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

A chilly day in Otago

Pasture stops growing. Keas mate. In Central Otago there can be hoar frost. In the past old biddies judged pies. In the 1960s Tokelauans were welcomed to Te Puke.

Winter induces some strange behaviours – budgie smugglers and 9 degrees Celsius are a bad mix. Pagans celebrate the solstice at the Wairarapa Stonehenge. I hunker down near the woodburner waiting for the weekend when football is cancelled and the All Blacks win (well maybe not this year).

The shortest day has passed, so days are lengthening – not that you’d notice. Whether you’re in Leigh or Lauder you won’t get sunburnt. For Māori the arrival of Matariki in the morning sky marks a new year.

If you think it’s all going to get better from here, it’s not quite that simple. The coldest weather occurs after the shortest day. July (average monthly air temperature 7.3°C) is colder than June (average monthly air temperature 7.9°C). In the North Island August is about as cold as June, September about the same as May. In the South Island August is milder compared with June and September milder than May. Throughout New Zealand October is cooler than April and November cooler than March.

There is a lag in the atmosphere before longer days (more solar radiation) translate into warmer temperatures – the months before the longest day aren’t as warm as we think they should be. Some years winter just doesn’t seem to quit (I remember snow flurries around Boxing Day in the Mackenzie Country a few years ago). But it also cuts the other way – in autumn it takes awhile for shorter days to steal summer’s warmth.

So beware longer days, as they can be false prophets – in terms of temperature that is. But lightening morns and eves quickly lift spirits, if not the mercury.

Joan Wiffen – the Dragon Lady

Joan Wiffen (1922–2009) died on Tuesday. ‘Who?’ I hear you ask. Well, the first person to find a New Zealand dinosaur.

Most women wouldn’t like the title, but she was the Dragon Lady – in her case a term of affection and respect. She wrote about her experiences in Valley of the Dragons: the story of New Zealand’s dinosaur woman (1991).

Up until the 1980s it seemed that dinosaurs had never lived in New Zealand. But as eminent scientist Charles Fleming noted in 1967, ‘the fact that no dinosaurs have been found does not mean they have never been here.’ It was the classic absence of evidence being interpreted as evidence of absence. At the time it was thought that dinosaurs had not spread to the part of Gondwana that split away some 85 million years ago – and which today is New Zealand.

In 1975 Joan, an amateur rock hound, found a fossil bone in marine sediments in a Hawke’s Bay stream bed. Up until then it seemed logical that dinosaur bones – if there were any – were likely to be found in terrestrial sedimentary rocks (river and lake deposits) – after all dinosaurs were land animals.

Joan didn’t think her latest bone looked much like the fossils of marine reptiles. She showed it to Australian vertebrate paleontologist Ralph Molnar who told her it was the tail vertebra of a theropod dinosaur. He presented the finding in a paper to geologists at Victoria University in 1980. Afterwards a man came up to Joan. ‘I’m Charles Fleming,’ he said, ‘and I’m delighted to hear about your dinosaur.’ Apart from that she recalled ‘the reaction was thunderous silence, and general lack of interest or understanding of the geological significance of dinosaurs in New Zealand. What had I expected – a champagne party?’.

Joan Wiffen went on to find other bones that show that 75 million years ago a community of dinosaurs existed including sauropods, theropods and armoured dinosaurs. As this was 10 million years after the split from Gondwana, the dinosaurs would have evolved to be unique New Zealand species. Other researchers have also found a single Jurassic dinosaur fossil (in 1995 near the Waikato River mouth) and in 2003 dinosaur fossils were found on the Chatham Islands.

‘What does it matter?’ you ask. Well, it matters as our evolutionary history is different if we had dinosaurs. It turns out we are (or at least were) more than a land of birds. As scientists know that mammals and dinosaurs lived alongside each other in Gondwana, it is likely that along with the dinosaurs, mammals and other reptiles also hitched a ride on the landmass that broke away.

Our understanding of the evolution of New Zealand’s plants and animals is now very different to what we thought thirty years ago. For example we now also know that crocodiles lived in freshwater lakes 16 million years ago. So far no Mesozoic mammal fossils have been found in New Zealand, but it is probably only a matter of time before they are. If mammal fossils are eventually found, then the question becomes, why did mammals become extinct here when they thrived in most other lands?

Joan’s legacy exposes convential wisdom as being just that – some of what we think to be true now is unlikely to be so in the future.

As the Māori New Year rolls around, it’s time to celebrate Matariki once again.  As Matariki (the Pleiades) has re-appeared in the pre-dawn sky, it’s just a matter of waiting for the next new moon to begin the celebrations. This year Matariki celebrations kick off on 24 June.

