Neighbourhood - Timaru (with Josh Thomson)

Actor, director, and comedian Josh Thomson slips on his trademark jandals and heads home to the coastal city of Timaru to present this episode of Neighbourhood. Thomson was born to a multigenerational Scottish-Timaru family and a Tongan mother (the only Tongan living there in 1973). Timaru locals from Germany, Vanuatu, Japan and South Africa describe the marrying of their cultures with the port city through tradition, craft, and community spirit. As German-Kiwi Rosie Knoppel says of Timaru, "There's something special about it, I don't know what it is . . . but once you've been here, you'll know what I'm talking about."

When we lost communication afterwards and the only communication we had was seeing footage on the media and hearing reports of "this amount of people are dead", it was a very hard time. It was very hard to see places on the news that you knew people who lived there, or to see those places destroyed and not knowing what happened to the people inside.

– Timaru local Marley Regenvanu from Vanuatu on being in Aotearoa when Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu in 2015

Key Cast & Crew

Josh Thomson

Presenter

Sarah Kinniburgh

Executive Producer

Maria Bolger

Director

Samantha Blackley

Producer

Belinda Simpson

Post Production Director

Jude Callen

Network Executive