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 [...]
The road to Bluff is desolate and beautiful. But it’s also so isolated. It seems like the sort of place where people would only willingly live if they had a really good reason, like running away from extreme levels of parking fines. The sky was grey, but the landscape had a strange brightness to it. [...]
If I ran a museum, it would not have a mannequin of an historic person, such as a miner, a blacksmith or a fisherman. And it would not have a motion-triggered recording of said character talking about what life is like in his historical time, voiced by a New Zealand actor struggling with an accent [...]
“Hagley Park is the second-largest manicured park in the world. It’s the largest in the southern hemisphere.” The airport shuttle driver provided a commentary for the English tourists in the van. “It’s a real asset for the city. I always love seeing people walk along the river, jog along it.” It was a cheerful, sunny [...]