Travel
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Tāne Mahuta
Round each blind and perilous bend we followed State Highway 12, the main thoroughfare down Northland’s remote west coast. The road threaded through forest so dense that the walls of vegetation looked flat and two-dimensional, like we were driving through… Continue reading
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Cape Reinga
Cape Reinga, at the northern extremity of New Zealand’s North Island, is an unforgiving place. Winds swirl above crashing tides as the Tasman Sea collides with the might of the Pacific, crests of foam pushing ethereally against one another in… Continue reading
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Waitangi
The Waitangi Treaty Grounds are a suitably impressive setting for the birthplace of a nation. Pristine lawns flow down to the sun-speckled waters of the Bay of Islands, while in the distance the pretty white buildings of Russell – once… Continue reading
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Kawakawa
Upon first impressions, it’s hard to imagine what could attract a celebrated European architect to Kawakawa. The small farming town seemed distinctly unremarkable when we passed through on our journey around Northland. The Klondike Ale House, bare walled and unadorned… Continue reading
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Waipu
As you enter the Northland town of Waipu, a sign to your left extends ‘A hundred thousand welcomes’. Excessively friendly in its English form, it’s there as the literal translation of a sign in Scots Gaelic across the road, ‘Ceud… Continue reading
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Waiheke Island
We were glad to get out of Auckland, if only for the day. The city lacked the vibrancy we’d expected of New Zealand’s economic capital, and despite the jungle of construction sites in the CBD pointing to the concentration of… Continue reading
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Maungakiekie, One Tree Hill
It’s easy to understand how a bustling settlement could have existed on Maungakiekie. Buildings, food stores and plantations would once have lined the artificially terraced slopes and the extensive views from its summit would have made it easily defendable as… Continue reading
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Maungawhau, Mount Eden
Maungawhau, or Mount Eden, is the highest point on the Auckland isthmus, one of the 14 Tūpuna Maunga o Tāmaki Makaurau , the ancestral mountains of Auckland. The volcanic cones upon which Auckland is built are of profound importance to… Continue reading
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A Tale of Two Flights
Everyone accepts that air travel is unnatural. No living creature, human or otherwise, has evolved to traverse this world with the speed we can by plane. Before this week the longest flights I had been on were to North America;… Continue reading
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Interlaken
By the close of the 19th century, the growing tendrils of industrial travel had transformed Europe’s provincial backwaters into profitable centres of tourism. The Alps, once spurned as a region of backwardness and superstition, now attracted thousands seeking their own… Continue reading
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Zermatt
As he gazed across that milky vista of saw-toothed peaks and formidable massifs, Edward Whymper must have felt unstoppable. It had been four years since he first laid eyes on that spectacular mountain, and now, perched upon its precarious summit,… Continue reading
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Geneva
For a city of such global renown, Geneva can appear inconsequential. It lacks the self-assurance of a capital, the vibrancy of a metropolis, and, as a French-speaking global centre on the periphery of a majority German-speaking nation, a certain stability… Continue reading
Dead Academic 