RNZ: Spectrum

An affectionate look back to the 47 year-old tradition of Broadcasts to Schools, and particularly its singing lessons, which all ended in the final school term of 1979.

It's only been a week but with guidance from graffiti artist Otis Frizzel, young Wauki Paniani has finished a massive mural of the face of Jesus. Wauki is part of a project for a group of fifteen and sixteen year olds who've been excluded from mainstream education. Each Rangatahi or teenager is paired with an artist for the week to create a piece of art.

German master craftsman Norbert Kleinschmidt has built a new thatched roof on the 'old slab hut', a south Canterbury landmark. Norbert talks to Spectrum's Deborah Nation about his life and work as New Zealand's only professional thatcher.

In 1912, Arthur Chorlton, Ernest Gilling, and Harold Richards drove their Model T Ford Roadster along the seemingly impassable tracks of the King Country and pointed the way to main road travel between Wellington and Auckland. Journalist Arthur Chorlton wrote an account of the journey which was dramatized for radio in 1964. To mark the centenary, Jack Perkins reconstructs this epic adventure.

For thirty five years Dr John Swinney's been hoarding bits of redundant apparatus from Whangarei Hospital and any medical stuff that didn't seem to be wanted by anyone else. His collection quickly became the Northland Medical Museum, but soon outgrew the small space allocated to him at the hospital. Now the museum has moved to a permanent and much bigger home.

Barrister and actor Mervyn Glue, fondly regarded as Christchurch's Rumpole, looks back over his long career.

Specialist palliative care nurse Joan Doyle sees her work as walking alongside her terminally ill patients, helping them to live their lives to the full. They live at home and can call on Lower Hutt's Te Omanga Hospice teams' services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Spectrum's Jack Perkins accompanies Joan Doyle on her rounds.

Every Sunday for over three decades, the pleasing sounds of hissing steam, trains tooting and tracks clickity clacking, have echoed around Centre Park in the Auckland suburb of Mangere. And if the sun is shining, so too will be the brass on the miniature trains that belong to the Manukau Live Steamers. Spectrum's Lisa Thompson climbs aboard.

In Spectrum this week we're going a bit further afield than usual. Bamyan province - right in the centre of Afghanistan - is one of its 34 provinces, and in ancient times this region was well travelled because of its location along the trading routes between the Roman Empire, China and Asia. As New Zealand's military presence in Bamyan comes to an end, many in the province are once again looking to tourism as a potential source of income. Marianne Elliott is a human rights lawyer who worked for the United Nations in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and is heading back to visit friends - and to find out more about the burgeoning tourism industry there.

Since it began in 2008, Wellington's non-profit food rescue service Kaibosh has saved nearly 100,000 meals from ending up in the landfill and distributed them to charities. Spectrum's Jack Perkins joins a team of volunteers as they rescue about 90kgs of fruit and vege left over after a Sunday market and follows the food to the Wellington City Mission.

Her Majesty Queen Victoria was there. So was her right hand man, Mr Brown - solemn and kilted. It was Live Day at the Howick Historical Village, this one marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Howick Historical Society. The three hectare village comprises over thirty original colonial buildings including schools, a church, a working forge, general store and a street of fencible cottages, all inhabited by 60-volunteers in Victorian dress busying themselves with butter-making, baking and candle making.