Eyewitness

The 1985 Live Aid concert was broadcast all around the world. But it very nearly wasn't seen here. Produced by Katie Scotcher.

"We had nine days to put the production together."

Don Hutchings never liked the title 'Mr Telethon' but for more than a decade that was exactly who he was.

He helped introduce the fundraising television marathon to New Zealand in the early 1970s and has been stuck with the name ever since.

But after more than a decade on the job, Don decided Telethon 85 would be his last. It was a good one to go out on. Over 24 hours, New Zealanders donated more than $6 million to the Child and Youth Development Trust - a record breaking amount.

Bewildered by the amount raised and shattered after the broadcast, Don was ready for a nap - but there was no time. He had just nine days to prepare for a broadcast much bigger than any Telethon or anything this country had ever seen.

The Ethiopian Famine

Michael Buerk was the BBC's correspondent in Africa covering the Ethiopian famine. In October 1984, he filed a story about the 18-month-old crisis like he'd done many times before.

But this story caught fire. Pictures of malnourished children and heartbroken mothers flashed across television screens around the world. The cry of children starving to death was haunting. People were glued to their screens, watching, in Buerk's memorable description, a "biblical famine in the 20th century."

The situation was dire. An estimated 200,000 people had already died and up to 8 million more were at risk. Buerk called the crisis "the closet thing to Hell on Earth".

Irish rocker Bob Geldof saw the news report and was desperate to do something.

With mate Midge Ure from the band Ultravox, Geldof wrote a charity single, then asked some of the biggest names in pop music to perform it. Recorded in one day in late November, the single was released just a few days later, in time for Christmas.

'Do They Know it's Christmas' was the biggest song in the world that year. It reached the top of the charts in 13 countries and held the number one spot in the UK for weeks. Donations poured in, eventually raising millions for food and supplies for Ethiopia.

But Geldof soon found out that aid wasn't getting very far; a cartel operating at the Ethiopian port was blocking it. Geldof needed a fleet of trucks instead and several million pounds to finance them.

His solution? A giant charity music concert, featuring the biggest bands in the world, performed simultaneously on two stages; Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Beamed through 13 separate satellites, this 'Global Jukebox' would be broadcast around the world…

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Timaru man Colin Murdoch was one of the world's great inventors. Produced by Justin Gregory.

It's entirely possible that you are alive because of one man.

"I suddenly got a bright idea."

In the town I grew up in, there was a man who knew how to do things.

His name was Colin Murdoch; he was a chemist and the kind of guy people would ask to solve problems for them. He always said yes and he always got the job done.

Colin was an ideas man and an inventor. In 1952, he had a very big idea indeed.

On a flight between Auckland and Christchurch, Colin took out his fountain pen to write something down. As he took the cap off and put it back on again... inspiration struck.

Using the same fountain pen, he drew a design for what would become one of the 20th century's most important medical inventions; the disposable, pre-filled hypodermic syringe. He was 23 years old.

In his home of Timaru, though, he was always known as the tranquiliser gun guy.

Colin Murdoch was born in Christchurch in 1929 into a family of chemists. He must have been an interesting kid; dyslexic, ambidextrous, experimenting with chemicals, making his own gunpowder for the pistol he'd built. He wanted to be a surgeon but was steered towards pharmacy, opening his first practice in Timaru at the age of 25.

Three years later a female friend set Colin up on a blind date with a local girl called Marilyn Tregenza.  He turned up to the date at the cinema with his leg in plaster. He'd broken it skiing.

"And at the end of the performance she (the friend) said 'oh you can take her home'," remembers Marilyn today. "And he had a big plaster on. I'm not really sure how I got home, but I did."

They were married six months later. Marilyn discovered Colin's inventive bent when he moved a metal lathe into their top floor flat.

"And the two elderly ladies downstairs wondered what on earth the noise was."

Syringes in the 1950s were made of expensive glass or steel and had to be used multiple times across different patients. As a chemist and a man keen on medicine, Colin knew the risks of cross-contamination they posed, even when properly sterilised. What was needed was a single-use product, made from inexpensive materials, that could be disposed of after use. Plastic was the answer and Colin was the man.

