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

The memorial to those who died in the 1896 Brunner mine explosion

The explosion at the Pike River mine near Greymouth is a sad reminder that underground coal mining will always be highly dangerous work. Wherever there is coal there is also likely to be methane, or firedamp as miners call it. Methane is given off by coal and is highly combustible.

Te Ara’s entry on coal and coal mining lists the major losses of life from mining accidents in this country, all but two of them caused by explosions from firedamp. The major disasters were:

• Kaitangata in south Otago, 1879, when 34 miners died from an explosion.
• Brunner on the West Coast, 1896, when 65 were killed from choking gas. This was the largest death toll from any New Zealand industrial accident.
• Ralph’s mine, Huntly, 1913, when a firedamp explosion killed 43.
• Dobson mine on the West Coast, 1926, when an explosion killed 9.
• Glen Afton mine, Huntly, 1939, when 11 were asphyxiated by carbon monoxide.
• Strongman mine, also on the coast, 1967, when 19 died following an explosion.

Yet, although the scale of these accidents is horrifying, our entry reminds us that in fact many miners, perhaps more in total, have died through individual accidents than in the mass tragedies. From 1900 to 1914, 98 individual miners lost their lives.  We also include a list of individual mining deaths at Denniston north of Westport.  It shows that in the 25 years from 1881 to 1906, 26 people died from mining – more than one a year.  Some were killed by falls of rock or coal; others lost their lives on the famous incline, hit by runaway trucks or in the case of Charles Ribey, by ‘a moment of absent-mindedness’.  Only one lost his life from an explosion of the type which caused the mass explosions.

With danger of accident and death ever-present, the coal mines spawned a tight and protective community, which the present tragedy has again highlighted.

At this time all our sympathies are with the families and friends of the 29 miners at Pike River.

In the Sunday paper a couple of weeks ago was an article about jaded Ponsonby types upping sticks for new lives in the country. On her journey to visit one of these city refugees the journalist described driving into the Te Awamutu back country and praying that ‘the Navman doesn’t let me down because there’s no one around to ask for directions.’ (Sarah Murray. ‘See ya, city’, Sunday: Sunday Star Times Magazine, 7 November 2010, p. 15). Incredulous, I spluttered through my Weet-Bix: ‘Why not use a bloody map then!?’

Will maps such as this become obsolete?

But I quickly realised I was on the wrong side of history. In the pre-Navman world the absence of a road map might have been explained along gender lines. In preparing for a trip beyond city limits, the average Kiwi bloke used to stuff his car glovebox full of maps procured from the AA. In the ‘unlikely event of an emergency’ – getting lost – the male driver could rifle through his maps and eventually reset his course. (The idea of asking directions from a stranger was too humiliating and emasculating to even contemplate.) Conversely, in the same situation, the average Kiwi sheila thought nothing of pulling over to the side of the road and getting pointed in the right direction by a helpful local.

I saw how this works as a kid when, having successfully travelled the length of the North Island in our trusty Holden station wagon, we arrived in Mangōnui and were unable to find the summer bach we’d hired. Mortifyingly for him, Dad’s glovebox library had no local street plan. After driving aimlessly through the settlement – some streets had no signs – he finally conceded to Mum’s pleading to pull over. While she chatted to the stranger, Dad slouched in his seat, his manhood slipping away.

This valuable lesson in Kiwi gender politics will soon be denied to new generations. When even the testosterone-loaded stars of Top gear use Navmans to navigate through Britain, we can only conclude that the days of the road map are numbered. Furthermore, with the Navman directing us right or left, it is inevitable that our map reading skills will decline. It might well be that future Kiwi kids will view any of the (so far) 325 maps on Te Ara with total bemusement.

On the plus side, with the Navman up on the dashboard, there’s more room for lollies in the glovebox.

The latest crop of Te Ara entries are a mixed bunch. So, rather than try to find some tenuous connecting thread, we’ll give them each their own time in the sun, with a different Te Ara writer introducing them.

Religion and society

Religion and society
by John Stenhouse

New Zealand has sometimes been described as the most unreligious country in the world. Certainly in 2006 more than a third of the population professed no religion or a secular world view; and for over 150 years New Zealand has had no established state church.

