Carrington Resort located in Carrington Farms offers luxury accommodation, a tournament standard golf course, an Angus stud farm, one of Northland's largest plantings of grapes and a restored wetland and thriving breeding zone for birds.

New Zealand merino wool is being used in the fashion houses of Yves St Laurent and Ralph Lauren as well as by several leading international fabric manufacturers and knitwear companies including Italian suit manufacturer Loro Piana and American suitmaker Oxford Clothes.

To many New Zealanders, the custard square rates right up there with the pavlova as a classic Kiwi icon.

In the Southern Alps of the South Island, a clownish colourful native parrot called the kea performs antics that can be both alarming and amusing.

Franz Josef is not your average glacier – it is a 12km long, 7000-year-old body of ice sliding down a mountain valley into a rainforest.

New Zealanders first started building boats out of necessity, as they lived in a country totally surrounded by sea.

Within the unfenced boundaries of Fiordland, one of the largest national parks in the world, is some of the most wild and dramatic scenery in New Zealand.

Jane Hunter (Hunter's Wines) and Michelle Richardson (Richardson Wines) are two New Zealand winemakers at the pinnacle of achievement in the wine industry.

Hell's Gate and Wai Ora Spa, Tikitere is a unique place of extreme contrasts. Visitors walk past steaming fumeroles and pools of boiling mud so violent they are unnerving.

Driving Creek Railway in the Coromandel region boasts a narrow gauge mountain railway, 14,000 planted native trees, a pottery studio and railway coffee cups.