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

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Earthquake damage in Christchurch

The Christchurch earthquakes and the Japanese tsunami have changed many lives in unexpected and tragic ways. And they have encouraged us all to ask new questions and seek out answers.

A fascinating indication of this is the way people have been using Te Ara since the big quake of 22 February 2011. In the thirty days before that date, about 260,000 people visited Te Ara, averaging around 8,900 a day. On the day after the quake we had our largest number of visitors ever, and in the 30 days since 22 February over 380,000 people have called in with an average of over 12,700 a day.

The places people are exploring are not unexpected. Since 22 February the entry on Historic earthquakes has received over 125,000 page views. Active faults received over 85,000, Earthquakes almost 35,000, then, with a big jump after the Japanese disaster, Tsunamis with over 17,000, and Geology with over 14,000.

Obviously the Christchurch and Japanese events encouraged people to think more widely about natural disasters, because the two entries on volcanoes (Volcanoes and Historic volcanic activity) together received over 21,000 page visits. By comparison, the highest other entries were the History of immigration (12,000 page views) and Deep-sea creatures with over 9,000. Whether either of these had anything to do with disasters we leave to your imagination!

Life on the edge: New Zealand’s natural hazards and disasters

These natural disaster entries were all prepared over five years ago in our theme on Earth, Sea and Sky. Those of us who worked on the theme were so deeply impressed by the risks of living in New Zealand that we put together a book from the relevant entries on the site, Life on the edge: New Zealand’s natural hazards and disasters. At the time we thought that the greatest risk of all was a major movement along the Alpine Fault, which last saw a big movement in 1717. The length of time between quakes along that fault has varied from less than 100 years to 285 years. The period from 1717 is now the longest interval between movements. What we did not expect were the disastrous quakes in Christchurch. But at least in terms of background content, we were prepared.

Apart from visitors, the quake has affected Te Ara in other ways. It made us realise how quickly our information can go out of date. We were immediately aware that the entry on historic earthquakes was grossly behind the times, so we put together two new sections, one on the 4 September 2010 quake, and another on the 22 February 2011 quake. We also realised that much of our two entries on Canterbury (the Christchurch sections in particular) looked like a time warp, with images of a genteel English city. We now have an urgent task to add the ‘after the quake’ images to those documenting the region before the quake.

In a larger sense these terrible natural disasters have given us at Te Ara a greater sense of the value of documenting our geology and history properly, so that when events, both good and bad, throw a new focus on aspects of our world, Te Ara is ready instantly with useful information. For example, when the press came looking for background information on rebuilding after a quake, we sent them to our section on Rebuilding Napier.

We hope that some of the new users who have found us over the last month, will return to explore other more benign parts of our rich content.

Te Ara is widely read within New Zealand, but evidently there is also growing interest from people elsewhere.

Last month about one in three visits to our site were from offshore. Almost every country in the world seems to have dropped by, including Puerto Rico (on 103 occasions), the Isle of Man (54), Botswana (23), Libya (3) and a much appreciated single visit each from the likes of Cuba, Mali, Cape Verde and the Wallis and Futuna islands.

Despite this exciting internationalism, more than half our overseas hits came from just four countries – the US, Australia, the UK and Canada. What they have in common, of course, is the English language, and they remind us of our global limitations as a resource that is primarily in English (along with many entries translated into the Māori language).

So it was a pleasant surprise for Jock Phillips, our general editor, to receive an email from Martha Ruszkowski, a professional translator from Belarus, which she described as ‘a small country which is somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Europe’.

Belarus, formerly part of the Soviet Union

Martha came to know Te Ara when she made a trip to Auckland last autumn (‘it was amazing!’). She asked to translate the section of Te Ara on gambling (which you’ll find in the Sports and leisure entry in New Zealand in Brief) into Belarusian, her native tongue. It would then be available to the around nine million speakers of this language, which Martha says is from the same Indo-European roots as English and French.

‘Why the gambling entry?’, we wondered. Martha cheerfully explained that she’s a keen gambler in her spare time, although it’s not a popular activity in her country since most forms of gambling are illegal there.

‘Go for it’, Jock told her, and so Belarusian speakers can now read about pakapoo, pokies and the Golden Kiwi at this site: http://onlinecasinospotlight.com/web/gambling-be.

Martha thinks this isn’t the only Te Ara entry that her fellow Belarusians will find interesting, and she plans to add further translations in due course.

Kia ora, Martha, and happy punting!

The sight of so many Christchurch stone buildings lying in ruins forces us to ask why those wonderful buildings were not built to withstand earthquakes. The obvious answer is that it was only with modern technology and developments like base isolators that people were able to design and build with earthquakes in mind.

