Southland swings
Posted 11 September 2008 // Ross Somerville
Hometown boy makes good – David Grant
Te Ara launched its coverage of Southland on Monday night, 8 September, with a celebration at Invercargill’s Civic Theatre. Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Mahara Okeroa cut the virtual ribbon.
Our friends at NZLive.com also put on a show. There was an excellent turnout – possibly partly because Jackie, NZLive.com’s manager, hails from Gore, and I think she invited all her relatives!
Author David Grant, who was raised in Southland, spent three months researching in the southern province. Te Ara General Editor Jock Phillips and Resource Team Leader Janine Faulknor also made field trips to capture some of the region’s highlights in digital form.
David says he particularly enjoyed writing about things that were uniquely Southland, like swedes, Bluff oysters and the rolling ‘r’. (’Good for picking up chicks’, says one hopeful Gore-ite in our rather cute video clip).
One of the nice things we’ve been able to do this time is to add a gallery of images from our Flickr group. Thanks to everyone who contributed!
This brings us to the midpoint of our Places coverage – 11 to go. Next up, The West Coast. Watch this space.
Never was it truer that cold temperatures go with a warm heart at Te Ara’s Southland launch on the evening of Monday September 8th. A Te Ara team of General Editor Jock Phillips, Regional Editor Malcolm McKinnon, Team Leader Resources Janine Faulknor and author David Grant (leaving the most important to last) flew down to Invercargill during the day.
The auguries were good – a local TV station taped an interview, both the Southland Express and the Southland Times were interested to hear what a bunch of Wellingtonians (well, David excluded as 14 of his first 17 years were spent in the deep south) made of their part of the world. We were ably supported by a communications team of Shona Geary and Tui MacDonald. (Tui had first visited Invercargill to meet up with her rugby-playing boyfriend now husband – wearing Auckland summer clothes! Amazing she lasted really, but she loved it and was happy to return.) Also with us was Gore-born Jackie Hay, Manager of NZLive.com..
The function kicked off in the magnificent Victoria room of the restored Civic Theatre with Frana Cardno, mayor of Southland district, saying a few words. Southland is the country’s largest district by a country mile, as it includes the whole of Fiordland and Stewart Island, and Cardno is obviously a glutton for punishment as she is the country’s longest-serving mayor. To return from a night function in Invercargill to her Te Anau home is nothing to her, and she had just returned from one of her regular visits to her Stewart Island ‘parishioners’.
The Associate Minister for Arts and Culture, Mahara Okeroa, ably launched the entry on behalf of the prime minister, and then it was the turn of Jock Phillips and David Grant to make their presentations. For David, garbed in a ‘Southland maroon’ shirt, it was an opportunity to ‘put back something into the community that raised him’. And, in a presentation that was both investigative and emotional, he did that in spades, giving Southland back to its people. They loved it – the images displayed crisply on a big screen and also David’s anecdotes – the Ranfurly Shield parade in Invercargill he attended in 1959 (better to recall than the immediate past weekend’s shield challenge loss to holders Auckland!); his account of meeting the 17-year-old girl who painted his father’s portrait in Trieste in 1945, 60 years on (the portrait features in the entry); and of the story of the H & H trucking company, part-founded by his grandfather. And perhaps the biggest laugh – showing how tolerant Southlanders are – came for the ‘Rolling r’ video, which exploring Southland’s distinctive accent.
We arrived as visitors, we felt by the time we left, we were family – well almost. We provided hospitality after the formal part of the proceedings but the warmth of the Southlanders’ welcome made them the true hosts.
Thank you Southland, from the Te Ara team
Malcolm McKinnon