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

Mayor Meng Foon at the East Coast launch

Before 130 enthusiastic locals, Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Chris Finlayson last night launched the East Coast entry of Te Ara. This is the 21st and penultimate region in the Places theme to be launched. Every region has its own character, but the East Coast is without doubt the most bicultural area of the country.

As the entry shows, Māori constituted almost half (47.3%) of the population at the last census. It was also the place where Māori and James Cook first met; where a number of the founding waka, the Tākitimu, Horouta and Nukutaimemeha canoes, found landfall; and where Paikea landed on his whale. Monty Soutar agreed to write the entry because, as he explained last night, he was keen to ensure that the story of both peoples was adequately told. Monty had the ideal credentials for the job. He has whānau roots deep in the region, is a wonderful writer whose masterpiece is Nga Tama Toa on C Company of the 28 (Māori) Battalion, and has served as director of the Tairawahiti Museum and chief executive of the Ngāti Porou rūnanga. So, the story he tells evokes the Māori experience on the coast in all its richness. Among the highlights look at:

• a wonderful painting by Tony Lloyd of Hine Hakirirangi, sister of Pāoa the chief of the Horouta canoe.  She is said to have brought the kūmara to Aotearoa.
• a remarkable film of the posthumous presentation of the Victoria Cross to the parents of Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngārimu at Ruatōria in October 1943
• an interactive showing the marae in the Waiapu River valley
• a video for the hit song ‘Sensitive to a smile’, by reggae band Herbs, which was shot at Mangahānea marae near Ruatōria in 1987
• a film of Minister Finlayson signing the deed of settlement with Ngai Tāmanuhiri earlier this year.

There is also full acknowledgement of the contribution of Pākehā to the region such as:

• the ‘awe-inspiring sight’ of Douglas Cook’s Eastwoodhill arboretum
• Harry Barker, the longest serving mayor in New Zealand history
• Tom Heeney, who fought for the world’s heavyweight crown and is shown being welcomed by a huge crowd in Gisborne
• the novelist David Ballantyne represented by one of his East Coast novels, The Cunninghams
• and Murray Ball, one of the region’s most talented sons, who contributes a great cartoon.

The entry also includes a video of a waiata by the present mayor of Gisborne District, Meng Foon. Of Chinese origin, Mayor Meng learnt to speak Māori while working in his parents’ market garden alongside Ngāti Porou and Tūranganui-a-Kiwa labourers. To our delight the mayor sang the waiata last night at the launch. It is nice to realise that even in such a strongly bicultural place as the East Coast culture crosses all boundaries.

In April our latest theme, Social Connections, went live. After looking at the statistics for a couple of months, we can now tell you which of the 105 entries in the theme are the most popular. The results may surprise you, depress you, or simply intrigue you.

Skinhead and girlfriend – the most popular image from the most popular entry

Our most popular entry in this theme is Gangs. Now, there is no doubt that this is an excellent entry, which we spent much time over. For such a loaded subject we needed to draw on a range of skills and perspectives, so the entry was jointly written by noted criminologist Greg Newbold and expert on Māori society Rāwiri Taonui. When the entry arrived, it was checked and edited closely by Basil Keane, Te Ara’s Māori editor, and our in-house specialist on crime, Carl Walrond. Fierce arguments ensued. We tried to get the balance right between, as the blurb says, presenting gangs as ‘products of poor and troubled backgrounds looking for friendship and fun, or as criminal organisations associated with drug running, violence and crime’. Then we sent the entry off to some former gang members to get the facts right. So, it is a good entry, well worked over and brilliantly illustrated – look at the map of gangs, the interactive on gang insignia, and the great photo of Thea Muldoon and Black Power.

Yet I doubt if the entry’s quality is the only reason for its popularity. An indication of this is that the third most popular entry is Violent crime, also written by Greg. It deals with murders, assault and rape. Perhaps it is simply that people are drawn to sensationalism. As that entry says: ‘Murders, assaults and rapes dominate newspaper headlines, attract television news viewers, and ignite public debate about harsher sentences for offenders and better support for victims of crime.’ Or is it that people have come looking for answers to deep-seated social problems? Our fourth most popular entry is on Mental health services.

If some of our users are just pursuing sensationalism, others have quite different interests. A particularly strong strand are those who are interested in finding out about the history of women’s experience. Others are interested in the history of families over time and other social-history subjects. Among the top eight we find:

• Megan Cook’s magisterial survey of the Women’s movement
• Kerryn Pollock’s fascinating study of Pregnancy, birth and baby care
• Rosemary Du Plessis and Ian Pool’s brilliant overview, Families – a history
• Jan Jordan’s pioneering study of Sex work and the battle to legalise prostitution.

