Letters to the Editor: Stereotypes, sharks and security
Lessons from the past
On the main street of Waimate there is a statue of Margaret Cruickshank, the first woman to practise as a GP in New Zealand.
As a long-term campaigner for rural health services I was intrigued by the inscription to her memory which reads: ''The beloved physician. Faithful unto death''. So I read her biography.
It is an inspiring read, showing how much was achieved with limited resources in the late 1800s and early 1900s, not only by Dr Cruickshank but also by her colleagues who, without the modern-day hordes of bureaucrats and other hangers-on to hinder them, simply got on with what needed to be done - and did so incredibly well.
At the time, Waimate had a substantial public hospital and several small, private ones. Now it has a one-doctor medical centre with local people having to travel all over the place for health care as the centralisation agenda continues. Progress?
Dr. Cruickshank's biography Beyond the Splendours of the Sunset , by David Lockyer, should be required reading for every politician and health system bureaucrat.
They might learn something.
David Tranter
Waimate No joy
In my book parents are responsible for their offspring and therefore responsible for paying for repairs to stolen vehicles.
Perpetrators will learn nothing if they're not made to pay for their actions in some way - and I am sure parental recompense would have a twofold result.
I realise these joyriders first need to be caught, but when they are the ''joy'' needs to be removed with serious payback consequences.
No deterrent - no answer.
Roberta Laraman
Cromwell Returning to our recent debate on shark diets
I fished commercially in Fiordland in the 1970s and occasionally we would find great whites in the set nets we used to catch bait. They were not uncommon; I caught three myself.
Little was known about great white behaviour back then but after the fatalities at St Clair and the mole at the harbour entrance in the 1960s, biologists began to take more notice.
One senior marine biologist would rush to where the latest attack occurred and take water temperatures. Temperature variation was one theory regarding attacks off the Otago coast. Another biologist insisted that great whites did not have parasites. He changed his mind when I showed him a set of jaws with several parasites attached.
As regards their diet of seals, although I have seen seal remains amongst white shark stomach contents, the bulk of their diet was other smaller shark species.
Les Tubman
Oamaru Taking the bait
Lewis Hore (Letters 28.4.25) says he is seeing lots of road-kill possums. In the 1970s, possuming with my dog, we got hundreds with cyanide paste. In the 1980s, back up in the bush with cyanide, lots of poison baits out, with no dead possums. Got some old traps out, wow, every trap had a possum in it. They had all got poison-shy.
Stephen Hurring
Balclutha Seeking bunker or a rocket launching pad
Recent discussions about the need to increase defence spending to counter the expansionist threats of other nations could divert our attention from a far greater and more insidious threat to our society.
The super-rich, who are tax and regulation averse, climate change deniers and promote high tech such as AI, will be able to use their extreme wealth to shape the society in which they choose to live. Their excess profits and greed have produced their vast wealth at the expense of the degradation of our planet. They anticipate and even welcome the collapse of civilisation as we know it.
They can protect themselves and their family by looking for havens or as it has been termed ''corporate city states'' within which there are no regulations, they are protected by high level security, supported by AI, financed by cryptocurrencies and well stocked to withstand an Armageddon.
These bunkers isolate them from the rest of humanity, which they see as expendable, and will protect them from the ravaged planet which they have created. Is this alarmist? No, we have one of the key architects of this vision for the future in Peter Theil who wants to build his bunker in Wanaka. Others who subscribe to this vision of the future are now able to manipulate the US administration for their own ends.
An interrelated issue is that outlined by Julia Wong ( The Weekend Mix 26.4.25) on the killing of kindness. A far right extreme fundamentalist Christian philosophy is part of the view of their future world for this group. For those who may think my concerns farfetched or would like to find out more then follow the writings of the author and columnist Naomi Klein.
Alternatively, for a more light-hearted but scaringlingly prescient observation read Ben Elton's novel Stark , where the ultra-rich having devastated the planet escape Earth on rocket ships. Sound familiar?
