Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Detail of Dracophyllum drawn by Nancy M. Adams, from a 1966 encyclopaedia entry by Lindsay Poole

With the death of Lindsay Poole on 2 January 2008, New Zealand has lost its grand old man of the forests.

A. L. Poole began his stellar career with New Zealand’s trees and forests in 1926, rising from forest labourer to director of the Botany Division of DSIR, director-general of the New Zealand Forest Service and chairman of the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council.

Along the way he investigated such diverse subjects as the control of ragwort; the use of New Zealand flax for woolpacks; the effects of the Nazi regime on German forestry and the taxonomy of New Zealand beech species.

He wrote more than 60 entries for the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, including all the native plant descriptions and entries on native forests, exotic forests and forestry in New Zealand.

His clear, succinct descriptions provide a perfect pen-picture of each plant or plant group, and have served as a model for Te Ara’s plant entries.

In his retirement he was a tireless champion for New Zealand’s forests, both native and exotic. He condemned the demise of the New Zealand Forest Service and in 2005 (his 97th year) co-authored a book that is highly critical of the forest management that ensued.

Extent of shaking, 1855 earthquake

Today is the 153rd anniversary of New Zealand’s biggest recorded earthquake.

Shortly after 9 p.m. on 23 January 1855 a magnitude 8.2 earthquake shook central New Zealand. Although before the era of seismographs, it was clearly the largest earthquake to affect New Zealand in the last 200 years.

The earthquake was centred in south Wairarapa and caused a surface rupture for 140 kilometres along the Wairarapa Fault. A horizontal offset of 18.7 metres on an old stream channel was recorded – the largest known anywhere in the world during an earthquake.

The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake had a huge impact on the young city of Wellington, as there was widespread uplift of land. The track along the western side of the harbour had previously been impassable at high tide, but is now the site of the highway and railway line. The edge of the harbour at Lambton Quay was uplifted, and much of Wellington’s downtown area is now built on reclaimed land.

A tsunami accompanied the earthquake, with widespread damage around the southern coast of the North Island.

The only casualty in Wellington was Baron von Alzdorf, who was hit by a brick chimney falling from the hotel he owned. Two people died in a fissure in the Manawatū, and between two and six Māori were killed when their whare collapsed.

If such an event were to hit Wellington today, we would not get off so lightly.

Hōne Tūwhare

New Zealand has suffered another great loss with the death of poet and playwright Hōne Tūwhare.

Tūwhare’s debut collection, No ordinary sun (1964), was the first book of poetry by a Māori writer in English. The 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand described him as ‘the only modern Māori poet’. Whether or not that was strictly true at the time, thankfully it is not so now, and Tūwhare and his writing has inspired many New Zealand poets, both Māori and Pākehā.

Tūwhare is of Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Korokoro, Tautahi, Uri o Hau and Te Popoto hapū) and Scottish descent. He was born in Northland (near Kaikohe) in 1922 and, though he lived elsewhere for much of his life, Northland is remembered in many of his poems, such as ‘A fall of rain at Miti-miti’.

He also wrote poems about more political subjects, including ‘Rain-maker’s song for Whina’, inspired by the 1975 land march, and his protest against forest destruction, ‘Warawara, Pureora, Okarito’, which has the ‘honour’ of being the only time the f-word is used in Te Ara. I think that would have amused him.

Portrait of Edmund Hillary

New Zealand has lost its favourite hero with the death of Sir Edmund Hillary.

Sir Ed, as he was fondly known, gained worldwide fame after he and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to scale Mt Everest, the world’s highest peak, in 1953. In Te Ara’s entry on mountaineering, you can watch a video of Sir Ed describing the last stages of their ascent.

Drawn to the people of the Himalayas, Hillary returned there in the 1960s to help build schools and health facilities for the Sherpas of Nepal. Hillary was also the first person have stood at both the north and south poles.

It’s a measure of Sir Ed’s achievements that he features frequently in Te Ara, in entries on New Zealand mountaineering, New Zealand mountaineers overseas, Auckland’s sport and leisure and post-war New Zealanders, to name just a few.

Jock and the Harper family

In the company of eight members of the Harper family, I have just completed a walk over the Harper Pass, which crosses the main divide between Canterbury and the West Coast. We were re-enacting Leonard Harper’s crossing 150 years ago.

When Leonard completed his walk in January 1858, he was the 20-year-old son of the first bishop of Christchurch. He had been in the colony just over a year. His aim was to find flat land for sheep, and although he did find gold in the Taramakau River, the provincial government ordered him to keep the discovery secret lest the news attract undesirables to the Anglican settlement.

Harper was rather lucky to have his name commemorated. He was certainly not the first person to cross that way. As our Walking tracks entry shows, the route up the Hurunui and over to the Taramakau had been for centuries the major highway for Māori seeking pounamu. And as our European exploration entry suggests, Harper was not even the first Pākehā over the pass. Arthur Dobson, of Arthur’s Pass fame, had preceded him.

Harper was also accompanied by another European, Mr Locke, and three, or perhaps four, Māori. Harper’s achievement was less crossing the pass than going down the West Coast as far as Big Bay, considerably further than Thomas Brunner in his epic journey of 1846.

Yet, as we meandered along the track with the comfort of car transport at each end, we did have a new respect for Harper. We followed DOC’s red triangular markers; Harper, Locke and his guides had to fight through the undergrowth. We feasted on dehydrated food; Harper depended on the skills of his Māori guides to catch birds or spear eels. Sometimes they captured kurī (dogs) in the bush to help with the chase.

We had modern equipment – light packs, easily assembled tents and polypropylene clothing. Harper, who experienced incessantly poor weather, had no tent – just a maggoty blanket. He wore Māori flax sandals, and by the time he arrived back in Canterbury, after almost three months away, his back was bare, his trousers had disintegrated and his shirt was so torn that he was wearing it like an apron to protect his respectability.

Despite our encouragement, the elder male Harper in the party refused to re-enact that assemblage. Historical reconstruction can only go so far.