He took his prototype to the New Zealand Health department who dismissed it as too futuristic. So Colin took out patents in Australasia and put the syringe out to market where, after a slow start, it's fair to say, it did pretty well as a concept…

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In 1995 rugby dropped its amateur ethos and went openly professional - but not before nearly tearing itself in two. Produced by Justin Gregory.

Rugby went professional more than twenty years ago. Getting there nearly tore the game in two.

"Professionalism is about more than just money, right?"

One cold winter's night, Keith Quinn went to a party.

It was 1979 and down at the Hutt Valley Marist club they were holding a send-off for club stalwart Bernie Fraser. He was about to leave on his first overseas tour with the All Blacks.

Towards the end of the evening, an official came to Keith and asked a favour. The local businesses had held a whip-round and raised some money for Bernie. It was a gesture typical of the time, thoughtful and generous, meant to make sure Bernie didn't suffer financially while off work playing for the national team.

The official wanted to know if Keith, one of the country's best known sports journalists, would present the money to Bernie.

Sure, said Keith.

"But I knew that I should have really been reporting this as a breach of the amateur rules."

Rugby Union back then was an amateur game and had been since it was invented and codified in the mid-19th century. No one got paid to play, but not because there wasn't any money in the game.

Australian journalist Peter FitzSimons played seven test matches for the Wallabies in 1989-90. He clicked to the truth early on.

"I was standing at the Sydney Football Stadium, singing the national anthem. And the stadium was a cathedral."

As he sang, he let his eyes wander around the stadium.

"You've got 40,000 people here, Mum and Dad were paying $65...huh, there must be $2.7 million dollars flowing through the gates here and I'm on $50 a day!"

But the debutant couldn't have cared less.

"It wasn't about the money. It was about the honour of the jersey. And that was the glory of the game."

But within a few short years, honour and glory were no longer enough for most top players. And in truth, some were already being paid.

They called it shamaterurism; amateurism in name only. Lots of sports did it. In rugby's old days there was boot money; cash quietly stuffed in your boots after a game. Or generous gifts from good honest rugby fans like the business owners of Lower Hutt.

By the 1980s there were large expense payments, commercial sponsors for big sporting competitions and brand logos on team jerseys. Athletes of all kinds did ads and endorsements, implicitly trading off their sports profile. Everyone winked at the hypocrisy. Occasionally someone was nicked for it and the contradictions of the system would be laid bare…

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When restrictive new abortion laws were passed in this country, a grass roots group of women immediately mobilised. Produced by Claire Crofton.

When restrictive new abortion laws are passed, a group of women decide to act.

"I was given a number and (told) 'try these people' and I rang them."

It's June 1978, and Judy* has a lot on her mind. In her second year of nursing college and dealing with a difficult break up, she was struggling with the typical challenges of being a teenager, but was also beginning to feel ill. Judy was taken into hospital with stomach pains, diagnosed with appendicitis, and rushed into surgery. When she came around from the anesthetic, she was told something shocking. She's pregnant.

"I was not sexually active, so how did it happen?"

Judy racks her brains. She looks back through her calendar and works out the date she must have got pregnant. But Judy can't remember much about that night, which is weird -  she's never had a memory blackout before. So she asks her flatmate; did anything strange happen that night? Her flatmate remembers that Judy was brought home by security guards that night when she was found wandering the grounds of the nurse's accommodation in a total daze. Again, really odd, and really out of character.

But then.... it dawns on Judy.

"It turns out that a young man I knew at school had coerced me into going over and saying goodbye to him because he was going back to Canada, and I was roofied (drugged) and raped."

Judy confronted her rapist last year and today, she feels like she's finally getting some closure. But in 1978, she was lost and confused. She had no support. She felt totally judged.

"I'm pregnant and everyone's saying 'well how did you get pregnant? Who was it?' 'Ah I don't remember' and of course immediately, in that day and age, I was just a dirty bitch. And the whole family, everybody other than my nursing friends, all were like, 'ew, you're worse than the worst. Worse than a slut because you can't even remember having sex."

Judy felt her future closing in on her.

"It got to the point that I couldn't cope. I mean honestly, it was like what am I gonna do? You know, I'll get kicked out of nursing, I've got nowhere to go, except home, and that's not really what I want to do because my mother was really terribly judgmental."

