Crew are the often overlooked component of New Zealand's thriving cruise-ship tourism industry. But at the Otago Seafarers Centre, crew know their needs will come first. Bruce Munro talks to Shirley Farquhar, who has been at the helm of the Port Chalmers sailors' sanctuary for four decades.
Renowned Chinese sculptor Sun Qi has embarked on the biggest challenge of his career. Bruce Munro talks to the new Dunedin resident about projects past and future, adding meaning to life, and translating a lifetime of art in an alien context.
An octogenarian millionaire says he wants out of an Otago dementia unit - a refrain similiar to that expressed by many dementia unit residents. Is it a case of the enduring power of attorney system malfunctioning? Or not? Bruce Munro takes a look at the wider issue.
How can protein filaments growing out of the scalp cause boys to be banned from school, men to be massacred and angels ordered to do a woman's bidding? Bruce Munro takes a closer look at hair.
The number of children enrolled in school holiday programmes is increasing exponentially, erasing, as it grows, the childhoods of yesteryear. With school holidays upon us, Bruce Munro asks whether we should be concerned about the different childhood memories we are creating for our children.
Are hard work and firm convictions in danger of turning Jinty MacTavish into the thing she hates? Bruce Munro asks the young city councillor what she is doing in the limelight she abhors and talks to friends and foes about her growing presence on the political stage.
Confidential reports on the contaminated former gasworks site in South Dunedin have called it a serious health and safety issue and a significant financial and environmental risk. Is Dunedin about to discover it is yet another community bearing the brunt of previous generations' ignorance and inaction? Bruce Munro takes a look.
Is superannuation an entitlement or a benefit? Fin Heads has taken a case against the attorney-general over "obscene'' legislation that forced him to choose between his superannuation and his...
Poverty affects up to a quarter of all children in New Zealand, researcher Simon Chapple says. Is this the one issue which - because of its complexity, because it will take time, money and...
Darren Hogg cannot imagine life without Parkinson's.
They are united with each other by a lack of other options and with all of us by humanity's frailty. But each of the hundreds of men and women who every year pass through the doors of the Dunedin Night Shelter has their own affecting story. Here are four of them.
A new ''ism'' seems to be taking hold among university youth.
Charities are profiting from liaisons with tomorrow's financiers, lawyers and doctors. It is a surprising revolution, begun in Dunedin, which is already starting to spread nationwide. Bruce Munro takes a look at Ignite Consultants.
The country road is taking Bevan Gardiner everywhere but home.
How can protein filaments growing out of the scalp cause boys to be banned from school, men to be massacred and angels ordered to do a woman's bidding? Bruce Munro takes a closer look at hair.
Home tattooists are the new front line of a rapidly morphing war against hepatitis C. There is no vaccine for the disease which is causing liver cancer at an alarming rate. Otago hep C patients, tattoo artists and health advocates are among those calling for nationwide changes that could see this long-stigmatised virus eradicated within our lifetime, writes Bruce Munro.
Watching Cap Bocage is like seeing yourself from behind for the first time.
The recently released documentary featuring New Caledonian environmentalist and independence activist Florent Eurisouke is simultaneously as foreign and familiar as that first unsettling glimpse of the back of your head in a mirror.
And holding the mirror is New Zealand film-maker Jim Marbrook.
Local authorities are considering telling hundreds of Otago landowners their properties may be contaminated.
A team led by Assoc Prof John Reynolds has spent seven years searching for a ground-breaking treatment for the debilitating Parkinson's. The signs are promising, but there is still a way to go. Bruce Munro asks how you go about curing the incurable.
Young people trying to grow up too fast in a country with a binge-drinking culture, in a city with a campus quarter promising a never-ending party: Dunedin's recipe for disaster is a heady, and sometimes violating concoction, writes Bruce Munro.
