With a shuddering jolt, a 30-year-old radiata pine bites the dust in Kinleith Forest, part of New Zealand's largest plantation forest region-the vast volcanic plateau between Rotorua and Taupo. Pinus radiata, once an obscure botanical oddity clinging to existence on the California coast, has become New Zealand's great timber tree, covering 1.3 million hectares of land and forming the basis of a billion-dollar-a-year export industry.
The south coast of the South Island is not an area commonly associated with gold-rushes, but in the 1880s it was the scene of New Zealand's most distinctive Chinatown.
"Hmmm," "eh" and "um" are not found in any dictionary of scientific usage, but together with other grunts and sighs, stressed and accented to taste, they are as essential to scientific discussion as they are to any other form of talk.
Most afternoons in the summer half of the year it is windy at the beach. Why? Because, if there is no wind caused by the current atmospheric pressure pattern, then a sea breeze is likely to develop. A sea breeze is a moderate or fresh wind blowing from the sea to the land, and is usually noticeably cooler than conditions prevailing before it started.
As soon as he arrived on Chatham Island, writer Vaughan Yarwood knew that this was going to be a different sort of story from the six others he had written for the magazine. (His first, "Kauri," appeared in Issue 2.)
On his own in a sea of misty grey, local priest and flounder fisher Riwai Preece will share his catch even with those who don't attend his sermons. Standing alone against mercurial elements, the Chatham Islands is the only land between New Zealand and Chile. Remoteness breeds self-reliance and a gritty comradeship among the islands' 750 inhabitants.
In spite of a widespread belief that their race and culture are extinct, Moriori people have survived on the Chatham Islands and are undergoing a cultural revival similar to that of their mainland cousins, the New Zealand Maori.
How was it that a tiny colony far from the centres of political power and influence became the first self-governing country in the world to grant its women the vote?
In the late 19th century, news of a strange antipodean bird with beautiful tail feathers, orange wattles, and a long curved beak spread around the British Empire. To Māori, it was a tapu bird—a sacred treasure. And its song was about to be silenced forever.
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