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

1908 Blackball strike

More than 200 people gathered at Blackball over Easter to celebrate the centenary of the 1908 Blackball strike. It was a good-natured celebration, recorded in this online photo album (to view photos and captions, click ‘Detail’ at top left).

Called the ‘crib-time’ strike, it was about the right of local coal miners to take 30 minutes for a lunch break rather than the 15 minutes allowed by the company. In a famous court case, Justice Sim told the miners that their demands were unreasonable, then called for a 90-minute lunch break for himself and the lawyers. It was a propaganda victory for the Blackball miners, and the company finally conceded to their demands. It was also the beginning of an organised union movement that eventually lead on to formation of the Labour Party.

Several of the organisers of the strike went on to hold leading positions in the Labour movement, including Patrick Hickey, Paddy Webb, and Bob Semple, and both Semple and Webb later became cabinet ministers in the 1935 Labour government.

One of the most amazing things that happened during the commemorations was the unveiling of a war memorial by the local RSA. Most of the early unionists were strongly opposed to the First World War, and both Webb and Semple went to prison for their opposition to conscription. But at the beginning of the 21st century feelings have changed, and the Blackball community has decided that it wants to publicly honour those killed in the first and second world wars.

The only thing missing from the celebrations was the brimstone smell of Blackball. Traditionally every house had a coal stove, and Blackball coal was notorious for its high sulfur content. It was hard on the lungs, and galvanised iron roofing was tarred rather than painted to preserve it. But the high-sulfur coal isn’t mined any more, and the atmosphere is greatly improved.

The Wahine on its side

Forty years ago my mother had just arrived in New Zealand. She’d come here from South Africa after marrying my father, a native of Palmerston North, and they were living in Upper Hutt.

As you might expect, she was finding things a bit different here, a bit strange. So when the wind picked up, she took it in her stride. ‘It’s probably like this all the time’, she thought.

It wasn’t too long before she realised it was a bit more serious. Everyone was advised to stay inside, and she watched pieces of the neighbours’ fences blowing past the window. And then she heard about the Wahine foundering in the harbour.

The Wahine, a Cook Strait ferry, sank at the entrance to Wellington Harbour. Fifty-one people died.

Te Ara covers the 10 April 1968 storm and shipwreck in a range of entries, including Shipwrecks, Weather, Search and rescue and Ocean currents and tides. There are also ‘Your stories’ accounts by people who experienced the storm, such as Bob Maysmor, who had to drive through waves to get home to Eastbourne; Stuart Young, whose boat capsized while he was trying to help rescue Wahine passengers; and John Laker, whose Kingston house was completely destroyed by the wind.

To commemorate the tragedy, NZHistory.net.nz has a feature on the Wahine disaster, there’s a page about it for children on Christchurch City Libraries‘ website, the National Library has put together a showcase of resources, and a website devoted to the Wahine has a page about the sinking.

The villain of the piece

The passion vine hopper has lovely lacy wings – and that’s the only nice thing I know about this little Ozzie overstayer. For the PVH, as it is known to the cognoscenti, is the real fly in the ointment (well, bug in the honey) in the latest poisoning episode in the Coromandel.

As you probably know by now, toxic honey develops in dry autumns when honey bees feed on honeydew exuded by PVHs after they’ve sucked juices from the poisonous tree tutu.

If ever an ecologist needed an example to illustrate the interdependency of humans and their natural environment, then the toxic honey story is a graphic example. Consider the elements needed in this tragic drama:

• a long, dry autumn – frequently experienced on the East Coast of New Zealand
• tree tutu – a poisonous native shrub
• PVHs – greedy, sap-sucking insects
• honey bees – to collect the toxic wastes from the PVHs to transform into honey
• humans – to consume the toxic brew.

Remove one element and there’s no problem: in parts of New Zealand where tree tutu is uncommon or where temperatures are too cool for PVHs, toxic honey is not produced. If there is plenty of rain during summer and autumn, the poisonous drops from the bums of the PVHs are washed off the leaves of the tutu bushes and honey bees search for another food source.

One of the tragedies of this recent poisoning episode is that some people seem to have forgotten that toxic honey poisoning is not uncommon and has a well-documented history in New Zealand. Up until 2008, 294 cases of toxic honey poisoning, including six deaths, had been notified (see page 16 of Supply of and demand for pollination hives in New Zealand).

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were probably other poisoning episodes that were never officially notified. This article from 1902 (in Te Reo Māori) records the deaths of some young men who chanced upon a beehive and sampled its honey.

Scientists worked out the links between the insects, climate, tutu and poisonous honey in 1947, and the following year the government brought in regulations preventing beekeepers from placing their hives in the Coromandel and eastern Bay of Plenty areas during December–May. These regulations have now been relaxed, but commercial beekeepers are required to check that their bees are not gathering honeydew from toxic sources.

Toxic honey isn’t the only problem with PVHs. They’ve also been implicated in spreading diseases to cabbage trees, flaxes and strawberries, and are responsible for producing the honeydew that feeds the sooty moulds that ruin kiwifruit.

It’s time for these little hoppers to pack their swag, pick up some of their possum cobbers along the way and head back home.

Irrefutable evidence

A partially-flighted ratite has been reported from dense Fiordland rainforest. Scientist Dr B. M. Valentine made the discovery last week after hearing a doubtful sound which he rushed to investigate. ‘My first thought was that this was the squawk of the kiwi,’ he recalled, ‘and that was reinforced when I spied a hairy creature eating, rooting and leaving’. Raising his telephone to his blind eye, he next saw it perched in a rimu and was shocked when it alighted and glided a short distance on its stubby wings.

‘My first thought was that I would be categorised as a nut cake along with the believers of the Bealy Pub moa hoax, New Zealand otter or the Kaimanawa wall. But as a scientist I have a duty to report what I see and quite frankly I’m struggling. The individual bird may be a genetic aberration (or throwback) whereby previous traits of a species re-emerge generations later’. Dr Valentine stressed that his evening meal of forest-floor mushrooms had enhanced his eyesight, rather than causing any ill-effects after the fits had passed.

Global warming is likely to be implicated as native species adapt more rapidly to a changing environment. He felt that it ‘was a real kick in the teeth for creationists. Evolutionary pressures for these birds to fly are very strong. Introduced mustelids have now been here for hundreds of years – natural selection would favour those individuals that had some ability to to avoid predation.’ On reflection, Dr Valentine averred that the avian spectre ‘did not so much glide as plummet’ but this in no way compromised the validity of his observation.

When contacted today Valentine was planning a return trip to the area armed with a digital video. His evidence so far consists of one grainy image taken on his cellphone. A scientific paper will be forthcoming. Wiping the spittle from his foam-flecked lips, Dr Valentine gleefully observed that ‘that f****ng Te Ara is going to have to rewrite all its entries now’. Sic transit gloria mundi.

He said the kiwi was delicious.