Roger Lusby's skills define versatility: mechanic, builder, craftsman, recording engineer, musician, balladeer, performance poet. Based on experience, he's written about fruit picking in Central Otago, the Mckenzie Country, Canterbury's infamous Nor'westerly winds, maintaining machinery in the Antarctic,- the list goes on. Spectrum's Jack Perkins chats with Roger about his colourful life with illustrations from his poetry.

I give lift to wings of hawk, I've rocked the laughing owl

Where kaka die and tara cry, I burn the tussocks brown...

- From The Great Nor'wester by Roger Lusby.

Roger Lusby's parents ran an orchard in the Old Man Range near Roxburgh in Central Otago. Some of Roger's earliest memories were of characters among the fruit pickers. But this was the late 40s early 50's and one of the marvels of the age, the Roxburgh hydro dam, was under construction, attracting thousands of workers and colouring Roger's experience of the region.

The Lusby orchard and homestead in the embrace of a Central Otago winter.

Roger migrated north sampling the McKenzie Country, droving, small town life and even Canterbury's hot, dry Nor'westers.At an early age he discovered a flair for fixing things mechanical and this led to a year in Antarctica in 1969, responsible for machine maintenance at Scott Base. He was only 22 years old.

A transporter built by Roger in Antartica. Some of the machines the 22 year-old had to maintain.

Clean, sharp crack of frost

Blue white frozen snow

Minus fifty degrees below

- From Husky by Roger Lusby.

Repairing one of Sir Edmund Hillary's old tractors - where to begin?  Roger after a year in Antarctica.

Nothing escapes Roger Lusby's pen:-dogs, cattle, phone party lines, drought and even the Queen's visit in 1995 - there's a story in them all.

Spectrum's Jack Perkins chats with Roger about his colourful life with illustrations from his poetry.

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Bill Kerrison is helping save our native longfin eels or tuna. Each year he traps and transfers eels and other native fish species past a series of dams on the Rangitaiki River in the Bay of Plenty, so they can continue maturing or head out to sea to breed. Spectrum's Lisa Thompson meets the man locals have nicknamed 'Mr Tuna'.

"My priority right from day one was water.  Because if we haven't got good water, where's our next two generations from my children, and their children and their children, gonna be?" - Bill Kerrison

Bill Kerrison has lived near water - salt and fresh - his whole life. And despite stints mining, farming and in forestry, he's always managed to find his way back his life source. Much like his beloved tuna, or native longfin eels.

While these sleek, black giants have a reputation for lurking in the murky depths of our waterways, Bill Kerrison regards them as one of the most intelligent species of fish on the planet and has a deep connection with what he affectionately calls his beauties.

A connection that started way back in the 1940s in Thames, when as a young boy, he befriended a sinewy mass of eels that lived under the local jetty.

He was put to work on his father's mullet boat but when a storm left her a wreck, the family packed their bags and moved further up the Coromandel Peninsula to go shearing.

"I loved it, I loved it, it was right in my environment," says Bill.  "But I ended up running away from home...people have their fights...and of course alcohol is a big distribution to that...I knew I had to go."

So at 14 and a half, Bill hitched a ride across the Hauraki Plains to his older brother's house near Rotowaro in the Waikato.

"That was it, I was underground just after I was 15 and stayed underground until I got called up into the armed services...that was the beginning of my man's life then."

After the army, Bill spent time in freezing works and as an engineer, before finally coming to Edgecumbe to run a fish and chip shop. It was here that he met his second wife Ruby, whom he affectionately calls 'mum'.

After the 1987 Edgecumbe earthquake Bill and Ruby moved inland to farm at Galatea. And while it's 70 kilometres from the coast, water was once again close by.

Behind the Kerrison's property flows the mighty Rangitaiki River, the longest in the Bay of Plenty, 155 kilometres in length. Once free-flowing, the river is now damned for hydroelectricity. And it was on the banks of the Aniwhenua dam that Bill's life took a significant turn in 1991, when he came face-to-face with his beloved long-fin eels again…

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They come for the carpentry and the mateship, and along the way they're restoring an Whangarei landmark.

"This building is going to be restored back to its original glory."

