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The planned expedition led by Norwegian Jarle Andhoy was already shady, and now there’s an unwilling member along for the ride. The yacht took off in a hurry as immigration officials arrived to investigate Andhoy at an Auckland harbor, while a mechanic was on board repairing an anchor on the 52-foot boat Nilaya.
Mr Andhoy and three crew members have embarked on an unpermitted voyage to Antarctica’s Ross Sea, in defiance of both the Norwegian and New Zealand governments.
A previous trip he made to Antarctica almost a year ago ended in disaster when his yacht Berserk sank in a fierce storm and three men died.
Declaring himself “a Viking”, the Norwegian adventurer says he is seeking the wreckage of the Berserk, which was serving as a supply ship for an attempt to reach the South Pole on quad bikes.
New Zealand authorities, who co-ordinated an extensive search and rescue operation last year in which Mr Andhoy and a companion were airlifted to safety, are furious about his return voyage.
Authorities are looking for the Nilaya, which Andhoy has said does not have a locator beacon. It is assumed to not have adequate provisions for an extra expedition member, either. Link -via Arbroath
This is a sport that has no place for the sheepish among you. You’ve got to be tough, fast, and precise with the clippers. That’s why shearing is a competitive event in New Zealand, and some people there want the Olympic Games to host it as a demonstration sport:
Maxwell said men’s and women’s world record-holders, Ivan Scott of Ireland and Kerri-Jo Te Huia of New Zealand, showed the athleticism necessary to reach the top of world shearing.
“Ivan regained his world eight-hour solo lamb title by shearing 749 lambs, seven more than the previous world record,” she said.
“Kerri-Jo smashed the women’s eight-hour solo lamb shearing world record by shearing 507 lambs, 37 more than the previous record.”
To be accepted on the Olympic program, a sport first must be recognized by the International Olympic Committee by being widely practiced around the world and administered by an international federation that ensures that the sport’s activities follow the Olympic Charter.
Link -via MetaFilter | Photo: Flickr user NatalieMaynor
A baby seal with serious cuteness and boundary issues slipped through the cat door of a house in Tauranga, New Zealand. The human residents returned to find it relaxed and making itself at home:
Swoffer said at first she though the cats had brought in a rabbit, or perhaps the noise was an intruder. But she knew it was something different when the dog didn’t react.
“I got a shock. It’s kind of like finding an elephant in your house,” she said.
The baby fur seal, however, was not perturbed.
It waddled its way into the lounge and onto the couch, where it then took a nap.
The owners were charmed by the seal, but that doesn’t mean that you should follow his example. When a human does this, it’s a smidgen less cute. Watch a video of the seal at the link.
Link -via The Mary Sue
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The conundrum is: you you want to look cool, or avoid being haunted by your dead friend for the rest of your life? This anti-drunk driving ad is from New Zealand. -via reddit
Justin Lee of Auckland, New Zealand, received a speeding ticket in the mail in 2004. He noticed a typo in the facts that stated the offense took place in 1974. Since that was a long time ago, he asked his mother for his alibi details. Then Justin wrote back to let the police know exactly where he was on June 23rd, 1974.
Firstly, the ‘date of offence’ is listed as the 23rd of June 1974 with the time being at or around half past six in the evening. This is of grave concern to me because I was not issued a drivers license until sometime in 1990 and I have no desire to be charged with driving while not legally licensed. I do not have a clear recollection of very much at all before I was three and a half years old, so I rang Mum to see if she remembered what I was doing that day. She said that – coincidentally – I was born that day!!
Mum mentioned that I was born at around five o’clock in the evening on that day in Porirua, which is not far from Wellington. She also said Porirua was a bustling suburb of young, low-income people who were trying to get ahead. Back in the 70′s, people were coming to terms with oil shocks, high-inflation and wage freezes, but that’s not important right now.
There’s more to his entertaining letter. And how did this episode turn out? Find out the final disposition of the case at Letters of Note. Link
South Africans Michael and Sunette Adendorff went to New Zealand, but had trouble finding the Majestic Hotel, where they had made reservations. They inquired at a chemist’s shop for help, but found there is no hotel at all in the town of Eastborne! Shop assistant Linda Burke looked at their paperwork and realized the hotel they wanted was in the UK -on the other side of the globe!
