This is the first edition of Lotto, New Zealand's oldest state-run weekly lottery. It was broadcast live from Auckland on 1 August 1987 (tickets went on sale on 22 July). The draw was hosted by Doug Harvey and Ann Wilson and overseen by independent scrutineers, with the seven balls picked (from 40) by "The Barrel" — the much-hyped automated number picker. The inaugural numbers were — spoiler alert! — 4, 29, 16, 40, 8 and ... 32, and the bonus number was 30. The prize pool for the first draw was $1,028,024 and Division One was $359,808, which was split four ways.

In the early 1970s expat broadcaster Michael Dean took Aotearoa’s pulse, as it loosened its necktie and moved from “ice-cream on mutton, swilled around in tea” conservatism, towards a more cosmopolitan outlook. Dean asks the intelligentsia (James K Baxter, Tim Shadbolt, Peter Cape, Shirley Smith, Bill Sutch, Ian Cross, Peter Beaven, Pat Hanly, Syd Jackson, Hana Te Hemara) for their take. The questions range from “what does the family in Tawa sit down to eat these days?” to the Māori renaissance. Dean had made his name in the 60s, as a high profile broadcaster with the BBC.

This NZBC religious programme goes where TV cameras had never gone before: behind the walls of the Carmelite monastery in Christchurch. There, it finds a community of 16 Catholic nuns, members of a 400-year-old order, who have shut themselves off from the outside world to lead lives devoted to prayer, contemplation and simple manual work. Despite their seclusion, the sisters are unphased by the intrusion and happy to discuss their lives and their beliefs; while the simplicity and ceremony of their world provides fertile ground for the monochrome camerawork.

Presented by Kiwi TV pioneer Shirley Maddock, Islands of the Gulf was New Zealand’s first locally made documentary series. In this episode Maddock makes the 50 mile seaplane flight from Auckland to Great Barrier. Accompanied by ever present birdsong, she proves an eloquent, attentive guide to ‘The Barrier’. She recounts the SS Wairarapa tragedy and pigeon post, tramps to old kauri dams, and surveys the quirks of transport for the 240 people then living on the rugged bush-clad island, from the Land Rover-driving nurse, to a Chrysler taxi once owned by Al Capone.

Kiwi telly showed it could do sly as well as it could show the shearing of a sheep when, in a 1968 Wellington edition of regional news show Town and Around, reporter Erin Sinclair investigated an innovative farmer whose turkeys were shod in gumboots. The legendary hoax apparently fooled two executives from Skellerup who flew to Whanganui to secure a contract to manufacture the boots' lining. The wool-pulling is often wrongly remembered as a Country Calendar spoof — but that show’s first hoodwinker (a fence-plucking musical farmer) was nearly a decade away.

In early 1974, NZ had more than just the Commonwealth Games on its mind. Norman Kirk’s Labour government was promoting social and ecological issues and the NZBC's 24 radio stations launched a yearlong 'I Care' campaign for the protection of the environment. A contest to find a theme song was won by John Hanlon whose credentials as a conservation crooner had been established with his eco-anthem 'Damn the Dam'. The launch in Petone was presided over by conservation minister Joe Walding, an understated logo was unveiled, and Hanlon performed his winning song.

Sixties teen sensation Allison Durbin featured on an episode of this early music show, shortly after her version of 'I Have Loved Me a Man' topped the Kiwi charts. Durbin sings ballad 'Looking Through a Tear', before swapping the dress, probably reluctantly, for a polka-dot pantaloon ensemble. As she sings the hip-swinging 'Eso Besso' (That Kiss), a small group of pseudo-Mexicans attempt to show a sombrero can make a viable dance prop. Durbin relocated to Melbourne around the time this was shot, where she would be triple crowned 'Queen of Pop'.

Before he was a British MP and Pavlova Paradise author, politics lecturer Austin Mitchell was a well known NZBC broadcaster. In this September 1965 first episode of his parliamentarian interview series he chats to Prime Minister Keith Holyoake. Mid-way through his 12 year reign, ‘Kiwi Keith’ offers frank insight into his job, from how he chooses his caucus to the balance of power between the arms of government. The National Party leader frames the role of PM as, “Chairman of Directors of the Board that runs the biggest business in New Zealand, the Government.”

Made six years after local TV broadcasting began, this wide-ranging 1966 documentary looks at the past and future of television in NZ. Political science lecturer Reg Harrison examines local content, a second channel, private enterprise, transmission challenges, editorial independence, sports coverage, and how TV’s expansion has affected other pursuits, and children. The doco includes interviews with privacy-keen Gordon Dryden and film legend Rudall Hayward, and MPs. Director Gordon Bick later argued that the NZBC had allowed "a good deal of criticism against itself" on screen.

This edition of the 60s Sunday night magazine show travels to New Zealand’s most active volcano: White Island, situated offshore in the Bay of Plenty. The thermal activity on the privately owned scenic reserve is vividly captured as the camera roams the roaring, shuddering landscape and ventures past seething fumaroles into the crater. The tenuous history of human engagement with ‘Whakaari’ is covered: from Maui and Māori myth to the derelict remains of sulphur mining; including a 1914 eruption that killed 11 miners (with their black cat the only survivor).