The Vault

In a taste from our radio archives today, Deborah Nation samples some of the different personalities who've drawn a succession of people with microphones to D'Urville Island in the Marlborough Sounds.

Flour bombs, flares and leaflets were dropped from a low flying Cessna plane which buzzed the third and final game of the 1981 Springbok Tour - dramatic Radio New Zealand coverage of the game and the… Read more Audio

Deborah Nation recalls visits to Homebush, the historic Deans homestead near Darfield, the wreckage of which became one of the most viewed images in the first days after the September 2010 Canterbury… Read more Audio

Porridge and scrunch were on the menu at health camps throughout New Zealand, and a strict regime of afternoon bed rests, teeth cleaning and food chew Audio

Kids wagged school, workers threw sickies, and the young went en-masse to the airport, the hotels and the concerts, where they became hysterical, to the bewilderment of their parents. Beatlemania… Read more Audio

Polio epidemics swept New Zealand from the 1940s to the early '60s and when a vaccine administered as a pink drink in a little white cup arrived, it was hailed as a wonder drug. Audio

An Arab feast and a Japanese Tea Ceremony described by soldiers overseas. Audio

The Vault delves back into our dental records. Audio

Letters, read for radio, from handwritten wartime correspondence to a Valentine note placed on a pillow with a rose from the garden. Audio

Deb Nation meets Oliver 18 years after his baby burblings featured in a programme called 'Parent Talk'. Now aged 20, Oliver hears his mother describe postnatal depression, and recounts his teenage… Read more Audio

The grizzly process of whale hunting is captured by live recordings, along with the stories of father and son whalers Charlie and Joe Heberley. Deborah Nation explores the changing ways we interact… Read more Audio

Recordings from the last 50 years revealing how parents and teens have forever been trying to work each other out. Audio

Sonia Yee looks at the roles of children and their experiences within the home during New Zealand's pioneering era. In those days children played an important role in maintaining the running of the… Read more Audio

Kiwis are renowned travellers. How else do we connect with a world which is largely so far away? Deborah Nation finds travel tips and observations from the Archives dating back to the 1960s. Audio

The journey of Trudi Paterson - from housekeeper to brothel owner in the Western Australia gold mining town of Kalgoorlie. Audio

Turning his back on journalism, Peter McIntyre became New Zealand's first official war artist after the Second World War. In this recording, he lends his two cents on wine, women and Wellington...and… Read more Audio

Miro Mitchell grew up on a King Country farm, south of Te Kuiti, whilst Charlie Lambert could be found scrounging for food in the Camberwell slums of South-East London. Both lived to tell of the… Read more Audio

Women from the past who dared to be different - who weren't afraid to step outside of conventional boundaries and show a bit of flesh... The first Red Cross nurse in New Zealand bares all for £5, and… Read more Audio

An insight into alternative lifestyles through clips from the mid-1970s, looking at why individuals have chosen to escape from it all. Audio

Those who recall Mother Aubert, founder of the Sisters of Compassion, knew her to be full of life until the very end. 'Sisterly Love' explores the stories of a tremendous woman who changed the lives… Read more Audio