Country – Page 2 – NZ Engine

Red-tipped bananas are not new to Australian consumers, but have gone viral on social media this month after an inquisitive post from two bewildered British backpackers.

The video from travellers Mel Chekaoui and Phil Colia has been seen more than 11 million times on Instagram, with eager consumers commenting that they too were hungry to learn the reason for the red wax tip.

“My Dad told me it meant they were strawberry flavoured and I believed him until I was 16 years old. Nice to finally learn the real reason in the comments”

Travellers Mel Chekaoui and Phil Colia have gone viral with a video about bananas in Australia.

@melandphil / Instagram

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“Stores actually have a sign that says ‘uniquely Ecoganic’, but I mean [social media] is just the way the young ones communicate today,” Ms Sciaccia said.

“[When I saw the video] I just laughed.”

Sciaccia said the accredited farming system used natural ecosystems to grow the crop and promote soil health, minimising other inputs such as chemical fertilisers and insecticides.

It is different to organic farming because not all products used are free of inputs.

While the red tips are more widely known to appear on bananas, producers of other crops have also started to adopt the farming method.

“We’ve had a lot of interest from different industries, so we’ve been working with avocadoes, apples and pears in Victoria, and almond growers in South Australia for the past couple of years,” Sciaccia said.

“We’re just putting some focus back into papaya, which we did start a few years ago, but due to crop loss, we sort of put that on hold at the time.”

Pawpaw potential

There are eight certified growers in Australia, including William Darveniza.

His farm is up the road from the Sciaccia’s, about 260 kilometres north of Townsville, and his range of crops includes the red-tipped bananas.

This is his first year formally producing the fruit, after he realised he had already been using the farming method.

He hopes to add the red tip to other fruits on the farm, including paw paws.

“A lot of those mycorrhizal fungi and the bacteria that they evolved alongside in the rainforest are sort of taken out of the equation in the conventional farming system that we have,” said Darveniza.

“I’d like to sort of try and reintroduce that a little bit and help protect the crop from these weather situations and these insect pressures using that system.”

He hoped a wider range of red-tipped fruit would be on supermarket shelves by mid-next year.

“There has already been a fair bit of interest in the product, so we’re looking forward to moving forward with it,” he said.

Red-tipped exports

Across all growers, about 80 tonnes of red-tipped bananas are produced a week, and they are not only turning heads in Australia.

Sciaccia said international interest had grown since they first sent trial volumes of bananas with the waxy, red tips to Japan about two years ago.

“We’ve been working with one of the major supermarkets over there and putting together a business plan with them,” she said.

“They’ve done all of their testing on the product, and the texture, taste, what they call sensory attributes, sit above any other product that they import from around the world.”

She was hopeful of sending commercial volumes to Japan in the future.

“I don’t see the export as being a major part of our business, but it certainly has the potential to be as equal to our domestic market quite easily,” Sciaccia said.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 11, 2025

Farmers doing their bit to support those with intellectual disabilities in rural communities

Source: Radio New Zealand

Kaye and her daughter check out the calves at the Temuka sale. Supplied

Strong beef prices are helping raise record funds as part of a fundraising scheme that’s been going for more than 40 years.

IHC has been around for 70 years supporting those with intellectual disabilities, particularly in rural communities.

For more than half that time, the IHC Calf and Rural Scheme has helped raised funds for the charity with farmers donating a weaned calf which is then sold and the proceeds donated.

National fundraising manager Greg Millar said some farmers donated multiple calves and had been doing so for generations.

“When they come to sale, [the calves] are often of amazing quality as well.”

Millar said the scheme was badly impacted by Mycoplasma bovis and Covid-19.

“We had to change everything about the way we ran the calf and rural scheme and tighten up a lot of our processes. At one stage we thought it could be the end of the scheme just because it was high risk.”

However, with farmers urging they persevered, it returned to full strength last year and raised $1.2 million.

He said this year is looking likely to be a record fundraiser.

“The sale prices have been great. The numbers we’ve been getting have been great.”

Millar said at the recent Temuka sale, which had more calves than the year before, the average price was about $100 per calf which meant the sale earned an extra $50,000.

