Living World

Finding ourselves at Te Papa

Taking over where nature left off, eager hands rub river gravel into the water-worn surface of a massive greenstone boulder inside the new Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Valued by Maori and Pakeha alike, this boulder, named Mauri, meaning "life force," is a metaphor for what Te Papa—"our place"—aspires to be: a treasure we can all appropriate and together work at enjoying.

Archive

Society

'And for Marlborough...' fine and dry

The weather forecasts for central Marlborough had a monotonous sameness last summer, as El Nino kept clouds away and turned pastures to brick. Sheep farmers like Ted Kearney (whose Atacama Station is named after the driest place on Earth) were forced to sell stock and feed straw and pellets to their remaining animals. Elsewhere in the district, which these days defines itself more by wine than by wool, the drought brought better fortunes.

Geography

A walk in the Waitutu forest

Southland's remote Waitutu district is considered by many to hold the finest spread of native lowland forest in the country. From shoreline to treeline, a diverse range of forest types unfurl their branches across 500 square kilometres of misty ridges which eventually merge with the harsher mountains of fiordland. The subject of fierce conservation battles in the 1980s and '90s, all of Waitutu has now been given formal protection from logging: an ancient wilderness saved.

History

C.F. Goldie: the old master revisited

To the public he is a national treasure. To critics he was a "one-man academy" who clung to an outmoded style and produced work that was both patronising and dull. Why should Charles Frederick Goldie divide opinion so? Fifty years after his death, New Zealand's best-known painter remains an enigma, open to as many interpretations as there are hairs in a sable brush.

Geography

The truth about tadpoles and frogs

Bulging eyes, cold, clammy skin, webbed feet and a capacious mouth—frogs may repulse us, but they also intrigue, and who hasn't marvelled at their summertime serenade under the stars? Yet around the world many of Kermit's kin are disappearing, and here in New Zealand frogs seem less common than they once were. Deputy editor Warren Judd investigates the state of the amphibious nation.

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