Eyewitness

In last year of the old millennium, governments and businesses warned us all of the dangers of the Y2K Bug. So did the hype help? Or was this bug never going to bite?

For those of us that remember it, Y2K is now looked back on as a bit of a laugh. It's a funny story about the world dealing with technology, but at the time, it was serious business. So how did it become such a memorable moment in history?

Image by Don Merton.

"Y2K was coming and you better be ready."

The internet arrived in New Zealand in 1989, but it was six years later that the World Wide Web's popularity caught on with the general public. Kiwi's finally had a connection to the rest of the world, but the web we knew then, wasn't anything like it is now.

"I don't even think Google was a search engine in those days."

Maurice Williamson was New Zealand's Communications and Information Technology Minister at the time. Unusually for an MP, he came from a coding background, and so had previously heard people in the computer industry talking about date-based operating systems and a possible problem at the end of 1999.

Back then the computers were large and their memory space was small, so programmers, trying to save space, had shortened the year format from four digits to two. This meant that instead of a date reading 1999 it would instead read as 99. When 1999 clocked over to the year 2000, computers would actually read it as 00.

With only 2 digits, 00 could potentially mean any date at all. This fault became known as the Y2K bug - 'Y' for year and '2K' for 2000. A 'bug' is an engineering term for a fault or flaw.

This flaw meant that computer dates might reset or even go back in time, and because of this, the systems running hospitals, power and other essential services could fail. The fear was that if we didn't fix this flaw, the world as we knew it might shut down.

Andrew McKie was working for Wellington Red Cross in 1999 and had heard the Y2K whispers.

"We had i386 computers back then so it was all pretty basic.

"We have a global Red Cross movement and I was talking to countries like Canada and the United Kingdom and they were really interested in what was happening in New Zealand, because we would be the first country affected."

Because of our proximity to the International Date Line, New Zealand would be the first developed country to see in the New Year - and by default be the early warning system for the rest of the world…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Two lions escape from a circus in small town New Zealand. Who you gonna call? Produced by Justin Gregory.

Two lions escape from a circus in small town New Zealand. Who you gonna call?

In the beginning, it wasn't really about the lions: the starting point for this story was a dog.

'Jay' was a German Shepherd, a police dog, and his beat was Auckland in the 1970s. His handler was Constable Mike Lodge; the two were a team, and good mates as well.

Listen to an audio version of this story

But the working life of a police dog isn't that long. Most retire around eight years of age. Jay was getting close and the higher-ups told Mike that he'd have to be put down if he couldn't do the job anymore.

Jay was a good dog, and Mike wasn't going to let him go out that way - and anyway, he was getting tired of big city policing.

So Mike talked the bosses into letting him transfer to a quieter station somewhere and to take Jay with him. They agreed.

"I applied for about three different places," he remembers.

"And eventually got Lawrence."

Lawrence is a storied small town in Central Otago, on State Highway 8 between Dunedin and Alexandra. The New Zealand national anthem was composed there, and nearby is Gabriel's Gully where the discovery of gold in 1860 led to the Otago Gold Rush. At one stage, more people lived in Lawrence than Dunedin.

That wasn't the case when Mike, his family, and Jay arrived in early 1978. There were just a few hundred people living there. Mike soon knew them all.

"They were a loose bunch," he chuckles, "very friendly".

The people of Lawrence wanted to know about him, too.

"Being the new cop in town, they tested me."

It's forgivable then, that when Mike got a phone call one night from the local headmaster about some lions on the loose in the town, he didn't believe him.

Simpson Park in Lawrence is just south of the town's main road and next door to the Lawrence Area School. It's used for all kinds of sporting and social events and on 30 March 1978 was partly occupied by some welcome visitors; Carlos' Circus, making a return to the town.