He said he was always impressed by farmers generosity, which allowed them to help families of children with intellectual disabilities.

“I’m always astounded by how amazing and supportive the farming community is around New Zealand.”

With one more sale in January, he expects to know the final total in the new year.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 10, 2025

New government rules coming for micro-abattoirs; homekill for sale in pipeline

Source: Radio New Zealand

Jordan Hamilton-Bicknell offers a homekill service. Supplied

The government is looking to cut red tape for small meat processors and is also exploring how homekill meat could be made suitable for sale.

From next year, small-scale meat processors will be subject to reduced meat sampling and testing requirements – compared to their larger, export-focused counterparts.

Around six to 12 of New Zealand’s small operators who process between 200-2000 farmed animals each year will be affected by the new rules announced this week.

They currently have to test 60 carcasses for things like salmonella or E. coli. That will be reduced to 30 in the first season and 12 in subsequent seasons, from April next year.

Andrew Hoggard RNZ / Angus Dreaver

Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said micro-abattoirs told officials the testing rules were unnecessarily restrictive and costly.

“Not reducing the safety at all, but certainly reducing the costs quite massively for [operators], which has been a barrier for a number of them either getting started or trying new operations,” he said.

“By reducing it down to a much more proportionate number reduces a lot of costs, enables them to do a bit more and hopefully we can see a few more micro-abattoirs emerging around the country and a few more better deals for consumers.”

It is illegal to sell homekill meat in New Zealand, despite the trade growing in popularity amid cost of living pressures.

Hoggard said the government was also looking into enabling commercial homekill, which was made difficult by poison-free declarations.

“We’ve got challenges with poison declarations, etcetera, for being able to turn more hunting meat, hunted deer, especially venison, into sellable products. And we are working on that one as well,” he said.

There were some challenges regarding the science around withholding dates and poison residues.

“So hopefully we’ll be having solutions on the administrative side of that within the next few months, which should enable less time in front of the computer for those people engaged in that business.

“It’ll be a bit of a slower burn on how we deal with those restrictions around withhold times and withhold areas because we do need to do a bit of science around that one to prove safety before we allow that.”

The new meat testing rules for micro-abattoirs will come into force in April.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 8, 2025

The sound effects that make horror films so scary

Source: Radio New Zealand

I was recently watching a scene from the 2025 film Weapons for a monograph I’m writing and noticed a familiar sound: a low, unsettling drone as a character walks down a hallway.

It’s the same kind of sound used in recent horror films such as Together. You can also hear it throughout the trailer forShelby Oaks (2025), where sound throbs like an invisible threat.

We never see what’s making this sound or where it comes from within the film’s world, which only makes it more disturbing.

Stephen Boyd, a young white man with wavy dark hair and a Roman tunic, stars as Messala in the 1959 film Ben-Hur. — In the 1959 film Ben-Hur, when Judah (Charlton Heston) declares to his friend Messala (Stephen Boyd), “I am against you,” a sharp orchestral shock of brass and strings announces their discord.

YouTube screenshot

.goodreads.com/book/show/147158272-the-filmmaker-s-book-of-the-dead?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=oZWLjBB30Z&rank=1″ class=”visited:text-foreground-secondary visited:decoration-stroke-link underline-brand-hover hover:visited:text-foreground-primary”>The Filmmaker’s Guide to Horror, Danny Draven advises aspiring directors that if a terrified character is creeping through, for example, a dingy basement, they can create atmosphere with “a low drone or rumble”, and so on.

“You can be very creative with these situations”, he writes.

This approach is now so embedded in the genre that film scholar William Whittington argues horror uses music and sound effects “far more aggressively and conceptually” than any other genre.

So why do horror films sound like this?

From silence to sound

Horror existed well before synchronised sound arrived in the late 1920s.

Films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), made during the German Expressionist period, unsettled audiences through distorted sets, eerie lighting and stylised acting.

Once Hollywood transitioned to sound, the horror genre as we know it took shape.

