Jenny Michie

Features writer Jenny Michie, AKA Lonnie Berg (it's a long story), comes with a disturbing amount of baggage after working for almost two decades in politics.  Determined to make a clean fist of it, she broke free from Wellington’s thrall and eventually washed up on Ōhope Beach; spiritually clean but with sand in her togs.

Best left alone except for unplanned social events, Jenny spends most of her time rearranging furniture, playing in her garden and planning a better life, before realising that she has it already.

She has two grown up children and an idiot border collie who will almost certainly never grow up.

Matt Mortimer

Contributer Matt Mortimer revels in his fair share of sarcasm and wit, more often than not putting pen to paper with tongue firmly entrenched in cheek. There isn't much he likes more than writing, other than laughing, a good fiery curry and very possibly lager.

He enjoys the Taupō outdoor lifestyle with his whanau, where he is further honing his ink-slinging craft while designing a retro man-cave to call his own, resplendent with worn leather couches and old concert posters. A vision of rebuilding a stable of old European motorcycles that will probably leak oil in said palatial cave swirl through his mind regularly - but that is another , and yet somehow strangely satisfying, story...

The Winsley Twins

Given that as children they rode a badly behaved but circus-trained pony to school and danced cygnet roles in Swan Lake at the Timaru Theatre Royal, it was inevitable that The Winsley Twins would enters the arts world (towing a mobile clinic from Kaitaia to Cape Reinga as school dental nurses was just a minor deviation). They road-tripped down the West Coast of New Zealand and then up the East Coast of Australia dressed head to toe in leopard skin (it was a 'thing' in those days apparently) and then spent five years looting Europe before returning to our shores and becoming established artists themselves. Helene, by far the nicer of the Twins, won a Molly Morpeth Canday painting award and founded and created the Tarnished Frocks and Divas show; we’ve never quite figured out what the other twin did except drink gin, though now that we come to think of it we’ve never seen both of them in the same room at the same time. . . We only have a picture of Helene Winsley, seen above with her stable boy.