Fast forward a few hours to 8.20pm: about 400 people, including children, are watching the second show of the night. Two of the circus' three lions, Sultan (a male) and Sonia (a female) have left the ring as usual at the end of their segment but found their cage wasn't properly closed. It's not entirely clear how this happened but it's believed that a new circus employee had simply failed to lock it…

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Why is a Soviet ship lying on the bottom of the Marlborough Sounds? Produced by Justin Gregory.

Why is a Soviet ship lying on the bottom of the Marlborough Sounds?

"Like a 55-storey building at the bottom of the ocean."

Port Gore Bay in the Marlborough Sounds is a beautiful place - from the shore. But head out onto the water even just a short distance and you can soon see another side. The water here is deep, very cold and murky. Turbulence from Cook Strait churns up the bay, making it rough to swim in and lowering visibility to nearly zero.

Only the very good and the very brave go diving here. After tying up to a nondescript buoy, divers slip into the water and clutch tightly to a taut, shuddering rope that leads them down through the depths. At about 15 meters below the surface they come upon what looks like the bottom of the bay. It's only when you touch it do you realise that this long, curved mound was once a ship.

That ship was the Mikhail Lermontov, once the pride of the Soviet Union's fleet of cruise ships.  The Lermontov has been lying on the bottom of Port Gore bay for more than 30 years. Very few people get to see it now and even then, they don't see much of it.

Derek Grzelewski has seen as much of the ship as he cares to. Derek is a writer and a filmmaker, the author of the book 'Going to Extremes', with a chapter about diving on the wreck of the Mikhail Lermontov. It's an eerie, uncanny experience, to explore a dead ship Derek which describes as "like a 55 storey building lying on its side at the bottom of the ocean".

'Everything just recedes into the gloom,' says Derek. 'You're in this void, in this dome of what you can see and outside of that it's just darkness.

'It's basically the stuff of your nightmares.'

But what is a Soviet ship doing lying on the bottom of the Marlborough Sounds? Well, it's a funny old tale and it doesn't have a happy ending or even really an ending at all.

The port town of Picton has seen a lot of ships but not many like the Mikhail Lermontov. At 150 metres long and twelve decks high, she was far bigger than anything else around her when she docked in the early hours of Saturday 15 February 1986. Under Captain Vladislav Vorobyov this elegant white cruise ship had crossed the Tasman from Sydney with more than 700 passengers and crew on board, on what advertising claimed would be the "experience of a lifetime". They'd visited Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington and were sailing to Milford Sound before heading home. The pilot who'd guided her into Picton would later take her out again; local harbourmaster Captain Don Jamison, a man with decades of experience in these waters…

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Health camps have been helping sickly Kiwi kids get better for a century now. What was it like to be at one? And why are the camps today failing to thrive?

Health camps have been helping sickly Kiwi kids get better for a century now. What was it like to be at one? And why are the camps today failing to thrive?

"For some reason I was the sickly one."

Moana Sinclair had a tough start in life.

There were seven kids in her whānau; her dad had shot through so her mum was raising them all alone. This was Taumaranui in 1966 and there was no DPB. Her Mum worked three jobs just to get by and when she got home, she was exhausted. It was up to the older kids to pitch in. Nine-year-old Moana and her big sister worked from first light to lights out helping their mum take care of everyone.

"We all had jobs to do. I had to get up in the morning, help my sister make the lunches, make sure we were all ready to go to school. Then when I got home I had to peel potatoes and get tea on."

This wasn't a case of neglect. Moana was loved by her mum, her aunty and the church community they all belonged to. She was doing really well at school and in sports, but she wasn't thriving. She was upset over her dad leaving and just wasn't able to eat. Moana needed help.

On the recommendation of the District Nurse, Moana was sent to a health camp at Ōtaki on the Kāpiti Coast. She fell in love with the town and the camp from her very first glimpse through the train window.

"I remember thinking how lovely it was. There were nice gardens and trees, the people who picked us up from the train were nice. It was exciting."

For the next six weeks, Moana Sinclair was fed and cared for and she got well.