Dracula (1930) and Frankenstein (1931) marked the true beginning of modern horror. Both were cheaply made and contained no musical score. They relied entirely on diegetic sound – the creak of a door, a scream, a character’s footsteps.

As sound technology improved and budgets increased, non-diegetic music (sound not originating in the story world) began to be used more often. This introduced an ongoing tension in horror sound: objective realism versus subjective emotional perspective.

Too early!

The origin of horror films is linked to the origin of cinema itself.

According to legend, at the premiere of the Lumière brothers’ 1895 film The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, audiences panicked, ducking and fleeing as the train on screen seemed to surge toward them.

The film isn’t a horror movie, but the reaction resembles the kind of startled fear horror aims to provoke.

Early audiences had not yet learned how to watch films – when the train appeared too suddenly coming at them, their bodies reacted before their minds could catch up.

This “too early” sensation – events occurring before we are ready for them – became a defining feature of horror.

In Cat People (1942), often cited as the first true jump scare, a young woman walks alone at night, hearing what she believes is a stalking presence. When the sound of a bus suddenly hisses into the scene, it startles both her and the audience.

The scare works not because of what we see, but because the sound arrives too soon, breaking the tension in a shock of noise – a modern echo of that onrushing Lumière train.

Film theorist Linda Williams describes horror as structured around the anxiety of not being ready, the problem of things happening “too early”.

Where melodrama deals in tragic lateness – arriving too late to save someone – horror delivers the opposite: the terror of being unprepared.

Music that stings

Sounds that arrive too early are not limited to horror. Classical Hollywood frequently used the “stinger”: a sudden burst of music to underline a dramatic moment.

In Ben-Hur (1959), when Judah declares to Messala, “I am against you,” a sharp orchestral shock of brass and strings announces the rupture between the two friends.

In 1960, Psycho changed the function of the musical stinger forever.

In the famous shower scene, Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking violins don’t highlight a plot point – they stab. The music becomes the attack. Audiences were stunned, not only because of the brutal sound but because the protagonist was killed so early in the film.

From that moment, horror split into classical and modern eras. Stingers in films like Halloween (1978) signal the killer’s sudden, unexpected entry from an offscreen space. The shock is now the point.

By the late 20th century, sound had become horror’s most powerful tool.

The power of the off-screen

After Psycho, stronger sound technology allowed horror to exploit the off-screen space more fully. The boundary between sound and music blurred: a low drone or rumble might be musical, or it might be part of the film world.

Draven gives another tip to aspiring horror filmmakers:

[It is] often what is happening off-screen that can be the scariest – and great, well-planned sound design can take us there.

The first half of Jaws (1975) remains so terrifying because, though we hardly see the shark, its presence is rendered through music – we feel what we cannot locate.

Jump scares increased dramatically in the post-Psycho era.

Paul Schrader’s remake of Cat People in 1982 contains eight jump scares compared to only two in the 1942 original. On the website Where’s The Jump?, the vast majority of films listed in the “High Jump Scare Movies” category are from the 21st century. None were released before the 1980s.

This reflects the “hypersensationalisation” of post-Psycho horror – a genre now driven by sound as much as image.

Contemporary horror still relies on the same principles: anxiety thrives not in what we can see, but in what we can’t.

Low drones, off-screen noises and sudden stingers all work by activating our imagination before we’re ready – inviting us to anticipate the moment when we’ll inevitably think, once again, “Too early!”

Will Jeffery is a Sessional Academic in Film Studies at the University of Sydney.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 8, 2025

Conjoined twin dies after separation surgery

Source: Radio New Zealand

Papua New Guinea conjoined twins. Audrey Taula / Life Flight and NEST retrieval team

Rare conjoined twins from Papua New Guinea had a seven-hour operation in Australia to surgically separate them on Sunday, but only one of the boys survived.

Tom and Sawong were rushed into emergency surgery at Sydney Children’s Hospital after Tom began to rapidly deteriorate.

The two-month-olds were medivacced from Port Moresby to Sydney on Thursday following medical advice that they undergo surgery as soon as possible.

A spokesperson for the family, Jurgen Ruh, said Sawong was in a stable condition and the parents were grieving the loss of his brother Tom.

