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Loading kiore bait

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

This helicopter is loading poison bait to eradicate kiore from Little Barrier Island (Hauturu), in 2004. Because kiore eat native plants and animals, the Department of Conservation has worked to eradicate the rats from Crown-owned islands. Listen to ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Open Bay Island

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

In the early 19th century, sealers were often dropped at islands to hunt for their prey. In 1810 a group of 10 sealers were taken to Open Bay Island in South Westland, but their ship, under Captain John Bedar, was lost at sea. The men were stranded on the ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Pōhā (kelp)

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Traditional pōhā (kelp bags encased in tōtara bark) are used to store the harvested tītī chicks. Bob Whaitiri talks about pōhā. Sound file from Radio New Zealand Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Chico the cockatoo

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Although there is now a population of wild sulphur-crested cockatoos, they were originally brought to New Zealand as caged birds and some, such as Chico, are tethered pets. Chico perched on owner Robert Nelson’s shoulder while he cycled around Lower Hutt ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Myxomatosis experiment

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Myxomatosis is caused by the myxoma virus, and was first identified killing rabbits in Uruguay in 1896. Trials of the disease began in Australia in 1938, and in 1950 it was released into the wild rabbit population with remarkable success. It was introduced ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Kārearea call

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

The call of the kārearea (New Zealand falcon) was said to foretell the weather. If the bird screamed on a fine day, there would be rain the day after – if it screamed in wet weather, the next day would be clear. Listen to a kārearea’s cry. Sound file from

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Charles Fleming, paleontologist

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Scientist Charles Fleming looks over a collection of fossils. A versatile scientist, Fleming became chief paleontologist of the Geological Survey in Wellington in 1952 and specialised in studying living and fossil molluscs. Listen to Fleming explain why ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Sealing song

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

In February 1810 a gang of 10 sealers were left here, at Open Bay Island, near Jackson Bay in Westland, by the brig Active. The ship was lost and the men were stranded on the island for almost four years, living on seal meat and fern root before they were rescued. This song tells of ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Eastern rosella

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

The eastern rosella has a distinctive red head, which contrasts with its yellow underbelly, and its blue and green wings and tail. Rosellas are often seen in pairs or in small flocks. Sound file from the ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Complaints about the food

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

The quality of food provided for the crew often depended as much on the cleanliness of the vessel as the skill of the cook. Listen to Wally Caldwell describe the inadequate diet he endured on pre-war coal-burning vessels. Sound file from Radio New...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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The revolutionary Southern Cross

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Shaw Savill & Albion’s 20,204-ton Southern Cross was the glamour cruiser of the post-war liners. Everything about her was revolutionary. Until then the liners on the New Zealand run had carried a mixture of passengers and cargo. They looked like the Gothic-class ship seen ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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The romance of the sea

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, old salts such as this man, photographed at Wynyard Pier in Auckland around 1910, would have known the words to a few sea shanties. These work songs, sung to help lighten the hard physical labour on board, also ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Counting for nothing

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

In her 1989 book Counting for nothing, economist Marilyn Waring argued that because women’s domestic work was considered ‘non-productive’ and was therefore not included in national statistics, this major contribution by women was not recognised in the ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Yellowhead

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Yellowheads (mōhua) live in the South Island and Stewart Island, where their musical call was once heard in most forested regions – especially mature beech forest. They nest in tree holes, which makes them vulnerable to predators, and they are now limited to a few mountain forest regions ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Commentary by Winston McCarthy

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

The success of the 1905 All Blacks rugby tour of Britain established the importance of the game in the eyes of many New Zealanders, and by the 1920s it had become a major spectator sport. The high point of public interest came in the 1950s when crowds of up to 50,000 people attended the games. ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Shining cuckoo

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Shining cuckoos (pīpīwharauroa) return to New Zealand each spring after spending winter in the tropics. Like other cuckoos around the world, they lay their egg in the nest of another species and let the foster parents raise their chick. Despite this apparently easy existence their numbers ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Dalmatian card game

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

These Dalmatian gum diggers are enjoying a card game – probably on a Sunday. Most of them worked six days a week and spent Sundays playing games and relaxing. Listen to ‘Song of the digger’, a traditional New Zealand folk song. Sound file from

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Baited longlines

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

In longline fishing, very long lines are strung with many baited hooks and drawn through the water. Malcolm Harrison, an Auckland longline fisherman, talks about landing snapper and gurnard in the late 1950s. Sound file from

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Gathering shellfish

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

These members of the Te Āti Awa iwi (tribe) are collecting shellfish from the Taranaki coast. In the early 1980s a synthetics fuel plant at Motunui, near Waitara, was set to pump industrial and sewage waste into the sea. Local Te Āti Awa objected, making ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage
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Mervyn Thompson performs Coaltown blues

Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Mervyn Thompson was born at Kaitangata in 1936 and spent most of his early years on the West Coast. He worked for five years as a miner, and later he became a distinguished actor, playwright and director. In the play Coaltown blues, he relived the poverty and struggles of his boyhood. ...

Ministry for Culture and Heritage