Eyewitness

Christmas 2005; a hundred drunk men dressed as Santa allegedly riot in downtown Auckland. But was it true? Yes. Yes it was. Mostly.

Five months without work, scant food and the whole nation against you... Katy Gosset hears a first-hand account of the 1951 Waterfront Dispute.

At the age of 20, Huia Welton got married. But not to the person she loved.

An emergency signal sparks a desperate search for a missing air force helicopter.

The mighty Manchester United go head-to-head in a match with an amateur Auckland team. How do you reckon the game turns out?

In this episode of Eyewitness: a dramatic alpine rescue that kept New Zealand on tenterhooks More than thirty years ago, two climbers were stranded on Mt Cook for two weeks, while the media recorded every detail of the drama. The survival of Mark Inglis and Phil Doole is now a well recognised part of the country's alpine history. Here Katy Gosset tells us the lesser known story of the man behind their rescue.

Sri Lanka, 1992 - New Zealand's Black Caps cricket team dodge a suicide bomber but get caught up in a web of civil war, contract disputes and fights between players and management.

The 1980s will be remembered for big hair, shoulder pads and the biggest destruction of wealth investors had ever seen. It's 30 years since the 1987 share market crash but the legacy of Black Monday still lingers.

In 1961, the 'Pill' went on sale in New Zealand and women's lives were changed forever. The first truly reliable contraceptive, the Pill meant being able to control your fertility was now a matter of choice. But not everyone here in Godzone was judged worthy of making that choice. In this episode of Eyewitness, in 1966, Carol, as she wants to be known, was young, single, sexually active and in a hurry to be an adult.

Only one Catholic Pope has ever made the trip all the way from Rome to New Zealand. In 1986 His Holiness Pope John Paul II spent three days here and the local church prepared for his visit in a uniquely Kiwi way. Eyewitness producer Justin Gregory remembers the Pope's flying visit and tracks down a special item he left behind.

June 1984 and a drunken decision late one night leads to a snap election. Sir Robert Muldoon's ruling National Government is thrown out of office and David Lange's reforming Labour Party voted in. But before they could take power, an unprecedented constitutional crisis gripped the country and for three days, no one knew who was in charge.

It's been a wild three-decade ride for broadcaster TV3. They launched in 1989 as an energetic alternative to state-owned Television New Zealand and proved they had what it took to survive - but not before going broke, being sold a few times and losing large numbers of long serving staff members. Earlier this year TV3 broke with the past and rebranded as +HR=E. Journalist Bill Ralston was headhunted by the new network and signed up before they began broadcasting. He cheerfully admits to Eyewitness producer Justin Gregory that it was his short attention span that made the offer so appealing.

How young is too young to compete in international sport? Rebecca Perrott had an outstanding swimming career which began when she was picked at the age of 12 for the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch. Rebecca was the youngest athlete there and she tells Eyewitness producer Justin Gregory that taking up swimming had a lot to do with sibling rivalry.

February 1994 in Auckland, the Big Day Out is bursting noisily into life. But as the giant outdoor music festival gets going, one band on the line-up is calling it quits. Eyewitness goes back to the day Dunedin's Straitjacket Fits split.

On Valentine's Day 2007 Georgina Beyer brought down the curtain on her 8 year career in government. The first transsexual in the world to be elected to parliament, her short time in national politics had been remarkable for its candour and courage as well as for its achievements. On the tenth anniversary of her resignation, Georgina tells Justin Gregory from RNZ's Eyewitness programme that she left it all behind with no regrets and little ceremony.