Yet a recent trip to Peru suggests that this is very far from the case. Peru is a country where quakes are large and frequent. Like New Zealand, the country sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire.  In 1746 over 5,000 people were killed in the capital of Lima, and since the Second World War there have been no less than 17 major earthquakes in Peru of magnitude more than 6.0. By far the worst was the 7.9 quake on 31 May 1970, which is believed to have killed about 70,000 people. Many lost their lives at Yangay, in the Cordilla Blanca, when an avalanche of mud and rocks, released by the quake, swept down from the mountains and engulfed the town.

Winay Wayna, an ancient Inca site

Despite this rocky past, Peru is also notable for the many visible reminders of its Inca past.  I was about to write ‘ruins’ – but what remains is frequently not ruins. In many places such as Machu Picchu or, even more remarkably, Winay Wayna the stone buildings are so intact that all that would be required to make them habitable again is to restore the thatch to the roof. The gables, the walls, even the stone plumbing remain intact. The evidence seems clear, that the Incas built to resist earthquakes. When a earthquake hit the ancient Inca city of Cuzco in 1950 63% of the buildings in the city had to be reconstructed. But the ones that remained untouched were the walls and doorways left by the Incas, constructed some 6oo years ago. It was the Spanish churches and houses which fell.

The remarkable fact about this is that the Incas did not use mortar. Rather, they fitted huge stones together in an interlocking manner, so that they were resistant to the most violent shaking.

Interlocking stones of an Inca building

So, we return to Christchurch and get a new perspective.  The reason that the lovely Gothic revival stone buildings of that city lie now in ruins is that the cathedral builders of England and France, who in the middle ages pioneered the techniques of constructing large edifices in stone, worked in an earthquake-free area. It never occurred to them to build to resist ground shaking. When British stone masons brought their techniques to New Zealand and built as they knew how, the long-term result was the destruction we see today. Perhaps if Christchurch had been settled, not by English and Scots, but by the Incas of Peru, we would not today be mourning the loss of so many lives and so much of our heritage.

In case you were unaware, 2011 is the year of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Alongside the rugby there will be a mass of other cultural events going on as part of the REAL New Zealand Festival.

Over the last few months, in the guise of one of my non-Te Ara roles, I have been working on a couple of proposals for photographic exhibitions to coincide with the cup. As I was working on the proposal, I became acutely aware that rugby was not a subject examined much by our art photographers.

Prince of Wales Park, Mt Cook, Wellington

Around 10 years ago Stephen Rowe and Brett Whincup produced the book The full 80 minutes and the touring exhibition ‘The New Rugby’. Beyond that, few other artists, art photographers and painters alike, have looked at the sport (or any other sport for that matter).

Over the years, photographers other than art photographers have focused on rugby though, most famously Peter Bush, and pretty much every local photojournalist, and masses of amateur and commercial photographers have also taken photos of rugby and rugby players from grass roots to internationals.

Recently, Pataka had an exhibition looking at sheep in New Zealand art. Again, sheep are a subject that has been well-covered by photojournalists in numerous books and magazine articles, but something that has been somewhat neglected by local artists – though a number of people have made works examining the meat works closures during the 1980s, most notably Robert Jahnke.

At Pataka there was a nice collection of paintings and sculpture with sheep as their subject, but the 10 or so photos, ranging from farmlands to science labs, were pretty much all that could be found from our art photographers, as Paul McNamara pointed out in a talk he gave during the show.

I do find it interesting that these two bastions of New Zealand culture have been largely neglected by our artists, and art photographers in particular, but maybe that in itself is a strong statement about New Zealand culture.

One aspect of our culture that hasn’t been so overlooked by our artists is war. In the lead up to Anzac Day I often find myself reflecting on the artists’ take on war. New Zealand has had a number of official war artists, most notably Peter McIntyre and, most recently, Matt Gauldie.

Bunnythorpe War Memorial, Bunnythorpe, Manawatū

A few years ago our 2011 Venice Biennale representative Michael Parakowhai produced some beautiful works responding to places in France and Flanders where the Pioneer Maori Battalion made a contribution in the First World War. Photographer Laurence Aberhart is widely known for, amongst other things, his beautiful images of memorials of war and other events – a subject he is still exploring. Michael Shepherd and Matt Pine have also explored war in their artworks.

I don’t think artists’ disregard of certain subjects is a purely New Zealand phenomena, but it does make me wonder if art does truly hold a mirror up to nature, as Shakespeare asserted, or if it just holds a mirror up to the nature of the artist.