Brian Ellis
Pine Hill
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
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What started as a small hustle on the side of her wine-making business has grown to be the main focus for Bannockburn's Debra Cruickshank. Business editor Sally Rae pays her a visit. She is the undisputed Queen of Port. Not only in her adopted home town of Bannockburn but now also nationally as New Zealand's largest producer of port. Debra Cruickshank is a force of nature; the one-woman show behind Tannacrieff Wines, producing port with a smile in the heart of Central Otago. Behind the smile has also been much pain, with an eventual diagnosis of the chronic inflammatory bowel condition Crohn's disease in 2021, and fears she might have to close her business. But being accepted for a Singapore-based clinical trial has seen her regain her life and allow her to continue to operate her boutique winery. An undisputed work ethic and life skills had its roots in her childhood on a farm in the Catlins where Ms Cruickshank, 45, would help her father with lambing, milk the pet cow before school, make hay huts for pregnant pigs and then stay up all night to watch the sows deliver their piglets. The farm was named Tannacrieff, after the ancestral Dickie farm in Ayrshire, Scotland — Ms Cruickshank's maternal great-grandmother was a Dickie — and several members of the Dickie family emigrated to the lower South Island in the early 1860s. In 2000, Ms Cruickshank caught the eye of the winemaker at Akarua Winery in Bannockburn and started her winemaking journey, working from the bottom up initially in the vineyard and then into the winery. That culminated in formal recognition from the Eastern Institute of Technology and Massey University. She spent eight years at Akarua and, after a year in Western Australia, she returned home to make wine for a very small winery in Cromwell. Never particularly keen on working for others, the time finally came to open her own boutique winery. She started a small contract winemaking facility in March, 2012, which was the start of DC Wines Ltd, and later moved to Bannockburn where she also produced her own wines. A pivotal moment came in 2017 when she won the supreme award in the Rural Women New Zealand Enterprising Rural Women Awards. It thrust her into the spotlight and the resulting publicity ensured people knew exactly what she did — "not just a chick who makes wine for everyone". It was also a turning point for her to concentrate on her port and slowly phase out the winemaking, where she was making up to 30-odd different wines for small-batch wineries. People started to know her for her port and yet she did not have enough time to make it. It was January, 2018, when Ms Cruickshank got her first "painful tummy" and knew something was wrong. Initially, having been recently to Samoa, doctors thought it was parasites. Both her parents had bowel cancer, yet she said it took three years of pleading with doctors for a colonoscopy. "I knew something was wrong. My motto is always the squeaky wheel gets the grease." By the time she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease three years later, it was severe. "The pain and fatigue and brain fog really did stop me being a normal person," she said. Around the same time, she needed back surgery and much of 2022 was spent in bed. Through the public health system, she was unable to access funded medication for Crohn's disease. In September that year, she was accepted for a clinical trial and "instantly felt like a new person". "I had my life back." Since then, she has travelled to Dunedin every two months for treatment and she has a colonoscopy every year. Ms Cruickshank knew things had to change — stress was the main trigger — and the decision was made to concentrate on port, keeping it manageable and what her health would allow her to do. Tanacrieff specialised in small-batch, handcrafted ruby, white and tawny ports which had gone from "just a little hustle on the side" to now being the focus. She recognised her passion was making port, leaving winemaking to others. "There's some amazing winemakers out there making wine, so why not stick to a niche market that's doing really well?" Port had shrugged off its old-fashioned image and had become a very popular drink, particularly with young people. It was also versatile and could be used in cocktails. The process of making it was also more fun than making wine and it was easier on her body. Her port was stocked throughout the country, and often sold through word of mouth, and her aim was to continue to grow the domestic market. "I don't want to go overseas, there's enough people here. I want to keep it big enough to handle," she said. While there had been offers of investment in Tanacrieff Wines, Ms Cruickshank preferred to keep total control, saying she had worked too hard to give it away. She particularly enjoyed having a stall at the likes of Wānaka A&P Show and catching up with customers and seeing people enjoy her products. She also did tastings by appointment and enjoyed showing people what she did. Even horses were welcome at her rustic base while their riders sampled a drop. That was the beauty of Bannockburn and open spaces, she said. A rose port was scheduled for release in October and, by the interest shown already in it, she expected it would sell out quickly. During the winter — her quieter time — Ms Cruickshank enjoyed travelling and she had been to Porto, Portugal, from which port wine was named. Port was one of Portugal's most famous exports and it was an "eye-opener" to see the home of port and also the quantities produced, making her contribution just a drop in the ocean.