- Jeff Griggs,Whangarei Men's Shed

She's a bit down at heel, Whangarei's old railway station building. But if a bunch of keen retired handymen have their way, she'll be all sparkling again one day. The Whangarei Men's Shed bought the big 1925 building for just a dollar last year from the local council. They plan to restore the building's exterior, but revamp the inside for their own use.They have to raise about 1.1million dollars to do it all but it seems like the blokes are all as keen as mustard.

The Railway Station was officially opened on 11th March 1925 by  the Minister of Railways and future Prime Minister Gordon Coates. It marked the joining of Whangarei and its isolated regional rail lines north, to the main trunk line running south to Auckland. The station cost about nine thousand pounds and was designed by architect George Troup who famously designed Dunedin's station.

At 600 square metres, the station's size reflected the status of Whangarei as  Northland's most important town. But by the second half of the 20th century, rail use was being eroded by road and air transport. Passenger trains stopped coming to Whangarei in 1977, and the building was bought by the local City Council in the 1990's. Since then its use has been patchy and its beauty has faded. The Whangarei Men's Shed Club plans to change all that.

There are about 900-Mens Sheds in Australia, and fifty or so in New Zealand.The Men's Shed movement began as a place for retired men to do their carpentry and metal working, when they no longer had room in their downsized homes. They come for  the carpentry but stay for the camaraderie. A Whangarei health professional is already studying the health benefits of the weekly get togethers.

"The company of the guys, its great. That's why I come."

- Alf, 84

The average age of the Whangarei men's shed is about seventy, and one of the founders Jeff Griggs says members have an amazing array of talents, including fund raising, particularly vital for future plans. Jeff says the building has been saved from demolition because of its Grade two listing with Heritage New Zealand.

Jeff says the Whangarei City Council was quite apologetic about the state of the building when it showed the Men's Shed people through. Water poured through the ceilings and there was lots of mould. But he says his members could only see great potential. Council did urgent and expensive repairs to the roof but members have paid for repairs to plumbing and electrical wiring…

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Maverick and visionary, Mother Suzanne Aubert was responsible for New Zealand's first purpose-built child daycare centre behind Wellington's Basin Reserve. Both government and the public were suspicious of the Home of Compassion Crèche, constructed in 1914. Daycare could encourage mothers to neglect their children said the values of the day. Spectrum's Jack Perkins explores the newly renovated building with Heritage architect Alison Dangerfield.

Suzanne Aubert had piano lessons from Franz Liszt and nursing training with Florence Nightingale...

In 1860, Bishop Pompallier brought 25-year-old educated and feisty French woman Suzanne Aubert to the New Zealand Catholic Mission based in Auckland. For the next 40 years she taught and nursed in the North Island as well as founding the Sisters of Compassion. Aubert and her Sisters moved to Wellington in 1899 to begin charitable work among the urban poor.

Already regarded as a maverick and visionary, Mother Suzanne Aubert established a home for 'incurables' (a haven for the sick and infirm and those fallen on hard times) and a soup kitchen. Her canonization is currently under consideration in Rome. If the cause is successful she will be New Zealand's first saint.

Suzanne Aubert also established a creche behind the Basin Reserve. In 1914, the original 1903 wooden crèche was replaced by a brick building designed by prominent ecclesiastical architect John Sydney Swan (also responsible for notable Wellington landmarks St Gerard's Church and Erskine Chapel). This was New Zealand's first purpose-built child daycare centre.

Mother Suzanne Aubert was well ahead of her time and met resistance from the government and the public. A crèche was seen as encouraging working mothers to neglect their children and even promoting unmarried motherhood and divorce.

Spectrum's Jack Perkins explores the newly-renovated crèche and its colourful history with heritage architect Alison Dangerfield.

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Katy Gosset heads to the Catlins in search of the Lost Gypsy Gallery. In remote Papatowai, Blair Somerville crafts automata, or moving sculptures, from recycled materials and displays them over the summer to appreciative tourists. But on a bleak winter's evening, during Blair's off season, Katy pays a visit after dark and takes a torchlight tour she calls 'Automata Nocturne'.

So, a funny thing happened on the way to the Lost Gypsy Gallery in Southland's Catlins region - Katy Gosset got a bit lost herself. Throw in a shortcut, an icy gravel road and a plea for free petrol. And Katy found herself approaching the remote Papatowai gallery and museum just on dusk.The gallery is run by Blair Somerville who creates humorous and thought-provoking moving sculptures, or automata, from recycled materials.