Another significant group of users are interested in things Māori, and especially the relationships between Pākehā and Māori. The most popular Māori entry is Basil Keane’s informed survey of traditional Māori religion, Ngā karakia a te Māori – traditional Māori religion. Also in the top 12 are Māori–Pākehā relations, Missions and missionaries, Ethnic inequalities and Ethnic and religious intolerance.

Finally, number 13 on the popularity stakes is the entry on Dental care. Do people enjoy re-living their memories of the ‘murderhouse‘, or is there some other reason for its popularity? I leave you to speculate as you enjoy our chart-toppers.

Changing the New Zealand flag – it’s one of those issues that regularly rises and falls in prominence without actually resulting in change. I’m writing an entry on flags for Te Ara so I’ve been looking into this issue. I recently perused two Internal Affairs correspondence files dating from the early 1970s to the late 1980s, and they were populated with new flag designs submitted – without solicitation – by members of the public.

Most of these were doomed to remain within the files, never having received the attention their designers perhaps thought they deserved, other than a polite, yet non-committal, letter from the minister. Until now that is. I have taken it upon myself to share some worthy examples with the world.

First up we have Mrs G. Bell’s design, dating from the early 1970s.

Mrs G. Bell's flag design

She writes: ‘I am forwarding this design as it may interest you. I thought the yellow would mean the land of sunshine the green the fields and the blue in “New Zealand” the blue sky. If you feel the animals would be best deleted, do so. Also the sun.’

In 1979 Mrs Caroline Smith submitted an annotated sketch.

Mrs Caroline Smith's flag design

She apologised for her rough sketch, writing: ‘I am a busy housewife with two children and my husband’s parents are arriving from England next week for their “trip of a lifetime”; consequently I haven’t much time to sit down and do a “proper” plan carefully. I am, therefore, just letting you know of my rough initial idea and I will quite understand if it is rejected immediately.’

There are a few submissions from school children in the files. In 1979 the students of room two at Rolleston School designed flags after the minister of internal affairs publicly suggested it was time for a new one – in the words of student Selena Taurua, the class ‘decided to give you a hand with finding some suggestions.’ Here’s one of them:

A flag designed by a student at Rolleston School

Most of the students’ designs incorporated Māori elements, such as the poi in the top right corner of this example. I noticed that consideration of Māori motifs cropped up more from this period.

Some submissions came from far afield. Mr J. A. Hocksenar of The Netherlands sent in a new design after he visited New Zealand in the late 1970s. I was impressed by his fine felt-penmanship.

J. A. Hocksenar's flag design

I said the submissions were made by members of the public, but I did come across one from someone with official responsibilities – the New Zealand ambassador to Germany, B. F. Bolt. He really went to town and made his design up in acetate and red tape.

Flag designed by ambassador B. F. Bolt

It seems he did this in a personal capacity in 1980 after hearing about the minister’s call for a new flag mentioned above. In his words, his flag ‘represents Ao-tea-roa – a white band between the dark blue sea and light blue sky.’

These days the Ministry for Culture and Heritage looks after official flags and we occasionally receive new designs in the mail, like this one:

Flag made by a member of the public

I don’t know who the maker was, but they obviously went to a bit of trouble sewing it. The flag is cared for by our librarian Fran McGowan.

By the way, this blog post should not be read as an invitation for more flag designs. There are no official plans to change the flag – not that this has ever stopped people from sending their designs in.

There are a number of people in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage who have an obsession with war memorials.

Chief amongst them is Te Ara’s general editor Jock Phillips. In 1990 he and fellow historian Chris Maclean published a book on war memorials around our country – The sorrow and the pride: New Zealand war memorials. There’s also the online memorials register over at NZHistory.net.nz, and Te Ara has an entry on memorials in its upcoming Government and Nation theme.

I don’t count myself as a war memorial obsessive (… yet), but I do like them very much and have indeed photographed many memorials over the years (which you can view here and here). On a recent North Island road trip I, again, photographed a number of memorials, and was once again reminded of the similarities and the differences between them.

From random observation it seems that we have four types of war memorial – the plinth/statue, the gate, the hall and the park. At the risk of protesting too much, I feel I should point out that I wasn’t actively seeking war memorials, merely regularly coming upon them.

Bunnythorpe war memorial statue

The war memorial in Bunnythorpe has long been one of my favourite memorials, even before I visited it, thanks to a wonderful Laurence Aberhart photo. Its location on the corner of a rugby ground, with farmland on one side, and industry on the other, seems to encapsulate the New Zealand male stereotype.

