Contents

COVER : The Clutha River flows fast and deep in a section known as The Snake, near Luggate, 20km downstream from its origin in Lake Wanaka.
CONTENTS - Features :
WHAT PRICE A RIVER? [No New Zealand river carries as much water as the Clutha, which passes through some of the country’s most iconic landscapes in its course between Wanaka and Balclutha. Yet demands for electricity, irrigation water and homes with river views are all sapping the great river’s essence];
THE SHIPPING NEWS [Dockside in the City of Sails it’s wall-to-wall containers. Ever increasing amounts of freight are being shipped in the big steel boxes, and the Port of Auckland, which handles half of the containers that enter and leave the country, has been completely reshaped to accommodate container shipping];
NIKAU : THE KIWI PALM [Its stiff, often battered fronds rattling in the wind, its trunk seemingly too skinny for its height, the nikau is a piece of the tropics transplanted in temperate New Zealand. Although there is no denying it’s a slow grower, the palm’s distinctiveness makes it a local favourite];
THE NIGHT TARAWERA AWOKE [June 10, 1886 : Into a calm winter’s night rose a plume of fire that blasted away a major tourist attraction (The Pink and White Terraces), also took more than 100 lives and left a landscape buried in ash and mud - one of New Zealand’s worst natural disasters (the eruption of Tarawera)];
CONTENTS - Departments :
LETTERS; VIEWPOINT [the importance of public access]; GEONEWS [rockhopper decline; hitchhiking mussels; a heroic nematode worm]; BOOKS [Krakatoa]; MUSEUMS [Taranaki’s new treasure house]; WEATHER [Probing the stratoshpere]; COMING UP [What’s in store];