“One body with two souls went into the operating theatre, and after seven hours of procedures we had two bodies and two souls,” Ruh said.

“Sadly we lost Tom but are happy to report that we still have two souls and Sawong has survived the operation.”

Ruh previously told RNZ Pacific the boys’ parents had been through a “rollercoaster” of emotions since the twins were born in a remote village in Morobe province on 9 October.

“They have accepted that they will lose Tom (the weaker twin) and there’s been many tears shed along the way,” he said previously.

The twins were fused at the lower abdomen but have their own limbs and genitals, however they share a single liver, bladder and parts of their gastrointestinal tract.

They also had spina bifida – a neural tube defect that affects the development of a newborn’s spine and spinal cord.

Tom had a congenital heart defect, only one kidney and malformed lungs.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 8, 2025

Firefighter killed by falling tree during bushfire prevention work in New South Wales

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Bulahdelah fire has burnt through 3,400 hectares of the Myall Lakes National Park. ABC News: Ross McLoughlin

A firefighter from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has died after being crushed by a tree during bushfire prevention work north of Newcastle.

The Bulahdelah fire, which has destroyed four homes and is burning on both sides of the Pacific Highway between Crawford River and Nerong, has scorched more than 3,400 hectares of the Myall Lakes National Park.

Emergency service crews were called to a property on Little Nugra Road at Nerong, about 90 kilometres north of Newcastle, at about 10:45pm on Sunday after reports a man had been struck by a tree.

NSW Ambulance paramedics treated him, but he died at the scene.

NSW Premier Chris Minns confirmed the man who died was a NPWS firefighter.

Authorities have established a crime scene and WorkSafe has been notified.

– ABC

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 8, 2025

Ukraine peace talks in Miami end with lingering questions over security guarantees and territory

Source: Radio New Zealand

By Max Saltman, Jennifer Hansler and Billy Stockwell, CNN

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a joint press conference with Turkey’s President following their meeting at the Presidential Complex in Ankara on November 19, 2025 AFP

Talks between US and Ukrainian negotiators over a proposed peace deal with Russia ended in Miami this weekend, with few new developments and lingering questions over security guarantees and territorial issues, according to Ukrainian officials.

As the talks concluded, the Kremlin welcomed US President Donald Trump’s new security strategy, saying it dropped the language of past US administrations describing Russia as a threat.

The marathon Miami meeting began on Thursday between US special envoy Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Ukrainian officials Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov.

After three days of talks, “difficult issues remain,” Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishyna said Saturday, “but both sides continue working to shape realistic and acceptable solutions.”

“The main challenges at this stage concern questions of territory and guarantees, and we are actively seeking optimal formats for addressing them,” Stefanishyna said. “More details will be provided once all information is compiled.”

Territory and security guarantees are long-standing sticking points for any possible deal. Ukraine maintains that a just end to the war would include reliable security guarantees and would not force it to surrender more territory to Russia.

As the meetings kicked off earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters in India that his country intends to seize Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region by any means.

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Kremlin economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev and Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, meets with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner at the Kremlin in Moscow on December 2, 2025. (Photo by Alexander KAZAKOV / POOL / AFP)

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, accompanied by economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev and aide Yuri Ushakov, meets with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on December 2, 2025 AFP

The Miami talks had been preceded by a visit to Moscow by Kushner and Witkoff. Trump said Wednesday the US delegation had a “very good meeting” with Putin, and that they believed the Russian president “would like to see the war ended” – though the talks failed to yield a breakthrough.

In a social media post on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he had a “long” and “constructive” phone conversation with Witkoff and Kushner, as well as his Ukrainian delegation in Miami.

“We covered many aspects and went through key points that could ensure an end to the bloodshed and eliminate the threat of a new Russian full-scale invasion,” Zelensky said. “We agreed on the next steps and formats for talks with the United States.”

Also discussed on the call was “the risk of Russia failing to honour its promises, as has happened repeatedly in the past,” he said.

Zelensky said that Hnatov and Umerov are expected to deliver him a “detailed in person report” on the negotiations.

