Terror of 25 years ago

Twenty-five years ago today two bomb blasts crippled the Rainbow Warrior - a vessel on a peace mission, tied up at an Auckland wharf at the time.
The 25th anniversary also marks the killing of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira in the French government's act of terrorism.
The moment on July 10, 1985, is frozen on the ship's clock, which stopped at the first bomb blast at 11.49pm.
The clock is one of several items in the country's biggest display of Rainbow Warrior relics, at Dargaville Museum.
But the display is just one link the doomed vessel has with Northland.
 Now a living reef, the vessel lies in its final resting place near the Cavalli Islands, off Northland.
 On the nearest mainland bluff, at Matauri Bay, sits a monument which is as beautiful as it is symbolic, built by Northland sculptor Chris Booth.
The ship's flag and motif were designed by  Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who lived in Northland.
 The Northland Maori MP, the late Hon Mat Rata had been an honoured guest on board the ship days before the bombing.
In the wake of the bombing, as the story of the French spies' preparations  began to unravel, it became clear that Northland was already  deeply caught up in the deadly act.
The special agents had illegally gone ashore in the region (see timeline) on June 22. They left calling cards in the way of signatures and stories at Whangarei eateries (see box).  Later in Auckland, they would be traced through vehicle hireage and motels.
Amateurish as some of their spy antics seem in the  light of hindsight, the end result was nevertheless mission accomplished: a flagship wrecked and unable to leave  on a protest voyage against French nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific. Tragically, one man dead.
This week Greenpeace New Zealand's executive director Bunny McDiarmid, also a crew member on board at the time of the bombing, was in Whangarei because of those old links and new ones.
Ms McDiarmid was a guest speaker at the opening of a Whangarei Art Museum exhibition which speaks to the 25th anniversary through the works of two New Zealand artists.
They are the late painter Pat Hanly and his widow, photographer Gil Hanly, who has documented 40 years of the peace and protest movement in New Zealand.

 A tearful Ms McDiarmid described the exhibition as "joyful".
"It's really nice to be celebrating this occasion as well as memorialising it," she said.
Ms McDiarmid said the events depicted in the images had changed New Zealand's history. Within a few short years of the bombing the country had declared itself nuclear free. As a cliched yet still relevant saying has it, you can't sink a rainbow.
Today, on the 25th anniversary of the bombing, the keel of the third Rainbow Warrior would be laid, the first Warrior to be designed and built from new, Ms McDiarmid said.