News, Updates & Fun Facts About Vehicle Rentals

It’s 1.20pm, and a catamaran idles with a baritone murmur at the wharf. On neighbouring jetties water taxis tug nonchalantly at their lines, a giant cruise ship towers over Waitohi wharf, and Picton harbour glitters in the pale afternoon sun. With cartons of groceries and canvas bags of mail safely stowed, a gaggle of eager sightseers are […]

Last week I wrote a post about “visible shipwrecks” of the North Island coastline, wrecks that you can visit on foot. Our fascination with these rust-ridden hulks comes partly from our simultaneous love/fear of the sea, and partly the fading link they provide to New Zealand’s past. You can read part one here. Sadly, they are […]

These guys will have had almost all their thunder stolen by the hubbub of the Olympics, so let’s give them a bit of attention.  Project ’64 is a team of Kiwi’s who last week broke two under-1000cc land speed records at Bonneville Speed Week, driving a 52 year old Mini Cooper. The car proved to […]

Shipwrecks have a special lure, don’t they? The spectre of tragedy that surrounds them, the resonance of loss, and a reminder of the ocean’s uncompromising power. More than most historical artefacts – restored cars, preserved buildings, antique furniture; embalmed in modern veneer; enshrined in modern surroundings – a dead ship feels like the past reaching […]

In this installment of our movie location series, we take a break from the artistic and economic gravity of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and reach for some light relief in the form of Without a Paddle. This featherweight male-bonding adventure-comedy was shot in NZ in 2004, using North Island locations exclusively for its […]

The pie. Surely our most iconic food, the lowly, unpretentious pie is at the core of any true New Zealander’s diet. In my youth these were “maggot packs”, the most basic form of nourishment you could plunk down your school lunch money for, and available in a long list of tempting flavours: mince, steak & […]

A contender for our “Shot in New Zealand” movie location series, except that Kingdom Come, a $180 million epic based on the life of Christ, was never actually filmed due to funding tribulations. And if you struggle to reconcile all that filthy Hollywood cash, tainted by sex, drugs, and Hangover sequels, with the sanctity of the […]

Dunedin. New Zealand’s first city. A lot of people don’t know, but it was home to our first art gallery, first street lighting, and first phone call. What a lot of people do know is that it has the world’s steepest street and a chocolate factory, and every July Dunedin-ites manage to combine these two […]

Railways were once the heart of a country. Both socially and commercially they were vital links, often the only links. In 19th century New Zealand thousands of settlers laboured for years, even decades on a single route, chiseling through horribly uneven terrain and dense native bush with picks, shovels, and an occasional blast of TNT. […]

   New Zealand’s cinematic output has been a mixed bag. After all, we’re a long way from Hollywood – geographically, socially, financially, you name the yardstick. In spite of this, we do have a history of making mostly good, sometimes excellent movies. My take is that all those degrees of separation from the showbiz capital […]