Judy felt stuck. Just months earlier, the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act of 1977 had come into effect, and getting an abortion in New Zealand had become pretty much impossible…

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When a routine search warrant goes suddenly wrong, an ordinary man becomes a hero. Produced by Anneke Smith.

Bullets fly in Napier as an everyday police operation turns unexpectedly deadly.

"That's when I grabbed the barrel and swung it away."

It's been ten years since Lenny Holmwood was shot by his mate but he remembers it like it was yesterday.

Lying on the cool pavement of Napier's Hospital Hill he could see bullets spark as they hit the concrete and hear the cries of wounded police officers.

It was here, enveloped in chaos, he sent a famous text about his cat Scrappy that marked perhaps the only light moment of the Napier Siege.

'Jan busted. Three cops shot. Me leg. Can you feed Scrappy?'

What ensued was a 51-hour standoff between police and gunman Jan Molenaar after a routine search warrant went horribly wrong.

How it started

7 May 2009 was a crisp autumn morning when Senior Constables Grant Diver, Bruce Miller and Len Snee knocked on the door of 41 Chaucer Road. They suspected Molenaar was running a small dope growing operation so, search warrant in hand, they knocked on his door. Molenaar's partner, Delwyn Keefe, let them into the house. Lenny isn't far behind them; popping over for a cup of tea after a boozy night out.

Molenaar was out walking his dog and by the time he returned, the police officers had found cannabis plants and a sawn-off shotgun in his basement. Lenny is with Delwyn in the kitchen when Molenaar arrives home and the situation kicks off.

In Lenny's words, "it exploded".

Molenaar becomes immediately angry and disappears down the hallway; returning with a rifle, he orders everyone out of the house. Outside, things seem to have de-escalated. But in fact, they've only just started. Jan Molenaar's eye follow Constable Snee as he reaches the roadside.

As the police officer turns to face the house, Molenaar takes aim with his telescopic rifle and shoots. Lenny watches in horror as Constable Miller is hit in the back and a bullet tears through Diver's forearm, lodging in his stomach.

Lenny's memory gets patchy here, there are seconds and movements he's lost over the years, but the next thing he remembers is Jan Molenaar standing in front of him.

"I heard the moans of the officers up the road. I looked at them over my shoulder and as I looked back the barrel was swinging past me towards them."…

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Not that long ago, the New Zealand economy was built on sheep, sheep and more sheep. We were asking for economic trouble and in the late 1960s, we got it. Produced by Justin Gregory.

Not that long ago, New Zealand's economy was built on sheep. There was only one real export commodity and one real market. We were asking for economic trouble, and in the late 1960s - when the wool price plummeted by 40 percent overnight - we got it.

"One dollar in six went down"

If you'd asked them at the start of the year, most Kiwis would have reckoned that 1966 looked like being a cracker.

And for the most part, it didn't go too badly.

In March, Country Calendar debuted on the telly. In April, the Queen Mum popped in for a cup of tea and a pikelet. In May, sadness over the death of Māori King Te Korokī Mahuta was tempered by excitement at the coronation of his daughter Princess Piki. That winter, the All Blacks downtrou'd the British Lions 4-zip and Maria Dallas, the pride of Morrinsville, had a huge hit with her song 'Tumblin' Down'.

New Zealand in the 1960s had one of the highest standards of living in the world with near-full employment and low inflation. Politically, we were the picture of stability; National Party leader Keith Holyoake was about halfway through his 12-year run as Prime Minister and eyeing-up another win in the general election later that year. 

'Steady as she goes' was the motto. We were rich, a bit boring and everyone was as good as everyone else. Sure, we had compulsory military service, the death sentence for treason and it was only in 1961 you could order a glass of wine with your meal, but there was no need to bust a gut worrying about stuff.

Or so most people thought.

Cracks, though, were starting to appear.

Anti-apartheid protests opposed South African sporting teams coming here and us going there. Prison riots had broken out across the country the previous year and the police were concerned enough about violent crime to establish the Armed Offenders Squad. Radio Hauraki took to the seas to break the state monopoly on broadcasting.

