This summer, Sport Bay of Plenty is encouraging you to grab your sunhat, slap on some sunscreen and get out amongst nature with your smartphone in hand. Wait, what? But doesn’t that go against the grain of putting down the digital devices in favour...... Read More

  I’ve been told that dog owners in Tauranga are spoilt for choice with the large number of parks, reserves, beaches and public areas where they can exercise their dogs. However, Mount Maunganui Main Beach, Pilot Bay, Mauao, Moturiki Island,...... Read More

  When you fly in to Los Angeles you kind of hope that’s smoke from forest fires you can see. But it’s not. It’s smog. You can see the air here. And you can taste it. It’s not pleasant. In some months, you can feel it too...... Read More

Marineland is returning to the Mount, but not as we once knew it. Yesteryear’s Marineland was located at Moturiki Island, also known as Leisure Island, and was previously an old quarry site in the early 1900s. Blasted out with explosives, the...... Read More

Forty sneaks up on you ever so quietly, and wafts a gentle breeze across your back as it flutters past. Fifty races up to you a few minutes later, and smacks you in the face like a Kenworth truck. For Tauranga’s Karolyn Timarkos, it turned her...... Read More

“I don’t do this for the publicity. I only do it for the penguins.” Julia Graham, spearhead of the Western Bay Wildlife Trust, is unbelievably passionate about the fuzzy little blue penguins. So much so that when Rena hit the reef five...... Read More

Isabel Betts has always wanted to help children in need. She has worked for a non-profit missionary organisation called Youth for a Mission for more than 30 years. But it wasn’t until Isabel met a young woman in Uganda that she realised she was...... Read More

I dip my ‘winter-tanned’ toes into the crystal clear waters of the Pacific Ocean, expecting to be shocked by a refreshing pinch of cool water – as we are accustomed to in New Zealand. Instead, the bath-like temperatures of the Samoan...... Read More

‘I’m so lucky to live in paradise’ is something I’ve found myself saying increasingly over the past six months since I, like most of Auckland’s population, made the shift back to Tauranga from the big smoke. But every now...... Read More