Cork Grows on Trees
Story and photographs by Diana Noonan

Sylvia Whiting loves trees, so she's lucky that there are so many growing in the city gardens near her home.
One day Sylvia discovered a new path in the gardens. Suddenly, she found herself standing beside a very strange-looking tree. 
When she touched its thick bark, it felt just like popped cork.
What else did it remind her of?
Then she remembered  it was soft, just like the cork handle of her fishing rod. And it was the same colour as the cork 
noticeboard on her bedroom wall at home.
The tree was a cork oak.
Cork oaks are special trees because they grow two very different kinds of bark. The inside bark carries the tree's sap up and 
down the trunk. The outside bark (the cork) is thick and spongy.
Cork oaks grow best in hot, dry places like Spain and the south of France. Their thick, cork bark keeps them from drying out in 
hot weather. Cork doesn't burn easily, so the cork oak's bark helps protect it from forest fires.
Because cork doesn't soak up water, it makes good floats for fishing nets. It's bouncy, so it's used inside cricket balls and 
softballs. Cork can squeeze tight to fit into the neck of a container and seal it up. It gives good grip, too. That's why it's used on 
the handles of fishing rods, on the keys of some musical instruments, and on the soles of shoes and sandals.
Cork is useful, so it's just as well that cork oaks don't mind sharing their bark. When a cork oak is twenty years old, big slabs of 
its outside bark can be peeled off. In ten or eleven years, the cork tree will grow the bark back again.
But even though cork oaks don't mind sharing their bark, Sylvia is pleased that her trees are protected for everyone to look at and 
enjoy. Now, whenever she visits the city gardens, she always takes the cork oak path to check on how the trees are growing. And, 
sometimes, if she looks carefully, she finds cork oak acorns.
Maybe, if the gardeners let her take an acorn home, she can grow a cork oak in her very own back garden!

Hot Bread
A story from the Cook Islands by Mona Matepi

It's nearly lunchtime, and the smell of bread fresh from the oven is making Tangi's tummy rumble.
The bakery is just across the road from Tangi's house. Tangi's Uncle Ta 
owns it, and Tangi's older brothers Mata and
Turu also work there. One of Mata's jobs is to cut firewood for the oven.
The outdoor oven is made of concrete. It uses lots and lots of firewood - 
sometimes Mata has to collect four
truckloads of wood in a week.
Mata and Turu are just taking the trays of baked, golden-brown rolls out 
of the oven.
"Mmm, they smell delicious," says Tangi. "Please can I have some?"
"Go and ask Mere," says Mata.
Inside the bakery, Tangi's cousin Mere is setting out the fresh rolls on 
the table. She gives Tangi some in a paper
bag.
"Don't eat them all on your way home," she says. But she knows there'll 
be at least one roll missing when Tangi gets
home. Everyone loves Uncle Ta's freshly baked bread! "Be careful - 
they're hot," says Mere. YUM! Fresh hot bread
for lunch!

A Recipe for Bread Rolls

You will need:
1 Ό  cups warm (not hot) water  3 teaspoons sugar 1 tablespoon Surebake yeast 1 tablespoon cooking oil 
1 teaspoon salt 3 cups flour Ό teaspoon baking powder

1.	Mix the sugar and warm water together in a big bowl. Add the yeast and oil. Leave it to stand for 5 minutes until the 
mixture has bubbles in it.
2.	Add the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix everything together.
3.	Rub some cooking oil on your hands and shape the dough into rolls.
4.	Put the rolls on a greased baking tray and leave in a warm place to rise.
5.	When the rolls have risen, bake them at 200'C for about 15 minutes. Get an adult to help you with the hot tray.