She is one of thousands of kids who have spent time at a health camp since the radical experiment in care was dreamed up by an exceptional doctor in 1919: Dr Elisabeth Gunn, MBE, paediatrician and pioneer in children's health, was a force of nature.

She had left her home in the South Island to study medicine in Edinburgh and later served overseas as a medical officer during the First World War. During her time in Britain she saw many kids who were suffering from tuberculosis and malnutrition and was horrified to discover similar conditions when she arrived home. A plan began to form in her mind and like everything else Dr Gunn dreamed up it soon became a reality.

The first health camp was launched in November 1919 at Turakina, near Whanganui, on a piece of land supplied by a local farmer. With food from the farm, 55 malnourished children spent three weeks under Dr Gunn's stern but loving command…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

A famous mountain gets two new names. Was this a messy compromise or a farsighted decision? Or is it still too early to tell? Produced by Justin Gregory.

Love their work, hate their work; the New Zealand Geographic Board has been busy naming and renaming bits of New Zealand scenery for nearly a century now.

There have been a few blowups along the way. None of them bigger than the controversy over what to call one of our most famous mountains. Was this a messy compromise? Or a farsighted decision?

"It was because of political pressure."

When I was a kid at Pihanga Primary School in Tūrangi, the teachers used to tell us the legends of the mountains that stood all around us. One of them went something like this.

Once upon a time, seven gods in the form of volcanoes lived around Lake Taupō. Tongariro, Ngāuruhoe, Ruapehu, Pūtauaki, Tauhara and Taranaki all fought for the love of the beautiful Pīhanga.

Tongariro won and stands next to Pīhanga today. Five of the losing mountains retreated peacefully away to the south, the north and the east, where they remain.

But one of them, the furious Taranaki, stormed off to the west, gouging a trench across the land as he went that filled with his tears, becoming Te Awa Tupua, Whanganui River.

Taranaki stopped when he reached the Pouakai Ranges, close enough to see Pīhanga, but far away enough to placate Tongariro. They say that during particularly stunning sunsets, Taranaki is displaying himself to Pihanga. And when Tongariro erupts, he is warning Taranaki to stay away.

So far, he has.

At the time, the volcano was known to nearby iwi as Pukehaupapa and as Pukeonaki by tribes living further away. It became known as Taranaki after Rua Taranaki, the first ancestor of the iwi of the same name.

In 1770, Captain James Cook sailed past the mountain and named it Egmont. This was to honour John Perceval, the Second Earl of Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty, and a key supporter of Cook's voyage. Cook didn't land in the region so iwi weren't informed about the name change. Poor old Perceval died before he ever found out.

Two years later, French explorer Marion Du Fresne renamed the mountain Pic Mascarin, but he was killed not long afterwards so that one never really took.

To recap: Pukeonaki, Pukehaupapa, Taranaki, Egmont and Pic Mascarin have been some of the names the mountain has worn - but in the colonial era, it was 'Egmont' that started appearing on maps.

After the second Taranaki war in 1865, the mountain and a million acres around it are confiscated by the Crown and sold for resettlement…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Getting the strap at school - a harmless rite of passage or an awful abuse of power? Produced by Justin Gregory.

It was a time many of us would like to forget. Less than 30 years ago, teachers in New Zealand had the legal right to physically punish their students for bad behaviour and some of them were more enthusiastic about it than others.

"I remember one time not spelling something properly and getting kicked, really hard, in the base of the spine."

