All articles by Julie Halligan

The general feeling of the time was that it would all be over by Christmas. For four long years the people of Papakura waited for that end and when it came on Armistice Day 11th November 1918, the final tally of the roll of the dead for Papakura and Kar…

How the Queen’s Justice failed Southern Tribal Chiefs As a terrible storm raged over the North Island coast in December 1769 the ships of Captain Cook and the French explorer Jean-François-Marie de Surville unknowingly passed within a relatively short d…

Captain John Stewart – Enabler for the ‘Cannibal Statesman’ In the early decades of the 18th century New Zealand was enjoying the profitable beginnings of international trade with its nearest neighbour, New South Wales. Captain John Stewart – Enabler…

In the Northern Hemisphere the traditional ‘May Day’ celebration is an ancient festival whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time. It is said that the earliest May Day observances began in pre-Christian times out of the Roman empire, a dedication t…

The white man who figuratively held the gun for a chief to pull the trigger thus igniting the worst holocaust New Zealand in New Zealand’s history The white man who figuratively held the gun for a chief to pull the trigger thus igniting the worst holocau…

The question hung in the air between us ‘So what drew you to the Chatham Islands in the first place? The two pairs of eyes looking back at me widened, the heads nodded together and two voices in unison replied ‘Fossilised sharks teeth’. Kiri jumped u…

Part 2 in a 6 part series looking at the ‘scumbuggering’ that has happened through the years in New Zealand. The Georgian England of the 1800s was a savage regime still attempting to come to grips with the sweeping social changes that had arisen as a di…

‘Once Were Whalers…’ is part 1 of a 6 part series looking at the ‘scumbuggery’ that has happened through the years in New Zealand. It was the era that has retrospectively been described as the Age of Discovery, a time when the commercial and imperial int…

Situated on the picturesque Otago Peninsula perched atop a rising ridge stands the imposing and lasting monument to one man’s insistent desire to announce to the world that he had arrived, that he was someone and that he had ‘done good’. William Larnach…