“Not everything can be discussed over the phone,” Zelensky said. “So we need to work closely with our teams on ideas and proposals.”

Peace and its conditions will also be the subject of a meeting on Monday between Zelensky and French, British and German leaders in London.

The discussion will cover “the situation and the ongoing negotiations within the framework of the American mediation,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday.

Kremlin welcomes removal of ‘threat’ label

Separately, the Kremlin has welcomed the new US national security strategy, released on Friday, which sets out the Trump administration’s realignment of US foreign policy and takes an an unprecedentedly confrontational posture toward Europe.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Trump administration’s document has dropped language describing Russia as a threat, state-owned news agency TASS reported.

“We considered this a positive step,” Peskov told the news agency.

“Overall, these messages are certainly in contrast with approaches of previous administrations.”

The strategy document says European nations regard Russia as “an existential threat,” but paints the US as having a significant role in diplomacy to re-establish “conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia.”

A 2022 Biden-era national security strategy said Russia posed “an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown.”

The Trump administration’s new document also reiterates its push for “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”

-CNN

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 8, 2025

For better brain health, it’s never too late to get active

Source: Radio New Zealand

Scientists have hailed the benefits of exercising early in life to lower the risk of your brain degenerating later. But new research suggests that even when you’re 45 or older, it’s not too late to try.

Having the highest levels of physical activity in midlife (45 to 64) and late life (65 to 88) was associated with a 41 percent and 45 percent lower risk of dementia, respectively, according to a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open on 19 November.

“This study shifts the conversation from ‘exercise is good for the brain’ to ‘there may be key windows when exercise matters most for brain health,'” says Dr Sanjula Singh, an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

A grey haired man is helped on an exercise machine. — Strength training a couple of times per week is recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Getty Images / Unsplash +

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With an estimated 57 million people worldwide having dementia and nearly triple that number expected by 2050, the authors “wanted to investigate whether the impact of physical activity on dementia risk differed or stayed consistent across the adult life course,” says Phillip Hwang, lead study author and assistant professor in the department of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health.

A downside of this study is that it can’t suggest how much exercise to do due to the measurement the researchers used, Hwang says.

It was “a composite measure based on the number of hours a person spends sleeping, in sedentary behaviour, and doing light, moderate and heavy activities in a day,” he added. “However, finding ways to be more active and moving around is important.”

Hwang’s findings are also affirmed by other studies that suggest more specific guidance.

A 2022 study found that people who walked just 3,800 steps per day lowered their risk of dementia by 25 percent, and, generally, the more steps participants walked, the greater the benefits were. Using a bike instead of a car, bus or train for transportation has been linked with a 19 percent lower risk of dementia and a 22 percent reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

“Given what is already known about the benefits of physical activity on other conditions — such as the heart, mood, stress, etc., which are also related to the brain and cognition — there are lots of other reasons as well to be more active,” Hwang says.

Adults need at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise per week, according to the World Health Organisation.

Such exercise could be, for example, 150 minutes of brisk walking, 75 minutes of vigorous running or cycling, and strength training a couple of times per week, Singh says.

She is part of the team that developed the Brain Care Score, a 21-point assessment of how a person fares on physical, lifestyle, social and emotional factors that they can change to protect their brain health.

If you’re new to exercise, begin with slower or shorter workouts, then gradually increase intensity, said Dr Raphael Wald, a neuropsychologist with Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Baptist Health South Florida.

“Starting too aggressively can lead to orthopaedic injuries, which may then limit your ability to exercise at all,” Wald adds.

Build consistent habits that can help ensure you stay active daily, Wald said, such as walking for 20 minutes before work or taking a short movement break during lunch.

Tracking activity and dementia risk

The new study’s findings are based on 1,526 participants in early adult life — ages 26 to 44 — nearly 2,000 middle-aged adults, and nearly 900 (mostly white) older adults who were part of the long-term Framingham Heart Study.

Physical activity levels in early adult life weren’t associated with dementia risk in either direction, the authors found.

