
Together at Home
Here we are—a nation of parents, grandparents and children all in the same boat, together at home. He waka eke noa. Every day of the lock-down we will post a story or video that can be shared among your family. The first few are below, and with them some talking points to fill our days at home together. Mauri ora.
Receive Together at Home by email
Enter your email to join the mailing list.
Aug 28: What happened on Stack H?
The Mokohinau stag beetle is one of the world’s most endangered species, occupying less than an acre of scrub on a rocky tower in the middle of the ocean. Its habitat is so precarious that Auckland Zoo and DOC are hoping to safeguard a population of beetles on the mainland as a form of insurance—that is, if there are any left.
Aug 28: Sugar dear?
At Auckland Zoo there’s an elderly primate whose unobtrusive presence and minimalist surroundings understate her significant role in our history. Isolated from the other chimps, she looks lonely, but this is her choice. She doesn’t get along with her fellow primates and prefers her solitary enclosure to their park-like surroundings. When her longtime friend, Bobbie, died four years ago, Janie, 58, became the last of the famous tea party chimpanzees.
Aug 28: Tea-party Chimp
We've changed our minds about zoos should be over the past generation. Let's visit Auckland Zoo to figure out what we've learned...
Sunday doco: Awesome Pawsome
Experience tigers in a completely new way as four cubs grow up to become part of a rare kind of family at Australian’s Dreamworld.
Aug 27: Auckland's green heart
In 1845 Governor George Grey set aside 80 hectares of central Auckland for a park. On the crest of an ancient volcano, it is a memorial, a recreation space, a green heart for the city and its citizens.
Aug 27: Auckland Museum
Let's learn about something close to home—at the centre of our city.
Aug 26: Silence of the Fantails
The fantail is one of our commonest native birds, loved for its flamboyant tail, acrobatic flight and inquisitive friendliness. Yet life is no bed of roses for these charming little birds. Between August and February each year they pour their energy into reproduction, only to have almost all of their infant offspring devoured by rats and other predators.
Aug 26: Pīwakawaka
Let's learn about fantails...
Aug 25: Where are all the spotted shags?
Seabird scientists are creating a fake home for shags on the Noises, an island group off the coast of Auckland, in the hope that the Hauraki Gulf’s rapidly diminishing spotted shag population will be fooled into thinking it’s a great place to start a family.
Aug 25: Spotted Shags
Let's learn about spotted shags...
Aug 24: The governor's island
In a succession of difficult postings—South Australia, New Zealand, South Africa—the energetic George Grey proved himself one of the British Empire's most able governors. Yet when he returned to New Zealand in 1861 for a second term, the magic was fading. The colony was on the brink of civil war, and local politicians were unwilling to allow Grey his former power. As an escape from the increasing pressure and frustration of public life, Grey purchased Kawau Island, building a grand house there amid exotic gardens and filling it with treasures. On the centenary of the death of Sir George Grey—soldier, statesman, explorer, philanthropist—we pay a lingering visit to Mansion House.
Aug 24: Kawau Island
Many Aucklanders know Kawau Island, but how many know it's truly weird history?
Aug 21: Return of the ancients
Sea turtles survived a meteor that killed the dinosaurs, millions of years of predator attacks, even the slow warming of the seas, only to be threatened by nylon fishing lines and plastic bags. Those that wash up in New Zealand almost always need the help of humans.
Aug 21: Turtles
Here's a lockdown life-hack... wear your home on your back like a turtle and you can travel anywhere!
Sunday doco: The Forgotten Atoll
The fascinating secrets of the South Atlantic Ocean’s only atoll have remained hidden from humankind… until now.
Aug 20: The Kiwi Bushman
Josh James reinvents adventure and manhood on the West Coast, with the world watching.
Aug 20: The Kiwi Bushman
While we're in lockdown, just imagine we can go bush...
Aug 19: Bird Island
The spade brigade, as they were dubbed, planted 280,000 seedlings—a city of trees—into which a host of rare birds and reptiles were released. Within sight of New Zealand's largest city, Tiritiri Matangi is now a template for island restoration and endangered species management.
Aug 19: Tiritiri
Our ground-based native bird species would be lost on the mainland, but have found safety in lockdown on offshore islands.
Velvet underground
It may look like a subterranean soft toy, but a prowling peripatus is anything but cuddly. The "velvet worm" is a voracious predator with a startling method of catching prey, and one of the forest's more unlikely denizens.
August 18: Peripatus
Let's learn about something weeeeeeird...
