Breaking news!! Today New Zealand – a country that reserves a very special place on its national menu for the humble pie – announced its Pie of the Year for 2008! Held every year, New Zealand’s annual Pie Awards raise the pie to gourmet status as judges painstakingly assess and compare three thousand pies in 11 categories. This year [...]

Here’s a note for your diary – Licorice Café is closed on Tuesdays!! I learnt this the hard way today. Left Auckland just after 7 am and drove down-country thinking I’d reward myself for the early start with lunch at one of my favourite Central North Island cafés. Would it be Replete in Taupo or Licorice [...]

If you’re in the Bay of Islands and find yourself in need of a – ahem! – bathroom break … good! You’ve got the perfect excuse to check out one of Northland’s quirkier sights. Kawakawa, situated at the southern end of the Bay of Islands, is home to the fabulous Hundertwasser Toilets.

You may have heard the weather in New Zealand described as being somewhat changeable. ‘Four seasons in one day’ – the phrase immortalised in song by much-loved New Zealand band Crowded House – is a perfect description! These two photos were taken today in Auckland just a few minutes apart – from sheets of rain [...]

In less than an hour, just after the stroke of midnight when the calendar flicks over to Friday 11 July, the highly covetable brand-new Apple iPhone 3G officially goes on sale and New Zealand, blessed with a geographical location close to the International Date Line, will be the first place in the world where tech-savvy [...]

Nothing like a night at the movies to clear the cobwebs. This is the 32nd annual international film festival to be held in Christchurch and I reckon it’s going to be the best ever. The film festival starts on 31 Jul 2008 and really has absolutely everything – drama, comedy, international and homegrown – you [...]

You will really enjoy The Court Theatre’s latest offering! Screwball comedy Arsenic and Old Lace was written in the 1930s and has been staged around the world several times (including a stint in London during the war years). Its popularity is no surprise: murder and mayhem contribute to an increasingly complicated and hilarious plot. In [...]

Wrap yourself up in a coat, New Zealand, and reach for your scarf … it’s cold out there! Yes, it’s officially winter down under and in many places the land of the long white cloud is now the land of the long white snowdrift! Last weekend a storm swept across New Zealand and snow dusted [...]