For this 2001 series Peter Elliott retraced Captain James Cook’s first voyage around Aotearoa. The second episode heads from Mercury Bay to Cape Reinga. Elliott diverts from Cook’s wake to Waitemata Harbour to investigate New Zealand boatbuilding history, and sail a Team New Zealand America’s Cup yacht with Tom Schnackenberg. Elliott then boards HMNZS Te Kaha to "hoon" up the coast to rejoin The Endeavour's path. In the Bay of Islands he meets Waitangi waka paddlers, crews on tall ship R Tucker Thompson, and dives to the Rainbow Warrior wreck off the Cavalli Islands.

In this first episode of the 2015 Māori Television series, three rangitahi answer a Facebook call for sailors who are up for reconnecting with nature and their culture, on a six week waka journey circumnavigating the North Island. The te ao Māori twist on the fish out of water reality show sees a trio of young Māori (including Boy discovery Rickylee Russell-Waipuka) set sail on Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr’s waka Haunui, where they’re separated from social media, face seasickness and rough seas, and learn the "ancient laws of voyaging". The winner gets the chance to join a voyage to Rarotonga.

Made by feature film pioneer Roger Mirams (Broken Barrier), this 1951 film promotes New Zealand outdoor recreation. Coming decades before bungy jumps and hobbits, this was an early effort to brand NZ as an adventure sport playground, taking in snow sports, deer-stalking, pig hunting, fishing and yachting. Regular filmgoers may have found Miram's footage familiar; most of it came from items he'd shot for Sydney-based company Movietone News. Some shots dated from as early as 1948, when he left the NFU to found company the Pacific Film Unit. 

Released on an EP ahead of their second album Flik Y’Self Off Y’Self, the promo for 'Faster Hooves' showed that while Head Like A Hole had distilled the industrial-thrash of their grimy origins into a hookier, more polished sound, the band had lost none of their piss-taking humour. With the rocky outcrops of Wellington's Island Bay filling in for the Wild West, singer Nigel 'Booga' Beazley teeters precariously on a helpless donkey, in pursuit of villainous drummer Mark 'Hidee Beast' Hamill. Meanwhile the rest of band hang on nooses next to a boiling campfire pot of Wattie's finest.

Head Like A Hole (aka HLAH) were a clap of heavy metal thunder over the jangly chords of the early 90s New Zealand music scene. Known for unhinged, "apeshit" live shows and outrageous clothing-optional antics, their flame died out amidst drugs and acrimony before a 21st Century reformation. This all-access passion project from director Julian Boshier was a decade in the making, tagging along with Nigel 'Booga' Beazley (and partner Tamzin), Nigel Regan et al, as the still rocking members of this distinctive Kiwi rock’n’roll family enter middle age: spats, moshing n’all.

Outrageous Wellington rockers Head Like a Hole (aka HLAH) formed in 1990, taking their name from a Nine Inch Nails song. Masters of excess, they quickly made a name for themselves via unhinged live performances (not to mention a casual attitude to clothes on stage).  Sharing management, a record label and one obscure recording with Shihad, HLAH split in 1998 after four albums, in a state of disarray. After reforming for the 2009 Homegrown festival, further releases followed. Swagger of Thieves, a documentary on the band, that was a decade in the making, premiered in July 2017.

In the best traditions of the Beatles, U2 and Head Like a Hole, Die! Die! Die! takes to a rooftop in New York for this video made by London-based director and editor Rohan Thomas. They sing of an urban nightmare of burning roads and bridges, places to avoid and not being able to return home – but the song's title takes full responsibility. The clip was the result of a guerilla shoot with a generator in 2009 that had them moved on from a series of prospective locations until they happened on an unguarded rooftop – to the surprise of nearby office workers.

This ambitious video for Head Like a Hole's cowpunk Bruce Springsteen cover was shot by commercials company Flying Fish — at vastly more expense than the low budget recording which supplies the soundtrack. There's more than a cursory nod to U2's LA rooftop video for 'Where The Streets Have No Name' (including fake radio coverage from Channel Z). But HLAH get a higher building, and, unlike U2's guerrilla effort, the apparent blessing of the city fathers (with Mayor Mark Blumsky on site). The video marked one of the last appearances of drummer Mark 'Hidee Beast' Hamill.

Flesh D-Vice emerged out of the early 80s Wellington punk/skinhead scene although vocalist Gerald Dwyer preferred to describe their sound as "hard edged rock'n'roll". They released three albums imbued with comic book horror imagery, and also left their mark in Dwyer's enthusiastic patronage of his city's music. He started a label, promoted gigs and, as Flesh D-Vice wound down in the early 90s, managed new local bands Shihad and Head Like a Hole. Dwyer died in 1996 and Shihad recorded a version of the Flesh D-Vice anthem 'Flaming Soul' in his honour.

This Feltex Award-winning documentary dives, abseils and squeezes under the mountain — Mt Arthur in Kahurangi National Park — to record the exploration of the subterranean world of the Nettlebed Cave System. At nearly one kilometre underground the system is New Zealand’s deepest cave, and a mecca for cavers from around the world. The cavers relay their motivations and anxieties as they negotiate the uncharted water-carved limestone labyrinth. Directed by Ian Taylor, it screened in the Lookout series. Claustrophobes beware: there are no lattes at Soft Rock Cafe.