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The Yealands Classic Fighter Airshow at Omaka, South Island, New Zealand, was a highlight for the southern airshow season in Easter 2023.

A Leeds father and son duo will be walking 25km from a Second World War crash site in Belgium to the pilot’s evacuation point at Dunkirk.

Published: February 24, 2021 at 7:03 am At the height of the battle of Dunkirk in May 1940, the brilliant New Zealander Al Deere was on patrol in his RAF Spitfire over the French coast. Suddenly, through the haze of smoke drifting upwards from the raging combat on the ground, he spotted a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter below him. He instantly gave chase. Soon, both planes were descending earthwards at high speed. “Down we went, throttles fully open, engines roaring and each determined to get the last ounce out of his straining aircraft. From 17,000 feet down to ground level I...

Romford’s Catholic priest, Father Colomb, was sent to Greymouth on the South Island, where he drowned crossing a river in 1871. After an Army career, Colonel Benjamin Branfill retired into poverty. His pension was small, his Upminster Hall estate yielded little income and he’d split from his “expensive and worldly” wife.  In 1880, he too took refuge in Nelson, choosing a place called Brook Street (perhaps it reminded him of home), where he started to build a replica of Upminster Hall.  An amateur painter, he supported himself giving art classes. In 2013, the Nelson Mail published an...