Lake Wanaka Tourism
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Chicken Run
Chicken stress is real. If you know, you know. Chickens are a great idea, in theory. Also, in theory, theory and reality are the same thing. The idea is simple. You provide some hens with a safe place to sleep, food, water and some table scraps, and they provide you with plentiful, healthy and (crucially)…
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Beyond the graves
The 1964 guide to storied cemeteries of the rural South. When I was a kid, someone told me to hold my breath whenever I passed a graveyard, or else the souls of the dead would slip in. Boo! I still do it out of habit, which happens a lot when I’m travelling the roads of…
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Love stories
Romance writing is having a moment. We found this out after Wānaka-based writer Catherine Hart got in touch with us about sending us a romance-style story set in the town. Why not, we thought. A quick Google delivered promising headlines like ‘Gen Z loves smut. NZ authors are cashing in’. Thank you RNZ. And we…
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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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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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Our duty of cairn
Rocks and hard places. “This can’t be the way.” I emerge, scratched and panting, onto a blessed patch of open tussock. I’m in the middle of Fiordland, painstakingly extracting myself from the alpine scrub that’s had me hemmed in on all sides. The toothy, snow-draped peaks of the Darran Mountains tower over the lush valley…
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Stuffed animals
The 1964 guide to the everywhere-taxidermy of the South Island. Rural Aotearoa and taxidermy go together like an all-you-can eat sausage sizzle and tomato sauce. There’s a lot of it, and both involve getting stuffed. However you feel about taxidermy, it’s an impressive craft, one which involves fitting the clean and treated skin of an…
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The Iceman calleth
If exploding beer is your problem, yo, he’ll solve it. Here is a sentence I never thought I’d write. I answer my phone and there is a man on the line; that man is Vanilla Ice. This is especially striking as I am receiving the call in my house, which is located in a small…
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Simple rules
On coming back to a small town. The path curves around the contours of the lake, following the ebbing water for as long as you want to walk it. A concrete trail, upgraded from gravel and dirt a long time ago, now the groundwork for a sense of stability. I sit and stare at the…