They also discovered that even for older adults who had the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease — the APOE ε4 gene — high physical activity was still linked with a 66 percent lower risk of dementia.

The study has important limitations, according to the experts.

“People who are more active may also engage in other healthy behaviours, have better baseline health, or differ in ways the researchers couldn’t fully measure,” Singh says.

The team acknowledged that it didn’t have details on middle- and older-age adults’ physical activity levels in their early adult lives or how habits changed over time, which could also influence risk for dementia.

Participants may also misjudge their levels, so studies with tracker wearables would be a more objective way to measure exercise, Singh said.

Midlife and late life, possibly being extra critical for brain health, may be explained by a few factors, according to the experts.

“Exercise plays a major role in maintaining vascular health,” Wald says.

“The most common vascular risk factors — high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, thyroid disease and high cholesterol — tend to emerge in midlife and later adulthood. It makes sense that exercise during these periods would have the greatest impact on reducing dementia risk.”

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 8, 2025

Pink-door adult shop ‘puts Eketāhuna on the map’

Source: Radio New Zealand

Ian Turner reckons his unique pink-door shop, nestled in a small village on SH1 between Wairarapa and Hawke’s Bay, “puts Eketāhuna on the map”.

“People who live here, they all tell their friends, ‘oh, I live in the town with the sex shop’, and even if they don’t come in, I think they like it being notorious.”

He reckons Tabu is one of the most remote adult shops in the country.

Ian Turner is the owner of adult store Tabu.

RNZ

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“I knew adult stores. I knew the sex toy world. So that’s what inspired me to do this.”

Some customers come all the way from Masterton and Palmerston North, and stock up to “make it worth the journey”, he says. He estimates about half of his customers are regulars.

“[They come here] so they’re not doing it in their back garden, or the backyard, so to speak. You know, people who know them aren’t going to be passing by because some people are a bit nervous about being seen entering a sex shop,” Turner says.

“There aren’t many sex shops around, and the ones that are are a little bit old-fashioned – magazines and DVDs – that sort of thing. Not the sort of thing that would interest women, mainly. So they will travel to come to a nice place…

“People are becoming more open. Instead of bottling up a problem or a desire, they’ll come and solve it.”

Turner says they do their best to make sure the environment is “as clean and bright and inviting as possible”.

He says he’s not had backlash because he runs the place with a “bit of discretion and a bit of understanding”, and no peeking from the windows outside.

“Travelling up and down the country, this is going to catch most [people’s attention] and there’s nowhere for like 20km one way and 40km the other way. So most people will stop for a coffee and stretch their legs, and I get at least 20 people a day poking their head around the door going, ‘oh this is a surprise to see you here’.”

With the cost of living crisis front of mind for many, he’s noticed “a slight dip” in business.

“But at the end of the day, if you’re selling alcohol or sex toys or cigarettes and people want them, they’re going to buy them. Maybe it’s not such a luxury, it’s a necessity for some people.”

He’s also there to lend a sympathetic ear to anyone needing a chat.

“Someone might start telling you about their wife that passed away and well I’m very sympathetic. I’ll be an ear if you want to talk to me about that.”

At the end of the day, “a small town isn’t a dead end necessarily”.

“It can give you an option to grow. It’s good practice for building up, saving up some money and then maybe moving to a city and you’ll be better prepared to deal with all the problems.

“If you can succeed in a small town, you can succeed anywhere.”

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

December 6, 2025

Country Life: Sheep Dog test Aussie v NZ

Source: Radio New Zealand

Ben Millar and King competing in the Trans Tasman Sheep Dog Trials test for the Wayleggo Cup. Megan Ellis

It is spelt “Wayleggo” but pronounced “Wal-a-go” and in dog trialling and shepherding it is an age-old New Zealand call for a sheep dog to leave the sheep and come back to its master.

“Wayleggo” originated in New Zealand and is short for “come away and let go”, the phrase used by shepherds and musterers to call their dogs back from working stock, according to the NZ Sheep Dog Trial Association.

The Wayleggo Cup is the dog trialling equivalent of the Bledisloe in rugby.

