Contributors
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The lions of Lawrence
THE ANIMAL ATTIC IN DUNEDIN’S OTAGO MUSEUM IS ONE OF THOSE PLACES THAT IS BOTH MAGICAL AND UNSETTLING AT THE SAME TIME. DATING FROM 1877, IT IS ORGANISED LIKE A VICTORIAN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OR THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF A GENTLEMEN OF MEANS WHO HAD THE INCLINATION TO PURSUE THINGS SCIENTIFIC. IT IS AN ODE…
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Pills ‘n’ hills and roadkill: The 1964 guide to cycle touring in the South Island
Dan Slater spent a month circumnavigating Te Waipounamu by bicycle so you don’t have to. Actually, you should, because it’s a good time. But there are a few things you really need to know first. AH, CYCLE TOURING IN AOTEAROA – LIVING THE DREAM! DAY AFTER DAY OF GENTLE PEDALLING ALONG COUNTRY LANES, WHISTLING JAUNTY…
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Deep water emergence
He is a monster of metal and rubber, a glass cyclops, an alien in a world he was never meant to visit. His voice is a hiss and a gurgle. He dips his head and begins. There is magic in the water here. It seeps out of the soil and runs down the rock face…
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So amped right now
Harry Dawson’s Nixie amps have a heart of glass. SOMETIMES FUNCTIONALITY TRUMPS BEAUTY. SOMETIMES HISTORY DOES TOO. BUT SOMETIMES BEAUTY WINS. EXHIBIT A: THE VALVE AMPLIFIER. The garage-slash-workshop in Harry Dawson’s garage is, in square meterage, as big as his house. It has two spaces: a “dirty room” and a “clean room”. Much of the…
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Dirt, the new snow
Is mountain biking the future for the resort towns of the past? WHEN WE USE THE PHRASE “RESORT TOWN”, WE GENERALLY MEAN ONE OF TWO THINGS: A PLACE WITH A BEACH, OR WITH ONE OR MORE SKI HILLS. QUEENSTOWN IS THE LATTER. IT’S PROBABLY THE COUNTRY’S BEST-KNOWN SKI RESORT. CORONET PEAK, AOTEAROA’S FIRST COMMERCIAL SKI…
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Music Review: Change, For a Fiver
Barry G Barry G is an Irish singer, songwriter and impressive strummer of strings who is a familiar figure on the Southern Lakes music scene. His first album, Change, For a Fiver, showcases everything his audiences love in his live performances to great effect. There’s his voice, which has an endlessly listenable Passenger vibe, except…
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Book Review: Dirge Bucolic
By Jasmine Gallagher (Compound Press, 2022) Jasmine Gallagher’s debut collection is like a series of fractal prisms. She takes moments, spaces and stories, then breaks and turns them so we see them from all sides. As implied by the oxymoronic title, there’s a lot here. Dirge Bucolic delves into and through Jasmine’s personal experience of…
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watching us, watching them
1. Toroa ingoingo. In 1937 there was one pair on the Peninsula, marked and wrapped by Doctor Lance Richdale, breeding. Better banded, perhaps, than starved, egg-sucked, stuck in ship masts or dismantled for muffs, tobacco pouches, cigarette holders and walking stick handles. 2. Now they flock to the camera like Kardashians and we sit and…
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Rationalise this
Because we’re nothing but a cross between Caligula and monkeys wearing pants. THESE DAYS, EVERYONE’S AN ENVIRONMENTALIST. TO BE OTHERWISE IS TO RISK BECOMING A SOCIAL EXILE OR HAVING YOUR BUSINESS BOYCOTTED. OUR SOCIAL CHANNELS MAKE US ALL SEEM LIKE THE LOVE CHILDREN OF JANE GOODALL AND DAVID ATTENBOROUGH. MESSAGING CORRECT, BRANDING ON POINT. It…