Open in summer, the museum is popular among tourists and once even beat Te Papa for an award voted on by travellers. But few have seen it under cover of darkness.

Katy is treated to a rare tour by torchlight, a night at the museum. She calls it 'Automata Nocturne'.

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She was a young New Zealander driving a big old ambulance during World War One in Britain. Deborah Taylor was one only a few colonials doing that job, and a woman who was prepared to get her hands grubby.

[As a New Zealand woman] you are a bit of a pal, while an English girl, is a girl to be flirted with!"-  Deborah Pitts Taylor, England 1917.

She was a young New Zealand woman driving and maintaining her own big ambulance during the First World War. Twenty two -year old Deborah Taylor transported hundreds of injured New Zealand soldiers for treatment to a New Zealand Military Hospital, deep in rural  Hampshire.

Over twenty one thousand soldiers were treated at Brockenhurst and only ninety three of them  died  and were buried there.

Every April, Brockenhurst marks Anzac Day. It's one of a small number of places in Britain to do so. In Brockenhurst you'll find an Auckland Avenue and an Auckland Place. Inside the village's old Norman church of St Nicholas the New Zealand Flag hangs, and there are Maori weavings on display

The No 1 New Zealand General Hospital was established in the village in 1916. It was one of three New Zealand military hospitals in the United Kingdom, staffed and operated by the New Zealand Medical Corps to care for wounded members of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

100-thousand New Zealanders signed up to go to war, including over 500-women nurses.

Just as the hospital opened, young farming woman Deborah Pitts Taylor arrived at Brockenhurst to take up the job as ambulance driver. She'd come to the UK with her younger brother Brian who, at seventeen had been too young to enlist at home, but was able to sign up in Britain.  Deborah was one of three sisters and two brothers. Her older  brother George had already  gone off to  war.

As a kiwi, Deborah was unusual because she was one of few colonials amongst the ambulance drivers at Brockenhurst who were mostly men, and she was a woman who could get her hands dirty doing  basic maintenance work on the lumbering ambulances; undoubtedly to the admiration of her workmates.

Deborah was called a "V.A.D", as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment. Over the war years she drove thousands of miles delivering dozens of wounded men who'd been brought in by ship to Southhampton, thirteen miles away on the coast from Brockenhurst.

She recorded the daily trials and joys of her life in diaries and letters home. Her granddaughter Janet Frater who knew Deborah well, has in her possession just one of the wartime diaries, from 1917 and many of those letters…

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For over seven years a dedicated group of volunteers have been passing on their quilting and life skills to prisoners at Auckland Region Women's Correctional Facility. The group is led by Mary Ann, who along with the other volunteers, wish to keep their last names anonymous.

For over seven years a dedicated group of volunteers have been passing on their quilting and life skills to prisoners at Auckland Region Women's Correctional Facility.

"I've was brought up with the basic premise of giving everyone a bit of a fair shake...and I saw no reason why we couldn't work with women in the prison" - Mary Ann, Quilt-Stich Group team leader.

Quilt-Stitch is led by Mary Ann, who along with the other volunteers, wish to keep their last names anonymous.

Nearly every week, Mary Ann makes a 30 kilometre round trip to Wiri to impart not only the basics of how to thread needles, take measurements and choose colours, but also to drop in pearls of her own wisdom from life on the outside into the ears of her 'Friday Girls'.

In 2012 the group's work was nationally recognised with a Big 'A' Prison Arts Community Award.

Mary Ann says it was surprise but an honour to receive the award.

"No-one in our group is doing this with thoughts of honour and glory. We all acknowledge there is a huge need for prisoners to have some practical skills to take with them when they go back into the community," she says.

"I'm not bleeding-heart liberal... no... but I'm practical and constructive and you like to think you're making a difference."

While there's lots of chit-chat and laughter along the way, Mary Ann says there's no greater reward than watching their protégés grow in self-worth and confidence.

For a few hours on a Friday morning, over a period of 30 sessions, the prisoners are able to leave behind the reality that they're in and concentrate on producing beautiful quilts, bags, sewing kits and table runners.

"You never talk about what's gone on, what's led you to here, it's always just straight into it, into quilting," says one young prisoner.

"There's no judgement... sometimes you might bring up what's going on in your life... they'll have a few bits of wisdom to impart on you and then you get on with your sewing. It's detoxing."

The prisoners also produce Angel Quilts for new-born babies at Middlemore Hospital.