Aug 17: No Take Zone
Rolling a fresh cigarette, Bill Ballantine gives a sardonic laugh as he recalls the headline in the local newspaper when New Zealand’s first marine reserve was opened in 1977—“Nothing to do at Goat Island Bay any more.” He had fought for 12 years to protect five square kilometres of marine habitat on the Northland coast. That protection was finally in place. To Ballantine it was the start of a new era. To the newspaper, voicing community opposition, it was the end of one.
Aug 17: Goat Island
Let's learn about marine protection, and the making of Goat Island.
Aug 13: Bryde's whales
In the Hauraki Gulf
Aug 13: Bryde's Whales
Let's learn about the whales in the Hauraki Gulf!
Sunday doco: Spinner Dolphins
Enter the mysterious world of spinner dolphins and discover how and why they perform the complex aerial activities, unique to their kind.
August 13: Deep insight
Here we are, back in lockdown. But before we go out of our minds, let's delve into the many minds of the octopus.
August 13: Octopus
Let's learn about octopii!
May 16: Black Tide - the Rena accident and its implications
New Zealanders have become accustomed to sea freight slipping silently in and out of the country’s ports without incident. But on October 5, that impression of well-oiled efficiency foundered on Astrolabe Reef, and our coastlines suddenly seemed acutely exposed. What went wrong?
May 16: The Rena accident
Nearly ten years ago the Rena slammed into Astrolabe Reef. What can we learn from that tragedy?
May15: South by Kayak
Pushing through a field of brash ice, an intrepid New Zealand expedition closes in on the bottom of the world. Their goal: the Antarctic Circle. Their route: wherever wind, wave and ice permit a passage along the western shore of the Antarctic Peninsula. Their means: three fibreglass kayaks and a fair measure of grit.
May 15: Kayaking Antarctica
Let's kayak around Antarctica!
May 14: Raising Baby - Gorilla
Enjoy the antics of two orphaned baby gorillas as they journey through their first year of life.
May 14: Raising Baby - Gorilla documentary
What does it take to raise a gorilla?
May 13: A new day for solar power
The sun powers our planet and provides us life. It’s as simple as that—though the processes can be mysterious and the applications surprising. In December last year, a bunch of Kiwis with a budget of less than $40,000 proved that it was possible to drive the length of the country using nothing but sunlight.
May 13: Solar Cars
Can we make a new future with renewable energy?
May 12: Best in Show
New Zealanders boast one of the highest dog ownership rates in the world—one third of households own at least one dog and 300 kennel clubs across the country run hundreds of dog shows a year. The competition will always be fierce, but there can only be one Best in Show.
May 12: Show Dogs
Only two more days in alert level 2, four more days of home-schooling. Love it or hate it, our time Together at Home is drawing to a close. Let's go to the dog show...
May 11: Australia
The epic journey of the world’s most arid continent has driven the evolution of its bizarre pouched mammals, until Australia became the realm of marsupials.
May 11: Australia video
Let's look at life across The Ditch...
May 10: Shooting stars
For stargazers, the clear skies over Tekapō afford a remarkable view of the heavens.
May 10: Shooting stars
Let's shoot for the stars!
May 8: Mana Island
In fading light, a fairy prion returns to its roost on Mana Island as a host of nocturnal creatures are just beginning their day. After concerted conservation efforts, the island is now a hive of activity after dark.
May 8: Mana Island
Let's go to Mana Island... at night!
May 7: Fussy Eaters
In the world of Extreme Animals, meet the Babies! From the cute and the seemingly helpless, to the weird and sometimes downright creepy, get ready for a top ten countdown of the world’s most extreme animal infants.
May 7: Fussy eaters video
OK, it's weird to think about how we eat... but let's think about how we eat.
May 6: Waste not, want not
In our rush through modern life, we leave behind a mountain of rubbish that gets a little higher every year. The problem starts in our homes—so does the solution.
May 6: Rubbish
What happens to nature's rubbish? Let's find out...
May 5: Deep space
By night, a menagerie of species rises to the surface of the ocean—rarely glimpsed, and in some cases never photographed.
May 5: Blackwater Photography
Enter the unknown, a liquid world beneath the sea...
May 4: Citizen science
You don’t need a PhD to find a new species, unearth a rare fungus or name an asteroid. New Zealanders with no specialist training are contributing to scientific research by monitoring streams, spotting rare plants, counting the birds visiting their back gardens, and putting GPS trackers on their cats.
May 4: Citizen Science
You can be a scientist too...
