Mark Price

The cause of the vegetation fire in the Hikuwai Conservation Area near Albert Town on Thursday evening is being investigated by three government agencies.

Competitors in the Wanaka Golf Club's HireQuip charity golf classic played in fine weather and on some increasingly rare green grass yesterday.

Today ''the Neck'' is known to most as not much more than a couple of steep bends on State Highway 6 between Wanaka and the West Coast. But this isthmus between Lakes Hawea and Wanaka has always been a sacred place to southern Maori and, as Mark Price reports, it is scheduled to be accorded again the prominence it once had.

Sparks from a fire in a conservation area next to Albert Town may have been what set fire to a house in a street about 150m away.

A pest-control programme on one small area of land near Lake Wanaka has eradicated almost 700 pests - including a cat likened to a panther - in little more than a year.

Almost five weeks without rain has put the squeeze on Wanaka Golf Club course superintendent Jason LaRose (left) to produce conditions to suit the 200 competitors in the three-day Hirequip Charity Golf Tournament, which begins today.

The perfect gift for the student with everything hit the display stand at the Wanaka A&P Show with a $39,000 thud yesterday.

Cardrona's controversial ''bra fence'' is on the way back.

Not many people would have realised it, but yesterday was a fine day for getting your goats dry.

''Big data'' is providing the tourism industry with detailed information about visitors and their spending habits.

Winton jet-boater Roger Preston held off the two much-fancied high-speed gas turbine jet-boats in this year's Central Rivers Jet Boat Race, which finished at Cromwell yesterday afternoon.

The Westland District Council's property company can expect more questions later this month over where it is getting the money for investigations into the 127km Haast-Hollyford highway proposal.

A $1.5 million motor vehicle test track is being carved out of a hillside at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds, on the Pisa Range above Cardrona Valley.

Many more Wanaka residents than usual will find themselves on the front line of the Otago Regional Council's battle against rabbits this winter.

A burnt pork chop and a mediocre salad have ended Tarras farmer Jonny Trevathan's run on television cooking show MasterChef but there is a ''but''.

Take a lean aluminium jet-boat hull designed for racing; swap its heavyweight V8 engine for the gas turbine from a helicopter and you have what Regan Williamson (35), of Queenstown, has - a jet-boat that just might be the fastest in the country.