Ms Burke rang around but discovered all the local bed and breakfast places were full, so she offered them a room for the night in her house.
The couple, who were exploring New Zealand while visiting the country to watch South Africa play in the Rugby World Cup, had mistakenly booked into the hotel in Eastbourne, Sussex, on the internet.
“I booked into the right hotel, just in the wrong country,” Mr Adendorff told the Dominion Post newspaper.
Despite the good-natured ribbing they received, the couple said Eastbourne was very nice and the locals were friendly.
The Adendorffs were unable to get a refund on the hotel due to short notice. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Wikipedia contributor NordNordWest)
Believe it or not, the First Lady of mystery and the Big Kahuna had something in common-they were both innovators in the sport of surfing! Agatha Christie, as it turns out, was one of the first Britons to stand up on a surfboard, and she sharpened her wave riding skills in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii as early as 1922. Oh what a sight she must have been braving the waves of Waikiki!
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Imagine you’re on a warm New Zealand beach, walking your dog, minding your business, when farther along the sand you spot a–no, it’s not a… it is a penguin! Christine Wilton was doing exactly that on Peka Peka beach discovered a young Emperor penguin. “It was out-of-this-world to see it,” she said, ” … like someone just dropped it from the sky.”
Conservation experts say the penguin is about 10 months old and stands about 80 centimetres high. Colin Miskelly, a curator at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand, said the bird was likely born during the last Antarctic winter. It may have been searching for squid and krill when it took a wrong turn.
Miskelly said emperor penguins can spend months at a time in the ocean, coming ashore only to molt or rest. He doesn’t know what might have caused this particular one to become disoriented.
Miskelly said the penguin appeared healthy and well-fed, with plenty of body fat, and probably came ashore for a rest.
However, Miskelly said the penguin would need to find its way back south soon if it were to survive. Despite the onset of
the New Zealand winter, the bird was probably hot and thirsty, he said, and it had been eating wet sand. “It doesn’t
realize that the sand isn’t going to melt inside it,” Miskelly said. “They typically eat snow, because it’s their only liquid.”
However, he said the bird was in no immediate danger from dehydration because Emperor penguins can also drink salt water in the summer.
Peter Simpson, a program manager for New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, said officials are asking people to stand back about 10 metres from the creature and to avoid letting dogs near it.
Other than that, he said, officials plan to let nature take its course. Simpson said the bird could live several weeks before needing another meal.
Link | Image: Richard Gill, Department of Conservation/Associated Press
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Police in Timaru, New Zealand, pulled over a 15-year-old on State Highway 1 near Pareora and gave him a breathalyzer test. The unnamed driver registered three times the legal alcohol limit for teenage drivers. He was taken to the police station, where his mother was summoned to retrieve him.
She was subsequently stopped and arrested for drink-driving on Craigie Ave at about 2.14am, after blowing 776 mcg, nearly twice the adult limit of 400.
But it wasn’t over there.
The woman then rang her partner to come and pick them both up. He was stopped and arrested on North St at about 3am, when he blew 559mcg.
Supposedly the family was reunited -in jail. Link -via Arbroath
The population of giant carnivorous hermaphrodite snails (formally, Powelliphanta) is on the rise in New Zealand, and that’s a good thing. Six years ago, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) found 51 live specimens in Hawke’s Bay. Recently, a new survey team spotted 75 live Powelliphanta.
“Powelliphanta are one of our most amazing native invertebrates,” DOC ranger Mark Melville told The Dominion Post. “They are carnivores, giants of the snail world. They can live up to 20 years and they lay eggs that look like small birds’ eggs.”
The snails dwell on damp forest floors and forage for food at night. They mainly prey on earthworms but are also known to eat slugs, using a row of sharp, backward-facing teeth to grab their prey before devouring it using digestive enzymes.
Like some other land and freshwater snail species, powelliphanta snails are hermaphrodites. This means that any adult can mate with any other adult because both female and male sexual organs are present in each snail.
