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

Confidence trickster Amy Bock – an early Tasmanian import

Have you ever seen those postcards with a map of New Zealand – showing the North Island, the South Island, and the West Island (Australia)? In Tasmania I saw postcards with Australia identified as ‘North Tasmania’. As this suggests, the attitude of Tasmanians to the mainland is not so different from the New Zealand attitude to its bigger brother.

But what about the relationship between New Zealand and Tasmania? In a tour of Te Ara I found many links. In the animal world, the forest-loving black possum is a Tasmanian import; and so is New Zealand’s most common frog.

Abel Tasman himself provides a first human link, sailing as he did between the island he named Van Diemen’s Land and the west coast of the South Island – he took 19 days.

Tasmanian aborigines had an even tougher  time of it than Māori in New Zealand once Europeans came to stay. But it’s striking to see parallels to the Ngāi Tahu experience – intermarriage, and the survival of muttonbirding on offshore islands through many generations. Those offshore islands also drew sealers and whalers – many of whom worked in both Tasmanian and New Zealand waters.

The convict experience differentiated the two colonies. For convict-free New Zealand, self-government in 1854 was a fairly easily gained status. However, for Tasmanians 1853, the year the transportation of convicts ended, was fundamental. Even the colony’s name was changed – from Van Diemen’s Land – as a way of burying the convict past.

Through the later 19th century, the human traffic went both ways. Tasmanian-born Gabriel Read, who made the first important gold strike in Otago in 1861, in fact spent most of his life on Tasmania, apart from four or so years in Otago.

Cross-dresser and confidence trickster Amy Bock also hailed from Tasmania (born in Hobart in 1859), as did trade unionist Stephen Boreham (born 1857). Retail baron John McKenzie was in business in Tasmania when he came on a motorcycling tour of New Zealand and decided to migrate, opening his first store in Dunedin in 1910.

People who crossed in the other direction included missionary son and New Zealand official George Clarke Jr, who was a church minister in Hobart from 1851 and, at the turn of the century, chancellor of the University of Tasmania for nine years.

Both premier Frederick Weld and governor Thomas Gore Browne did tours of duty as governor of Tasmania, the latter from 1861 to 1868, and the former from 1875 to 1880.

A more unusual ‘crossover’ was that of W. B. Perceval, New Zealand’s agent general in London from 1891 to 1896. Replaced without warning by William Pember Reeves, he served as agent general for Tasmania for another two years.

For the contemporary visitor to Tasmania there are reminders of New Zealand links. The British 99th Regiment, based in Hobart from 1846 to the 1850s, erected a memorial, still in the grounds of the Anglesea barracks, to the 24 of its number who died in fighting in New Zealand in 1845–46. (Jock comments: it’s Australia’s very first war memorial.)

There are Mawhera and Waimea streets in Hobart – and at the top of the latter a Waimea Heights primary school. Otago Bay is at one remove – named after the only ship ever commanded by mariner and novelist Joseph Conrad, which was broken up at the bay in 1931.

Tasmania, like New Zealand, has a settlement called National Park. When the park – now called Mount Field National Park – was established in 1916 it was the only one, just as Tongariro once was in New Zealand.

A recent theatrical link was Wellington actor Stuart Devenie’s performance in Geoff Chapple’s play on Joseph Hatch’s controversial exploitation of Tasmania’s remote Macquarie Island (1889 to 1920), which was performed to acclaim in Hobart in April 2009. A few months later, when I visited, a television reviewer was recommending the ‘quality Kiwi series’ Go girls, whilst a dress shop owner’s favoured label was that of Trelise Cooper of Auckland. And everyone seems to be wearing Kathmandu branded clothing - there are three outlets in Tasmania and countless others through the mainland states.

But one New Zealand product that you can’t find in Tasmania are our apples – though that’s not too surprising in this, the biggest apple-producing state in the Commonwealth.

Cross-posted on Lively.

