Afternoons for Thursday 11 July 2013
1:10 Best Song Ever Written - Cindy Baxter of Piha nominated Born Slippy by Underworld.
1:20 Your Place Macraes Flat today, the mining town about 55 kilometres north of Dunedin. Our tour guides are
Rebecca Tisdall, John Fisher (Principal at Macraes Moonlight School) and Mike Booth (Stanley's Hotel)
2:10 Horse Wake Boarding - Chloe Phillips-Harris
Kawakawa resident Chloe Phillips-Harris loves horses so much that in a couple of weeks' time she is going to race across Mongolia to raise money for two charities. The race is 1000km long - putting that into perspective, the South Island is just over 800kms. Chloe will be racing against 34 others and is only allowed 5kgs of gear and no support crew. She'll also have to navigate the harsh Mongolian conditions all by herself. Chloe has come up with a novel way to raise that money - horse wake boarding.
2:20 The Portable Grand Piano - Alastair Monteath - Have you ever seen a grand piano atop a hill or down on a river bank? Well Roxburgh based musician and music teacher Alastair Monteath has come up with an interesting way to do just that. Over the last six months, on weekends and evenings Alastair has been building a portable grand piano... which can be moved by just one person to any location... But looks can be deceiving..
2:30 Reading - In our 2.30 story this week, Birbie the pet starling has been rescued several times, he's stirred up family emotions when he's gone missing for periods of up to 2 weeks - and he's learnt to speak his name and a few phrases. But in today's episode, he faces an entirely new challenge. A shift from Golden Bay to Fiordland.
2:45 Feature Album - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. was the fourth album by the Monkees, released on November 6, 1967
3:10 Q Theatre - Justin Gregory - With new theatres being built in Auckland, classical musicians have started asking where their special performance space is. The surprising answer seems to be Q Theatre. Built as a live theatre venue, its upstairs loft space has nevertheless become home to classical and contemporary art musicians. So why do they want to leave behind the concert chambers, churches and lecture halls they played in before?
You can hear the New Zealand Trio performing in Q Theatre's Loft on Sunday 14 July. Go to qtheatre.co.nz. for details.
3:20 The Movies Man - Lang Masters - We meet the Christchurch man behind the movies at one of the city's oldest cinemas.
3:30 Spotted Shag Spectacle at Tata Beach - Alison Ballance - Tata Beach in Golden Bay is home to one of New Zealand's great wildlife spectacles. At dawn hundreds - and sometimes thousands - of spotted shags gather at the beach for an hour to bathe, preen … and regurgitate small stones.
More Information on spotted shags from New Zealand Birds Online
4:06 Wellington author, Catherine Robertson is on the Panel today with David Farrar: Facebook finds it untenable that the Government would use its pages for spying activities; what about its own new Graph Search rolling out today? When a conscience vote isn't a conscience vote, and putting aside the social distress argument against more gambling machines, does the economic argument stack up? The head of the Hong Kong bank's warning about the Gen Y revolution against the baby boomers - but are the baby boomers the right target? President Obama's choice of broccoli as his favourite food and New Zealanders' choice of bananas as our favourite fruit. Is the President telling the truth, and should we favouring other fruit over bananas?