Country Calendar - Cashmere
This excerpt from a 1986 episode of NZ TV’s longest running show comes from the heady pre-crash mid-80s when NZ farming was getting off the sheep’s back and diversifying to stay profitable in changing times. Here Robert Hall is stocking the “hard hill country” of a farm near Taumaranui with goats. Rather than hunting goats as pests, the young industry — fuelled by “large amounts of city money” — is attempting to farm them for their cashmere wool. It offers new opportunities for women in farming, but teething problems include low yields from feral animals.
Bloopers - Animals
Animals, people and cameras can make for a wild unpredictable combination, as this set of bloopers demonstrates. First up is the legendary 1989 clip of rugby star Zinzan Brooke falling off a spooked Shetland pony in Wales. Back on Kiwi soil, Dexter the golden labrador refuses to listen to owner Mark Leishman. A hare and dog take over a trotting track and cricket pitch, while reporters doing their pieces to camera are harassed by a friendly horse and overzealous ostriches. Plus two pigs give Country Calendar reporter John Gordon the giggles.
Cinema of Unease
Sam Neill weaves portions of autobiography into an idiosyncratic, acclaimed yet controversial analysis of Kiwi cinema — from its crude beginnings, to the dark flowering of achievement seen in the breakthrough films of Peter Jackson, Lee Tamahori, and Jane Campion. Directed by Neill and Judy Rymer, as one of 18 films commissioned for the British Film Institute's Century of Cinema series, the award-winning documentary debuted at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. The New York Times' Janet Maslin rated it a series highlight. The opening sequence looks at the role of the road in Kiwi film.
Zed
Zed was part of a wave of turn of the century guitar bands (The Feelers, Goodshirt) that found local chart success. The band was formed under manager Ray Columbus, when Nathan King, Ben Campbell and Adrian Palmer were students at Christchurch's Cashmere High School. Andrew Lynch joined in 2000. The same year Silencer debuted at number one; it won Album of the Year at the 2001 NZ Music Awards and produced hit ‘Renegade Fighter’ (which also featured in a long-running Rebel Sports campaign). The band's second and final album This Little Empire (2003) followed in both Kiwi and United States versions.
Love Soup
Love Soup was a brief prelude to the rise of Bic Runga. She formed the duo with Kelly Horgan as a seventh former at Cashmere High School in Christchurch. They placed third in the 1993 Smokefree Rockquest and won a recording contract with Trevor Reekie’s Pagan Records. Runga then signed with Sony. One of her Love Soup songs ‘Drive’ was re-recorded for her debut Sony release and went on to win the 1996 APRA Silver Scroll (and the other Pagan recordings were released as part of the Drive EP). Kelly Horgan later played in Auckland band Heavy Jones Trio.
Bob Parker
Bob Parker did 12 years as guardian of the big red book, presenting and writing This is Your Life. Other presenting roles include Young Farmer of the Year and This is New Zealand (made in NZ for American cable television). He also appeared as a "weird dancing man" in the feature film Snakeskin. After doing time as mayor of Banks Peninsula in 2001, he began a six year stint as mayor of Christchurch in 2007.
Julian O'Brien
Julian O'Brien, who shepherds the team of reporter/directors on Country Calendar, knows something about the job. He spent nine years in the field, before returning as the show's producer. O'Brien began as a newspaper journalist, and his broadcast career also includes stints directing current affairs, documentaries and corporate videos.