Howard Morrison (far left) and the Howard Morrison Quartet, 1962

It’s a song that many throughout the world know. A song that was given to our local tongue by Howard Morrison when he sang ‘Whakaaria Mai‘ for the queen at a royal command performance in 1981. It’s a song that today is in my mind, and perhaps in the minds of many, as we remember Sir Howard Morrison, who died in Rotorua today, 24 September 2009, aged 74.

Known as ‘The Sinatra of New Zealand’ and ‘Ol’ Brown Eyes,’ he first came to prominence with the Howard Morrison Quartet in the 1950s and went on to establish himself as a successful solo performer. With a career spanning five decades, his influence extended beyond entertainment through to work with the Department of Māori Affairs and concern about achievement among young Māori.

Accolades followed him throughout his life. He was recognised first in 1976, becoming a member of the Order of the British Empire, and again in 1990 when he received a knighthood. When, in 2007, Dr Ngahuia Te Awekotuku (then Chair of Te Waka Toi) presented Sir Howard with the Te Tohu Tiketike a Te Waka Toi, she characterised Morrison as ‘Not just a great artist and entertainer but an outstanding New Zealander.’

With the closing lines of ‘Whakaaria Mai’, we remember you.

Ki kona au
Titiro atu ai
Ora, mate
Hei ahau koe noho ai

There I will be
looking
In life, in death
let me rest in thee

———-

For more on Sir Howard Morrison:
• biographies from NZHistory.net.nz and NZMusic.net.nz
• television clips from NZOnScreen and their discussion forum
• the New Zealand Herald obituary
• the cover of Te Ao Hou from March 1962, featuring the Howard Morrison Quartet, and the full-text article.

The man in black (photo courtesy of NZPA)

With a good All Blacks‘ win on the weekend, it’s worth reviewing the positives. Their victory over Australia in Sydney last month saw them retain the Bledisloe Cup. Additionally, a bet on the game in Sydney with our prime minister, saw the Aussie PM wearing the ‘All Black’ tie following Australia’s loss. Sportingly, he dressed in a dark suit that emphasised the silver fern on the tie.

The bet on the rugby illustrates the history between our countries. New Zealand was briefly governed from New South Wales, and the first two white women to settle in New Zealand were from Australia (both convicts).

We also have a history of humour. A somewhat apocryphal friend of mine, when was visiting Australia, was asked by a customs officer at Sydney airport if he had any criminal convictions.  ‘No!’ he replied. ‘Do you still need them to get in?’

Following the final tri-nations match against the Wallabies, I’ve put together a subjective list of the top 10 things we share with Australia.

Top 10 things we share with Australia

1. Australian Federation. New Zealand is included in the Australian constitution as one of its states. They asked us to become part of the Australian Federation, but our then premier, Richard Seddon, wouldn’t let God’s Own Country (as he called it) be swallowed up.

2. The Ditch (Tasman Sea). At various times they have crossed it in large numbers to settle here, and vice versa. Former prime minister Robert Muldoon quipped that New Zealanders moving to Australia raised the IQ of both countries. More recently this movement has prompted fears of a ‘brain drain’, though research by Treasury has suggested that it’s a ‘same drain‘.

3. Sheep. We have a lot of them, though we are getting less sheepish.  Australia’s unofficial anthem, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, is about a guy stealing a sheep.

4. Pavlova. Invented in New Zealand and claimed by Australia (or is it vice versa?)

5. Phar Lap. They have his skin and heart and we have his bones. (Outside Australasia that might be considered odd.)

6. The ‘underarm incident‘. (Reminds me of the ‘don’t mention the war‘ episode from Fawlty Towers)

7. The Bledisloe Cup. Gifted by former New Zealand governor general Lord Bledisloe.  He also gifted the Ahuwhenua trophy, and Waitangi treaty grounds to the nation.

8. The Southern Cross. Both countries have the Southern Cross on our respective national flags. Designed at around the same time, ours became official in 1902 while theirs became official in 1954. I can’t help thinking one of the flag designers was looking over the other’s shoulder when these flags were designed.