Bread and Balloons
By Sarah Wellington

Have you ever made bread?
If so, you'll know that you need yeast to make the bread rise. And it's the yeast that gives the bread such a delicious smell when 
it's baking. 
But did you know that yeast is a living, breathing substance? Just like you, it needs food. When food (such as sugar) is mixed 
with it, the yeast becomes active.
Try this experiment.
Mix together:
1 tablespoon of dried yeast
½ teaspoon of sugar
about 1 tablespoon of warm (not hot) water.
Pour the mixture carefully into a bottle. Fasten a balloon over the mouth of the bottle and stand it in a warm place, such as on a 
sunny window sill.
Leave it for an hour or so and watch what happens.
Why does this happen? 
If yeast has sugar and warmth, it gives off a gas called carbon dioxide. This is what inflates the balloon.
When yeast is mixed into bread dough, the carbon dioxide gas produces tiny bubbles in the dough, which make the bread rise.

Pipi Fritters
story and photographs by Judy Raymond

We often look for pipi on the tidal flats between Tairua and Pΰuanui.  You have to wait until the tide goes out before you can dig 
for pipi, and it's a long way out to the pipi beds.
Sometimes we don't get any pipi at first.  They're playing hide-and-seek in the sand.  So then I look to see where the 
locals are digging.  They always know where the pipi are hiding.
Nobody takes any more pipi than they need because that would be wasteful.
When I get home, I put fresh water into the bucket of pipi.  That will make them spit out all the sand overnight.  I hate 
gritty pipi fritters.
In the morning, Mum heats up a big pot of water.  When the water boils, she puts in the pipi.  As soon as the shells open, 
the pipi are cooked.  Mum and I scrape all the pipi out of their shells and throw out any of the shells that haven't opened.  We 
chop the cooked pipi into small pieces.
Then I find everything else that we need to make the pipi fritters.  Mum and I mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.  
Then we heat a frying pan and put in some butter.  When the frying pan is hot, we put spoonfuls of the mixture into the 
pan.
When the fritters are brown on one side, Mum turns them over.
Almost ready 
 YUM!

Pipi Fritters

To make fritters with about forty-eight pipi, you will need:
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 small onion, chopped finely
2 eggs
pepper and salt
parsley
100 grams butter
about 48 chopped-up, cooked pipi.

1.	Put the flour and baking powder into a bowl.  Mix with a wooden spoon.
2.	Beat the eggs until they are fluffy.  Mix them into the flour and baking powder.
3.	Add the chopped onion and pipi, the salt and pepper, and the  parsley.  (You can chop the parsley over the bowl with a 
pair of kitchen scissors.)
Get an adult to help you with the next stage.
4.	Heat a frying pan and put in the butter.  When it bubbles, put spoonfuls of the pipi mixture into the pan.  When one side 
is golden, turn the fritters over.  They take about 10 minutes altogether to cook through.

What Does a Starfish Have for Lunch?
by Annette Seear

The Island Bay Marine Education Centre on Wellington's south coast is a great place for learning about the sea and the 
creatures that live there.  Victor Anderlini and Judy Hutt share their knowledge with hundreds of visitors each year.  Today, 
children from Naenae Primary School and Mesopotamia School are visiting the laboratory. 

