Three schoolboys ''playing chicken'' with a train in Oamaru have traumatised its driver and horrified KiwiRail.

A prominent conservationist is reflecting on his good fortune he was chasing a possum and not sitting in his ute when it was hit and shunted off the road and over a 100m bluff.

Two promising rugby players are fighting for their lives last night after they were thrown from a vehicle that crashed on a remote road after a party.

From wildlife to heritage to chocolate, Peter Feeney finds plenty of reasons to extend your visit to Dunedin.

Dunedin 12-year-old Charlotte Cogger has learned she has two things in common with the newest member of the Royal Family - the same first and second names.

A part of Oamaru's industrial area has been cordoned off and part of the main southern main trunk line, after an explosive substance was found in a bucket at a scrapyard this morning.

US student Allison Willen was making her way, alone, through flood water covering a section of the Young Valley walking track when she was swept to her death.

An American tourist found dead in a river near Wanaka yesterday had previously described her first tramping trip in a column published by Otago University’s student magazine Critic.

A Central Otago boutique hotel with a conscience mixes pleasure with wellbeing, discovers Jesse Mulligan.

Police fear a missing University of Otago student could have been swept away in a flooded river during a tramp in Mt Aspiring National Park at the weekend.

Millbrook Resort plans to spend $50 million on a new golf and residential development.

The police prosecutor in charge of Edward Livingstone's second protection order breach has conceded mistakes might have been made in the way police handled the case.

A harrowing statement from Katharine Webb to police has revealed the horrific minutes leading up to her children's deaths.

The duplicity of Edward Livingstone has emerged during the coroner's inquest into the death of himself and his children.

Paul Currie accidentally used a broad-spectrum herbicide to treat his grass, prompting his neighbours to think he had been targeted by vandals.

Speed limits need not have been posted in Tapanui, West Otago, during filming of Walt Disney Pictures' "Pete's Dragon" on Saturday. Local residents came out to participate and watch the filming of "Pete's Dragon", taking place in Tapanui.

A Chinese tourist has admitted causing the death of Oamaru 5-year-old Ruby Jay Marris.

Nature's treasures keep drawing people south to the Teviot Valley, finds Elisabeth Easther.

A castle, gardens and penguins give the student town of Dunedin a more refined air, finds Sam Wicks.

Two men plucked from rough seas near Taieri Island yesterday after clinging for hours to an upturned kayak are ''lucky to be alive'', their rescuer says.

Craig Mitchell guided his stricken Cessna 182 to a crash landing in the soft sand of Tomahawk Beach to avoid beachgoers.

A pilot and his passenger had a lucky escape after their light plane crashed on Tomahawk Beach yesterday afternoon after ''spluttering'' over the city.

Home and business owners were mopping up yesterday ready to assess the damage after an hour long thunderstorm hammered Alexandra.

Louise Richardson's kids are so charmed by scenery and history they manage to put down their devices for a while.

It has been a "bad and very sad year already" for aviation in the south, the Civil Aviation Authority says.

The problem of wilding pines spreading through the McKenzie Basin and Upper Waitaki Valley is a hole into which government money has poured, and yet the trees persist.

Tributes are flowing in today for two of New Zealand's most experienced Cessna pilots who died in a horror crash that also claimed the lives of their two children.