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What started as a small hustle on the side of her wine-making business has grown to be the main focus for Bannockburn's Debra Cruickshank. Business editor Sally Rae pays her a visit. She is the undisputed Queen of Port. Not only in her adopted home town of Bannockburn but now also nationally as New Zealand's largest producer of port. Debra Cruickshank is a force of nature; the one-woman show behind Tannacrieff Wines, producing port with a smile in the heart of Central Otago. Behind the smile has also been much pain, with an eventual diagnosis of the chronic inflammatory bowel condition Crohn's disease in 2021, and fears she might have to close her business. But being accepted for a Singapore-based clinical trial has seen her regain her life and allow her to continue to operate her boutique winery. An undisputed work ethic and life skills had its roots in her childhood on a farm in the Catlins where Ms Cruickshank, 45, would help her father with lambing, milk the pet cow before school, make hay huts for pregnant pigs and then stay up all night to watch the sows deliver their piglets. The farm was named Tannacrieff, after the ancestral Dickie farm in Ayrshire, Scotland — Ms Cruickshank's maternal great-grandmother was a Dickie — and several members of the Dickie family emigrated to the lower South Island in the early 1860s. In 2000, Ms Cruickshank caught the eye of the winemaker at Akarua Winery in Bannockburn and started her winemaking journey, working from the bottom up initially in the vineyard and then into the winery. That culminated in formal recognition from the Eastern Institute of Technology and Massey University. She spent eight years at Akarua and, after a year in Western Australia, she returned home to make wine for a very small winery in Cromwell. Never particularly keen on working for others, the time finally came to open her own boutique winery. She started a small contract winemaking facility in March, 2012, which was the start of DC Wines Ltd, and later moved to Bannockburn where she also produced her own wines. A pivotal moment came in 2017 when she won the supreme award in the Rural Women New Zealand Enterprising Rural Women Awards. It thrust her into the spotlight and the resulting publicity ensured people knew exactly what she did — "not just a chick who makes wine for everyone". It was also a turning point for her to concentrate on her port and slowly phase out the winemaking, where she was making up to 30-odd different wines for small-batch wineries. People started to know her for her port and yet she did not have enough time to make it. It was January, 2018, when Ms Cruickshank got her first "painful tummy" and knew something was wrong. Initially, having been recently to Samoa, doctors thought it was parasites. Both her parents had bowel cancer, yet she said it took three years of pleading with doctors for a colonoscopy. "I knew something was wrong. My motto is always the squeaky wheel gets the grease." By the time she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease three years later, it was severe. "The pain and fatigue and brain fog really did stop me being a normal person," she said. Around the same time, she needed back surgery and much of 2022 was spent in bed. Through the public health system, she was unable to access funded medication for Crohn's disease. In September that year, she was accepted for a clinical trial and "instantly felt like a new person". "I had my life back." Since then, she has travelled to Dunedin every two months for treatment and she has a colonoscopy every year. Ms Cruickshank knew things had to change — stress was the main trigger — and the decision was made to concentrate on port, keeping it manageable and what her health would allow her to do. Tanacrieff specialised in small-batch, handcrafted ruby, white and tawny ports which had gone from "just a little hustle on the side" to now being the focus. She recognised her passion was making port, leaving winemaking to others. "There's some amazing winemakers out there making wine, so why not stick to a niche market that's doing really well?" Port had shrugged off its old-fashioned image and had become a very popular drink, particularly with young people. It was also versatile and could be used in cocktails. The process of making it was also more fun than making wine and it was easier on her body. Her port was stocked throughout the country, and often sold through word of mouth, and her aim was to continue to grow the domestic market. "I don't want to go overseas, there's enough people here. I want to keep it big enough to handle," she said. While there had been offers of investment in Tanacrieff Wines, Ms Cruickshank preferred to keep total control, saying she had worked too hard to give it away. She particularly enjoyed having a stall at the likes of Wānaka A&P Show and catching up with customers and seeing people enjoy her products. She also did tastings by appointment and enjoyed showing people what she did. Even horses were welcome at her rustic base while their riders sampled a drop. That was the beauty of Bannockburn and open spaces, she said. A rose port was scheduled for release in October and, by the interest shown already in it, she expected it would sell out quickly. During the winter — her quieter time — Ms Cruickshank enjoyed travelling and she had been to Porto, Portugal, from which port wine was named. Port was one of Portugal's most famous exports and it was an "eye-opener" to see the home of port and also the quantities produced, making her contribution just a drop in the ocean.
