I am quite serious. This anguished plea has been exchanged across the garden fences in my neighbourhood over the last few weeks. It’s hardly the right sentiment for Christmas; so let me explain the outbursts.

I live in Mt Cook, no more than a quarter of an hour’s walk to the centre of Wellington (if that is how you describe Courtenay Place). For years we have had very little bird life except for a few cheeky blackbirds (which, incidentally, are actually brown if female). Over the last year or so the native birds have started appearing – fantails, kereru, we have even heard the screech of a kākā, and many, many tūī. To a botanical nationalist like myself this was a cause for joy. We discussed explanations – the planting of native trees which provide food, the establishment of the Karori sanctuary (now ‘Zealandia’) closeby, and, most likely, the effective attack on the region’s possum population. For a time we smiled smugly about this development.

Several weeks ago the smiles began to disappear. There is one particular  tūī which sits high in the branches of a pōhutukawa tree nearby and emits a sound. It can’t really be called ‘singing’; it’s more like a single grunting hoot. Sometimes there are five hoots, sometimes seven, and if you are really unlucky there are nine. The hooting begins at about 3.30 a.m. in the cold of the morning when all of life’s worries descend on you; and it continues never ending until about 11.00 p.m. I know  tūī are a national icon, the symbol of Forest and Bird and used to sell objects from beer to lip balm. And a  tūī singing is meant to be one of life’s glories; but this is far worse than the proverbial dripping tap. We even tried taking a cellphone outside with a nice tune in the hope that the  tūī might imitate it, but the bird is obviously stone deaf. The whole street is desperate, driven demented by lack of sleep. Hence the anguished plea.

Now this puts me in a rather difficult situation. After all, I have long gone on record as seeing imported birds and plants as pernicious imperialists who should be driven from the land to allow our sacred natives to flourish. When Maggy Wassilieff attacked the Levin community for replacing its roses with flaxes, I instead applauded. I was aware, of course, from Te Ara that New Zealand species can be scourge in other places. I secretly enjoyed the fact that flaxes had overrun Tristan da Cunha, that our flatworm was eating through Britain’s rolling meadows and that the New Zealand mud-snail had spread through the rivers of the United States. That seemed a fair enough revenge for us who had suffered from invaders like gorse and stoats. It was unthinkable that native plants and birds could be a scourge in their own land. Now I found myself having secret thoughts to bring back the possums and the blackbirds. Cutting down the pōhutukawa has even entered the mind.

I hope you can forgive me for this confession in these days of Christmas cheer; and spare a generous thought for the sleepless encyclopedia editor hoist by his nationalist petard.

Just recently our blog turned two years old. Happy second birthday Signposts! This event, together with the fast-approaching end of the year, led me to undertake an unashamed hit quest for the top 10 blog posts (hitwise) since Signposts was first erected. To make you read to the bottom I’ll start from the tenth most popular and work my way down.

What are the top posts on Signposts?

10. North Island and South Island

‘What is a in a name?’ wrote Shakespeare, and it’s something the Geographic Board is trying to answer over Māori names for the North and South islands. The recently released decision about how to use Wanganui/Whanganui is another example. Not since the 1890s, when Taranaki politician Edward Metcalf Smith used to introduced himself by saying, ‘Hi Ham He Hem Smith’ (I am E. M. Smith), has there been such uncertainty in New Zealand about whether to use an ‘h’ or not.

9. In plain English

Ross writes how Te Ara won the Writemark New Zealand Plain English Award. Not only is it nice to win awards, it’s nice that blog followers are interested. To paraphrase Sally Field, ‘You like us, you really like us!’

8. City slogans: the bad and the ugly

In this blog, Kerryn highlighted when good slogans go bad. Two examples were, ‘Hamilton, more than you’d expect’ and ‘You matter in Matamata.’ A T-shirt company has it’s own cheeky versions including, ‘Hamiltron, City of the Future‘ and ‘What’s the Matamata with you bro?’.

The phrase associated with Paeroa (and L&P) ‘World famous in New Zealand‘ is part of a trademark application by Coca Cola being fought by a Paeroa man who argues it is part of the kiwi venacular. However, the ‘World famous in …’ phrase dates at least to 1971 when Mordecai Richler wrote, ‘world-famous — in Canada‘ to mock Canadian celebrities.

7. War of the roses

Jock and Maggy had a battle royale over whether roses or flax were better after the Horowhenua District Council decided to remove 300 roses which were costing $400,000 to maintain, and to replant with flax and native grasses. The argument was billed as horticultural imperialism versus horticultural chauvinism. Controversy saw this blog popping up the charts.

6. What’s your favourite New Zealand book?

Helen asked for readers to tell us what their favourite New Zealand book is, and why. I have a couple but my favourite is still Maurice Gee’s The Half-Men of O, which was read to my primary school class by our teacher.

Like city slogans, this is a topic that people are interested in and carry an opinion.

5. Did Neanderthals speak like New Zealanders?

Helen discusses the finding that Neanderthals pronounced vowels all the same, something New Zealanders are often accused of doing . Though a popular post, I’m sure it won’t help Kiwi’s get over their cultural cringe at the Kiwi accent.