May 3: Chatham Islands
Perched way out in the Pacific, Rangatira Island is pockmarked with thousands, maybe millions, of seabird burrows. Its forest remnants and rocky platforms also shelter some unique and critically endangered birds. But even endangered birds can make a tasty snack and, on a crowded island, there might not be enough room for everyone to rear their chicks.
May 3: Chatham Islands video
Let's go to the Chathams...
May 2: Kelly Tarlton
Although he is best remembered for the Underwater World on Auckland's waterfront which still carries his name 22 years after his death, that project was just the last in a life brimming with adventure, discovery, originality and zest.
May 2: Kelly Tarlton
Would you like to be a pioneer? What would it feel like to explore a world no one else had seen?
May 1: The leg shop
What happens when you lose a limb?
May 1: The leg shop
So, you don't have any legs. What do you do? You build some new ones that are even more awesome.
Thu 30: Banks Peninsula: Mountains Meet the Sea
A drowned volcano, jutting out into the ocean, shelters one of the world’s tiniest marine dolphins. Fresh meltwater from Southern Alps rushes down braided rivers, washes food into the sea and percolates into wetlands that provide a home for the long lived and mysterious eels.
Thu 30: Banks Peninsula video
Let's travel to Banks Peninsula...
Kids respond: Jellyfish
Kids get slimy with jellyfish...
Wed 29: Jellyfish
Drifting at any depth in all the world’s oceans, these creatures range from an Arctic species with a bell the size of a car, to a venomous microscopic Australian. Carnivorous predators, jellyfish swarm around our coasts and litter our beaches, yet we know surprisingly little about them. Some of the most recognisable species don’t even qualify as true jellyfish. One such, a Portuguese Man of War (Physalia physalis), its inflated bladder keeping it poised at the surface, is not even a single animal, but a sizeable colony containing four types of minute, highly modified polyps.
Wed 29: Jellyfish
They don't have a brain or a butt, but jellyfish are cool...
Tue 28: Fields of Plenty
Look closer. The straggling plants on the riverbank, the so-called weeds in the garden, the insect-eaten leaves on the forest’s edge—often ploughed, sprayed or simply ignored—are finding their way back into the medicine chest. And Maori herbal remedies, once derided and outlawed by an act of Parliament, are revealing their curative power.
Tue 28: Medicine
Lots of plants have medicinal properties, even in New Zealand. Let's learn about rongoa.
Sun 26: The Kermadecs
Alone in the Pacific, halfway to Tonga, sit the Kermadec Islands. This remote archipelago is New Zealand’s northernmost frontier and our toehold on the tropics. Everything that lives on and around these young islands has travelled far to be here and a unique mix of creatures thrive in its warm waters. As a marine community the Kermadec is unrivalled in New Zealand waters.
Sun 26: Kermadecs video
Follow us north, 1000 kilometres north to the Kermadecs Islands.
Sat 25: Gallipoli—a hill too far
In the battle for Chunuk Bair, Imperial Britain’s campaign to occupy the Gallipoli peninsula reached its harsh climax, and fighting centre stage were the soldiers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Artist Ion Brown’s re-creation of the scene—a sesquicentennial gift to the people of New Zealand from the country’s armed forces—celebrates the unquenchable resolve of the few in the face of a massive Turkish counter-assault.
Sat 25: Gallipoli
It's April 25th, ANZAC Day.
Fri 23: Road to recovery
Takahē numbers are rising by 10 per cent a year. The problem now is where to put them.
Fri 23: Takahē
Once thought extinct, takahē have endured a lockdown to protect them—just like us! Did you know you can knit your own baby takahē? With a fork?
Thu 23: Open Bay Islands
On New Zealand’s remote Open Bay Islands, New Zealand fur seals protect their newborns from surging seas, starvation, and predation by great white sharks.
Thu 23: Open Bay Islands video
Let's travel to the wild West Coast!
Wed 22: The glory of clouds
They are the supertankers of the sky, ferrying billions of tonnes of water vapour around the atmosphere and making possible life on land.
Wed 22: Clouds
Look up! Behold, the architecture of the skies!
Tue 21: Signs of Life
Like a planet in space, a rainbow trout egg sparks and crackles as biological processes begin a miraculous transformation, the same that progresses silently in the inscrutable waters of New Zealand’s wild rivers every day. But even in clean rivers, the odds are stacked against this small vessel of life—only one in a thousand eggs will hatch and survive until adulthood.
Tue 21: Baby trout
Ba-by fish doo doo tu-doo-tu-doo...
Mon 20: Poor Knights Islands
New Zealand’s Poor Knights Islands is considered one of the world’s top dive sites and for good reason, with a rich collection of extraordinary characters and bizarre behaviours, including a unique congregation of stingrays and sex-changing Sandager's wrasse.
