There was not much else to do in sports-mad New Zealand in October 1964 other than join the legions cheering on our most famous athlete, Peter Snell, at the Tokyo Olympics. He remains the only athlete since 1920 to win the 800m and 1500m event at the one Olympic Games. The Tokyo medals came four years after Snell, then an unknown, sneaked away with the 800m gold medal at the Rome Olympics in 1960. The…
After seeing a photo on a tourism brochure of a fruit cocktail with a banana posed like a dolphin with its mouth open, eating one will never be the same. I decided to write about bananas after spending two weeks in north Queensland, where 94% of the fruit is grown. I had also recently learned of the re-emergence of Panama disease, coined ‘Bananageddon’ by some droll headline writer. The threat of disease not withstanding, Australian banana…
In 2009, Greens candidate Peter Bell walked several kilometres backwards from a Mackay fast food franchise to the office of the National member for Dawson, De-Anne Kelly. He told ABC radio at the time he did this to highlight the backwards nature of the Howard Coalition’s policies on industrial relations and climate. Despite making headlines with this stunt, Bell polled only 3,489 votes (4.4% of the Dawson ballot). But he made his point, in public….