Tikitiki war memorial

Equally I love the memorial in Tikitiki. Like Bunnythorpe, the statue itself is stunning, but so is the location on a hilltop looking towards the rising sun. The other week I was lucky to arrive in Tikitiki an hour or so before sunset and the light was just beautiful.

A little way south of Tikitiki is Tolaga Bay, and there you can find a large memorial gate. There’s also one in Taranaki, at Normanby School from memory, which always catches my attention as I drive past saying I must stop and photograph it one day.

War memorial gates in Tolaga Bay

Many of those communities which don’t have a statue or gate, and indeed some that do, often have a Memorial Hall, a hall for the community, such as the one in Mahoenui. Occasionally the building has some other public function, such as the War Memorial Library in Lower Hutt or the War Memorial Baths in Millers Flat, Otago.

Mahoenui memorial hall

Lastly there are the parks. It seems to me that naming a park ‘Memorial Park’ was easier than coming up with some other name. There’s not always any memorial of any kind, or even suggestion of it being a memorial aside from the name. Sometimes, as with the park in Taihape, there’s quite an entrance.

Entrance to Taihape war memorial park

The newest memorial I came across on my trip was one in Rongotea. At the centre of town they have a statue and little park, but the Te Kawau Memorial Recreation Centre is on the edge of town … which is only 500 metres or so from the centre of town. And while the rec centre is reasonably new, the gate on the left confirms that the park has been a memorial for some decades.

Rongotea's new memorial hall

And while it’s not a war memorial, this rugby ground not far from Tikitiki also caught ­my fancy, and does (I suppose) memorialise battles of another sort.

George Nepia Memorial Park

History in a mural: bagging oysters in Bluff

The recent debate (if it be dignified as such) about the merits of the ‘Wellywood‘ sign on Wellington airport land, invites attention on how places assert their identity.

The most common device for small-town New Zealand is the giant icon – for example, the Rakaia salmon or the Ōhakune carrot. These were a phenomenon of the 1980s, as rural towns suffered from the downturn in the farming economy, and looked to find ways of enticing visitors to stop, perhaps take a photograph of their giant ‘thing’, and even spend a few dollars on a bun and a cuppa. They were in many places a successful gimmick, but they tended to freeze identity – a problem which Gore tried to overcome by several large icons: a brown trout, a guitar and a merino sheep.

In the first decades of the 20th century such places would often trumpet their achievements through a statue of their founder or notable pioneer. So Ashburton put up a statue to John Grigg, who was responsible for draining the land around the neighbouring property of Longbeach and turning it into productive farm land. Bluff honoured its local booster, with a statue of Joseph Ward. But it was not very forward-looking to seek identity through a founder, and once the First World War came along these statues were often edged aside or upstaged by a large memorial to the dead of the Great War. Of course, war memorials were hardly expressions of distinctiveness, because every township or locality in the country had one.

More recently cities and regions have trumpeted their identity through slogans, such as the try-hard ‘Absolutely Positively Wellington‘, or Dunedin’s rather apologetic ‘It’s all right here’ (used from 1988 to the mid-1990s, and later replaced by the confounding ‘I am Dunedin’), or Horowhenua’s ‘The feel of real New Zealand’. The problem with this route to identity is that the slogans tire quickly, and they tend, as with the above examples, to be applicable to any community. They are not really expressive of particular identity and are little more than feel-good advertising slogans

Another way for a town or city to proclaim identity is through murals. The richness and abundance of these became apparent recently when I drove down the east coast of the South Island seeking images which might illustrate stories we had prepared for visitors to the Rugby World Cup. We are creating 3–4-minute-long audio files about characters, interesting events or natural phenomena to be found along the main highways of the country. I needed to find images to accompany these stories in a web-based slide show.

I soon realised that it would be quite hard, in many instances, to get photos of the actual subject matter. The story at Bluff is about oysters, but it was not an easy matter to arrange to go out on an oyster boat or capture shots of workers shelling oysters. It was much easier, and visually more interesting, to photograph the murals about the history of oystering which adorn the walls of the town. Similarly, in Kaikōura I had neither the time, nor funds, to go whale-watching, but the place is thick with murals, and in some cases sculptures, of whales and whaling. I ended up taking no less than 15 different images of such works.

Now, I know that these murals are kitsch, and not usually great art. But they do often capture the human history of the activity, and they reinforce a sense of a distinct identity in a way that is more interesting and varied than slogans or even giant icons. It is worth just looking at the murals in small Taranaki towns to see how often and in how varied a way, the mountain which dominates the region is pictured.

So, next time you have the pleasure of driving through small town New Zealand, keep your eyes open for the public art, and give thanks to the local muralists, usually unnamed and unrecognised, who have tried to capture their place in paint on shop walls.