4. A beginner’s guide to finding Matariki

The interest in this blog reflects the growing interest in Matariki. This blog gets its most significant traffic each year running from May through to July.

3. Don’t be a turkey

Carl’s Christmas blog was anything but a turkey, and keeps bumping up large over Christmas. This has started to jump up the ladder with Christmas on the way.  (As has Classic Kiwi Christmas carols.)

2. Classic television commercials

Helen sought views on our favourite commercials. A number of our best directors cut their teeth on commercials with the Fair Go Ad Awards formerly being our equivalent of the Golden Globes. Everyone has a favourite ad, mine being the Trumpet togs or undies one.

1. Who wants to be a millionaire, Julia?

Our own resident quizmeister, Julia, had been training for the Who wants to be a millionaire show.

So, with her as contestant, and Heath as a Mike Hoskings stand-in, the questions were played out over the comments section through the course of a day. It was unusual in that the majority of the content was contained in the comments section. It was one of my personal favourites as it played out like a conversation.  So did Julia become a millionaire?  You’ll have to read it to find out.

The ever-present Mt Taranaki

Last Friday (11 December) local MP Jonathan Young clicked the mouse on the Taranaki section of our Places theme to launch it in front of over 120 enthusiastic locals.

Whenever we launch a Places entry we talk up the distinctiveness of the region – in this case it was an easy job. Perhaps you can blame it on the mountain, which shapes the landscape and the culture in unique ways. The new entry includes a lovely series showing how Mt Taranaki has entered into local culture.

Even before we launched the new section, Taranaki had already made its presence felt in Te Ara. A search revealed 231 images of the region already on the site, and uncovered some interesting Taranaki facts. Taranaki was:

• the modern birthplace of non-violent civil disobedience (at Parihaka in 1881)
• the most English part of New Zealand in the 19th century – many of the new arrivals came from Devon and Cornwall (Plymouth is a Devon port)
• the home of early New Zealand surfboards made by Nigel Dwyer of Taranaki Hard Core fame
• New Zealand’s hydro-carbon province
• the birthplace of the petrol-driven milking machine and, 50 years later, the rotary milking platform
• the site of a couple of New Zealand’s classic pets stories. Rastus the cat cruised the highways perched on the handlebars of his owner’s motorbike and wearing his own custom-made goggles and helmet, and red bandanna. Colin’s the cat, who lived at Port Taranaki, was accidentally taken to South Korea on a methanol tanker. After a mid-ocean transfer was rejected as too dangerous, a pet food company paid for her to be flown back to New Zealand.

Historian Ron Lambert, who wrote the Taranaki entry, is a dedicated local and he went above and beyond the call of duty to make the Taranaki story richer. Just one example – we wanted a photograph of the famous youthful soldier on the Inglewood war memorial, which stands in front of the largest rhododendron in the Southern hemisphere, and we wanted the plant to be in flower. So we asked Ron if he knew where we might find such a photograph. An hour later we had one – Ron had driven out to Inglewood, taken the photo, and sent it back by email.

Through Ron’s dedication and the knowledge he gained through his lifelong interest in Taranaki history, we are now able to present many more unique facets of Taranaki. They include:

• the Taranaki gate, which Ron surveyed in 2002
• the ferocious boxthorn hedges
• the gold-striped gecko
• Taranaki ‘wool’, the ‘Jew’s ear’ fungus, which was the region’s greatest export in the 1880s
• Broome and McKendrick’s Swanndri bush shirt
• the weird small-town dramas of novelist and jazz-musician Ronald Hugh Morrieson
• the amazing ‘Beehive house’ constructed of hexagonals by the eccentric E. R. Brewster
• the signs that warn newcomers of the levels of facial eczema.

So next time you plan to head up (or down) to the ‘Naki, take a look at Te Ara first and get some background on the place like nowhere else.

Will the free-range dairy cow become a thing of the past?

There is a stoush down south in the Mackenzie Country – a large basin that has traditionally been the preserve of dryland pastoral farming and tourism. There are plans to house around 17,000 dairy cows under cover for up to eight months of the year in 16 large farms.

Critics call it industrial farming that could hurt New Zealand’s farming and tourist reputation (the proposed farms’ locations are close to Lake Ōhau and Ōmarama). Proponents say that the sheds will have little environmental impact as the effluent can be collected from the concrete floor and then diluted and spread back onto the land to fertilise it.

This proposal is another step in a trend that began in the 1980s which has seen dairy farming spread from traditional strongholds such as Waikato and Taranaki into other areas, even into dryland sheep farming areas in Canterbury and elsewhere. Critics say that the farmers are profiting at the cost of the environment. On the other hand the industry is a vital export earner.

Such proposals go through the resource consents process of the Resource Management Act, where the focus is on reducing, mitigating or avoiding any adverse effects of proposed developments rather than prescribing what type of activities are appropriate in a given area.

This proposal is interesting as it raises water rights, water quality, farm intensification and animal welfare issues all in a setting that has been recognised for its natural landscape features.

Is intensive dairying appropriate in a setting such as the Mackenzie Country, which takes its name from a sheep rustling rogue?