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

It's your turn to add to Te Ara

We’ve just opened up an easy way for our community of users to interact with our Te Ara website.

There's a box to add your contributions at the bottom of every media page

On almost every media page – pages with images, sound files, videos, interactives, maps and graphs – you’ll now find a box where you can write a contribution (or comment) on the topic and post it to the website. The box is found at the foot of each media page. You’ll need to enter your name and email address before posting your contribution. (We won’t publish your email address or use it for any other purpose. It just helps us to ensure that there is a real person making the contribution, and not a robot or spam artist.)

It’s taken us a little while to get our heads around the best way to fit what you, our users, have to say into the context of the carefully researched and authoritative information our writers provide. So it’s been important to us to make it easy to distinguish what YOU’ve written from what WE’ve written.

Te Ara’s point of difference from publicly contributed sites such as the invaluable Wikipedia is exactly this transparency and the level of editorial control required to safeguard its status.

But we’re also trying to make the most of the extra riches that you, our community, are already adding to Te Ara by sending us your stories through the Your Story link that’s on every page.

We’ve had a lot of valuable, lively and fascinating little nuggets of information and colourful anecdotes submitted this way, but a lot of them don’t fit comfortably into the mould we’ve been using when we’ve published longer pieces on topics such as immigration experiences, bush yarns, disasters you’ve witnessed, or, most recently, stories about going to a country school. (You’ll find a complete list of them under ‘Your stories’ in the Te Ara browser.) We’ll now be able to publish these juicy morsels as comments.

This it isn’t our first foray into social media – Te Ara already tweets, blogs and flickrs – but it’s a bit more immediate than anything we’ve done before on the Te Ara site.

What we’re hoping for are contributions that will add value for other users of Te Ara. We’d welcome additional information and different points of view. We may edit some contributions, and we won’t necessarily publish them all. If you have a longer story to tell, or want to contribute images or other files, please use the Your Story link, or add images to our flickr pool.

A sketch of a planned memorial hall, which was part of an application for funding

I have to confess. I had a bad dose of the bug this weekend. It was a bit out of season, since it normally hits the population bad around Anzac Day. I caught it this weekend because I was in New Plymouth to take part in a panel discussion about Fiona Jack’s exciting exhibition at the Govett-Brewster, ‘Living Halls‘, on war memorial halls. Fiona has the bug real bad. She has spent over two years exploring the history of the halls.  There were also quite a number in the audience who seemed to be infected. They enthusiastically kept us talking about war memorials for almost two hours on a Saturday afternoon!

You’ve probably realised by now the nature of the bug. It is a strange affliction which makes its sufferers get terribly excited about concrete phallic objects, called war memorials. In bad cases the patients do everything in their powers to seek out new memorials.

I first caught the infection some 25 years ago. Chris Maclean and myself were writing a book on stained glass windows, and since we were travelling round the country with cameras, we thought photographing a few war memorials might make interesting subject matter for a calendar or a set of cards. It was when we looked at the slides later on a big screen that we both became infected. We realised that almost every memorial was different, and that an extraordinary amount of social energy had gone into thinking about every memorial’s location, symbolism and wording. But, try as we might, we were unable to spread the bug to others. My kids used to sigh with impatience every time I brought the car screaming to a halt and started burbling with excitement at the local sculpted soldier or cenotaph. Chris and I decided to write a book about the subject, but this also showed that the populace were as yet resistant. The Government Printer, on its last legs before disappearing, took a punt and printed about 1,500 copies of the book – The sorrow and the pride. It was not sound commercial judgement – they were obviously off-colour themselves. The book sold no more than about 200 copies. We decided to send one to every school in the country, but both Chris and myself were left with boxes unsold and unread.

Slowly the infection spread. When NZHistory.net.nz decided to use some of our photos and present a database of First World War memorials, we were astounded by the number of people who started to drive round their neighbourhood and systematically record on film the local memorials. The images started to roll in. People began writing to me regularly asking about particular memorials. It was not yet an epidemic, but the infection was starting to catch.

The people at the Govett-Brewster have got a bad case. Three gallery spaces are devoted to Fiona’s exhibition. In the first we see the work of largely realist artists from all round the country who were asked to paint their local memorial hall. They have done so with amazing devotion.

