Reckoning with the Nazi past of the man who helped build Mt Hutt skifield stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Most of the media stories on Willi Huber focused on his work founding the Mt Hutt skifield. This month, North & South finally unravelled the other central event of Huber's life: his role in one of the most brutal divisions of the Nazi army.
Willi Huber was a champion of Mt Hutt's ski field developments, and a popular local. But it wasn't until he died that the full horror of his past was revealed.
That rang alarm bells with military historian and journalist Andy Macdonald, who realised there was an untold story here. It was a hundred per cent obvious that he was Waffen SS. And there were other things that he said that would strain credulity, such as he was unaware of the events of the Holocaust, war crimes and that sort of thing while on the Russian front and in the most indoctrinated Nazi units around. Macdonald then worked with journalist Naomi Arnold to produce a major story for the June issue of North and South that’s been months in the making.
Murchison s secret high flying South Island fishing spot
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Naomi Arnold visits New Zealand s secret bucket-list fishing destination
Down a nondescript country lane near Murchison is one of New Zealand s best-kept secrets: Owen River Lodge, a fly-fishing destination on the edge of Kahurangi National Park that few Kiwis know about, let alone visit. Up until Covid, more than 99 per cent of the lodge s clientele were from overseas.
Outside New Zealand, in international fly-fishing circles, the lodge is famous, and together with Murchison s rivers is spoken of reverently as a bucket-list fishing destination. Owen River Lodge took out gongs at the New Zealand Tourism Awards in 2018 and 2019, and guests ranked it #2 in New Zealand and #5 overall in Condé Nast Traveler s 2020 Readers Choice Awards, including in the Top 25 Resorts in Australia and the South Pacific - unheard of for a fishing lodge.