Yet, in the ‘Religion and society’ entry John Stenhouse points out just how important religion has been to New Zealand experience. We had no established church because no one denomination could command a majority; but until 1920 over 90% of European New Zealanders claimed to belong to a Christian denomination, and two-thirds of all children went to Sunday school. Māori were no less religious, regularly attending European churches or their own forms of religion, including Ringatū or Rātana.

John Stenhouse also points out that religion was a major influence in some of New Zealand’s great social movements, such as votes for women, prohibition, and the welfare state which many in the Labour party saw as ‘applied Christianity’. During the years before and after the First World War tensions between Catholics and Protestants were a major source of social conflict. When the Social Connections theme is complete, there will be separate entries on the major denominations; but to put them in a wider context, this entry makes a superb beginning.

Jock Phillips

Te whānau tamariki – pregnancy and birth

Te whānau tamariki – pregnancy and birth
by Hope Tupara

Te whānau tamariki – pregnancy and birth examines traditional and contemporary practices surrounding birth in Māori communities. It looks at those atua or deities associated with births in mythology including Ranginui and Papatūānuku, the primal parents, Hineahuone, who was the first woman formed from the earth who gave birth to the first child, and Hineteiwaiwa. It refers to the common practice of the whenua (placenta) being returned back to whenua (the land) following birth. Particular highlights are the beautiful illustrations by Robyn Kahukiwa, Warren Pohatu, and Adam Williams and Joshua Watene.

Basil Keane

Victims of crime

Victims of Crime
by Nancy Swarbrick

I am fortunate never to have been a victim of crime, so researching this entry was a sobering experience. Reading newspaper accounts of serious confrontational crimes such as assaults, rapes and murders, I was horrified and saddened at what victims – and often they included the primary victim’s family and friends – had to go through. The crime itself was often just the start of a long-drawn-out ordeal, in which victims relived the trauma, first through often prurient media coverage, and then through the trial. I was shocked to discover that not so long ago, victims of crime received very little, if any, consideration or help. The justice system aimed instead to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused person and punish offenders on behalf of society. My entry traces the growing awareness of victims’ needs and the development of schemes to provide support and practical assistance for them. It also points out the range of issues that they still face.

Nancy Swarbrick

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A month or so back I headed into the hills of South Westland – the Mataketake Range near Paringa to be precise. Accompanying me were brother Walrond (a geologist not a member of the clergy), Grant (ex-bureaucrat), Kennedy (founding editor of New Zealand Geographic) and his son Jeremy (one-time online gamer now Capoeira enthusiast).

The purported reason? To find a mica mine of the 1940s (or perhaps to escape domestic bliss and enjoy some ‘wild congress with nature’ as someone worth quoting once described it). Mica occurs in flat sheets looking like cellophane, and many sheets occur as ‘books’ – large overlapping sheets.

A sheet of muscovite mica

We set off down the Haast–Paringa cattle track and soon arrived at the Blue River Hut (also known as Blowfly Hut). From here we bush-bashed upstream past a bluff and camped for the night. The next morning we climbed trying to find the mine site in the bush (we never did). But on the tops, hassled by three kea, we managed to find some pegmatites (dykes containing large crystals) with mica books – enough to fashion a pair of lenses.

Kea

During the 1940s mica was deemed an essential strategic war mineral, and was used by the Allies for making sparkplug washers in aircraft engines. In 1944 New Zealand’s overseas supply from India failed and the Radio Corporation of New Zealand needed mica for manufacturing radio condensers for the domestic market. Some 1.5 tonnes was mined from the Mataketake Range for this purpose.

We wound up back at Blowfly Hut a few days later by way of the cattle track. For close to a century this was South Westland’s only overland link to the outside world – some 50,000 cattle were driven along it between 1875 to 1961.

When the Governor Lord Onslow and Minister for Works Richard Seddon came this way in 1892, they smeared themselves in ‘camphorated lard’ to keep the sandflies at bay. In 1911 traveller Maud Moreland wrote in her book Through South Westland about enduring a horrific night due to mosquitos. Her brother fared better as he ‘smoked many pipes’. The rain had set in. I don’t smoke, but it seemed appropriate to enjoy a plug on the porch wearing mica glasses – it kept away the bloodsuckers – not that we had seen any.

Keeping the 'skeeters' at bay