Northland’s ‘Tarara’ reconnect with Dalmatian roots on Croatia rugby tour
More than a century after their forebears left what was then an impoverished corner of Europe, a Far North rugby team is using sport to rekindle old family ties.
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Northland
Māori elder’s vow to stay on Moturua Island: ‘I have a job to do’
Matutaera Clendon is determined to stay on the island where he was born and raised, despite orders to dismantle his illegally built tiny home.
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‘This must not happen again’: How a nation’s photographic history was lost, and found
The loss of the Fairfax archive is one of the great debacles of New Zealand history-keeping. Here’s how I found a small part of it back.
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The island with too many kiwi
An island’s overpopulation problem turns out to be a blessing for a mainland conservation project.
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‘We can hear ourselves think again’: Stillness descends on Mangamuka as highway closes for the second time in two years
Two years ago a massive slip wiped out a highway and turned Mangamuka into a ghost town. Now it’s happened again.
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Project Island Song: Return of the giants
An ambitious ecological restoration project aims to return a small corner of New Zealand to the way it was before humans arrived.
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Getting high in Northland: A peak-bagger’s guide to the North’s 10 highest mountains
How to climb Northland’s highest peaks — well, some of them anyway — and where to find them.
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Best photos of 2019
For once picking my favourite photo of the year was easy.
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Kiwi couple’s answer to the housing crisis: A tiny house on a trailer
Rangimārie Mules and Jared Hiakita didn’t want to start their life together shackled to a giant mortgage. Their solution was a tiny house on a trailer.
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Best photos of 2018
From a new Prime Minister’s visit to a tearful whale stranding and a mass haka in the rain, these are a few of my favourite news photos of 2018.
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The highwaymen of Hokianga
Once a year the Wild West saddles up and rides into Waimamaku for a day of highway robbery.
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Godson to the Queen
The fascinating and little-known tale of how Queen Victoria came to have a Māori godson.
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Te Paki: New Zealand’s top hike
Could the Te Paki Coastal Track around New Zealand’s northern tip qualify as a Great Walk? I decided to brave the mosquitoes to find out.
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Against the odds: Surviving the Burma railroad
Seventy-five years after being conscripted into the Dutch East Army during World War II, a Northland man’s service – and his ordeal on the notorious Burma railroad – has finally been recognised.
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Peace at last for shipwreck’s ‘hungry ghosts’
A Northland woman’s quest to discover the truth behind a century-year-old maritime tragedy has brought two peoples together – and brought peace to hundreds of “hungry ghosts”.
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An everlasting link
A traditional carved canoe has created a new bond between New Zealand and the Netherlands, two seafaring nations with a shared history going back almost 400 years.
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Journey to the end of the map
I’ve never been able to resist places at the end of the map. Show me a dead-end road, a peninsula or a cape, and I’ll show you somewhere alluring and mysterious.
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