The species has been victim to endangered habitat and natural enemies, but the conservation efforts in areas like Hawke’s Bay are proving beneficial.
Link | Image: Flickr User JK and Rocky, CC License
It looks like a piece of Photoshop trickery, but that bit of fairlyand fungus is Entoloma hochstetteri, the Sky Blue Mushroom. In its native New Zealand the mushroom is well known, appearing on a postage stamp and on the back of the country’s $50 note, but it is virtually unheard of outside the Land of the Long White Cloud. The Sky Blue Mushroom is probably poisonous, but no daring forager has offered to find out. There are more pictures and information on Kuriositas.
Link | Image credit: little tomato
Storytellers drew inspiration from the people passing through Aotea Square in Auckland, New Zealand. The stories were projected on a large screen, where folks could see themselves woven into the stories. The stunt was a promotion for the BNZ Literary Awards. Link -Thanks, Jono Aidney!
Phil Johnson, a homeowner in New Zealand, has put a rock up for sale. The rock found its way to his home during the recent earthquake in the Christchurch area.
For sale 1 owner 25 – 30 tonne landscape feature (answers to the name Rocky) …
He is in pristine condition (just a little bit of concrete dust). Suitable for garden feature, or as in our case a magnificent addition to your living area.
Rocky will enhance your “indoor outdoor” flow considerably, especially if you load him in through the garage roof like we did.
The other pictures at the auction site are just as interesting. The Q&A section is priceless! Humor aside, the proceeds from this particular auction go to the Christchurch Earthquake Relief Fund. The current bid is $8,000. Link -Thanks, Phil Fahey!
As told by the children of St Paul’s Church of New Zealand, in adorable Kiwi accents that defy imitation. It ends with a party!
A man emigrated from London to New Zealand. Shortly after arriving, he was ticked for speeding. He recognized the police officer as Constable Andy Flitton, who had ticketed him for speeding in London two years before. Flitton, too, had just immigrated to New Zealand:
“He asked if I had worked in London,” Constable Flitton said. “I said, ‘yes’.
“He asked if I used to operate the laser gun on the A5 in north London. I said, ‘yes’.
“And he said, ‘I thought it was you. You gave me my last speeding ticket there two years ago’.
“The minute he said it, I remembered the whole thing,” Constable Flitton told the New Zealand Herald.
“We both just had a laugh.”
The man told Constable Flitton he had been in New Zealand for less than two weeks and was still looking for a place to live.
Link | Photo by Flickr user 111 Emergency used under Creative Commons license
Siuta Vealia from Aukland, New Zealand, can play a ukulele with his teeth:
It’s pretty easy, he reckons. You play two strings with your top teeth and the other two with your bottom row.
But he admits his talent is “quite unusual” and can shock his audience.
“When I start playing with my teeth they’re surprised,” he says.
At the link, you can watch a video of Vealia performing. About 40 seconds into it, he begins playing with his teeth.
Link | Photo: Shane Wenzlick
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Brett Graham is a Maori artist who explores the intersection of Western art and that of his tribe, the Ngati Koroki. In an exhibition in Sydney entitled “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, he recreated Western weapons using steel, medium density fiberboard, and rubber tires. Pictured above is “Te Hokioi”, modeled after the Lockheed F-117 stealth fighter and inscribed with Maori symbols.
Link via DudeCraft | Artist’s Website | Photo: Design Boom
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Funeral homes in Wellington, New Zealand, have been hit by an unusual thief, dubbed the "Grim Eater" for reasons that will soon become obvious. From The Dominion Post:
A fake mourner who repeatedly gatecrashed Wellington funerals was so keen on the food that he brought along tupperware containers to fill up and take home.
The "grim eater" attended up to four funerals a week during March and April before he was stopped.
Harbour City Funeral Home director Danny Langstraat said the company eventually grew concerned enough to take a photograph of the man and distribute it to its branches. "He was showing up to funeral after funeral, and without a doubt he didn’t know the deceased."
The man, thought to be aged in his 40s, went to different churches and venues around the eastern suburbs, including Miramar, Rongotai and Kilbirnie. "We saw him three or four times in a week. And certainly he had a backpack with some tupperware containers so when people weren’t looking, he was stocking up."