9. Possums. We got them from Australia and they ran rampant.  Ironically, indigenous Australians rediscovering the art of traditional possum fur cloaks have had to import our possum skins, as theirs are protected.

10. ANZAC Day. Past the joking and nose tweaking, our Aussie cousins share this day with us on 25 April.

Recently Te Ara made the biggest change since it launched. However, on the surface little has changed. This is part of a series of posts that will try to explain why it’s exciting for us and why we hope it’s exciting for you. We’ve broken the story into three parts: Te Ara past, present and future.

Te Ara present

In part one I talked about why Te Ara moved to the Drupal content management system (CMS). While we were messing around ‘out back’, we took the time to make some changes to the front. Ross listed them in his post but let’s take a closer look at what has changed.

Browse Te Ara
In the past the navigation around the Te Ara relied on people understanding the site’s structure:

Home » theme » sub-theme » story

Later we added this column browser to allow users to browse through our stories.

However, because of the technical limitations mentioned in part one, we could only easily add it to the home page. The old CMS also meant the listings had to be added by hand, rather than dynamically. Moving to Drupal enabled us to link the browser to the CMS and add it to every page on the site.

At the top of each story page is a button to ‘Browse Te Ara’ which, once clicked, will reveal the browser. This is now our primary navigation, and we can’t wait to see how people use it, the categories they browse, and their feedback.

Search
To see how we’ve improved our search, compare these two sets of results for ‘kiwi’:

You wouldn’t expect the story titled Australians being listed before the story devoted to kiwi would you? (And, when comparing the image and media search results, I noticed the old search listed the cheddarmaster before the brown kiwi!?) The results on the right are far more relevant, and they’re generated by Sphinx, Te Ara’s new search engine. This has been a long overdue improvement, and the much better search results continue to amaze those of us that use it everyday.

The Short Story
Every story in Te Ara also comes in a simpler, refined, easy read that we call the Short Story. The Short Story has changed in two ways. First, the button is now in the same position no matter what page you’re on.

Second, the old button opened the Short Story in a pop-up, which had its drawbacks. So we now use a technique called Lightbox to display the short story. This blog also uses Lightbox to display larger images. In fact, here’s an example of both.

New location of biographies

Biographies
Previously, story pages had a tab that listed relevant biographies from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (DNZB). We’ve now moved the links to relevant biographies to the bottom of the story page, above the footer. Currently, we display a thumbnail picture, name and what the DNZB people call ‘years of activity’ (usually their birth and death dates), but we’re hoping to add more information later … more about that in part three.

Tabs (above) vs Back to Story (below)

Tabs
The biggest change to the in-story navigation was the removal of the tabs. They seemed like a good idea, but whenever we watched people use the site, hardly anyone used the tabs and most didn’t even know they were there. Once we moved the biographies inside the story, the only purpose to the tabs was to switch between the images and the story. We decided a ‘Back to Story’ button, similar to Trade Me’s ‘Back to listing’ button, would be clearer, and more useful. Also, by freeing up the space, we could keep the short story button location consistent. However, out of all the changes, removing the tabs seems to be the most contentious amongst our users. What do you think? Do you prefer the tabs or the back to story button?

Other bits and bobs
Those are the biggest changes, but you may notice little tweaks like new icons and our new media series layout. Hopefully you haven’t seen our new 404 page, which unfortunately became quite popular while we were working the kinks out of our URL redirection thingamabob.

As I mentioned in the first part of this series, what matters is that a huge barrier has now disappeared and Te Ara can start evolving. But, other than the modifications we’ve already made during the migration, what is going to change? Where is Te Ara heading? I’ll let you know, what I can, in part three.

Subscribe to Signposts to make sure you don’t miss Part three – Te Ara future, a look at what’s next.

Last month we launched the Hawke’s Bay Places entry on Te Ara. I’m very fond of the Bay – I spent summers there when I was young with my parents and my mum’s family, and went to school there as a teen. When I think of Hawke’s Bay I envisage clear blue skies in any season, summer-scorched dry hills, and winter-white frosts, but let’s see what else makes Hawke’s Bay.

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