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New Zealand Sea Lion at Surat Bay

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Charging sea lion bullDo the paparazzi annoy you too sometimes? That's what this New Zealand or Hooker's sea lion seemed to be saying after I had taken multiple photos of him sun and sand-bathing on the beach at Surat Bay on the Catlins coast.

We had heard that the bulls come onto the beach at Surat Bay, so stopped by to see what we could see. We struck it lucky as this big bull sea lion strode up onto the beach just as we got there. He must have heard I was coming with my camera!

These sea lions once bred all over the New Zealand coast, but wouldn't you know it, man put an end to that. Hunted first by the Maori for food, and then by sealers for their fur and oil, today they breed mostly on some of the southern-most islands off the east coast of the South Island. In recent years some small breeding colonies have established themselves on the mainland coast.

Anyhow, check out my photos of the sea lion at Surat Bay.

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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

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Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...
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