For a small country from the edge of the world, achievements on the Olympic stage are badges — silver fern-on-black — of national pride: precious moments where we gained notice (even if it was Mum’s anthem playing on the dais). This legacy collection draws on archive footage, some rarely seen, to celebrate the stories behind Kiwis going for gold.

This second series leg of The Big Art Trip kicks off in Wellington with a visit to artist John Walsh, who chats about his Māori myth paintings and children’s book Nanny Mango. Douglas and Fiona also talk about Washday at the Pa with photographer Ans Westra and pop-in on jewellery designer Steph Lusted. They visit the Massey Memorial, explain typography and check out the Wellington Writers Walk before meeting architect Nicholas Stevens and viewing a cliff top house he designed. The episode winds up with a look at kinetic sculpture Pacific Grass, by Kon Dimopoulos.

In this episode of Back of the Y, Chris Stapp and Matt Heath concentrate on drugs. Convinced that all students are on drugs, the constables travel to Dunedin to deal to the local scarfie population. Meanwhile a baggy-trousered, inner city pothead journeys into the backblocks in search of a cannabis mother lode in 'Te Puke Thunder'. A new feature introduces "extreme" cameraman Wally Simmonds (profiling a sight impaired skate team) and stuntman Randy Campbell has to cope with his team's incompetence as well as his own.

This 1970 documentary surveys New Zealand’s dairy industry — “probably the most advanced in the world” — from pasture to export. Dairying then produced a quarter of NZ’s income, but with Britain due to join the EEC, NZ was forced to seek new markets. This film proclaims the industry’s readiness, thanks to an artificial breeding centre (with ‘calf-eteria’), room-sized computers, and cheeses designed for the Asian market. The country's 25,000 dairy farms were each owner-operated, and averaged 90 cows. The Dairy Industry won top prize at an agricultural film competition in Berlin. 

Maggie's Garden Show (originally Palmers Garden Show) was a popular TV One series that ran from 1992 to 2003. Featuring ‘bug man’ Ruud Kleinpaste, gardening experts Bill Ward, Jack Hobbs, Gordon Collier and Professor John Walker, and of course, the nation’s most beloved ginger gardener, host Maggie Barry. The Ellerslie Flower Show special was a perennial favourite amongst viewers; a review from the Herald notes, “In an age where TV personalities grow to be larger than life, Maggie's Garden Show has stuck to its information-based roots.”

One of the last films made by Jeremy Sykes before his death in the Antarctic in a helicopter accident, this NFU short commemorates the 1969 Cook bicentennial. It traces Cook’s first voyage to New Zealand and his charting of the coastline. Contemporary illustrations and dramatic camerawork are used to follow his six-month journey around Aotearoa. It also highlights Cook's navigational skills as he sailed the Endeavour, home to 94 men, two greyhounds and a goat, through uncharted waters, helping earn him his reputation as "explorer extraordinary and servant of the King".

A pocket survey of the diversity of Kiwi farming circa 1952, this film serves as a booster’s reminder that thanks to self-reliance and research, New Zealand ranks as “one of the world’s great farming countries”. Cameraman Brian Brake captures arresting high contrast imagery: cattle move in silhouette against the sky; dust-caked fertiliser trucks emerge from clouds of lime; shirtless WWII veterans load silage onto harvesters. Meanwhile an upbeat, nationalistic voiceover pays homage to the holy trinity of good pasture, stock and climate.

Keen to discover "the real essence" of his country, filmmaker Ryan Fielding spent two months travelling around New Zealand with camera in hand. The short film that Fielding came up with is a mosaic of Aotearoa and its people, dotted with moments of beauty and celebration, but precious few signs of wealth: rundown shops, quiet pubs, children larking around in the ocean, and a number of locals who appear slightly worse for wear.

As a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, Brian Deeds (Belfast-born actor Ian McElhinney) grassed on 23 fellow terrorists in Northern Ireland. Now living in New Zealand under a new identity, Deeds has to come clean to his girlfriend (Judy McIntosh) when a hit squad arrives in town for him. This clip sees guns and car crashes on the streets of Dunedin. Made in NZ, the Anglo-Kiwi funded TV movie won solid audiences on UK television, before local release on video. Ian Mune (Came a Hot Friday) directs; Marshall Napier and Temuera Morrison are the cops playing catch up. 

Winter is going. This impressionistic take on spring in Aotearoa focuses on details of regeneration, from the mountains to the sea. Director Ron Bowie and cameraman Grant Foster capture signs of the season: ice melt like tadpoles under snow grass, gannets nesting on their Cape Kidnappers tenement, fern koru unfurling, kōtuku and royal spoonbills perched in Ōkārito trees like Dr Suess characters, willow buds and kōwhai flowers. And of course, lambs and daffodils. The camera aptly obeys the title to end. Patrick Flynn (Don’t Let it Get You) composed the score.