Poet, rapper, author, performer, Auckland artist Dominic Hoey mines his life for his material. This poem, which he performs live a lot, is about what he calls his "awesome education":

our teacher was a thick-necked sadist.

he carried soft brutal hands

and wore big wet eyes on his stupid pig face

he taught a master class in the joys of violence

spelling mistakes

laughing

being a child

all were answerable with

beatings

that'd make

any meth head bouncer proud

Dominic goes on to describe how one day this "thick-necked sadist" loses control and his beaten victim escapes from the class. Everyone settles back down to work until a man in a red jacket arrives. He wants to know if the teacher hit his son.

the man in the red jacket grabbed the teacher by the throat

and dragged him from the classroom

we all leapt to our feet

ran to the windows

our sticky fingers pressed to the glass

watching with glee

as the man in the red jacket beat the living shit

out of the teacher

'kill him, kick his face off'

when our teacher returned his face was a rotten mess

he never did grow back to his former size

and the man in the red jacket

became revered like Jesus or MacGyver

The name of this poem is 'Kill Him'.

Dominic has other not-so-fond memories of school.

"I remember one time not spelling something properly and getting kicked, really hard, in the base of the spine...getting thrown across the room by the neck ... but yeah, a lot of kids got it worse than me."

No one's saying this was standard behaviour for teachers, but most New Zealanders in their mid-30s and older can remember teacher-led violence at school - because if you were thinking this all took place a long time ago, think again. Dominic was at primary school in the 1980s. The late 1980s.

When RNZ asked our audience to share their memories of corporal punishment, they flooded in. We received literally hundreds of responses, almost all condemning the practice.

Only three responses were in favour, and one of them was from an ex-teacher.

I ask Dominic if receiving corporal punishment ever helped him to learn…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

At thirteen Taeko Yoshioka Braid survived a moment of history that changed the world forever; the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Produced by Lynda Chanwai-Earle.

Aged just thirteen, Taeko Yoshioka Braid survived a moment of history that changed the world forever. Meet one of the last survivors of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

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Taeko Yoshioka Braid is one of our country's last surviving Japanese war brides. In 1950 while translating and singing for a living the 18 year-old met Noel Braid, a soldier with the New Zealand K-Force stationed in Kure, Hiroshima.

They married in 1952 and four years later Taeko followed Noel home to Hastings. She's lived there ever since, and at 86, has six children and many grandchildren.

But her path from Hiroshima to Hastings has not always been an easy one.

As she tells me her story, she is supported by her daughter, Sonia Yoshioka Braid.

Taeko was born in Hiroshima in 1931. She is the eldest of six with five younger brothers. Her name means "funny girl" and was given to her by her father who had big plans for his only daughter.

"My father always said I have to learn English and Chinese."

Her father was a high ranking official with the Japanese Navy and served in the port town of Kure in the Hiroshima Prefecture. He was killed during the war when his boat was torpedoed.

Aged just 12, Taeko became head of the family and scrambled to make a living to support her sick mother and five brothers.

"That was really terrible. My mother thought not very safe in Kure, so we shift to ."

Takehara is three train stops or 60 kilometres from the centre of Hiroshima. It was a decision that saved their lives.

It was late summer, August 6th 1945, during the last months of World War II. Taeko was learning how to make kimono with other girls at their substitute school in Takehara. A group of her school friends were in Hiroshima making uniforms for the soldiers.

Just after 8 o'clock the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the "Little Boy" - the world's first atomic bomb over Hiroshima.

Every moment of the day is indelibly etched into Taeko's memory.

"It went like that!" She says, slapping her hands together. "Very sharp! Very, very - spark!"

The blast has been described by other survivors as; "A blinding white light that seemed to cover the sky, an intense heat ..."

The girls ran to the windows to look. "Oh, another bomb!"

But no, says Taeko. "It not another bomb - it totally different!"…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Moscow, near the end of the Cold War; paranoia, politics and perestroika. An embassy guard recalls life behind the Iron Curtain. Produced by Justin Gregory.

Moscow, 1983. The capital of the Soviet Union is at a crucial moment in the Cold War. The New Zealand Embassy needs extra people to guard it and keep both diplomats and documents safe. To know why, we need to go back to 1979 - and a diplomatic scandal.

"How would anyone in the military ever get to visit the Soviet Union and get the chance of living behind the Iron Curtain?"

