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

Just over a month ago, inspired by all the things we heard at Webstock, Te Ara joined Twitter. Some of you have already found us there. If you haven’t you can check us out at: http://twitter.com/Te_Ara.

Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a forum for micro-blogging. Each ‘tweet’, or post, is a maximum of 140 characters. You can follow other ‘twitterers’ and other twitterers can follow you.

If you haven’t tried Twitter (as I hadn’t) you possibly think it’s a bunch of attention-deficient people telling each other mundane facts about their lives (as I did). And I’m sure that’s sometimes true (as this video suggests).

But it can also be a way of making connections, learning about new cool things, and letting other people know about cool things – and all in a minimal amount of time. Because tweets are so short, they take hardly any time to write or read.

What is Te Ara doing on Twitter?

Te Ara’s Twitter account is managed by Heath, our lead designer. A few times a day he tweets things like:

• interesting facts
• links to weird and wonderful pictures, videos or other resources
• links to new blog posts
• behind the scenes goings-on at Te Ara
• links to Te Ara content related to news stories
• replies to other twitterers
• other random things we think might be of interest.

So how’s it going?

Very well, thank you. We’ve found a community of people to talk with, and a bunch of other cultural organisations to hang out with, such as:

• NZHistory.net.nz
• NZLive.com
• The National Library of New Zealand
• Te Papa
• NZ On Screen
• The Big Idea
• Brooklyn Museum
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Good company to find ourselves in, don’t you think?

Vegemite

Even when I’m not working, no matter how hard I try, I don’t seem to be able to stop myself when it comes to commenting on, or acting on, something that I notice has been designed.

Or perhaps I’m just the perfect consumer. We had both Marmite and Vegemite at home in November, but I wanted to buy Momite – for Movember. I’m unashamedly influenced by labels, product packaging and advertising … and I get to work on images like these in Te Ara.

Sure to rise

I love both new and retro-styled products: like Vim, The Edmonds cookery book, Paramo, and this gem of an ad proclaiming less work for women. I wish!

I guess the thing with ephemera is that the best of it is loved beyond the original intended audience and lifespan. Don’t you want to hang this poster up in your home?

Dry white wine please

And this awesome poster reminds me of the ones that you might find hanging in the office of Murray Hewitt – Deputy Cultural Attaché for the New Zealand Consulate in New York city. I think it would be equally at home in my living room.

Images like this Yates’ garden annual are similar to the pictures in my mum’s scrapbook, which she created when she was a girl in the early 50s, and that I continued when I was young. The scrapbook was full of the only colour pictures she could get then – often labels from canned food – cut out meticulously, and carefully arranged on the page. Perhaps she used the Yates’ garden annual for pictures too – because those flat-looking veges seem very familiar.

Radishing design

The annual is my favourite because it captures a sense of nostalgia for me – like my other favourites I’ve mentioned – but it also makes me think that I too could be a designer.

Art deco for the art deco fans

Recently I had the good fortune to visit Hawke’s Bay because I’m writing about this region for Te Ara’s ‘Places‘ theme. It wasn’t a research trip as such, rather an exploratory tour. When you’re studying a place, its people and environment, it’s essential to go there and experience it first hand – especially if you’re an outsider to the place, like I am. I can do a lot of research from Wellington, but I learned that personal observation is an important way of making the desk-based research process real.

One of the best things I did on my trip was spend some time exploring rural Hawke’s Bay. As art deco fans arrived in Napier, aboard their vintage cars, I left in my Toyota Corolla rental for the back blocks. I spent one day driving along the east coast, and another up the Taihape road, and then over to State Highway 5, stopping at the settlements along the way. I hardly saw another person during these two days, so I relied on personal observation as a way of gathering information.

On the way back down SH5 I saw a road heading towards the Maungaharuru Range marked by a heritage site sign, so I decided to head down it. I found myself going up hill and down dale along a winding, narrow gravel road, through forestry and farming country, and Department of Conservation reserves.

Road to nowhere?

My roadmap was pretty basic, and I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going. I prayed I wasn’t heading for a dead end (this happened the day before down the coast, when I mistook a four-wheel-drive track on the map for a road). I was a bit disconcerted to see regular signs warning me to watch out for logging trucks, but as it turned out I was the only person on the road that afternoon.

Though you’re never really that far from signs of human life in Hawke’s Bay, I was struck by the relative isolation of much of the region. The accounts I’d read about lonely farming wives and the back-breaking task of turning forested hill country into (often barely profitable) farms made complete sense. The gravel roads that populate the rural districts provide a tangible link to these past lives, and still makes a trip to town for some farming families (and visiting writers) a moderate expedition in 2009.