It’s been competed for since 1985 and just like the All Blacks, the New Zealand dog trials team has dominated the competition, winning 21 of 37 competitions over the past 40 years. Last year, however, the Aussies won on home soil, so this year it was their turn to cross the Tasman and try and retain the cup on Kiwi soil.

In October the event was part of the  Ashburton A&P show with four handlers and dogs from each country and two days of competition.

Follow Country Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts.

The love for the sport can be seen in the efforts competitors go to just to compete. Queenslander Barry Knight drove from Toowoomba to Perth to compete and be selected for the Australian test team, a journey not for the faint-hearted.  

“We travelled to Western Australia,” Knight said.

“The round trip was about 10,000km, driving the ute all the way with a trailer and driving all the way back – five days each way and three days there.”  

So, with a potential commitment of two weeks for one event, young shepherds don’t often compete because they can’t afford the time off.

Barry and his 26-year-old son Bailey are the first father and son to compete for the Australian test team.

Barry has a small farm and Bailey is a plumber which highlights the fact that most competitors in dog trialling across the Tasman are not farmers.   

The Knight family has a love of characterful names for their dogs. Barry’s heading dog is six-year-old Mavis and Bailey’s is eight-year-old is Duncan, named after the Slim Dusty song ‘I Love To Have A Beer with Duncan’.

Aussie sheep dog Duncan competing in the Wayleggo Cup in Ashburton Megan Ellis

Another first for the Australian team is the presence of Jessica Kimpton who is the only woman in this year’s competition. 

She is one quarter of the Aussie team, matching the proportion of women on the Australian dog trialling circuit.

Kimpton said she seldom had any pushback from the male competitors

“They’re good, and even if they weren’t, they’d just have to suck it up,” she laughed.

“We actually see a lot more women in Australia being out there on the trial course. While it’s still male dominated, about 25 percent of triallists now would be women.”

She is an animal trainer for movies and while training her dogs she discovered dog trialling as a sport and loves it.  

Jessica Kimpton competing with Stitch in Wayleggo Cup – the Test between New Zealand and Australia at Ashburton Megan Ellis

She said the bond between handler and dog is vital to be a top competitor.

“Some dogs just have ‘it’,” she said. 

“We don’t know how to describe what ‘it’ is, but some dogs are just so talented, and you get this relationship with them where it’s almost like you’re reading each other’s minds and when you are out in the trial field, the rest of the world, just melts away, and it’s just you and your dog, and every now and then you’ll glance at each other and you just know what the other one needs.”

The sheep showing no respect for the heading dog in the Wayleggo Cup Trans Tasman Test in Ashburton. Megan Ellis

Commentator Tony Jackson farms 101,000ha in Queensland. 

He musters his 23,000 sheep and 3000 cattle using helicopters covering more than 30,000ha a day. He said the land is not as productive as that which New Zealand farmers enjoy and the pests are next level, kangaroos and dingoes.

“Every town has roo shooters who make a living out of harvesting kangaroos for the pet food market and for human consumption.

“They go out shooting and are shooting 50 kangaroos per night. That’s a Toyota load. And you’re looking at around about $25 a roo and if  you shoot 50 of them, you make a good living.”

The New Zealand and Australian Teams line up before the 37th Test in sheep dog trials in Ashburton Mark Leishman

It is the tenth year in the New Zealand team for team captain Mark Copeland and he is excited about the future of dog trialling.

“There is a lot of good young talent and particularly good talented women coming through.

“They’re putting the men to the sword, as it were, running very, very good well-trained dogs.”

“We’ve been trialling since what, 1860 or something, and you’re trying to get better and develop a better dog and it doesn’t always happen, so you go again and you go again and again.

“There’s no other sport that I can think of that involves three mammals. Some you can teach… others you can’t.”  

As for the result of the test? After leading the first day by just 10 points, the Australians made no match of it, retaining the Wayleggo Cup by 60 points and taking the cup back with them to Australia.   

So next year will be a big one for the Kiwi test team as they try and stop the Australians from winning a three-peat on their own turf.  

Learn more:

Find out more about the Trans Tasman Test here and here

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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