Just before Christmas 1979, Ambassador Vsevolod Sofinsky, the Soviet Union's man in Wellington, met with George Jackson from New Zealand's Socialist Unity Party in a motel in Auckland.

Their room was bugged by the Security Intelligence Service (SIS).

They report back that Sofinsky had handed Jackson $10,000 in cash.

Our then-Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, took a pretty dim view of all this and he took action. Sofinsky is expelled from the country.

Before he left, the Soviet ambassador was almost incandescent in his denial of wrongdoing.

"Never. Never in my life. It is absolutely lie (sic), slander and nothing more!"

Moscow took it badly, too and retaliated by expelling our ambassador.

The scandal kicked off a tetchy time between the two countries. Just a few days earlier, New Zealand had announced a package of measures against Russia in protest at their invasion of Afghanistan, and in 1980 we send only a small team of athletes to the Moscow Olympics.

But life goes on and things eventually calmed down. New ambassadors were exchanged. We sent butter and mutton there - and they sent Lada cars here (which is surely the real crime).

Although relatively normal service had been resumed, it was felt that our diplomats in Moscow needed a bit more security. Defence Force personnel were to be deployed there to keep an eye on our hosts. It's volunteers only. And one man jumped at the chance.

"How would anyone in the military ever get to go visit the Soviet Union and actually get the chance of living behind the Iron Curtain?"

James - not his real name - is a former military policeman in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. He deployed to Moscow twice in the 1980s.

His first posting is planned for late 1983 and he prepares as best he can by getting in touch with colleagues who have been there before. They tell him what to expect and what to pack, while the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) brief all the team members on security issues.

"We would be persons of interest  and could be followed. Common sense had to prevail."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

EFTPOS and ATMs changed not just the way we bank, but arguably, the way we live. But was that a good thing? Produced by Justin Gregory.

"I'm like the Queen; I do not carry cash."

A few years back, a Kiwi actor flew out to Shanghai to film a TV ad.

The shoot would only take a few days but he told his friends to expect him back in about a month. He had never been to China before and wanted to have a good look around.  Fair enough.

So his mates were a bit surprised when he arrived home just a week later.

What happened, they asked, we thought you were staying longer?

"Oh yeah," the actor replied, "yeah, I meant to. But it's the weirdest thing. Do you know they don't take Taranaki Savings Bank EFTPOS cards in China?"

For more than 30 years, electronic banking and especially EFTPOS have been the way we pay here in New Zealand. I truly can't remember the last time I carried cash or paid for something but didn't swipe a card to do it.

If you open your wallet, purse or what have you right now, I'll bet you find more bank cards than cash in there. Unless you're Professor David Tripe, Massey University's head of banking studies.

"Gosh, I've got $180 in there!"

How many bank cards?

"Let's see...a credit card, another card, another card and a debit card. And a second credit card."

Or you might be tech expert and PR guy Paul Brislen, who forgot to bring his wallet to our interview.

"Yes, and I drove here, without my licence so now I'm in trouble with the law."

Cards on the table (so to speak) - Paul Brislen does do PR work for Paymark, which controls around 75% of all EFTPOS transactions in this country. But the opinions here are his own, he promises.

In case you're not old enough to remember, back in 1984, when people went shopping for a new synthesiser, some legwarmers or a can of hairspray ("now with extra CFCs!") they didn't pay for them with an EFTPOS card. More often than not, they used cash.

A few people had direct salary credits but a lot of us still got our wages in cash in a brown envelope. We'd set aside enough for the week, then, in our lunch break, go to the bank with our savings book and deposit the remainder.

If you ran short over the weekend, when the banks were closed, your only option was to write a cheque, but banks and retailers didn't like that very much. Cheques took a few days to clear, and during that time you could make a mistake with your bank balance and your cheque would bounce.

Of course, sometimes it wasn't a mistake…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details