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

Fred Flutey in his pāua-shell house (click for image credit)

Today we release two new stories – Collecting and Furniture – which together provide a fascinating study of New Zealand’s cultural relationships with the outside world. They invite the question, ‘Are we no more than Europe’s most distant outpost?’

As author Richard Wolfe explains, the initial collecting impulse in this country came from European explorers who were interested in showing off the wonders of a strange new world to collectors and savants at home. So James Cook and his crew collected plants and Māori crafts and sent them to European museums. In the early 19th century there was a huge trade in moa bones, which were sent to naturalist collectors across the seas.

Then the flow began to reverse. Prominent New Zealanders began to put together collections which might remind their fellow colonials of the wonders of European civilisation. George Grey gave his collection of medieval manuscripts to the Auckland Public Library. Ronald and Zillah Castle put together a remarkable collection of musical instruments, mostly of a European origin. And of course people with money throughout New Zealand collected antique furniture, mostly from Britain, as a reminder of a more genteel civilisation across the globe.

Collecting was not always just nostalgia for ‘home’. Inevitably people began to collect distinctly New Zealand things – those two great bibliophiles Thomas Hocken and Alexander Turnbull both centred their collections on this part of the world. In the 20th century many Kiwis began to invest in local art or, at a different level, in Kiwiana from buzzy bees to Crown Lynn pottery. But inevitably the exotic and the foreign, whether Middle Eastern rugs or American records, remained always attractive items of collecting.

The Furniture story equally explores the interchange of New Zealand and the wider world. From the very start of European settlement there were local furniture makers using local woods. But what is striking is how they drew on international styles, such as art nouveau and art deco. There was a constant echo in New Zealand homes of the styles that had flowered in London, Paris or New York a few years before. And they had to compete continually with the import of furniture from across the seas.

It would be wrong to draw from this a lesson that New Zealand was just a subservient colonial offshoot. Rather, New Zealanders have always been in touch with foreign influences and trade, and have tried to keep up with new ideas and influences. We have been in constant communication with collectors, museums, fashion designers and stylists. This something to admire – it kept us moving and kept a small society thinking. The histories of collecting and furniture in this country reflect our willingness to take from the larger world in order to give us a sense of being at home.

Jason Scott prefers to call the cloud 'the clown'.

‘Stand up if you can name more than one Kardashian.’

‘Now stand up if you know New Zealand’s child poverty rate.’

That humbling challenge posed by Clay Johnson kicked off Webstock 2013 and was followed by an excellent presentation calling for a paradigm shift in our relationship with mass media.

Essentially: we are what we eat and ignorance can actually be caused by consumption of media (i.e. not just lack of information but by wrong information). The more junky tabloid media we consume on the web, the more junky and tabloid the web becomes. We are shaping it through our actions, and we need to shape it - and ourselves - for the better. Linking to sources to allow people to make up their own minds, and using good data to allow the creation of more honest media, were a few of his suggestions.

His call to become ‘a producer rather than a consumer’ and to start each day by writing 500 words hit a note with me, and inspired me to write this, my first ever blog post.

I found the whole of Webstock thoroughly enjoyable this year, both the conference and the fantastic workshop I went to by Chris Coyier. The speakers were a great bunch and even the speaking order felt just right.

As a tech-head who is equal parts designer/coder (otherwise known as a ‘unicorn’ according to Kitt Hodsen) I genuinely found inspiration and something worthwhile to take away from every single presentation. Here are the three that I found had the most immediately applicable ideas:

Chris Coyier introduced me to SASS, Compass, CodeKit and Emmet, and showed us smart ways to use CSS variables, nested tags, breakpointed media-queries, includes, mixins and box-sizing:border-box as well as loads of other great stuff. He somehow managed to cram loads in while giving each concept enough time and examples to really sink in. All the while being really entertaining and likeable along the way.

Karen McGrane talked about COPE (create once, publish everywhere) and used some great examples of what large media companies have done. My favourite was the US TV Guide who decided well before the technology changed that, despite the fact they were still publishing printed guides, they needed to start creating three versions of everything: short, medium and full format - now of course implemented on everything from Sky guides to websites and mobile apps. She also hit on a really simple but important point – we need to stop thinking in terms of our ‘primary platform’ – it’s just as flawed whether you are thinking first of ‘print’ or ‘website’. The content is first. The platforms are ever-changing.

Mike Monteiro delivered an in-your-face wake-up call to web designers that featured a fair amount of swearing and a strong focus on responsibility. Responsibility to be of service to the world we live in and to make things that have a real and positive impact on people’s lives (as opposed to another iPad dock). Responsibility to the craft of design – to write, speak and teach, to share failures and successes for those who come after us. Responsibility to clients – to choose the right ones, to be a gatekeeper, not an order-taker, and to do good design, not just keep clients happy. And responsibility to ourselves – ‘Your portfolio is another name for your reputation.’ He definitely had the best one liners of the day: ‘Not only can designer’s change the world, they ****ing need to’ and ‘Don’t trust a designer who hasn’t been punched in his mouth.’

