Spectrum

An iconic documentary series which captured the essence of New Zealand from 1972 to 2016.

Stories from 1972 to 2016

Red, blue, orange, green and yellow fractions of light are framed on the upper left and bottom right corners with a dark section on the other diagonal across the middle. The text 'Spectrum' is in bold and white, with the year numbers '1972' and '2016' underneath with a radio waveform in between the two numbers.

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The Homefront War

Ena Ryan talks to Jack Perkins about wartime Wellington of the 1940s. As battles raged and casualties mounted, those left behind to keep the home fires burning waged their own war against uncertainty, grief and wartime conditions.

Spectrum for 3 January 2016

Spectrum for 3 January 2016 (I've Swung An Axe and Humped A Swag) Bob Edwards provides a detailed account of his life as a swaggie and bushman.

I Remember Mother's Mother (Part 1)

Dan Bergin sings a tribute to his Irish grandmother as part of his recollections of Wanganui's Dublin Street and the colourful folk who lived there in the 1930s.

A Workin' On The Whalin' O (Part 2)

Dan Bergin sings of his life as a whaler working out of Great Barrier Island in the 1950s and recalls his work as a deer-culler and bushman.

Survival of the Fittest

Just three years before his podium finish at the Crankworx mountain bike festival in Whistler, Canada, Jamie Nicoll was trapped in a harness engulfed in flames on the side of a ravine in remote Patagonia.
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The Town That Wouldn't Lie Down

A colourful portrait of Blackball, told from the vantage point of 1975 - four years after the government closed The Paparoa Mine at Roa. With the great days of coal gone, the inhabitants of this West Coast settlement were told to leave and let the town die. They refused, and the town didn't just subsist, it thrived, as Jack Perkins discovered when he visited the famous settlement on its plateau in the Paparoa Rangers near Greymouth.

Armageddon

Caver Neil Silverwood is a man with a dream. He wants to find the missing connection between the West Coast's Fox River caves and a nearby system ominously-named Armageddon. If he can make it happen, Neil believes it will be one of the best caving trips in the country. Recently Neil and a team of explorers travelled to Armageddon to have a go. Spectrum producer Justin Gregory sent them off to the cave with an RNZ recording device. Team member Lauren Kelley was in charge of chronicling the attempt on Armageddon.
An image from inside the Armageddon cave system, showing a caver standing in in a high and wide chamber.

Life 101

The Life 101 course was first designed for school-leavers. Now it's helping prisoners at Auckland Prison at Paremoremo to prepare for life on the outside.
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Fighting fever with healthy habits

Schools in Porirua are tackling high rates of rheumatic fever by teaching their students healthy habits from the start.
Practice Nurse Litia Gibson says reducing rates of rheumatic fever is often opportunistic work involving testing entire families when just one member is ill.

The Complicated Game of Love

Songwriters, poets, and artists the world over have found great inspiration from it, but today, finding love is a game that comes with a raft of complicated, and sometimes unwritten rules.
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Send In The Clowns

The country's clown doctors are using laughter to engage with older patients and now they're keen to spread the word.
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TAUTAI / NAVIGATE - Celebrating 30 years of Contemporary Pacific Arts

For thirty years Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust has been helping artists of Pacific heritage to navigate the tricky waters of the art world. To celebrate, they are holding a large-scale exhibition and throwing themselves a party.
Comb (Black) by artist Lonnie Hutchinson. Photo: By permission of Tautai Contemporary Art Trust.

Horeke Shipyard

Digging up secrets of New Zealand's first commercial shipyard.
Chris Strachwitz circa 1960

Westminster Pilgrimage

Reading music in braille is a daunting challenge especially when you're a member of a choir.
The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament (CBS) Choir at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.

Going under kava

The popular narcotic drink, kava, doesn't always mix with modern-day activities like driving - and its increased consumption by followers of teetotal religions is cause for conflict.
An estimated 20-25,000 people drink kava throughout New Zealand on a Friday or Saturday night. Taken at Waikato University in Hamilton