Greater Auckland

Eden Park is the biggest stadium in Auckland, New Zealand. It is used primarily for rugby union in winter and cricket in summer . The ground also... occasionally hosts rugby league matches. To accommodate all three sports, the cricket pitch is removable. The ground is located three kilometres southwest of Auckland's CBD, straddling the boundary between the Kingsland and Mount Eden suburbs. It became the first stadium to host two Rugby World Cup Finals in 2011, having held the inaugural final in 1987. It was also the venue for the Rugby League World Cup final in 1988. The Eden Park area has been in use for sport since around 1900. Eden Park has been the home to Auckland Cricket since 1910, and has also hosted many international Tests and One Day International cricket matches. In 1950, Eden Park was the principal venue for the IV British Empire Games, where the Opening Ceremony and the Track and Field Events were held. In 1981, Eden Park was buzzed by a Cessna light airplane on the occasion of the third and final New Zealand v.
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The Auckland Civic Theatre is a large heritage theatre seating 2,378 people in central Auckland, New Zealand. First opened on 20 December 1929, it... was reopened in 2000 after a major renovation and conservation effort. It is a famous example of the atmospheric theatre style, in which lights and design were used to convey an impression of being seated in an outdoor auditorium at night, creating the illusion of an open sky complete with twinkling stars. The Auckland Civic Theatre is internationally significant as the largest surviving atmospheric cinema in Australasia and as the first purpose-built cinema of this type in New Zealand. It is also known for its Indian-inspired foyer, which includes seated Buddhas, twisted columns and domed ceilings. The main auditorium was designed in a similar style, imitating a Moorish garden with turrets, minarets, spires and tiled roofs as well as several famous Abyssinian panther statues. It could hold 2,750 people at its opening, and even at its reduced current seating, is still the largest theatre in New Zealand.
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The Auckland Town Hall is a historic building on Queen Street in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, known both for its original and ongoing use for... administrative functions , as well as for its famed Great Hall and its separate Concert Chamber. The Town Hall and its surrounding context is highly protected as a 'Category A' heritage place in the city's district plan. Opened on 14 December 1911 by Lord Islington, then the Governor of New Zealand, the building is one of the most prominent heritage structures on Queen Street. Costing £ 126,000 to construct, it was designed by Melbourne architects, JJ & EJ Clarke, their Italian Renaissance Revival building selected from amongst 46 proposals. The five-storey building was specially designed to fit the wedge-shaped piece of land that had been acquired for it at the meeting of Queen Street and Grey Street. The town hall formed Auckland's first permanent seat of both administration and entertainment in the young city's early history, with its Great Hall modelled on the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and being considered as having one of the finest acoustics in the world.
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The Cathedral of St Patrick and St Joseph is the Cathedral of the Catholic Bishop of Auckland. It is on the original site granted by the Crown to... Jean Baptiste Pompallier, the first Bishop, on 1 June 1841. To minister to the 300 or 400, mostly Irish, Catholics in Auckland in the 1840s, a wooden chapel, clergy house and school room were opened and blessed on 29 January 1843. Work soon began on a more permanent church. In 1845, the Australian architect Walter Robinson arrived in Auckland on the encouragement of Pompallier and he was commissioned to design a stone church. The new church was built on the original grant of land and situated on the corner of Chapel Street and Wyndham St. At first referred to as a chapel, and then a church, St Patrick's became the Catholic Cathedral when Auckland was made a diocese in 1848 and when Pompallier, after a visit to France and Rome, returned to Auckland in April 1850, and made the city his headquarters.
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Michael van Wijk , is an English bodybuilder, professional sportsman, actor and TV presenter. van Wijk is most well known for his role as Wolf on... British TV endurance sports game show Gladiators, a role he held for seven years, eight series . Van Wijk now owns a gym in Henderson, Auckland, New Zealand called "Wolf's Gym," where he now resides. Before his rise to fame he owned several gyms until he secured his first contract with his long term employer 'Gladiators'.. According to a Sky One interview, producers refused to allow van Wijk to be mean as a Gladiator, but he soon persuaded them to let him try it. This distinctive persona led him to be the most popular Gladiator in the history of the show, although he courted controversy. He was also known to video game players for appearing on the cover of the computer game Barbarian. Michael van Wijk was spotted by a member of the Gladiators production team shortly before filming began on the first television series in 1992. He once stated on Gladiators that his favourite television show was Star Trek. Van Wijk used to run a gym in Hayes in Bromley, London called 'Wolf's Gym'.