It seems to me lately that the internet is at an interesting crossroads, with tension between the open environment of the personal computer and the locked environment of new tethered appliances and their proprietary gatekeepers, between what Jonathan Zittrain calls ‘generative’: the freedom to adapt and interact with an operating system, and the security of a virus/malware-free environment, between open source and copyright protection, between the potential and the threat of the cloud.

I was hoping for these concepts to be addressed at Webstock and they were. I’d recommend that everyone who uses the web watch the presentations by these three Webstockers as soon as they go live:

• Clay Johnson
• Bruce Sterling
• Jason Scott.

I love that Webstock had such a conscious message this year. I think Clay Johnson put it in context by ending his presentation with a fitting acknowledgement:

‘Who do we want to look back on as the leading thinkers of this era? The Mark Zuckerbergs? Or my mate Aaron? ‘

I know my answer.

Thanks Mike, Deb, Natasha, Ben and everyone in the Webstock team for putting in all the hard work every year.

Late last year we published our first iBook and it’s available (for free) here in the iTunes store. It’s a small step for us but one that represents our current attempts to explore and experiment with new forms of digital publishing beyond our (traditional?) websites.

The cover of our Roadside Stories iBook

The content we used for this iBook, which is able to include images and multimedia as well as just text, was taken from our series of stories about New Zealand, Roadside Stories. These were produced as part of our contribution to the Rugby World Cup in 2011, and feature 140 stories from along the main highways up and down the country. In a similarly experimental vein, the Roadside Stories series was the first time we really thought about content as having a life that wasn’t restricted to one website. Instead we created the content and then found as many places as possible to publish it.

In creating the Roadside Stories, we started with stories and created the audio, then added images to create YouTube videos, then mapped it all to Google Maps as well as creating an iPhone app (and later an Android app) using MyTours. And only then did we start embedding the videos onto websites. It looks a bit like this:

What we did with Roadside Stories

From there it became a fairly straightforward matter to create an iBook using a couple of the Roadside Stories tours, namely the routes from Christchurch to Invercargill and then Invercargill to Queenstown. The iBook combines audio of the stories with short introductory text and maps, as well as a full slide show of images. To round it out we’ve included additional text (lifted from Te Ara and NZHistory) and links to our websites for more information about the places.

Contents page for the Christchurch-to-Invercargill tour

The Mount Cook story

Again, we’re starting to see our Manatū Taonga – Ministry for Culture and Heritage websites as a collection of content in itself, rather than separate silos, and as a rich source that can be recombined in new forms and formats. More than that, we’re hoping to extend that thinking to include a much wider range of sites from across New Zealand’s rich and varied online cultural world.

So where to next? The iBook is an experiment and we’d love your feedback on it and thoughts on whether this is the sort of content and format that you’re interested in seeing more of. We’ve included a link to a survey at the end of the book, or you can leave a comment here.

Some readers will question why we produced an iBook that can only be read on an iPad, and it’s a fair question. It’s a pragmatic approach really: iAuthor, the software that produces iBooks, made it simple to produce something beautiful.

We’re eagerly awaiting developments with the platform-neutral epub format as it starts to support more of the features that appear in iBooks, and will be realeasing a few experimental ebooks soon. In the meantime, those of you with an iPad, have a play with the results of our foray into the world of ebooks, iBooks, digital books – call them what you will – and let us know what you think.

‘What the hell is that?!’ Sean said, looking from his vantage point on the couch towards the ocean.

The ocean was just across the road from the Paekakariki holiday cottage we’d booked for Wellington Anniversary weekend. I’d just come in from outside. It was getting dusky, and the breeze was getting cold, but before I closed the door on the sound of the sea I wanted to spend a bit more time on the deck, watching the waves. But somehow I’d missed it.

‘There was a giant black fin sticking out of the sea,’ he said.

We went outside and before too long we saw another fin, and then a couple more, breaking the surface of the water. Orcas! Judging by the cars that started arriving, other people had noticed them too and were phoning all their friends.

We were treated to quite a show as at least four orcas (it was hard to tell how many, as they kept disappearing and reappearing) meandered their way up the coast towards Raumati. Hopeful of another look, we followed them up the beach, but they were gone. All I had to prove we saw them was a rather bad picture I took on my phone.

Two orca fins appearing above the waves

A close up, in case you didn't believe me

It was a strange week for large sea mammals on the Kapiti Coast – a few days before a 15-metre-long sperm whale had stranded and died on Paraparaumu Beach. I’m not sure whether orcas are commonly found around this area, though according to Te Ara (which I, of course, consulted to enrich my paltry knowledge about orcas) 15 stranded at Paraparumu in 1955. Fortunately the ones I saw didn’t suffer that same fate.