Paintings of war memorial halls around the country

In the second space Fiona has hung a series of ‘honour boards’ modelled on the boards which are often found in halls recording those who served and (marked with an asterisk) those who died from the district. Fiona’s boards list the halls in each province, with asterisks for those which have gone – died in the service of their community.

An 'honour board' of war memorial halls in the Manawatu–Whanganui region

The third gallery is the most striking of the lot. Fiona, by now well and truly a sufferer, examined the over 700 files of applications to the Department of Internal Affairs for subsidies for war memorial halls. She has reproduced beautifully, complete with the folds in the paper and the rubbings out, the sketches that were included in these applications. They are a wonderful expression of the folk art of late 1940s New Zealand. Here we see communities around the country planning a memorial hall where they might have euchre evenings, dances on Saturday night, and meetings of the Country Women’s Institute.

So watch out. The disease is loose; and if you visit the Govett-Brewster you will almost certainly get infected. But don’t worry too much, if you catch it. It is actually an affliction well worth having.

Postscript

The Govett-Brewster has kindly sent us some of the official images from the exhibition, which we’ve included below.

Deborah Illingworth, Mauku Victory Hall 2010 (detail, Fiona Jack: Living Halls). Courtesy Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Fiona Jack, Living Halls 2010 (detail). Courtesy Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Anne Smith, St Mary’s Peace Memorial Hall 2010 (detail, Fiona Jack Living Halls 2010). Courtesy Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Who knew that poet John Keats had a connection to New Zealand? Not me.

A couple of months ago I watched the movie Bright Star, directed by New Zealander (though overseas-based) Jane Campion. It’s about the relationship between Keats and his fiancée Fanny Brawne.

Brawne and Keats were interesting in themselves, but I found the most fascinating character in the movie to be Keats’s close friend Charles Brown. In the film version he’s an outspoken Scotsman who spars with Fanny Brawne, but who is devoted to his friend Keats and acknowledges his greater poetic talent. His spark is subdued somewhat after he gets the maid pregnant and finds himself a father.

Knowing Campion’s penchant for difficult men in her films, I wondered how much of her portrayal of Charles Brown was accurate. Well, apparently he wasn’t Scottish at all, but the basic facts of his friendship with Keats and other noted artists of the time are true. And, outside the scope of the movie, he ended up over here.

His son, also Charles Brown (sometimes called Carlino), is generally thought to have been illegitimate, though he himself said his parents had married in a secret ceremony. Charles Brown senior was a shareholder in the Plymouth Company, which colonised New Plymouth, and felt that his son (then 17) would have better prospects as a civil engineer in New Zealand. So father and son both emigrated. Wikipedia notes that when Charles Brown senior arrived in New Zealand, ‘his disappointment was profound. Unlike its namesake in England, this Plymouth was wilderness, with a treacherous coast instead of a harbour. He proposed an early return to England.’

An idealised New Plymouth, to encourage settlers. Charles Brown senior begged to differ.

Instead, Charles Brown senior died in New Plymouth, aged 55, of that Victorian ailment, an apoplectic fit. His ambitions for his son were fulfilled, however, as Charles Brown junior rose to become one of New Plymouth’s (and New Zealand’s) leading citizens.

Apparently more practical than his poetically minded father, he’d brought a sawmill with him, and set up his first company. In 1853 he became the first superintendent of the Taranaki province, responsible for instituting the provincial system of government. He was later elected to the House of Representatives and was even colonial treasurer (the modern equivalent is the minister of finance), though only very briefly (May–June 1856).

Outside of politics, he continued with his business interests, including founding and running the Taranaki News newspaper, and served in the Taranaki militia. He married twice, and had several children, including a son he named Charles Keats Brown.

When retired, he used his knowledge of Māori language as an interpreter in the New Plymouth Police Court. He died on 2 September 1901, aged 81, on his way home from interpreting a case, when he was struck by a train on New Plymouth’s main street.

Despite the distance, Charles Brown junior and his descendents kept their Keatsian connection alive by donating Keats memorablia to the Keats House museum. The museum is the house in Hampstead that Keats and Charles Brown senior had shared during Keats’s most productive time; the time Campion portrays in Bright Star.

