Ten interesting New Zealanders we met this year

Northland fisherman Cliff Barnes, 80, has had more brushes with death than most of us have had hot fish dinners.

He’s fallen off his fishing boat and watched it chug off into the distance. Another time he survived in a cave for a week with nothing to eat but rotting octopus.

It wasn’t very palatable, he says.

“But anyhow, with the help of a spoon and the prayers of God, I got it down and it stayed down.”

Gisborne conservationist Sam Gibson serves up “chuckly yarns” on Instagram. But in a documentary, he argues the loss of our native forests is no joke.

In the new short film Think Like a Forest, Sam Gibson introduces Kiwis to Recloaking Papatūānuku – a planting proposal which would restore 2.1 million hectares of native trees within the next 30 years.

“We’ve got the strategy, we just need the buy-in [from the government]. The cost of not doing it is pretty dire,” he tells RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

On a bitter late winter’s afternoon in Masterton, five hardy characters braved frigid temperatures to spar in a community boxing gym.

Gary, Lesley, Viv and Kleese are taking their weekly Counterpunch class at the Wairarapa Boxing Academy. Coach Abel Ripene calls these guys the OGs. Margueritte is here this week too, she has been coming for a month.

Despite the cold, there’s plenty of warmth and laughter in the gym as Ripene puts the five through their paces.

Counterpunch is a non-contact boxing programme designed for people with Parkinson’s disease, set up in New Zealand in 2016 by neuro and rehab specialised personal trainer Lisa Gombinsky Roach alongside former New Zealand pro boxer Shane Cameron.

A Kiwi family on passing the halfway point on their monumental effort to circumnavigate the globe aboard their catamaran.

Rob and Rachel Hamill, both former elite athletes, and their three grown-up sons; Finn, Declan and Ivan departed New Zealand in 2018.

The trip has gone through Pacific Islands, Australia, Southeast Asia. They’ve continued through to India, then Africa and up through the Atlantic to the east coast of Brazil.

In March 2016 Bailley Unahi’s life changed forever when the balcony she was under at a Dunedin party collapsed.

She suffered a severe spinal injury following the collapse of a crowded balcony at a Six60 concert on Dunedin’s infamous Castle Street.

Since the 2016 accident she has pursued a career she never knew she wanted and taken up a sport she hopes will take her all the way to next year’s Winter Paralympics – sit-skiing.

“Essentially, we’re sitting down strapped into quite a customised frame that has a motorcycle suspension and shock, and then we only have one ski,” she tells RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

From loose-boweled whales in Tonga to the deafening call of the Weddell seal, Kiwi cameraman Andrew Penniket has had plenty of close encounters under the surface.

One of the most explosive tales in underwater cameraman Andrew Penniket’s new memoir comes courtesy of a snoozing sperm whale in Tonga.

“It was a big bull, and he was just floating along. And it was incredibly clear water.”

Penniket swam out to the whale, but the current had placed him in an unfortunate position behind its tail. That’s when things got messy, he tells RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

From cherimoya and white sapote to Brazilian cherries, Kris Edgington is growing a mouth-watering array of food on his productive Bay of Plenty property.

Most of us have heard of a veggie garden, but what exactly is a food forest? Kris Edgington knows more about them than most.

He’s got a thriving, self-sustaining property filled with nutritious and delicious kai in Te Puke, Bay of Plenty.

Edgington is a police detective by day, but spends the rest of his time spreading the word about something called syntropic agroforestry – a form of food forestry.

Avila Allsop made the decision to take up powerlifting at the age of 86.

In the run-up to her 90th birthday, she finds it funny that she can lift 70kg.

After taking up powerlifting only three years ago, Allsop had her proudest win yet in February 2025 at the NZ Masters Games.

Powerlifting at the Masters Games usually consisted of three attempts at a maximum weight on three lifts – a squat, bench press and deadlift – against other women in the same age category.

In her debut book Hello to Everybody, Wellington illustrator Sallie Culy depicts the smiling faces of the people in her life.

Most afternoons, when it’s not raining, Culy takes the bus into the city.

The felt-pen drawings of friends, family members and celebrities in Hello to Everybody, reflect the 45-year-old illustrator’s warm feelings towards every person she meets.

“I usually say ‘hi’ to everybody in town,” she tells Culture 101.

Damian Sutton has about 1,500 Trolls and once spent $5000 to ship a rare light blue Elephant Troll from Denmark.

More than 30 years ago, at a humble craft fair in Pōkeno, Sutton laid eyes on a wild-haired, wide-grinned Troll doll – and everything changed.

“The smile on the Trolls, you just couldn’t walk away from it,” he says.

“I think the spiky hair, the smile, as I was growing up as a kid having bad days through my childhood, it just kept you happy. Morgan was my favourite, I had a pram for it and everything,” he told RNZ Nights.