The signpost to civilisation

I was very pleased when I came across the squiggle on the map that was the road out of the ranges and down to Tutira on State Highway 2. By this stage the shearing shed and flock of sheep I drove past was a welcome sign of civilisation.

I never did come across that heritage site. But I saw and learned enough during my drive along this road, and others like it, to make my expeditions worthwhile.

Time for a revival of morris dancing?

Today, on St Patrick’s Day, I wish my Irish mates good cheer, and praise their energy and old-country loyalty in keeping the day alive in New Zealand.

But, where are our English and Scottish mates, who between them constituted over three-quarters of New Zealand’s Pākehā? How come March 17 is a widely recognised annual ritual, but 23 April (St George’s Day) and November 30 (St Andrew’s Day) is not?

There was a time, before the First World War, when the banks closed and lawyers had a holiday on these days; but there was never much public interest. Papers Past – that wonderful treasure trove of 19th century newspapers – has only 13 search results for St George’s Day, and 126 for St Andrew’s Day; but 222 for St Patrick’s Day.

For a time, Scottish sawmillers in Canterbury celebrated St Andrew’s Day, and the trains in Otago offered cheap return fares – primarily to allow people to attend Caledonian sports. But such celebrations died out by the 1920s; while St George’s Day, which was always much weaker in its observance, may have been finally killed by its proximity to Anzac Day.

But St Patrick’s Day, which featured large crowds attending sports and watching processions in the late 19th century, has undergone an impressive revival in the last 20 years. The beer has flowed green, there have been processions through towns, and few people are unaware that today is for the Irish.

Why the difference, you ask? Perhaps it is just that us Scots and English are a lazy phlegmatic lot. Perhaps it is that because we were so long in a majority we felt little need to celebrate our heritage – and, anyway, with Empire Day, and then Queen’s Birthday, our imperial heritage was commemorated. Another factor was that over half the Irish were Roman Catholic, and the object of considerable suspicion. St Patrick’s Day was a way expressing some pride in the Irish cause.

But when we look at the way the Chinese celebrate the Chinese New Year, the Hindu community holds their festival of lights (Diwali), the Pacific community has their Pasifika festival, and Māori are reviving Matariki (Māori New Year), surely us stick-in-the mud Anglo-Saxons should get off our butts and celebrate our heritage. A bit of morris dancing would do us all a power of good!

NZHistory.net.nz

Ten years ago today Jack Elder (remember him?), who was Minister of Internal Affairs, clicked the mouse to launch NZHistory.net.nz. At the time this was an initiative of the Heritage Group of the Department of Internal Affairs – a quickly forgotten grouping which pulled together the historical and heritage activities of the department, including the National Archives, as it was then.

The website largely drew on the energies and staff of the old Historical Branch and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (DNZB). Jamie Mackay from the DNZB was the moving spirit. The launch featured a really whizzy interactive of Richard Pearse’s plane. Initially, the site was seen primarily as a virtual shop window for our historical publications.

Well the Heritage Group has joined the dustbin of history; National Archives has become Archives New Zealand – an independent department; the Historical Branch has become the History Group in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and the DNZB will shortly become part of Te Ara, also in the ministry. But Jamie Mackay remains the webmaster extraordinaire; and the creativity that he and the team showed then has gone from strength to strength. And NZHistory.net.nz now offers an extraordinarily varied menu covering all of New Zealand history.

Among the features of NZHistory.net.nz that I particularly enjoy are:

• Anzac Day: the site has always been a treasure-trove of material commemorating the Gallipoli landings and the Great War on the Western Front (see especially the great exhibition on Passchendaele). For years there was a huge spike in visitor numbers towards the end of April, although now the content is so rich now that it receives over 100,000 visitors a month during most of the year.
• Today in history: a daily snippet on fascinating events in New Zealand’s past. Today, for example, the site tells us that on this date in 1940 the country began marketing Jockey Y-fronts. Us Kiwi males could now relax – there was ‘no bunching discomfort at the crutch’ and a ‘no-gape opening’.
• Disasters: There is a great series on New Zealand disasters, from Tangiwai to the 1918 flu epidemic.
• Transport: I love the fascinating series of pieces about railways, which drew on Neill Atkinson’s fine book Trainland.
• The Classroom: This provides a guide to teachers on how to use the material on the site for class activities.
• Memorials register: This register began from the photographs and database I compiled with Chris Maclean about New Zealand memorials of the First World War. But it has since grown like topsy, with many people getting the ‘memorial bug’ and contributing both photos and comments to the site. Today, for example, the site received a note to say that Eli Cropper, whose name appears on the memorial commemorating the victims of the Wairau affray in 1843, should actually be Eli Crapper.

So congratulations to NZHistory.net.nz from Te Ara. You have been a great companion on this strange web journey and you have taught us heaps.

As for the rest of you, take a look at the site and tell us your favourite pages.