Victor lifts a starfish out of a big tank near the gate and shows it to us.  "Look at the spines on top and the suckers underneath," 
he says.  "It walks by sucking on to everything as it goes along.  Its eyes are at the ends of its arms and help it to tell the 
difference between light and dark.  And it has tastebuds to help it find food.
"Just imagine you're a starfish clinging to a rock in the sea.  You're hungry, but the fish all swim too fast, and you're 
scared the crabs might nip you.  So you choose things with two shells  pipi, oysters, scallops, and especially mussels.  But how 
would you open the shells?"
No one has any ideas.
"The starfish places its suckers on each half of the mussel shell and pulls and pulls.  Sometimes it takes three days!  But, 
in the end, the mussel gets tired, and the starfish wins.  It only has to open the mussel shell a tiny crack because it has a stomach 
that can come out of its body, squeeze inside the shell, and gobble everything up."
"Gross!" says Hamish.
Inside the building there's a "touch tank" where we're allowed to pick up anything  gently!  "Nothing in here can hurt 
you," promises Judy.  The kina are prickly.  The snake-stars feel cold and slimy.
"This crab shell's really hard," says someone.
"That's because crabs and lobsters are like people's bodies turned inside out," says Victor.  "We have our soft stuff on 
the outside and our hard bones on the inside, and they have it the other way round.  What do you think happens when a crab 
grows too big for its shell?"
No one knows the answer.
"What do you do when you get too big for your clothes?" asks Victor.
"Get some new ones," we reply.
"That's right," says Victor.  "And that's just what crabs and lobsters do, too.  Those empty crab shells you find on the 
beach are their old clothes left behind  just like when you take your jacket off and leave it on the floor."
"Who wants to see what happens when an octopus has lunch?" asks Judy.
Everyone does.
Judy shows Hamish how to scoop a crab from a tank, using a sieve.  Then Phil stands on a stool to flip the crab into the 
octopus's tank.  
"We have to keep the tank shut tight with weights and latches," says Judy.  "The octopus can squeeze out through the 
tiniest gap.  Before we fixed the lids, we often used to arrive here in the morning and find an octopus on the floor, trying to 
squirm back out to Cook Strait!"
Today the octopus doesn't seem to be hungry.  "Usually that crab would be her complete lunch box," says Judy.  "She'd 
wrap her arms round it and inject poison into it from a hole in her head.  The crab takes about thirty seconds to die.  The octopus 
sucks out all the meat.  She takes about an hour to munch the lot until only the shell is left."
The crab swims round and round, but the octopus doesn't take any notice.  
"That's one lucky crab!" says one of the teachers.
We've had a great time and learnt a lot, but now it's time for our lunch.  
Shellfish, anyone?

photographs by Margaret Gould
Make a Face
by Julie Ellis

It's fun to make faces with shells collected from the beach.

Choose a large shell as a base.  Use Blu-tack or a strong glue to stick on small shells to make eyes, a nose, and ears.

You could use seaweed or pieces of grass for hair, a beard, and whiskers.

Paddle Your Own Canoe
Story and photographs by John Hart

Most of us thought that learning to paddle a canoe would be easy.
"No sweat," we said. "You just get in, and pick up your paddle, and off you go."
Well, it wasn't quite as easy as we thought.
First we had to practise paddling without a canoe. We didn't get far, but at least we found out which way to hold the paddle.
Then we had to learn how to put on our life jackets 
 and how to get in and out of the canoe without tipping it over.

bow	bailer	thwarts		gunwale	outrigger	stern

Raeina brought along a helper.
Charles thought it might be easier just to hang on to the outrigger (ama) 
and go along for the ride.
Some of us just wanted to laze around on the beach.
"We'll stay in the shallow water till you get the hang of it," said Ace.
We had to learn to paddle in time with each other. It was harder than it 
looked!
"OK," said Ace at last. "Now we're ready to go!"
We steered the canoe out towards the middle of the lake and tried hard to 
keep paddling in time with each other,
while Ace sat at the back and steered
with the steering paddle. Our arms
ached, but it was choice fun.
Olympics, here we come!

Olympics, here we come!

Can you wear a Teddy Bear?
By Jan Trafford

Every year in Nelson, there's a huge show  the New Zealand Wearable Art Awards.
What is wearable art? 
It's a costume made out of more or less anything you like!
Designers use all sorts of things for their creations: human hair, bullet cases, flax, seashells, CDs  you name it!
Anyone can enter a costume in the competition, but only the best ones are chosen for the show.
Janna Micio was chosen to model one of the entries in the children's section.
She had to go to practices three times a week and learn to dance in time to the music. Janna had 
tried on the costume weeks before, but it wasn't till three days before the show that
she saw it again. It was even better than she'd remembered.
The jacket was made out of teddy bears! It felt very soft and warm. There were teddy bear boots, a 
teddy bear hat, and a yellow umbrella covered with ...
... you guessed it, teddy bears!
On the night before the show, Janna couldn't steep. She kept going over and over her dance steps in 
her head. She couldn't wait for the show to start.
Finally, it was time. Backstage was a clutter of
cameras, costumes, props, and nervous models waiting to go on stage. Janna had butterflies in her 
stomach.
At last she heard the music that was her cue to go on. She put up her yellow umbrella and ran onto the stage.
The lights shone in her eyes.
Janna counted her steps. She
remembered to smile. The
butterflies in her stomach disappeared. She danced in time to the music, and two and a half thousand 
people clapped and cheered. It was magic!