I probably enjoy the revitalised traditions that go with Matariki more than finding the star cluster itself. Last year’s Matariki we got together as a whānau and ate traditional and not-so-traditional foods placed in kono (a small flax food basket ) woven by my daughters.  Nice food, warm fire, and inside.  On the other hand, the Matariki star-gazing show is beset by the twin problems of early mornings and freezing (ok, very cold) temperatures to deal with.  While my daughters are able to pick out the individual stars, I can only just make out a blurry shape, which is helped by looking at it slightly askance.

If you’re interested in early mornings and being very cold, then have a look at last year’s Matariki blog, which tells you how to find Matariki in the sky.

If you have an interesting story about how you - as an individual, whānau, family, organisation or tribe - have celebrated Matariki, we could be interested in incorporating it into our entry. You could send it to us, preferably with a photo, or leave a comment.

My grandfather Toivo as a young man (click for full image)

Toivo Pärssinen (1911–2007), my Finnish grandfather, fought in two little-known wars (in New Zealand at least) within the Second World War – the Winter War (1939–1940) and the Continuation War (1941–1944). I am named after Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim, who led the Finnish forces (he had a great moustache). Russia was the ’sleeping bear’ and whoever was Russia’s enemy was Finland’s ally. This proved to be Germany, once Hitler broke the non-agression pact with Russia in 1941.

During the wars Toivo (which means ‘hope’ in Finnish) was a cornet and later cavalry captain. In the summer of 1945, at the end of the fighting, my grandmother Saima was pregnant and had two children under six. The army flipped a coin. He lost, so he was sent to clear mines in Lapland – departing SS troops had razed the town of Rovaniemi and laid mines. Toivo’s eyebrows got burnt when his best friend stood on a mine. They picked his remains out of the trees.

Toivo's cavalry funeral in 2007 (click for full image)

Toivo did not talk much about the war, but he had a small map on his bedside wall of a horseshoe-shaped lake where he grew up in Karelia. At the end of the war Russia took a large chunk of eastern Finland as war reparations. The Finnish army burnt the Karelian farmhouses as they withdrew. By war’s end Toivo was something of a pacifist but, as he said, ‘if you don’t shoot them they’ll shoot you’. He was pensioned in 1959 and enjoyed a long retirement. If the Finns hadn’t resisted the Soviet invasion they would have ended up like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – behind the Iron Curtain. Finland’s war experience is chronicled in the novel The unknown soldier by Vaino Linna, which has been translated into English. The book is anti-war.

My New Zealand grandfather, Frank Walrond, ran a stamp shop in Auckland’s Queen Street. During the Second World War he trained soldiers before they went overseas, so he saw no active service. Technically, Frank and Toivo were enemies at times and allies at others. The war was messy and complicated – there were all sorts of dirty little wars, land grabs and attempts to settle old scores. Toivo’s friend died from a German landmine and many of his brothers-in-arms, and his brother in-law, died by Russian fire.

A vodka bottle carved by my great uncle in the trenches (click for full image)

So, on New Zealand and Australia’s day of remembrance, ANZAC Day, I thought of Toivo and my great-uncles who were wounded, and I remembered Saima’s only brother, who died fighting for German forces against the Russians in ‘White Russia’ (Belarus). His last word was ‘aiti’ (mother). A small corner of a Belarusian field is forever Finnish.

Not the Easter bunny – Alexandra's Easter Bunny Hunt

It is a strange time of year.

It varies when it falls according to calculations that escape me (it’s got something to do with the moon). Sometimes it’s in March, sometimes in April.

For most people it means an extra long weekend. For Christians it obviously has religious meaning. Yet not everyone is religious, nor Christian. Chinese New Zealanders use Easter as a time to hold a sports tournament. Trampers head into the hills before the snows come. In the past you could take a cheap rail holiday. For children it is about chocolate eggs. For Central Otago hunters it is about bunnies, and hunters everywhere will be taking part in the roar. And these Island-Bay types for some reason raced pancakes in 1985.

It definitely marks the end of the golden weather – it is autumn. There’s just Queen’s Birthday in early June – after which it truly is the winter of our discontent, as the next public holiday is Labour Day in spring.

During my coffee break, I learned that the four of us gasbagging were all going home for Easter weekend. Emily is off to the Hawke’s Bay, Emma to Wanganui (or Whanganui) and Julia to the City of the Future (Hamilton).  It’s truly the return of the prodigal daughters.

Me, I’m taking the family off to Auckland to my olds. If Easter has a commonality, it’s that, like Christmas, it is a time to go home. My mother has promised to walk around the garden crowing ‘kook-ka-kee-koo, kook-ka-kee-koo’ while hiding Easter eggs for her grandchildren. My role, should it need explaining, is to tell the small ones that the Easter cockerell is out and about.