Otago Daily Times
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Letters to the Editor: Stereotypes, sharks and security
Lessons from the past On the main street of Waimate there is a statue of Margaret Cruickshank, the first woman to practise as a GP in New Zealand. As a long-term campaigner for rural health services I was intrigued by the inscription to her memory which reads: ''The beloved physician. Faithful unto death''. So I read her biography. It is an inspiring read, showing how much was achieved with limited resources in the late 1800s and early 1900s, not only by Dr Cruickshank but also by her colleagues who, without the modern-day hordes of bureaucrats and other hangers-on to hinder them, simply got on with what needed to be done - and did so incredibly well. At the time, Waimate had a substantial public hospital and several small, private ones. Now it has a one-doctor medical centre with local people having to travel all over the place for health care as the centralisation agenda continues. Progress? Dr. Cruickshank's biography Beyond the Splendours of the Sunset , by David Lockyer, should be required reading for every politician and health system bureaucrat. They might learn something. David Tranter Waimate No joy In my book parents are responsible for their offspring and therefore responsible for paying for repairs to stolen vehicles. Perpetrators will learn nothing if they're not made to pay for their actions in some way - and I am sure parental recompense would have a twofold result. I realise these joyriders first need to be caught, but when they are the ''joy'' needs to be removed with serious payback consequences. No deterrent - no answer. Roberta Laraman Cromwell Returning to our recent debate on shark diets I fished commercially in Fiordland in the 1970s and occasionally we would find great whites in the set nets we used to catch bait. They were not uncommon; I caught three myself. Little was known about great white behaviour back then but after the fatalities at St Clair and the mole at the harbour entrance in the 1960s, biologists began to take more notice. One senior marine biologist would rush to where the latest attack occurred and take water temperatures. Temperature variation was one theory regarding attacks off the Otago coast. Another biologist insisted that great whites did not have parasites. He changed his mind when I showed him a set of jaws with several parasites attached. As regards their diet of seals, although I have seen seal remains amongst white shark stomach contents, the bulk of their diet was other smaller shark species. Les Tubman Oamaru Taking the bait Lewis Hore (Letters 28.4.25) says he is seeing lots of road-kill possums. In the 1970s, possuming with my dog, we got hundreds with cyanide paste. In the 1980s, back up in the bush with cyanide, lots of poison baits out, with no dead possums. Got some old traps out, wow, every trap had a possum in it. They had all got poison-shy. Stephen Hurring Balclutha Seeking bunker or a rocket launching pad Recent discussions about the need to increase defence spending to counter the expansionist threats of other nations could divert our attention from a far greater and more insidious threat to our society. The super-rich, who are tax and regulation averse, climate change deniers and promote high tech such as AI, will be able to use their extreme wealth to shape the society in which they choose to live. Their excess profits and greed have produced their vast wealth at the expense of the degradation of our planet. They anticipate and even welcome the collapse of civilisation as we know it. They can protect themselves and their family by looking for havens or as it has been termed ''corporate city states'' within which there are no regulations, they are protected by high level security, supported by AI, financed by cryptocurrencies and well stocked to withstand an Armageddon. These bunkers isolate them from the rest of humanity, which they see as expendable, and will protect them from the ravaged planet which they have created. Is this alarmist? No, we have one of the key architects of this vision for the future in Peter Theil who wants to build his bunker in Wanaka. Others who subscribe to this vision of the future are now able to manipulate the US administration for their own ends. An interrelated issue is that outlined by Julia Wong ( The Weekend Mix 26.4.25) on the killing of kindness. A far right extreme fundamentalist Christian philosophy is part of the view of their future world for this group. For those who may think my concerns farfetched or would like to find out more then follow the writings of the author and columnist Naomi Klein. Alternatively, for a more light-hearted but scaringlingly prescient observation read Ben Elton's novel Stark , where the ultra-rich having devastated the planet escape Earth on rocket ships. Sound familiar? Brian Ellis Pine Hill Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@
