David Loughrey

A personal tribute to New Zealand theatre identity Warwick Broadhead saw Dunedin's Octagon strewn with broken pottery last night after a mass smashing of cups.

The Downton Abbey-style family that sprouted from Richard Huber's mind has some surprisingly articulate servants.

A collaboration between artists in the mental health community and the Dunedin Fringe Festival has provided the latest fashion item in the city's art world.

Explorations of nostalgia, memory and the stuff of childhood - with a Japanese flavour - are behind a Dunedin Fringe Festival art exhibition that opened yesterday.

You know you are in a fully fledged City of Literature when poetry can pack a venue over two nights, leaving disappointed punters without a ticket turned away from the door.

You could see it reflected in the eyes of the bemused and slightly alarmed cruise ship passengers taking in the sights on George St.

Work on a 121-room hotel in the former Dunedin chief post office is ramping up, as its developer works to finish in time for an October 1 opening day.

They had to compete with rap music coming from a nearby bar, and an audience of just two people, but a group of poets bravely took their art to the Octagon last night.

Nicole Wilkie leapt, spun, flicked her hair in the direction of the Robbie Burns statue, then crawled dramatically across the vertical wall underneath the stony-faced Scottish poet.

They are not long out of art school, they want to turn art upside-down, and their opening night act is something of a secret - Zoe Crook and Aodhan Madden are positioning themselves on the fringe of the fringe.

The inherent humour of beards, erotic fantasies about Benedict Cumberbatch and Scottish jokes were on the stage at the Dunedin Fringe Festival-eve taster at the Regent Theatre last night.

Palmerston Elim Church members say they have not managed to convert the publican of the Waihemo Lodge Hotel to their faith ''at the moment''.

Work has begun tidying and repairing the long-neglected former Dominican Priory in Dunedin, as the Catholic Church makes another attempt to sell the historic building.

There was a triple live album of the Woodstock festival featuring naked hippies on the back cover, a 1974 edition of War Monthly magazine, and a used wooden spice rack on offer at the Anything But Books Sale in Dunedin yesterday.

Penguins in rehab with voracious appetites are eating their carers out of house and home, prompting an urgent call for more fish.

Exactly 4614 people* live in Northeast Valley, one of a number of indisputable facts about this sometimes enigmatic suburb. But the facts only tell half the story. Armed with a sharp eye and a feel for humanity's strengths and weaknesses, David Loughrey ventured into the valley to find the whole truth.

Southern lawyers say motorists hit by a $65 fine or ''breach notice'' charged by a private car park provider at its pay and display machines have been handed a penalty that is not legal.

Chinese tourists helped drive an almost $11 million boost to Otago coffers last month, producing dividends for the hospitality and tourism industry.

Contractors are about to begin building what has been a missing link in Dunedin's cycle/walkway network.

Andrea Harbour has tried oysters from as far afield as Vancouver and Nova Scotia, but says the bivalve molluscs produced in southern New Zealand are a cut above the rest.