There’s that slightly overused saying – you can’t beat Wellington on a good day, which is more or less true. When there’s little wind and the harbour is placid and the streets are bright, Wellington is the loveliest city in the world. But the saying implies a flipside – the bad day upon which Wellington [...]
I once knew some lads who lived in a house on Randolph Street in Newton, Auckland. It was this house, in fact: Only back then it wasn’t so nicely done up. It was a bit run down, and they paid heaps in electricity due to the house being in a commercial zone. The neighbours were [...]
At one end of Tory Street is Te Papa, at the other end is the old museum building. Actually, let’s be more formal – it’s the old National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum. Yeah, that’s more like it. The museum building opened in 1936, but lasted only 60 years, moving into the Te Papa behemoth [...]
The Wellington real estate market is cruel. I make an above-average wage, but I can’t even afford to buy a studio apartment – the cheapest type of property out there. (Hey, is that what “marriage” and “husband” is for?) But I had discovered that the valley suburb of Wainuiomata had plenty of affordable real estate. [...]
The Wairarapa commuter train is quite posh. Every day, while I’m waiting at my bleak suburban train platform, it swooshes past, reminding me that I’ll soon be boarding a clattery old train that fights with my iPod for aural dominance. But I’d never been on the Wairarapa train, so I took advantage of a long [...]
“A Christmas carnival and the Poverty Bay rodeo on New Year’s Day are not to be missed,” urges Maurice Shadbolt, as I again consult the Shell Guide to New Zealand for something to do. As brilliant as his suggestion sounds, I was a couple of weeks too late. Maurice didn’t have any further recommended sightseeing [...]
Had I been naive to think there would be an overhead locker in which to store my laptop bag on the 19-seater Beechcraft 1900D aeroplane that was clanging its way to Gisborne? I can happily do without inadequate airline coffee or those weird “veggie crisps” things that Air New Zealand serves in flight. But I [...]
Things from my notebook that I couldn’t wrangle into any sort of narrative After I’d checked in at the hotel in Christchurch, I went up to my room, swiped my room card and opened what I thought was my hotel room. Instead I found myself in a small space, faced with three doors. I felt [...]
There comes a time in the life of any New Zealander from the generation known as “X”, when one must look back and wonder what happened to the Play School toys. Big Ted, Manu and Humpty now live at Te Papa, the sign at the Otago Settlers Museum says. The bear, the wahine and the [...]
I didn’t meant to go to the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. It was an accident, I swear. See, I’d been basing my travels on my 1969 edition of the Shell Guide to New Zealand (edited by Maurice Shadbolt, cover by Colin McCahon), so anything opened in the last 40 years was off my [...]