January 2022

North & South

North & South is New Zealand’s premier monthly current affairs and lifestyle magazine, specialising in long-form investigative journalism, delivered by award-winning writers and photographers.

North & South2 min read
From the Editor
Dear readers, No matter who you are or where you’re reading this, it’s probably safe to say that it’s been a hard year. I don’t want to dwell on the compounding fog of stress and uncertainty we’ve been stumbling through ever since the first Delta cas
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Reader Letter Winner
This month’s best letter wins a reader’s treasure trove from Potton & Burton valued at $269.95! The titles include: Ray Ching: New Zealand Bird Paintings by Ray Ching — A sumptuous book from New Zealand’s greatest bird artist; Mana of the Pacific: Wi
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Letter Of The Month
Congratulations to Nicola Harvey for her well-researched article trying to give an accurate assessment of the tremendous challenges facing our farming and rural communities today (“The Fight for the Future of Farming”, December 2021). As a past succe
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Featured Contributors
Pete’s feature in this month’s magazine on the incredible — and until now unknown — involvement of two wily Kiwi diplomats in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis was sparked by a rewatch of the 2012 movie Argo. A throwaway comment about New Zealand in th
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North & South
Verena Friederike Hasel and Konstantin Richter Editor: Rachel Morris Art Director: Imogen Greenfield Deputy Editor: Tess Nichol Subeditor: Anna Hodge Proofreader: Clare McIntosh Graphic Designer: Sarah Conder Tobias Buck, Donna Chisholm, Damian Chris
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Subscribe Or Renew Today
*While stocks last! Gift a subscription to North & South this Christmas. The gift that keeps giving. via direct debit, just $6.33 per issue save 33% off the retail cover price save 37% off the retail cover price Already a subscriber? Simply renew you
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Four Corners
AUCKLAND Obit for a Stoat In the end, it wasn’t the rangers, the dogs, the cameras or the traps. It was the loneliness that killed him. We don’t know much about the stoat who died on 5 November. No name was provided in the Department of Conservation’
North & South1 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
Way Too Social
“Can’t think why people must use the pool as a toilet”, one user wrote on Tripadvisor in February 2019. Soon afterwards, local iwi put a rāhui on the Matapouri Mermaid Pools, a social-media favourite for their turquoise waters. Despite private proper
North & South6 min read
Leaving New Zealand
By late 2020, when it was clear that Covid-19 wasn’t going to be fixed quickly, New Zealand media was awash with tales of the coming “brain gain”: talented Kiwis coming home, bringing years of experience in high-demand industries like finance, the cr
North & South6 min read
Invercargill Lido, Ciao
In Wellington, where drinking coffee is as iconic a cultural activity as hailing taxis is for New Yorkers, those who meet to talk shop or gossip at their local café owe the privilege to many people: horticulturalists in Brazil, Vietnam and Ethiopia;
North & South3 min read
War Of The Words
A Saturday in November and Wellington is windy, no surprises there. It’s also cold and wet, beneath a grey sky. But only 45 minutes away is another world. Featherston, on the other side of the Remutaka Ranges, is bright, hot, even humid. The resident
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Alter Ego
Hello, I’m the publisher of North & South magazine. I’m the publisher of North & South magazine, too. Yes, that’s why I’m calling. Some time ago, I googled “North & South”, and I found you. What is your North & South about? I’m a publisher based in C
North & South5 min readDiet & Nutrition
From India With Love
For Julie Guise, home cooking has always been done on a macro scale. She’s turned out trays of mousetraps to feed harvesters at midnight. She’s layered industrial sized lasagnes for teams of shearers. “Men don’t work on empty stomachs,” she says, rol
North & South8 min readDiet & Nutrition
We Are What We Eat
There was a time in this nation, not so long ago, when canned cheese was the height of dinner party sophistication. “I’m serious!” says Lauraine Jacobs. “It was Danish Camembert from a tin, and it wasn’t even that good and that’s why” — she dissolves
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The Huntress
For more than 15 years Jannine Rickards travelled the world learning the craft of winemaking. Now based back in New Zealand, she is one of only a handful of Māori women making wine. She works for the organic wine company Urlar, and makes her own wine
North & South3 min read
Southern Gold
Producing saffron is tough work. Not only does it grow in tiny amounts, and only as much as sun and soil allow, but it can be back-breaking to harvest. On your knees, hands in the soil. Traditionally grown in the dry heat of places like Spain, Iran a
North & South2 min read
Glenn And The Chocolate Factory
Two decades ago, Glenn Yeatman fled Zimbabwe, where the Mugabe regime had embarked on a violent campaign to seize the land of white farmers. Now, he’s making ethical, vegan, cane-sugar-free chocolate from a factory he started from scratch in Tauranga
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The Sweetest Sting
During the 2020 lockdown, Dan Bycroft and Chris Bulman were inspired to launch a tech start-up. “A New Zealand-based search engine, you know, taking on the big guys,” says Bycroft, who spent years in the fashion industry and doing freelance copywriti
North & South2 min readRegional & Ethnic
How The Sausage Gets Made