The man was "always very quiet and polite, and did as the rest of the mourners did in paying his respects".
The man in question was later revealed to be a local artist named Reese Tong: Link (Photo: Kent Blechynden/The Dominion Post)
This video by Andrés Borghi of Argentina won the "Your Big Break" competition from 100% Pure New Zealand. The slogan for the competition was: ‘Capture the spirit of 100% Pure New Zealand – the youngest country on earth’. This video certainly conveys that idea!
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Sweet Shop.
For 26 years straight, New Zealand has defeated the US in rugby to win the Ross Island Cup. But these aren’t professional rugby players -they are scientists and support staff who live and work in Antarctica! The national team back home in New Zealand are the All Blacks, but the team from Scott Base goes by the name Ice Blacks. The US team from McMurdo Station, well, most of them don’t even know how to play rugby before they are recruited for the annual game. Yesterday’s game is recounted in embarrassing detail at Discover Magazine. Link
See the New Zealand Antarctic team performing their customary haka in this video from a few years ago. Link
(image credit: Chaz Firestone)
Ben Goulding of Pig Jockey has a list of the world’s longest place names, including Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateahaumaitawhitiurehaeaturipukakapiki maungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. That’s a hill in New Zealand. Because it’s such a long name, most people just call it Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu for short.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Maggga.blogspot.com
A woman in New Zealand sold two glass vials at auction for the equivalent of $1,983 USD. She claimed that they contained souls that she had exorcised from a house in the town of Christchurch:
The “ghosts” were put up for bidding by Avie Woodbury from the southern city of Christchurch. She said they were captured in her house and stored in glass vials with stoppers and dipped in holy water, which she says “dulls the spirits’ energy.”
She said they were the spirits of an old man who lived in the house during the 1920s, and a powerful, disruptive little girl who turned up after a session with a spirit-calling Ouija board. Since an exorcism at the property last July led to their capture, there has been no further spooky activity in the house, she said.
Link via io9 | Photo: flickr user Nancy Wombat, used under Creative Commons license
The Moa was the only wingless bird that ever existed.
The moa were hunted to extinction by 1500 by the Maori in New Zealand. They were the only species of birds with no wings. But wait, you say, what about kiwis, emus, and ostriches? Well, these flightless birds, a group of birds called ratites, actually do have wings (some of them vestigials).
Oh, and one more thing. I mentioned New Zealand – have you ever asked yourself where is Old Zealand? New Zealand is actually named after Zeeland, a major seafaring province of the Netherlands, by Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in 1642 (yup, the island of Tasmania is named after him). Captain James Cook misspelled it New Zealand and the name stuck ever since.
St. Matthew-In-The-City Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand considers itself a liberal place of worship, and this year it erected a billboard that was intended to provoke thought about the literal meaning of Christmas. So far all they’ve provoked is the collective rage of area Christians.
Archdeacon Glynn Cardy defends the church’s message:
“This billboard is trying to lampoon and ridicule the very literal idea that God is a male and somehow this male God impregnated Mary,” said Cardy, who described his church as having very liberal ideas about Christianity.
“We would question the Virgin Birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense,” he said.
On the billboard — painted to mimic the fresco style commonly used in church murals — Mary and Joseph are in bed side-by-side. Joseph is looking down. Mary, looking heavenward, appears sad. The caption reads: “Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow.”
Link to NPR story. (Photo: Sarah Ivey)
A group of explorers from New Zealand are traveling to a campsite of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1909 Antarctic expedition in the hopes of finding whiskey left behind beneath the floorboards of a shelter:
Among the supplies British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton abandoned on his unsuccessful 1909 expedition to the pole were two crates of the now extinct rare old brand of McKinlay and Co whisky.
Now Whyte & Mackay, the drinks giant that owns McKinlay and Co, has asked for a sample of the drink for a series of experiments, the Telegraph newspaper reported in London.
The New Zealanders will use special drills to free the trapped crates and rescue a bottle from the crates, discarded near the Cape Royds hut used by the Nimrod expedition, or at least draw off a sample using a syringe.