Mon 20: Poor Knights video
Let's dive in to the pristine waters of the Poor Knights...
Sun 19: The microscopic world of lichens
There is a slow war raging, under our noses.
Sun 19: Lichens
Lichens—like us at the moment—are playing the long game. Let's learn some lessons from our most patient plants...
Kids respond: Spider webs
We build spider webs with wool...
Sat 18: Aquatic assassins
The secret life of fishing spiders
Sat 18: Aquatic assassins
Today we go hunting for the creepy and crawler critters in our backyards and berms!
Fri 17: Fiordland
In the cold, steep world of the fiords, tannins block out sunlight to the world below. The fiords are cold and inhospitable in winter, when they receive little light and freeze over at their extremes. In this unforgiving world there are no second chances
Fri 17: Fiordland video
Let's slip into the shadowland...
Thu 16: Seven steps
An Otago man out for a walk made a significant palaeontological discovery.
Thu 16: Moa footprints
Let's travel back in time...
Kids respond: Frog reveal
Let's draw pictures of frogs.
Wed 15: P class
Most of the stellar yachting careers of New Zealand’s America’s Cup sailors began in humble seven-foot boats—a class now a century old—designed by a Public Works employee who couldn’t swim, and who was too hard up to build anything larger.
Wed 15: Let's go sailing!
It's breezy out there... let's learn how to harness the wind.
Kids respond: Volcano
Kiwi kids build volcanoes.
Tue 14: White Island
In the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand’s most active volcano fills the sky with plumes of white cloud. Sterile and inhospitable, the forces that built White Island influence the seas around it.
Tue 14: White Island video
Whakaari/White Island was recently the scene of tragedy, but it's also a natural wonderland that we can learn from.
Mon 13: Liquidation
Water, our most precious natural asset, offers amenity, a habitat for aquatic species and a focus for recreation. But it also turns the turbines of industry and powers New Zealand’s agricultural economy. Economic development and environmental integrity are at odds in a struggle for control over this great resource. Are we mortgaging our future for a little more economic growth?
Mon 13: Water
A 'weather bomb' threatens the nation, but not to fear, a bit of foul weather creates an opportunity to create...
Sun 12: A leap in the dark
Of all the world’s amphibians, the most evolutionarily unusual and critically endangered is the Archey’s frog. The smallest of New Zealand’s four native frogs, this ‘living fossil’ hasn’t changed much in 150 million years. It didn’t evolve ears or a voice, prefers the forest floor to water, and can’t leap without landing in a bellyflop. Why are Archey’s frogs so strange, and what makes them so important?
Sun 12: Frogs
Frogs live in the space between the worlds of wet and dry. What can we learn from them today?
Sat 11: Ghosts of Summer
Our enigmatic butterflies
Sat 11: Butterflies
Consider the butterfly...
Fri 10: Into the wild
Around New Zealand’s coastline by foot, raft, etc...
Fri 10: How would you fare in the wild?
After three weeks’ training and with limited outdoor experience, an Auckland teenager took that first step on a journey of more than 7000 kilometres. Could you do the same?
Thu 9: Pet day
Every spring, rural traditions play out in miniature in the ring at the local pet day.
Thu 9: Pet day
We're connected to the land, and now longing for it more than ever.
Wed 8: Songlines
After centuries of whaling that nearly silenced the song of humpbacks, the singing giants are making a steady recovery in most places. Yet the population of the South Pacific that was hardest hit by Soviet whaling in Antarctica remains endangered, numbering fewer than 4000 individuals.
Wed 8: Humpback whales
Singing the songlines of humpback whales.
Tue 7: Dead heat
Giant carnivorous land snails don’t ask for much: moist leaf litter to burrow into, earthworms to suck up like spaghetti. But if the lower layer of the forest is nibbled away, if sunlight reaches the soil, and if one month of drought follows another, molluscs relying on damp homes struggle to survive.
Tue 7: A snail's pace
The lock-down winds on, and even as the end of it seems a while away, the beginning seems an equally distant memory. Let's learn moving slowly, let's learn about snails. Real big ones.
Mon 6: Kaikoura
New Zealand’s Kaikoura Peninsula is home to the world’s most acrobatic dolphin species, some of New Zealand’s most robust young fur seals, and an unconventional group of red-billed gull families who defend their chicks from dangers both within and outside the colony.
Mon 6: Let's learn about Kaikoura
It's a new week. Let's start it with some dolphins!