When I told a friend about seeing the orcas, she was surprised as she was used to seeing them off the Hawke’s Bay coast during childhood. Apparently, again according to Te Ara, you are ‘most likely to see them are off the Bay of Plenty, East Cape and Hawke’s Bay regions in June, and again from October to December.’ But obviously that isn’t their exclusive domain. In fact three separate groups of orcas live around New Zealand: one off the North Island, one off the South Island and a third group that spends its time in both regions.

A much better photo of an orca from the Orca Research Trust

Back in the day (i.e. my childhood) orcas were always called ‘killer whales’. That’s discouraged now because not only are they not killers – well not of humans (there haven’t been any reports of orcas attacking humans), though they do kill and eat a great many other creatures – they are not even whales. They actually belong to the dolphin family. They’re the biggest dolphin though, and are of a similar size to the smaller whales. In this footage of an orca pod swimming beside a ship, it’s easy to see their dolphinishness (which should be a word, even if it isn’t) as they glide up and down through the waves.

Otago Central Rail Trail between Wedderburn and Ranfurly

Jock wasn’t the only Te Ara staffer to spend some of his Christmas break on the seat of a bicycle. I spent a few days enjoying the Otago Central Rail Trail.

I ride less than Jock, but my relationship with the bicycle is somewhat different from his. I’ve always enjoyed cycling. As soon as I was old enough to ride on the roads, I rode to school pretty much every day, regardless of the weather. The trip to primary school was under a kilometre, college was about two-and-a-half kilometres; but I wasn’t allowed to ride to intermediate as it was deemed too far (and there was a free bus).

I would also ride for pleasure in the holidays and, when I got my 12-speed, would think nothing of the 40-kilometre round trip to Days Bay, or a similarly long ride someplace else (or noplace else if, I felt like it). When I got my first mountain bike I was happy to take that for a ride in the hills – my favourite ride (not that I’ve done it for a while) is up to the Brooklyn wind turbine then down to Red Rocks and back home via Island Bay.

The Otago Central Rail Trail had long been in my plans and when the opportunity arose to do it this year I wasn’t going to turn it down. Our group based ourselves in Naseby which isn’t actually on the rail trail and involved lots of shuttling various vehicles to and from the day’s start and end points. But it meant we were flexible to do the track however we wanted, deciding which legs to do based on the weather, energy levels etc.

Trail sign at Wedderburn

The first day was a slow start, only a short stretch as a warm up, mainly downhill - Wedderburn to Kokonga, 31.5 kilometres. However, at about the halfway point of leg one we met a rain storm. I got to Ranfurly without getting too wet but as the rain settled in, and with cars at Wedderburn and Kokonga I realised someone (i.e. me) would have to ride back to Wedderburn in order to rescue the others from the weather.

The next day we woke to snow!!

Snow at Naseby. In summer.

We decided to do the picturesque leg from Wedderburn to Ōmakau, 41.1 kilometres. It was a little chilly and we had a constant headwind, breeze really, but it was a pleasant enough ride and the scenery was at times spectacular. We also got to see the Poolburn viaduct and tunnels and the older tunnellers’ camp.

45° south sign west of Wedderburn

A close-up of the sign

Poolburn viaduct

The next day was Kokonga to Middlemarch (the traditional finishing point of the trail), 41.9 kilometres. This included a lovely little trip along a gorge of the Taieri River, and through Hyde, past the site of the Hyde rail disaster and the Hyde rail disaster memorial. Fortunately we all managed an incident free ride.

Hyde rail disaster memorial

Arriving in Middlemarch

Day four was Ōmakau to Clyde (the traditional starting point of the trail), 37.2 kilometres. It was the hottest day, reaching 35 degrees in Alexandra, though it felt much hotter than that on the exposed track coming into Clyde. I just love the parched, rocky landscape around that part of the country, and even the intense heat wasn’t enough to dampen my enjoyment of it.

'The parched, rocky landscape': hills around Chatto Creek and Galloway

As the only one in the group not to have done the trail before, I did the last day on my own, just so I could say I completed the whole thing. Ranfurly to Tiroiti, 25.5 kilometres. While I only needed to stop at Kokonga, I wanted to revisit the lovely little Taieri River gorge again. And a good thing too as the Ranfurly to Kokonga stretch is the dullest stretch, not helped by the howling headwind I had, so that last bit of gorgeous scenery made me happy.

The little Taieri River gorge (which I’m not sure has an actual name) on the way to Tiroiti

The track is classed as easy, and it is, with those nice steady gradients that trains needed to tackle hills. And every day we took it easy, with regular stops, long lunches and just enjoying the surrounds. We could have done most of it in half the time, but we weren’t in any rush and it was a nice way to do it. And with the long southern summer days we also had time to do a bit of exploring farther afield on the way home to Naseby.

The trail between Ranfurly and Kokonga, showing one of the little info huts (though I’m not entirely sure if this one had anything in it)

All along the trail are huts containing historical information about the area you’re passing through, not that I bothered much with that, I was just having fun being on the bike again. So much so that when we visited Hanmer Springs a few days later I forewent a trip to the hot pools with the group for a ride up Jacks Pass on the bike. It was a stupid idea, but that’s another story…