The crates were discovered in January 2006, but the bottle couldn’t be removed as they were too deeply embedded.
Link via Discover | Image: NASA
Well, if he didn’t have hedge clippers, then he had no alternative. Two men (who prefer that their names be kept confidential) in Cambridge, New Zealand hauled a lawnmower into the sky with a crane in order to trim a hedge:
The man had expected a real hedge trimmer to turn up on Sunday to mow the hedge, but when he didn’t his mate arrived with his crane and a ride-on mower.
The next thing he knew he was being hoisted up on top of the two-metre high hedge.
“We were supposed to get all dressed up in our Mooloo gear and show people that this is how the Waikato boys mow their hedges.”
The unusual sight bemused passing motorists. One passer-by, Bart Dinger, said it was a classic case of Kiwi ingenuity.
“A kiwi classic – jandals and all,” he said.
One of the pair is being treated for a broken hand that resulted from the stunt.
Link via Geekologie | Image: Bart Dinger
The New Zealand Herald is reporting on a strange occurence at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World. Eloise Gibson writes that a shark was bit open at the stomach by another shark, which freed her young that were due to be born that night. Since the staff was unaware of the pregnancy, they were shocked and speculated that the sharks feared predator attacks if she birthed during the night; the likes of stingrays could be lethal.
The young sharks have been taken to a “nursery” tank with some baby eagle rays, where visitors can see them before they are released into the wild.
Link (Photo: Richard Robinson)
Update (11/11/2009): The mother and her eight babies are all doing fine. Link to Daily Mail story with video.
A cat named Krillen survived 19 hours in a freezer in Te Kuiti, New Zealand. Sarah Crombie heard a faint meow when she approached the freezer, which hadn’t been used since her partner Sid Sisson shut it the night before. He didn’t realize that Krillem had jumped inside. The freezer was set to -18C, the coldest possible setting. She opened the lid and saw him on a bag of dog food.
“I raced inside to get Sid and as I came out, Krillen rolled off the bag in an attempt to get out, but he was that frozen he just rolled to the bottom of the freezer on his back,” she said.
“At first we thought his eyeballs were frozen. I’ve never seen a cat with such big eyes.”
Fortunately, Sid, 28, knew it was essential to raise the body temperature of hypothermia sufferers slowly. So he put the cat under his shirt and got into bed with him.
It took three hours under the covers for the cat to stop shaking. Krillen appears to have recovered without frostbite. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Bruce Mercer)
The native Maori of New Zealand tell of a giant man-eating bird called Te Hokioi. Now scientists have identified a real bird that fits the description. Haast’s Eagle has been extinct for only 500 years, and may be the source of the Maori tales. The bird with up to a four meter wingspan was first discovered in 1870, but until recently was thought to be a scavenger. Recent scans show the bird to be strong enough to kill prey much larger than itself.
“It was certainly capable of swooping down and taking a child,” said Paul Scofield, the curator of vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum.
“They had the ability to not only strike with their talons but to close the talons and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis. It was designed as a killing machine.”
Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall.
“In some fossil sites, moa bones have been found with signs of eagle predation,” Dr Scofield said.
Link -via the Presurfer
(image credit: John Megahan/PLoS Biology)
The Schweeb is an experimental transit system in New Zealand that combines the bicycle and a monorail track. Users lie down individual pods and work the pedals to move forward:
Our proposal to get you safely and quickly from one point in the city to another would be to elevate you onto a network of interconnected monorails where you never have to stop at traffic lights. The ideal vehicle for such a system already exists. Fully faired recumbent cycles, because of their low aerodynamic resistance, are breaking all bicycle speed records and currently reaching speeds of 90 kph (56 mph) in sprints. Suspending these comfortable and highly efficient machines from monorail tracks has the added advantage of taking away the rolling resistance of pneumatic tyres. Trains of Shweebs can further reduce the aero drag – ten people travelling at 40 kph will each have a lot less work to do than a single rider at the same speed. A single rider requires only a fraction of the energy to achieve the same speed as a normal cyclist – thanks to the significant reductions in both aero drag and tire friction. The vehicle is completely weatherproof, you can’t derail or fall out while on the cellphone or blackberry!
