Smoke alarms alerted a family to ceiling fire in their Canterbury home early this morning.

Canterbury's cuisine - like the city of Christchurch itself - is also enjoying a post-quake revival, discovers Nathan Paul.

New Zealand Oil & Gas says exploration drilling of the Barque prospect in the Canterbury Basin, which has the potential to be the nation's biggest-ever hydrocarbon discovery, is expected to start in 2017.

A Canterbury bach was evacuated in the early hours of this morning as an large scrub fire threatened to get out of control.

Police today said the 17-year-old youth would appear in Westport District Court on Thursday.

The crash killed the animal and seriously damaged the patrol car.

Six years on from Yoon Sook Chun's disappearance, police are offering a $30,000 reward for fresh information that might help find her.

This spot is a favourite with Kiwis and visitors year-round, says Elisabeth Easther.

A $30,000 reward has been posted to help find a Canterbury woman missing for six years.

Ashburton Police are warning the public to take extreme care on the roads in the Canterbury region due to reports of black ice.

Great fiestas, beaches and eateries abound, says Elisabeth Easther.

Police are expecting a quieter morning in Canterbury with less ice to make the roads treacherous.

The young woman who died yesterday when her vehicle skidded out of control on black ice and hit a school bus has been named.

One person has died on the roads in Canterbury this morning, with about 25 crashes occurring since 6am.

New Zealand has nearly shuddered itself to the MetService's record books after the Canterbury high country plummeted to -20 degrees overnight.

A build-up of snow and ice on lines, as well as tree branches being weighed down on lines, caused outages to around 4700 customers around the western areas of the Canterbury Plains yesterday.

Around 1500 people in Canterbury are likely to remain without power overnight, after a snow storm battered the region today.

Two minor earthquakes hit central parts of both main islands today.

The digger driver killed in a quarry landslide will be farewelled on Monday.

A mentally-handicapped man, with the mental age of a 9-year-old, was accidentally strangled to death after becoming entangled in electrical bed wires.

The full extent of illegal quarrying is not known after it was revealed the latest person to be killed was operating without a safety certificate.

Police have recovered the body of digger driver Murray Taylor from the more than 1500 tonnes of rubble that buried him in a mammoth landslide.

Digger driver Murray Taylor, who was buried in a mammoth quarry landslide, has been remembered as a great bloke after hopes of finding him alive faded yesterday.

The former boss of the North Canterbury limestone quarry where a landslip is feared to have killed a digger operator yesterday has spoken of previous brushes with death and bemoaned the lack of regulation in the industry. Murray Taylor, the owner of Heathstock Haulage that operates the limestone mine, is believed to have died after he was buried under a rockfall yesterday.

The former boss of the quarry where a landslip is feared to have killed a digger operator yesterday has spoken of previous brushes with death.

The digger driver buried under 1000 tonnes of rubble has been named as Murray Taylor.

A person is dead and another seriously injured after a crash in south Canterbury this afternoon.