At Rhythm and Alps last year, the ON girls (and boy) developed what can only be classed as a mega-crush on The Funk Hunters. This infatuation saw us inventing new dance moves to their infectious selection of mindfully mashed up beats the first time we heard them, then following their tour like DeadHead groupies. We caught them at Summerlands, […]

  Sting said history will teach us nothing, but Damien Fenton taught us lots.  History doesn’t so much repeat itself, it reverberates. Events don’t end, the past doesn’t always stay in the past and you may think everything has been said about the ANZACs at Gallipoli, but it hasn’t. These are a few of the thoughts I had after Damien […]

  As part of Wanaka’s annual Festival of Colour, Aspiring Conversations saw Wanaka  inspired about a vast array of topics, educated on everything from the power of Chinese capitalism to New Zealand’s growing inequality issue. Most notable, however, was Tim Finn’s performance last Saturday evening. Beginning at 7.30pm in the Lake Wanaka Centre, the former Spit Enz member graced his audience with soulful […]

    In case you hadn’t noticed, the global economy is no longer centred in Tokyo or New York or Singapore or London. It’s somewhere in the cloud.   The ‘How to run the world’ session this morning at Aspiring Conversations was everything this festival of ideas is about: engaging speakers up to their ears in qualifications, a topic that is very ‘now’, […]

    ‘You may not be interested in war but war is interested you’ – Leo Tolstoy Some say we live in historic times, but don’t we always? Dr Damien Fenton is an Honorary Research Fellow in the College of Humanities and Social Science at Massey University (Wellington Campus), and his book ‘New Zealand and the First World War, 1914-1919’, which illustrates […]

    Charlotte Grimshaw is one of our favourite New Zealand writers and the literati agree – she has won both the Montana Medal for fiction and the Montana Prize for Reviewer of the Year. She’s got range, writing novels, short stories, reviews and columns, and she’s known both for her beguiling characters and intricate plotting (her novel Foreign City jumps between London […]

  ANNABEL WILSON joined Jo Guest of Mission WOW as she led a troupe of backcountry trekkers into the mountains on a quest to share skills and ideas at Cardrona recently. Here’s the skinny from Jo on leftovers and other life lessons. Then we tell you WHAT’S ON this week in Wanaka and beyond. What’s happening in the world of Jo Guest at […]

Jane Guy of Queenstownlife catches up with Canadian Wakatipu-sider,  freelance writer, photographer, filmmaker, The Source editor, online TV channel co-­ordinator, musician and hockey player Scott Kennedy to find out What’s ON this weekend and what he keeps in his medicine cabinet. READ ON to discover what’s happening over the hill. Then we bring you the skinny on cool stuff happening in Wanaka this week. […]

Winter announces itself in Wanaka with a whisk of snow on the hills, frost in the mornings and the scent of burning firewood wafting through town. Since last year, this aroma has mingled with a second, more delicious one: roasting chestnuts. This divine essence comes to us courtesy of Village Nuts. Started last year by Greg Inwood and Lisa Johnston, […]

ANNABEL WILSON caught Grammy-winning Chris Berry at Federal Diner this week for an interactive night of African-infused rhythm and melody. Amongst the dubstep and other crap currently infiltrating our airwaves, the antidote is where it has always been: in the tribal beat. The opening to Chris’ set began with the soft resonances of “the voice of the ancestors”: the mbira (Zimbabwe’s […]