Added to packs of hand knitted baby clothes issued to parents, it's a way for the women to be able to show their gratitude by giving something back to those in need…

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Josie Lancaster has converted the basement of her Porirua home into a Koha Shed where people bring all manner of goods - clothes, toys, books, furniture, the list is long - to help those in need in the community. Spectrum's Jack Perkins finds out how it all works and talks to the givers and receivers of koha.

I just love helping people and that's why I set up the Koha Shed.

- Josie Lancaster

A Koha Shed is a kind of op shop where everything is free and no money is involved. Of course, the Koha Sheds have sprung up out of severe need in these hard times. Koha Sheds have generated good will and trust in the community - those receiving also give when they can, so the system is not exploited.

The Koha Shed's always overflowing storage area.

Josie's Koha Shed in Ascot Park is one of a growing network in the Porirua region. People bring all manner of goods to the shed - clothes, toys, books, furniture, the list is long - to help those in need in the community.

People meet and chat as well give and receive.

Of course, the shed is a boon for beneficiaries and the low-paid. But people show up in Josie's basement for all kinds of reasons. A teenage girl sifts through the clothes hangers, she's had her luggage stolen while bussing down from Hamilton and has no money to buy new clothes.

This teenager had her luggage stolen and is looking for things to ward off the winter chills.

Spectrum's Jack Perkins finds out how it all works and talks with the givers and receivers of koha (Maori for gift).

She's grateful for this boxful of pre-loved clothes to replace her stolen wardrobe.

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Closing time at Takaka's Junction Hotel and, with it, the end of an era for long serving publican, Nola Drummond. After 50 years in the job, Nola has seen it all: bar fights "like the Wild West", long hours and tough financial times. But she also tells of a warm and supportive community that pulled together in times of hardship and of long-time patrons and staff who became extended family. She talks to Katy Gosset in the days before calling for last orders.

Nola Drummond knows a thing or two about good, old fashioned hospitality. And if necessary, Nola can stop a bar fight in its tracks....

Closing time at Takaka's Junction Hotel and, with it, the end of an era for long serving publican, Nola Drummond. After 50 years in the job, Nola has seen it all: bar fights "like the Wild West", long hours and tough financial times. But she also tells of a warm and supportive community that pulled together in times of hardship and of long-time patrons and staff who became extended family.

Nola talks to Katy Gosset in the days before calling for last orders.

She was one of the country's long serving publicans, behind the bar for 50-odd years.But she's now pulled her last pint, citing both her age and the recent change in alcohol driving limits.

Nola says last summer was the worst yet for Takaka's Junction Hotel and she's looking forward to a retirement spent fishing and boating. But the move also calls time on a rich career:

Nola seldom has time to play the piano in the hotel dining room.

As the publican in a small town, Nola dealt with "wild west" bar fights and barred disruptive patrons but she also supported her small community and helped locals in times of hardship.

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Spectrum's Jack Perkins explores the philosophy and history of Levin's Radio Reading Service which provides regional and national news and current affairs for the print disabled. A Print Disabled person is anyone who cannot see, hold, understand or access every day printed literature. The Radio Reading Service turns print into sound for anyone who finds it difficult to read conventional print.

In New Zealand, 99,000 people have difficulty reading or accessing conventional print, that's three percent of the population.

At Levin's Radio Reading Service, 75 volunteers turn print into sound, providing 22 hours a day of local, national and international news and current affairs for anyone who cannot see, hold, understand or access every day printed literature.

Established in 1985, the Radio Reading Service made its first broadcast in May 1987. The idea of providing practical help for the print disabled caught on in a big way with the Levin and Horowhenua communities. Locals provided technical gear, labour, ideas - you name it, the list is long - for the fledgling not-for-profit service. Typically, it was a local motorcycle gang who dug the trench allowing a co-ax cable to connect with the transmitter.

Trained operators and readers record the material and manage the station providing over 120 hours of broadcasting each week on 1602 KHz AM to the Horowhenua and Manawatu regions of New Zealand, and also on 107.3 MHz FM to Levin. This broadcast is also streamed live through the Radio Reading Service - click on the Listen Live button.

A new initiative, supported by Access Internet Radio, has been introduced providing 'On-Demand' listening via Podcasts, or stored audio files of selected broadcasts.

Jack Perkins explores the philosophy and history of the service.

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