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Category: New Zealand

Word power: Moby Trump

“My” local daily paper – The West Australian – has recently become relentlessly parochial and adopted inane journalese as its house style.

Its headlines especially grate: almost all are prime examples of what smug dullards consider “clever”, of what twits mistake for wit.

The West‘s editor may or may not be a bona fide idiot; perhaps he is just a bright young lickspittle, fulfilling a brief to “dumb everything down, cut every cost and cross-promote the linked TV station, endlessly”.

So, it was a particular joy/relief to encounter some actual journalistic flair…

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Dining “off-piste”, at Fleurs Place, Moeraki, NZ

Sitting beside a very rustic little jetty in a hamlet on New Zealand’s South Island is a delightfully “unlikely”, internationally renowned restaurant.

Fleurs Place (pictured above) is a one-off.

Fleur (real person) serves teethsqueakingly fresh seafood, cooked simply and superbly, without pretension.

However, the “diner” closest to us preferred to catch and prepare his (or her) own lunch!

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Active volcanoes, all: Tongariro, Ngauruhoe (aka “Mt Doom”), Ruapehu

The shortest of the “big three” that dominate the central plateau on New Zealand’s North Island is Tongariro.  The more “perfect” Ngauruhoe deserves an Academy Award – not just for its role as “Mt Doom” in The Lord of the Rings,  but for so convincingly presenting itself as an independent entity, when it is in fact Tongariro’s “parasitic”, secondary cone. Ruapehu is the North Island’s highest peak and only currently glaciated mountain.

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