Thousands marched to protest our troops being sent to Vietnam and when US President Lyndon Johnson visited that year, a huge crowd gathered to cheer but a loud group of roosters booed him, too. Vietnam became an election wedge between National and the opposition Labour Party, but not enough to change the government. National were returned in November with an eight-seat majority but shockingly, had lost the previously safe seat of Hobson to the Social Credit Party…

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In the last century we have seen a massive revolution in telecommunications. Technological advances have brought the world closer together, but we have lost something too. Liz Garton looks at the shift from manual to automatic telephone exchanges - a roll out that took nearly a century.

Today most people have the world at their fingertips. But it wasn't that long ago that we shared phone lines and there was no SIRI. Instead, we had The Operator.

Liz Garton looks at the shift from manual to automatic telephone exchanges - a rollout that took nearly a century.

Mike Watling: 'The cellphone is driving people apart'

The shift from manual to automatic telephone exchanges ushered in an era of rapid technological advances which have made our current means of communication, Skype, social media, hangouts, almost unrecognisable to someone born just a few decades ago.

Maurie Challinor is nearly 87 and began working for the Post Office in 1948, back when it was in charge of pretty much all the country's communications. Now he volunteers at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology .

Maurie Challinor with a telegraph receiver at MOTAT.

He says the advances in communication technology since he started has been out of this world and it's still improving all the time.

"If anyone had've told me at the time, I'd have said no, you're joking, that will never happen, it's impossible," Maurie says.

But while the change was rapid for some, for others it was excruciatingly slow.

Telecommunication came to New Zealand about 150 years ago - in 1862 when the first telegraph line was set up between Lyttelton and Christchurch

The first electrical transmissions of sound happened in early 1878 and by 1881 New Zealand had its first telephone exchange - in Christchurch.

A telegram Maurie sent to his young daughter while he was postmaster in Antarctica.

Brian Potter volunteers with Maurie at MOTAT.  He spent 45 years working for Spark, Telecom and the NZ Post Office, essentially living the evolution of the telephone.

"When you consider the phone wasn't invented until 1876, New Zealand was very early in the game," Brian says.

Early adopters, but perhaps not thorough ones.

Because while the Morse system closed about 1963, the telegraph service as an entity didn't close until 1988.

"The phone saturation in the country wasn't immediate. A lot of people couldn't afford telephones for a long, long time. Not only that, the technology wasn't available to supply everybody with them anyway," Maurie says.

"I think this country was quite behind in getting full coverage of phones."…

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For over a century, Niueans have been moving to New Zealand in search of a better life. Did they find it?

For more than a century, Niueans have been exercising their right as citizens of New Zealand to move here in search of a better life.

In the last fifty years, what started as a trickle of migration has become a flood.

More than 24,000 people living in New Zealand identify as Niuean. But in Niue, the population barely tops 1600.

There is some evidence that the trend has topped out and may even be slightly reversing. But when over 90% of your people live somewhere else, the story of your nation, your language and your identity inevitably becomes complicated.

Here are two of those stories.

"The whole of the Pacific is where I'm from."

It seems like kind of a mean trick.

Little Shimpal Lelisi was four years old and living in the village of Liku in Niue. It's 1976 and his family had just given him some flash new clothes. Shimpal was excited.

"We got new shirts made, to go somewhere.

"I didn't know where we were going but it was somewhere big."

He was right. Shimpal's new shirt wasn't for church or visiting. He and his family were leaving Niue to live in Niu Silani - New Zealand.

Shimpal's folks weren't being mean or playing a trick; they were trying to do the best by their family. But Shimpal wasn't that impressed, and even less so by his first sight of Auckland.

"It was raining and it was dark and it was cold. And I was still in my shirt. My short-sleeved shirt."

He was also a bit scared.

"Where are we and when are we going to go home?"

It would be nearly twenty years before Shimpal went back to Niue and by then, he wasn't sure it was home anymore.

Liku is on Niue's east coast, directly opposite the capital of Alofi. Shimpal was just a kid when he left, but he clearly remembers eating mangoes, fishing with his dad, hunting for delicious uga (coconut crab) and chasing other kids around the village. Life for him was good.

But Shimpal's dad was a carpenter and he couldn't find enough work. Mr Lelisi had left for New Zealand a couple of years earlier and now the rest of the family was following.