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Angela Marie Dotchin is an actress. She's most known for her roles as Kirsty Knight in Shortland Street, and as Emilia Rothschild in Jack of All... Trades. Dotchin was born on 31 March 1974. Her father is a businessman of Welsh ancestry, with whom she traveled extensively, before the family returned to New Zealand in 1985. Dotchin also has an older sister. She attended Meadowbank Primary, in Meadowbank, Auckland and Selwyn College, in Kohimarama, Auckland. Dotchin was the partner of New Zealand actor Temuera Morrison for six years. In 1990, at the age of sixteen, Dotchin began modeling. Her first audition was for the role of Kirsty Knight in the long-running soap opera Shortland Street. At the time, Shortland Street was a private hospital, and Kirsty was one of the two receptionists. Later she moved ‘upstairs’, where she became PA to the clinic’s medical director. American audiences were introduced to Angela by her roles in the Xena: Warrior Princess series and the Hercules spin-off show Young Hercules.
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Rachel Hunter is a New Zealand born model, actress and reality TV show host, who is a naturalised citizen of the United States. She is best known... for her appearance in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issues and her marriage to singer Rod Stewart, which ended in 2006. Born in Glenfield, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand, her parents divorced when she was still a child. Wanting to be a ballet dancer, she was diagnosed with a rare blood disease as a teenager, which curtailed her dancing ambitions. As a result, Hunter began modelling by age 17 in 1986, and the same year turned down an invitation to pose for Playboy magazine. Resultantly persuaded by her aunt to fly to the United States, she signed for the Ford Models agency of New York, landing the Cover Girl cosmetics contract and becoming the spokesperson for the company. But Hunter rose to global prominence after posing as a Sports Illustrated model in 1989. She subsequently appeared on magazine covers, including Cosmopolitan and on the 1994 "Dream Team" cover of Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue. She posed naked for a cover-featured Playboy pictorial published in 2004.
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Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays... and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. A best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, his works have been neglected since his death. Walpole was born in Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest of three children of the Rev George Henry Somerset Walpole , Canon of St Mary's Cathedral, Auckland and his wife, Mildred Helen née Barham . Walpole was educated at a series of boarding schools in England, principally at Truro School for two years, the King's School, Canterbury for two years and as a day boy for four years at Durham School, when his father was principal of Bede College at the university. Walpole's popular character Jeremy lived in the cathedral town of Polchester in Glebeshire, an amalgam of Truro and Durham, which featured in many of his later books.
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Ian Barry Mune, OBE is a New Zealand character actor and director. He co-wrote and starred in Roger Donaldson's first film, Sleeping Dogs. He also... directed Came a Hot Friday, which featured comedian Billy T. James as the Tainui Kid, and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, the sequel to Once Were Warriors. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? won nine of its 13 New Zealand Film Award nominations in 1999. It remains Mune's biggest commercial success to date. One of his best-loved films is the 1991 'coming of age' drama The End of the Golden Weather, a film version of Bruce Mason's play, written by Mune and Mason. In 1994 Mune played Sir Robert Muldoon in the made-for-television mini-series Fallout, depicting the end of the Muldoon-led National Government. He directed the original episodes of the short-lived television series Letter to Blanchy by David McPhail and Jon Gadsby, and has featured in numerous New Zealand television dramas. Mune was an 'additional second unit director', as well as playing the part of Bounder in the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. He played Buster Keaton in the TV movie Lucy: The Lucille Ball Story.
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Harry Sinclair is a film director, writer, and actor. In his early career he was an actor and member of The Front Lawn, a musical theater duo. He... went on to write and direct several short films, a TV series and three feature films. Harry Sinclair was born in 1959 in Auckland, New Zealand. He is the son of historian and poet, Keith Sinclair and brother of writer Stephen Sinclair. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Rebecca Rand Kirshner Sinclair. Sinclair studied acting at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, and went on to a career on the stage in Auckland, as well as roles in a number of New Zealand films including working with Peter Jackson, playing the role of Roger in Braindead and Isildur in The Lord of the Rings. In 1985 he co-founded The Front Lawn , a multi-media comedy music duo. Sinclair and The Front Lawn toured internationally with a series of live shows including: Songs and Stories from The Front Lawn, The Reason for Breakfast, The Washing Machine, and The Story of Robert. They also completed two music albums, Songs from The Front Lawn and More Songs from The Front Lawn.
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Bruce Allpress is a New Zealand actor. He has been in many television dramas and also presenting on television and radio productions. In the... mid-1980s, he was a regular on The Billy T. James Show, as well as featuring alongside Tommy Lee Jones in the pirate adventure film Nate and Hayes. His most known role is Aldor, archer of Rohan that shot the first uruk-hai from their army in the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
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