South Island
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Show You’re Working Out
By liz breslin (Dead Bird Books, 2025) If this book is afraid, it doesn’t give a fuck and goes ahead anyway. Which is to say this poetry is a resourceful, DIY, lesbian builder that will deconstruct the ambient violence it encounters and create a shelter of banter, a huddle of tenderness, a tent for marchers…
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Fight or flight
Nathan quacks around and finds out. Martha is my oldest friend in Wānaka. While I fish, we talk about the weather, the annoying tourists, the falcons who think “they’re all that”, the river levels, entomology. We share inside jokes, we fight, we make up. We have had hundreds of lunch dates at the Albert Town…
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The Wonder Dog of Methven
Celebrating Canterbury’s celebrity canine. We go a bit nuts for clever dogs. There was war rescue Rin Tin Tin who nearly won an Oscar in the 1920s, Dorothy’s Toto (also a rescue) in The Wizard of OZ, and Sinbad the sailor dog, who, as the mascot of the USCGC Campbell, was at sea for 11…
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A perfect fit
Barbara Brinsley’s fashion sense was forged in the far south. Dunedin is a city of grey stone and wind. Within it, Barbara Brinsley is a flicker of colourful defiance clad in, most days, head-to-toe tartan. She is a style icon in the small city, one who has been featured in Woman’s Weekly, NZ Life &…
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The walkway at the end of the world
Between Bluff and the Foveaux Strait, a ramble along the Foveaux Walkway feels like skirting the edge of the earth. We’re just pimples on a gnat’s back. It’s a colourful metaphor. But strolling along the Foveaux Walkway, I realise it’s true almost as soon as the wizard says it. My companion on this day is…
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Young guns
A walk around a lake. A big lake. All the way around. It’s late summer. The days are long and the sun still has heat. My car whines with a high-pitched wheeze as it slaloms up the Coronet Peak ski field access road. I’m not on my way to an adventure. I’m on my way…
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Salt of the earth
Pure Salt is helping to restore Tamatea Dusky, one boat trip at a time. The trip’s going to be chilly. There’s a dump of fresh snow to low levels on the Fiordland Mountains. One by one, the volunteers turn up at the Manapouri hangar. It’s a motley lot, myself included. There are back-slaps and hugs…
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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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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,…