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FFANZ Home

FFANZ
Fan Fund of Australia and New Zealand

Guide to visiting New Zealand

Are you a fan planning to visit New Zealand? Are you interested in contacting other fans? The idea of this page is to give you some key contact info to help you arrange that. Of necessity I have concentrated on what could be considered traditional SF fannish contacts - i.e. no detailed wargaming or RPG contacts etc. Perhaps someday these can be included.

A note about using the links to personal email addresses. I have put some measures in place to protect the email addresses from being harvested by spammers. This means that you will need to have javascript enabled on your browser to use the link. You may also see the email address being displayed on a browser window in some cases - just use the back button if this happens. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Have a look at the following list of travel destinations. If any of them are on your itinerary then follow the link for more info.

Auckland New Zealand's largest city is the main entry point for most international flights, so there is a pretty good chance you will go through here.
Wellington The capital and its surrounding area has a very active fan scene.
Christchurch The largest city in the South Island and gateway to its tourism activities.
Dunedin Possibly the spiritual home of fandom in New Zealand.
Other Towns Other towns in New Zealand do not have a fan scene but there are a few isolated kindred souls out there. There are contacts in New Plymouth, Norsewood, Manapouri and many others.

Looking for something a bit more general which might help you plan a trip involving fans. One of these topics might help you

Conventions Want to match your trip up to a con?
General Fan Info Interested in the NZ fan scene generally?
Ask Someone Correspond with a local to get some more useful info.

Auckland
Stella Nova is the main general interest SF club in Auckland. They hold regular meetings on the third wednesday of the month at the Auckland Horticulture Centre as well as a wide range of other social events during the month. Contact them for more specific details.

Barbara & Peter Clendon are the current FFANZ delegates and they live in Auckland so are an obvious contact point - what is more they have a bookstore you can visit.

Maree and Matthew are the previous FFANZ delegates and they also live in Auckland so are an obvious contact point especially since they probably know every fan in town.

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Wellington
Phoenix is the largest SF club in Wellington. The main meeting is held at the Turnbull library building on Bowen St on the second wednesday of every month. There is a regular social gathering at the end of each month. There are also regular board gaming and writer group meetings every month. Contact the secretary to get the calendar for the current period. Visitors are always really very welcome at any of these events.

The Upper Hutt club is the oldest active club in the country - they celebrate their 25th anniversary in May 2005. They meet on the first Tuesday of every month - drop David a line for more information.

Spontaneous gatherings of fans happen at other times - the visit from an out of fan being as good an excuse as they come for such a get-together. Drop Ross or Simon a line if you want to meet some of the locals.

The current down-under DUFF delegate is Norman and he also hangs out in Wellington and would like to hear from you too.

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Christchurch
There is not any regular club scene in Christchurch anymore. But the local fans do socialise from time to time. Drop Brian a line to see what is happening and arrange a social gathering.

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Dunedin
Its hard to find a club scene in Dunedin anymore either. If you want to touch base with the local fans then email Martyn. Those of you in the APA fellowship will probably already know James but even if you don't he would be happy to hear from you.

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Other Towns (from North to South)
With so few fans in the New Plymouth area, you can imagine that Sue and Vince would be glad to hear from anybody heading to their general area.

Lyn McConchie lives in Norsewood midway between Napier and Palmerston North on the road between them and is always happy to see other fans/writers.

Pauline and Aaron live in Manapouri (a few hours north-west of Invercargill) managing a motor park. They are glad to help visitors (and fans) that come and stay, with information about the area. They would love to talk science fiction and other eccentric things when it's not the busiest time of the year!

I pretty much lied about the others although if you are going to Hamilton or Rotorua I might be able to find a contact for you. I don't really have enough of this type of info, but somebody out there does. If you are a fan in the provinces who would like their info in this area, let me know.

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Conventions
There is usually only one SF con each year in New Zealand - the natcon. This is usually held at either Easter or at New Zealand Queen's Birthday weekend (the weekend of the first Monday in June). Check out this natcon list for details of the next couple of cons.

There are also a couple of Armageddon expo events each year but these are more like a trade show than a con although they usually have top quality media guests.

On the Gaming side of things there is Kapcon on the Kapiti coast north of Wellington in late January.

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General Info
Have a look at the SFFANZ site - SFFANZ is the New Zealand national association with a reponsibility to promote fan activities. Check out the SF index site as well - there are links to lots of useful sites there.

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Ask Someone
 Ask me. Really - I mean it. I am always happy to correspond with other fans from around the world and may well be able to help you with the kind of things you need to know. Check out my web site while you are at it.

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