Kids respond: Ice sculptures
Ice artists display their skills.
Sun 5: Let's drive across Antarctica to bore a hole!
As we kiss goodbye to Daylight Savings, we venture south... to Antarctica.
Sun 5: The long haul
Antarctica is a puzzle that science is racing to solve. The continent shifts from stable to unstable, frozen to melting, without much warning—and we don’t know why, or how. A New Zealand-led expedition journeyed to the heart of the Ross Ice Shelf to find out.
Kids respond: Understanding wingspan
Together-at-homers trace out the 3.1-metres wingspan of a mighty Antipodean albatross.
Sat 4: Freefall
Albatrosses are good omens for sailors, but are not having too much luck themselves. The population of female wandering albatrosses that nests on Antipodes Island has plummeted by two-thirds in the past 14 years.
Sat 4: The mighty albatross
With a wingspan of more than three metres, the albatross is a magnificent seabird. But how big is three metres, really?
Fri 3: Bat signals
Nightfall, and the forest comes alive with squeaking. Or it used to. Lesser short-tailed bats are clinging on in a handful of places, their populations blinking out of existence. Yet researchers are only just beginning to learn about our bat species—New Zealand’s only native mammals—and what they’re finding out is pretty weird.
Fri 3: Everyone is going batty...
Covid-19 likely came from a bat, so let's get to know the critter that got us into this mess.
Thu 2: Torpedo carnivore
Reaching more than six metres in length with a bite force of nearly two tonnes, the great white shark is the most fearsome predator on Earth. Yet despite their reputation as maneaters, great whites are protected in New Zealand as a vulnerable species.
Thu 2: A shark's tale
What can we learn about sharks today?
Wed 1: Video, Northland
Only in New Zealand do Orca families cooperatively - and ingeniously - hunt rays.
Wed 1: Orca!
Orca are at the top of the food chain in Northland's sun-kissed harbours.
Kids respond: Penguins paradise
Kids imagine life beneath subantarctic water.
Tue 31: Life on the edge
Like New Zealanders, penguins occupy the margin of land and sea, being dependent on both habitats, and vulnerable to changes in either as well. Their fate is wedded to our coasts, and as scientists have begun to understand, they are a perfect indicator of the health of this fragile boundary too. What can penguins tell us about our seas and shores?
Tue 31: Who doesn't love penguins?
Try one of these penguin craft activities together...
Kids respond: Bumblebee watering holes
Everyone needs a place to quench their thirst, even bumblebees...
Mon 30: In search of a better bee
Unaffected by Varroa, tolerant of cold and able to pollinate in enclosed spaces, bumblebees offer new hope for New Zealand’s primary industries. If only we knew how to build a nest they wanted to live in…
Mon 30: The thing about bumblebees...
Bumblebees don't make honey. And they hibernate in a nest! Let's learn about them...
Kids respond: Let's build boats!
This is why New Zealand holds the Americas Cup.
Sun 29: Goat Island
The creatures of New Zealand’s oldest marine reserve are safe from humans, but that doesn’t mean life is easy. They are under constant attack from marauding dolphins, diving cormorants, and the sharks and the marlin that live beyond the boundaries of the reserve.
Sun 29: Goat Island
A Sunday inside is not a Sunday wasted... he's some stuff for families to do, Together at Home...
Sat 28: The longest walk
Last October, Chris and Jorinde Rapsey and their two children set off from Cape Reinga to walk Te Araroa, the 3000-kilometre track that runs the length of New Zealand. They lived outdoors for five months and walked an average of 20 kilometres a day. For nine-year-old Elizabeth and six-year-old Johnny, it was an immersive education—a form of learning increasingly absent from the lives of young New Zealanders, even as international research affirms the importance of children spending time in nature.
Sat 28: The lost art of long walking
The first weekend in a new world, locked-down, but no less awesome.
Kids respond: Colourful kākāpō
More responses from students of life to the kākāpō colouring challenge!
Fri 27: Kākāpō
In a land renowned for its unusual birds, the kākāpō—a giant flightless nocturnal parrot with a bizarre breeding system—has to be one of the strangest.
Fri 27: Giant parrots!
We're here to help families... every day of the lock-down.
Kids respond: Clay starfish
Responses from kids to the clay starfish challenge.
Thu 26: Rakiura/Stewart Island video
Little Blue Penguins run the gauntlet to escape great white sharks—but they’re not the only species flirting with death on New Zealand’s famous Stewart Island.
Thu 26: Let's go to Rakiura/Stewart Island!
Watch the video, chat with our talking points, and make clay starfish and yummy crackers!