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

The Wizard – an essential part of Christchurch's city life

Progress on Theme 5 of Te Ara – The Economy, Business and City Life – is now steaming ahead. The city part will feature entries on such topics as street life, city language and fashion, parades and protest marches. The first bunch of the 100 planned entries are now entering Te Ara’s ‘furnace’ to be carefully shaped and polished before being officially launched in late 2009.

In the meantime, you can find fascinating insights into the economic, social and cultural life of cities in the Places entries on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

It is perhaps no surprise to learn that property has been the basis of Auckland’s economy since 1840 – the first land sales bringing in a massive £555 per acre! Where there’s a bubble, it inevitably bursts. A long boom in the 1880s ended with a dramatic crash. The ‘father’ of Auckland, John Logan Campbell, was one of the few entrepreneurs to survive. He’d wisely diversified his property interests by moving into booze.

Wellington never went ahead until it was made the political capital in 1865. This reliance on the state sector makes the city susceptible to politicians’ cost-cutting knives.

Until the 1960s Christchurch was a farming town, experiencing the same booms and busts as its hinterland. Even now, its anniversary is not celebrated on the day it was founded, but on the first day of the annual Agricultural and Pastoral Show.

Auckland is sometimes derided for its flashiness and lack of culture, but the arts have always thrived in the city, which boasts annual festivals like Pasifika and artists like Che Fu.

With its susceptibility to earthquakes and wild weather, Wellingtonians like to think they live life ‘on the edge’. Coming into Wellington airport, passengers can sometimes be forgiven for thinking they’re about to fall off it.

Featuring cultured parks and fine buildings, Christchurch is said to be the most English of New Zealand’s cities. It has been suggested that it has an inclination for eccentricity – among its most famous residents are The Wizard and Mabel Howard, who will be forever remembered for her whopping bloomers.

We’ll be posting regular updates on our progress as we make our way through The Economy, Business and City Life.

At work in a radiocarbon-dating laboratory

A woman’s skull, found in Wairarapa in 2004, has been carbon dated as being 296 years old – plus or minus 34 years. Forensic scientists can tell from a skull’s morphology whether or not it was a Māori skull and whether it was a man or a woman, and the skull wasn’t that of a Māori.

This challenges New Zealand history, as there were no white settlers (male or female) here then. The first documented white women (Catherine Hagerty and Charlotte Badger, two escaped convicts from New South Wales) are thought to have arrived in 1806.

If the carbon dates and the forensic interpretation of the skull form are accurate, then a non-Māori woman, probably a European, was alive in Wairarapa around 1678–1746. This was 36–104 years after Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand in 1642 (he never landed) and at least 23 years before Cook’s first voyage in 1769!

So how can this be explained? Again assuming that the carbon dates and forensic interpretation are correct – is it possible that a Dutch (or some other) ship reached New Zealand between Tasman and Cook? The Dutch knew of New Zealand from Tasman, but, although they planned a follow-up voyage in 1643, this never occurred. The arrival of a ship between Tasman and Cook is of course pure speculation.

In terms of the recent carbon dating, it is only one skull and there are assumptions made with any analysis – that is why scientists couch their findings with words like ‘possibly a European female’ and ‘was probably Caucasian’.

The popular blobfish

Well, we wouldn’t say that we’ve ‘joined’ Wikipedia exactly. ‘Nestled alongside’ is a more apt description of what we’re planning.

The blobfish article in Wikipedia, which links back to an image of a blobfish in Te Ara’s entry on deep sea creatures, got us thinking. As interesting as blobfish are, there are so many other entries in Te Ara that could add value to Wikipedia entries.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be adding links on appropriate Wikipedia articles to relevant entries on Te Ara. We acknowledge and thank the Wikipedia community for letting us do this. Our aim is to enrich New Zealand content on Wikipedia. While Wikipedia beats us on sheer number of contributors, Te Ara’s strength lies in our ability to tell a cohesive, well-researched, well-written and informative story about New Zealand and its people, natural environment, history and culture.

Te Ara’s entry on Tītī and muttonbirding, for example, adds depth to the Wikipedia articles on the sooty shearwater and muttonbirding. It traces the history of muttonbirding in New Zealand, and explains the harvesting and processing of tītī. We even include a wonderful personal story from a woman who used to go out muttonbirding as a child with her family.

Our entry on Ranginui – the sky father is another great example of where our story goes beyond that told in Wikipedia’s entry on Rangi and Papa. Both entries tell of the parting of Rangi and Papa, but the Te Ara entry also tells of Ranginui’s role as knowledge and life, describes similar father figures in Polynesian mythology, and explains the role of Ranginui in creating the celestial bodies.

So the next time you are looking at a New Zealand Wikipedia article, check out the external links at the bottom. You might just get more of the story.