIN. IVAN LUPI’S ‘A BIG HAPPY PLANET’ CAPTURES THIS UTTERLY. AN ONLINE VIDEO PIECE, THE WORK DOCUMENTS

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  • Failure is inevitable

    Failure is inevitable

    Or is it? LYN MCNAMEE LOOKS INTO THE REVENANT, A RACE SO HARD THERE ARE NO WINNERS, JUST FINISHERS. It’s dawn in the Nevis Mountains. A piper stands silhouetted on a ridge, his melody drifting towards a host of tiny lights in the tussocks below. Each pinpoint is a contestant — twenty-four audacious adventurers seeking

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  • Summer camp

    Summer camp

    Snapshots from a holiday hotspot. You leave town early to beat the holiday traffic. The car is packed tight with camping gear, the overflow strapped to the roof. The kids were bouncing off the walls, but by the time you pull into Wānaka, everyone is asleep. You’ve left your worries behind. — Every year, around

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  • Homeland security

    Homeland security

    What a small town in the Waitaki Valley has to do with universal health care. Speaking at an event marking its 70th anniversary, then-Prime Minister Helen Clarke talked about what the 1938 Social Security Act meant to New Zealand.  More than just a piece of legislation, it stood for an idea. It was born from

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