The West Coast celebrates 150 years

Recently, the West Coast celebrated its sesquicentennial – 150 years since the Arahura Deed of Purchase was signed at Māwhera Pā (near the present Greymouth railway station) between James Mackay and Poutini Ngāi Tahu chiefs from all over the region on 21 May 1860. The sale covered the entire West Coast region, from Kahurangi in the north to Milford Sound in the south. Hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, with little habitable land, the region has long had a distinctive identity as frontier bushland. Attracted by the lure of gold, miners swarmed over the country from late 1864 onwards, and provided the first wave of settlers – English, Irish, Scots, and later Chinese.

In celebrating the jubilee, Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn said, ‘The West Coast has a rugged beauty and unforgiving nature, which has taken its toll. We need to celebrate what it has made us – a close-knit community.’

Last year Te Ara launched its coverage of the West Coast region as part of the Places theme. As author of the West Coast entry, I found it fascinating to travel around this region where I had worked for many years, and notice the changes in the first decade of the 21st century. Mining still remains an important part of the culture, with widespread public support. Technology has replaced much of the manual work of mining in modern mine sites such as Stockton, Pike River, and Reefton’s Globe opencast.

Dairy farming is now big business, with year-round rainfall and moderate temperatures meaning that grass grows vigorously without the need for irrigation. A distinctive West Coast innovation has been the development of humping-and-hollowing, which stops flat land from becoming waterlogged and pugged by cows walking on it.

Fox Glacier, painted by Premier William Fox in 1872

Tourism is the third leg of the regional economy, which has boomed in recent years as many overseas visitors travel to visit the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers as well as other attractions such as the Pancake Rocks and the Ōpārara caves.

In the last year there have been some interesting changes on the West Coast:

• Shantytown curator Julia Bradshaw has published the first account of Chinese on the West Coast. Much of our knowledge of Chinese miners previously came from research in Otago, but now they are commemorated with Chinatown in the Shantytown complex.

• A Museum of Working Class History was opened in Blackball on Mayday 2010. This follows the successful centennial of the 1908 crib time strike, celebrated in 2008.

• A major upgrade to the Brunner Mine Industrial Site has recently been opened, including a kilometre-long walking track around the site.

• Kete West Coast has been launched to capture and preserve the historical and current memories, pictures and documents of West Coast people and events.

Today we officially launch the first three stories in our new theme, ‘Social Connections’. This is the first time we have begun drip-feeding new entries as they are ready. For our previous themes we prepared all 100 stories and then launched them on an unsuspecting world in one huge splurge. This provided a good excuse for a celebratory launch; but 100 new stories is quite a lot to take in. There were many fine ones which got lost in the deluge.

So now we have changed tack. We have learned that the web is an ever-moving beast, and unless you keep moving you do not get noticed. We are also hoping that by presenting no more than three stories at a time each one may get savoured at leisure and enjoyed. Hopefully people will be more encouraged to send in their personal accounts of the subjects we are covering. We do not expect to release all the new material in this way. We will probably launch about 30 of the new stories, before we have a formal launch of the remaining content. But at least it will give you all a sense of the areas we are covering and whet the appetite for more.

The three stories we are launching today give some sense of the range to be covered in the theme:

• Atheism and Secularism may seem a strangely negative way to start ‘Social Connections’. The theme is about the links people have with one another through family or voluntary organisations including organised churches. It is not quite so strange to begin with this story when you realise that in the 19th century atheism itself was in effect a surrogate church with regular meetings and preaching. By the 21st century atheism had really become secularism – a lack of religious belief.  By 2006 almost 1.3 million New Zealanders professed to have no religion – over a third of the population. So in a back-handed way the story in effect provides a quick overview of the history of religion in New Zealand.
• Childhood is a most appropriate place to begin our study of the New Zealand family. In essence the story  explores the question as to whether, and when, New Zealand was ‘a great place to bring up children’. Expect later stories about adolescence, mid-life adults and old people.
• Cultural go-betweens initiates our study of the relationships between different ethnic groups.  This story spans a long and fascinating history of those people who have tried to interpret Māori to Pākehā and vice versa. It begins with Cook’s Tahitian navigator Tupaia and ends with two recent cultural giants, James K. Baxter and Michael King.

Enjoy these new stories and keep your eyes out for new ones on the way.