If you set aside the cold weather, the family had a reasonably soft landing when they arrived in Auckland, with plenty of relatives and people from Liku to welcome them and ease their way into jobs and housing. The idea was to earn good money, educate their kids and then go back home…

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Isobel was 14-and-a-half when the Napier earthquake hit. Decades later, her grand-daughter interviewed her about it for a school project.

It was the morning of 3 February, 1931.

My Nana, Isobel, was 14-and-a-half years old. Her family lived at Whakatu, not far from Hastings.

It had been a hot, dry summer and it was her first day back at Mangateretere School.

Everyone was outside on the field because they weren't doing any work - it was just too hot.

But at 10.47am, disaster struck.

"I've never forgotten that day ."

"It just felt as though someone had punched me right in the small of the back. I was looking around to see who had done it and I nearly had a fit when I saw the ground up there."

Isobel and her schoolmates were knocked right off their feet.

The shaking went on for about 45 seconds, she said.

Others who felt the magnitude 7.8 quake reckoned it went on for more than two-and-a-half minutes.

The Napier earthquake remains New Zealand's deadliest natural disaster - 256 people were killed.

Across Hawke's Bay, the ground shook, cracked and rolled.

Huge expanses of land were pushed up out of the sea.

Napier and Hastings were in ruins - buildings crumpled and the streets were covered with debris.

In 1998, when I was almost 10, I interviewed Nana about what she saw that day - I was doing a school project about the disaster.

When it hit, she said it sounded like thunder.

Was it scary? I asked.

"It was scary alright because we didn't realise what was going on."

There was a lot of damage inside the school, things falling off walls and books coming off shelves.

"We saw the chimney at the Whakatu freezing works go, it was a brick one of course, and it just seemed to shoot off in the air and break in three bits and fall and there was an awful lot of dust that went up after it," she said.

Nana's brother picked her up from school and took her home.

Her mother was inside the house when the earthquake hit and rushed outside.

"She got to the backdoor and there was a big safe hanging there and it came and hit her," Nana said.

"She was thrown down to the bottom of the back steps - and they were quite high and of course there was a concrete floor."

Luckily, she ended up with just a few bumps and bruises.

But the house was a mess, Nana said.

"The wardrobe with the mirror on the door fell over. Dad went and picked it up and then it fell down again that night.

"The cupboard doors flew open and all the jam on the shelves dropped on the floor."…

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Did you know that the tomato only became popular locally about 1920? Or that brussels sprouts and silverbeet didn't catch on until the 1930s? Our national diet has undergone massive changes in the last half-century. Duncan Smith heads to the annual NZ Symposium of Gastronomy to find out why.

Did you know that the tomato only became popular locally about 1920? Or that brussels sprouts and silverbeet didn't catch on until the 1930s?

Our national diet has undergone massive changes in the last half-century. Duncan Smith heads to the annual NZ Symposium of Gastronomy to find out why.

'It's a tough job but someone's got to do it' he said, giving me what I can only call a meaningful stare.

He stared for what seemed an uncomfortably long time.

My bottom lip trembled a little but I managed to suppress a deep internal shudder as my stomach churned.

I held his gaze and feigned ease.

'Oh yes,' I proffered. It caught in my throat and squeaked out like an aging choirboy.

'I need you to go to the bay,' he plowed on bullishly, 'Napier, this coming weekend'.

'Okayyy...' My mind was racing; the bay, Napier, why me?   

'There's something called The Symposium of Gastronomy' he continued.

It's in Napier next weekend and we think you're the man to cover it."

My visions of waking to the sight of a bloodied horse's head nestled on the rice pillow beside me evaporated into the ether as I digested what the mission required of me.

I would have to spend a weekend in Napier with a group of friendly foodies listening to interesting presentations about food, the making of it, it's history and what the food we eat it says about us. My tummy gurgled in a different way

"Mmmm ... Symposium of Gastronomy."

This group of chefs, anthropologists, historians, food writers and foodies are interested in the history and philosophy of eating, meals, food and food-ways, and they are out to promote a better understanding of our culinary heritage.   

They have been meeting annually since the year 2000 in different locations around the country.

They welcome anyone with an interest in food and eating (Me! Me!) to take part in the Symposium and to contribute to their journal The Aristologist.

The theme of this year's symposium was 'migrate'. It featured numerous and diverse papers and presentations…

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