I first encountered the force of nature that is Rob Beard almost a decade ago when he was living with his wife Lara and their small children just outside the riverside settlement of Clive in Hawke’s Bay. In a very humble way he was making outstanding
North & South2 min read
The Smell of Success
Mandy Steel had never been a foodie. Nor a gardener. Nor even possessed of a burning desire to run her own business, let alone become the nation’s top producer of horseradish sauces. She had dabbled around here and overseas in the worlds of finance,
North & South3 min read
Underground Operation
When Jax Lee-May needed dogs to sniff out truffles, she contacted the police: She figured that the dog squad would know a thing or two about how to train an A-grade scent dog. This was in 2010 and little was known about growing truffles at the time,
North & South3 min read
Fresh Pastures
How Jennifer Rodrigue of Belle Chèvre Creamery went from a high-flying career in Silicon Valley to milking her own goats to make cheese on a small Northland farm. I was brought up in the Silicon Valley and was very good at maths and sciences, so I go
North & South1 min readRegional & Ethnic
Mother Knows Best
When Jenny Zo’s parents moved from Taiwan to Fiji in the 80s, then later to New Zealand, they missed the flavours of home like tofu, fish balls and bao buns. So Jenny’s mother, Yu Chyn, learned to make them from memory. “We’re a family of foodies,” s
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Argo II
On a crisp winter’s morning in 1989, many of Wellington’s most influential diplomats, bureaucrats and consultants met in Old St Paul’s Church to farewell a dear friend. The man they were there to mourn was not a household name. But to the assembled g
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The Great Aotearoa Quiz
1. The Pleiades constellation is called Subaru in Japan. What is it known as in Aotearoa? 2. What was this year’s controversial winner of the annual Bird of the Year competition? 3. Which disease, caused by a fungus-like organism, is plaguing an anci
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Need Some Inspo For Your Palmy Getaway?
Ask Palmy locals why they live where they do - in a place that doesn’t have a big neon go-to light shining on it - and they might just speak in a whisper. They will probably keep their enthusiasm dialled down low but, look into their eyes and you’ll
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On the Road Again
In October 2009, shortly after my partner and I returned to New Zealand following our requisite foreign gallivanting, I relocated a campervan from our temporary home of Christchurch to our new permanent home of Auckland. It was filled to the brim wit
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About Town Omori
To say Omori is a town would be an exaggeration. It’s a small settlement, nestled on the southwestern edge of Lake Taupō, about 20 minutes northwest of Tūrangi. When I was growing up the only thing there was a store that sold very good $1 mixes. The
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The Anatomy Of An Art Auction
We’ve heard a lot about how Covid has driven up house prices in New Zealand, but there’s another sector where auctions are booming: the art market. It’s an increasingly competitive business, partly due to the pandemic freeing up a lot of dollars that
North & South1 min read
Subscribe Or Renew Today
*While stocks last! Gift a subscription to North & South this Christmas. The gift that keeps giving. via direct debit, just $6.33 per issue save 33% off the retail cover price save 37% off the retail cover price Already a subscriber? Simply renew or
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Books
by Nikki Crutchley HarperCollins — $35 Many things make this thriller stand out. For a start, the narrators are reliable. That’s refreshing, these days. Crutchley tells her story in more than one voice and time period, but all are clearly handled and
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How I Wrote
In her beautifully presented book, Auckland Museum historian Lucy Mackintosh incorporates disciplines including history, archaeology, anthropology, mātauranga Māori and geology to tell the stories of three Auckland locations: Pukekawa/Auckland Domain
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Puzzles
1. Desert failing (6) 4. It’s predictable: stumbling-blocks initially put forward for discussion (6) 9. He wins nine LPG conversions, something that was common in traditional cottage industry (8-5) 10. Burn for the contravention of an ancient law pri
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Whiz//quiz
1. Who is president of COP 26? 2. And what does COP 26 stand for? 4. Who won the 2021 Booker Prize? 5. In which English county is Prince Charles’ Highgrove House estate? 6. In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, who is the film star whose pin-up post
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10 Things To
A tropical breakfast of papaya and passionfruit. Scoop the seeds out of a halved papaya and replace them with the insides of a couple of passionfruit. Cover and leave in the fridge to combine overnight — the zesty passionfruit marinates the papaya’s
North & South6 min read
Men of God?
You could say Covid came at a good time for Brian Tamaki. Membership at Destiny Church, of which he is the founder and leader, has been in decline for the past 20 years, peaking at 5000 in 2003, falling to 3000 by 2012, and dwindling further since. V
North & South1 min readHistory & Theory
The National Gallery
Phoebe Carr (Ngāi Tūhoe and Ngāti Awa), The Resist Poster, 2017 Shortly after I moved to Sweden, there was a massive Nordic Front (white supremacist) protest in Gothenburg, where I live. Gothenburg is quite a leftist city, with a lot of anti-fascists

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