Flying Foxes
Flying foxes are not really foxes at all; they are members of the bat family.
New Zealand has two kinds of native bat (pekapeka):  short-tailed and long-tailed bats.
You can read about New Zealand short-tailed bats in "Nectar-loving Bats" by Jan Maguiness (School Journal, Part 1 
Number 1, 1993). 
There is also an article about bats, "New Zealand Native Bats/Pekapeka", in The Wockagilla: Journal of Young 
People's Writing 1999.

Sleepy Koalas
story and photographs by Jan Maguiness

Sleep, sleep, sleep!
Whenever I saw koalas on my holiday in Australia, most of them seemed to be asleep.  And when they weren't 
sleeping, they were busy eating gum leaves.
I found out that koalas eat for about four hours a day and spend nearly all the other twenty hours sleeping.
The name "koala" comes from an Aboriginal word that means "no drink".  Koalas don't drink much water because 
they get as much liquid as they need from eucalyptus (gum) leaves.
Once there were millions of koalas in Australia, but most of them were killed for their meat or fur.   The forests that 
they lived in were destroyed, and the koalas were hunted so much that they nearly became extinct.  Many also died from disease.
These days, koalas are protected.  People are not allowed to kill them or keep them as pets.  
I visited Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where koalas are cared for.  Some of the koalas from sanctuaries are released 
into the wild or given to zoos.
When a koala is born, it is about the size of a bee.  It crawls straight into its mother's pouch and stays there, drinking 
her milk, for about twenty-eight weeks.  Once it is big enough to leave the pouch, the baby koala rides on its mother's back, 
clinging to her fur.  And then it snuggles up close for yet another sleep!

Here Goes!
by Jan Trafford

"What's green, likes water, has eight wheels  and goes FAST down hills?"
"A frog on Rollerblades?"
"No, an Argo."
"What's an Argo????"

An Argo is a type of vehicle that can go both on land and on water.  It's called an amphibian.  
Frogs and toads are amphibians, too.  They can live both on land and in the water.
The Argo has eight wheels and can travel almost anywhere.  Five of us got to try out an Argo at Happy Valley 
Adventures, near Nelson.  
When we arrived, Keith handed us each a raincoat.
"But it's a lovely day!" we said.
He gave us helmets and life jackets as well.
"I'm your driver," said Keith, "and this little machine is called an Argo.  Jump in  if you dare!"
We all held tightly onto the bars as the Argo headed down the bank and straight towards the river.  
"See why you need a raincoat?" Keith yelled as the boat hit the water.  
SPLASH!
The water looked deep and fast.  We held our breath.  Would we sink to the bottom?  Would we be washed 
downstream?  
We looked over the side.  The wheels were spinning crazily, but they were definitely not on the bottom.  This machine 
was swimming!  
"Now, hold on!" yelled Keith.  "We're going up the bank."
We held on tight.  The bank was steep.  Up, up, up we went.  Then, wham!  Over the top, down the other side, and 
straight into a huge wheelie at the bottom.
Then back again  up and over and straight back down into the river.
It was like a roller coaster.  Everything happened so fast that we had to remind ourselves to breathe!
"How about some mud?" yelled Keith.
"YES!" we yelled back.
"OK," shouted Keith.  "Here goes "
The Argo powered across the bank and into the biggest mud puddle we'd ever seen.  The wheels spun, and mud sprayed 
up in our faces.  Round and round we went till we all felt dizzy.
"Once more?" asked Keith.
"Yes!" we yelled.  
Keith took us over the whole course again but in different directions, so we never knew where we'd end up next.
Back at the base, our parents were waiting for us.  "You look like drowned rats," they said.  "Muddy drowned rats!"
"Thanks, Keith," we all said.  "That was awesome!"

photographs by Ian Trafford 


