Contributors
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That’s the spirit
Liz Breslin goes ghostbusting in two of the South Island’s haunted hotels. We are not Kesha in popular reality TV series Conjuring Kesha, who says, in the trailer, “a lot of things have happened that are weird, but I’m like, give us more.” We are not the beloved Ghostbusters men or the flopped Ghostbusters women.…
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The past is a photograph
Travelling times gone by through an amateur photographer’s album. The photos have a quality that tells you they are not from now. The grain is fine, the light natural and the colours vigorous. The compositions disclose something about the photographer; you can hear him thinking, see him learning, his light-caught journey exposed, frame by frame.…
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Highway to the danger zone
What the small problem of the Franz Josef petrol station says about our inaction in the face of big problems. 1— A million tourists pass through the town of Franz Josef, population 500, every year. They book helicopter rides to the receding glacier and take strolls through the primordial forest. Thrill seekers are everywhere, to…
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Like bucks to water
The 1964 guide to the flora and fauna on the banknotes of Aotearoa. Since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II we have, like Snoop Dogg, had our minds on our money and our money on our minds. Specifically, we’ve got our minds on the prospect of being confronted by King Charles III’s sad bewildered gaze…
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The slacker generation
Crossing the line with the funambulists. Elsa Leperlier, a young French woman living in Wānaka, didn’t have a choice when the small tabby cat adopted her. It was love at first sight. Owning a cat isn’t easy when you’re a freewheeling spirit, travelling the world without any ties. Elsa was once offered a lucrative job…
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A song for Big Bay
[PHOTO ESSAY] Dinner when it’s cooked / breakfast when it’s shucked / surfing, food beneath our boards / all of Big Blue’s rewards / spend all our time living / no need to be forgiven / we exist in nature’s rhythm. Awarua Bay, also known as Big Bay, spans eight kilometres along the southwest coast…
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Winter mixer
Onwards and upwards at the Remarkables Ice & Mixed Festival. A four-limbed creature moves across the vertical face with careful agility. The rock is plastered with blobs of freezer ice. The creature’s extended arms end in singular sharp hooks and its lower limbs are adorned with multiple spikes, which it places carefully. It looks terribly…
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The smell of uranium
“HOLD YOUR BREATH JUST FOR A MOMENT. I CAN SMELL THE URANIUM ON IT.” PRIME MINISTER DAVID LANGE TO HIS AMERICAN OPPONENT AT THE OXFORD UNION ‘NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE’ DEBATE, MARCH 1, 1985. One evening in November of 1955 a pair of long-in-the-tooth miners rolled out of a West Coast pub. On the…
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Our hearts’ desires: We can go our own way
“Lines are created by being followed and followed by being created.” THE LINE ABOVE IS A LINE BY SARA AHMED, AND SHE’S WRITING ABOUT LINES CALLED DESIRE LINES. YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD OF DESIRE LINES, BUT YOU’VE PROBABLY SEEN ONE OR WALKED ONE IN YOUR LIFE. Desire lines, sometimes called desire paths, rat tracks,…