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

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog…

We are now into the business end of the World Cup. The hordes of Irish and Scottish and Argentinian and English and Italian fans in their campervans have gone home, licking their wounds. There don’t seem to be many Aussies or Welsh around either. The few French get a cheery wave as they pass in the street. The action has moved to Auckland, and the kids are on holiday. So I decided the place to be was the Auckland waterfront. The sun was shining, the harbour sparkling, and people were there to enjoy themselves. What impressed me as I wandered around was that the REAL New Zealand Festival had provided something for everyone. Here are a few of the different scenes that I saw and heard as I wandered round.

Wood chopping on the waterfront

Scene 1: The piercing scream of chainsaws going at top pull me to the outside space on Queen’s Wharf. The ANZAXE competition is in full throttle. Australian woodsmen in yellow singlets and Kiwis in black are aggressively shaving slivers of wood with their saws, or axing them in the underhand chop. The axemen are huge brawny types. The competition is fierce and close. Beside me a grandfather and his young grandson are watching intently…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog…

Exhibition poster

Put together a case of old jerseys, cups, programmes and tickets; throw in a couple of panels about heroes of the past; add a scrummaging or a kicking-a-goal interactive; find a catchy title (usually involving the colour black) – and you have your Rugby World Cup 2011 exhibition. I have seen half a dozen such exhibitions over the last month; and on my way north yesterday I saw another, ‘Khaki and Black‘, at the Waiouru Army Museum.

It followed the standard formula. The labels were a bit wordy, there were a couple of surprising errors (surely every rugby fan knows that the famous 1956 series against the ‘Boks was four tests not three) and one of the interactives was not working. What saved the exhibition for me was some unusual objects, especially a fabulous 19th-century woollen rugby jersey, and the well-researched story which it told. ‘Khaki and Black’ explores the interaction of rugby and war.

I have already quoted in an earlier post Tom Ellison’s famous phrase that rugby was ‘a soldier-making game’; but he was simply picking up the point made by the Duke of Wellington: ‘The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.’ Rugby became popular in schools in New Zealand at the turn of the 20th century at the very time that military training was introduced. Rugby was seen as developing men physically, encouraging teamwork and courage, and promoting strategy and tactics – all valuable on the battlefield.

When the 1905 All Blacks went to Britain and swept all before them (forgetting for a moment that dubious loss to Wales!), commentators in Britain saw their success in the light of the relative failures of British forces in the South African War. Many British recruits for the war had been rejected as physically incapable and a parliamentary investigation into the ‘degeneracy of the race’ followed. In that context, the All Blacks were interpreted by the British as the salvation of the Anglo-Saxons…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog…

My title could refer to the bodies of the Wallaby rugby team, but it does not. It refers to the colours of the two teams which will meet at Eden Park on Sunday night. So I thought that in the spirit of strict impartiality I would give a voice to the two groups of fans, and show you some of the ways they have expressed their devotion to their respective teams. One of the joys of Rugby World Cup 2011 has been the creativity shown by people in demonstrating their loyalty. So this is a photographic post of images collected over the course of my travels during the past month.

Since we are good hosts, let’s begin with the visitors. Most of these images of ardent Francophiles were shot in Napier when France played Canada. I now regret not photographing the French fans who lined up outside their hotel on the Napier waterfront and clapped each player individually as they left the hotel for the game. But I think you will agree that the fans did well in other ways…

Two young French fans

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog…

Webb Ellis trophy at Fanzone

It was a message on my cellphone which inspired this post. Jackie Hay, a good friend and the inspired organiser of this blogging trip, asked if I could take a photo of the huge Webb Ellis Trophy which stands at the entrance to the Fanzone in Christchurch’s North Hagley Park. The cup had been used as the centrepiece for that magnificent opening ceremony, which seems so long ago. Now it beckons punters to the Fanzone and is used as a backdrop for innumerable family photos. I decided I would describe the scene in the park, which in the absence of games, is the centre of cup activity in Christchurch.

North Hagley Park has long been the site for such festivals. Hagley Park itself is huge, over 160 hectares, and the largest urban park in the country. It was set aside by the good people of Christchurch as a permanent place for recreation in 1855. The area over the Armagh Street bridge bordering the banks of the Avon river is where such events have traditionally been held. This was the home of the ambitious 1906-7 Christchurch International Exhibition. Richard Seddon’s brainchild, the exhibition was designed to show off the success of the ’social laboratory of the world’ and to display New Zealand’s industrial and agricultural progress to the world. The formal buildings were to the right of Armagh Street bridge where the Fanzone is today, but it was ‘Wonderland’ to the left, where the Events Village is, that attracted the crowds. Here you could be thrilled on the water chute, or be terrified in the Katzenhammer castle, or be awestruck by the 114-metre-long cyclorama of the battle of Gettysburg.

The 1950 Canterbury Centennial show was also held here. In fact my very first memory was riding the roller-coaster at the age of three – I have never quite recovered! More recently this was where the ‘Ellerslie flower show’ has been held, and where people were cared for in those first horrific days after 22 February…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…

During the REAL New Zealand Festival, which runs alongside Rugby World Cup 2011, our Jock is roaming the country and blogging about it for the REAL New Zealand Festival Insider blog.

For the third time in three days I have just had an interesting theatrical experience which was not in a theatre - ‘The Complete History of World Rugby (Abridged)‘ was on a footie field; ‘Having a Ball‘ was in an inflatable dome; and now ‘The Earthquake in Chile’ was in a church. This is what Cantabrians have to do these days, when all the theatres are nothing but rubble.

I heard about the latest offering when I walked into the REAL New Zealand Festival events village and saw an ad for the 2011 Body Festival. Well, at first I thought that was an imaginative description for the World Cup. Then I picked up the brochure and found a feast of offerings – mostly dance. My eyes lit on ‘The Earthquake in Chile’ because I was thinking earthquakes.

St Mary's Anglican Church

I turned up at the scene, St Mary’s Anglican Church in Addington. I could see immediately that it was most glorious church – a tiny building with a separate bell tower. There were 96 seats, and I was number 97 – looked like I would miss out, until someone failed to turn up. So I was in. I was given a bright pink card and told to keep it. I entered the church, the organ was playing, the lighting was dark which made the stained glass windows (lit from outside) glow warmly. Shadows flickered on the beautiful curving wooden roof. On the prayer-book stand in front was an ‘order of service’.

The lights dimmed further and the actors/priests/choir proceshed up the aisle. The choir, singing a beautiful ‘Canto Penitencial’ (or so the order of service said), was dressed in scarlet capes with metre-high coned headdresses which made them look a bit like Ku Klux Klansmen in scarlet. There was a reading and an ‘Alleluia’, and then the sermon. This consisted of a rage about the city as a whore, a city which had lost its morals, a city which had turned over its soul to the money-brokers. A woman carrying a baby was the symbol of this whoring city. Then with a deafening roar, the earthquake hit, lights went out, and we were told to stay calm and move outside. I could see that for many in the audience this was a bit too close to reality.

Outside we entered a village market. There were people comforting us. They offered bottles of water and warm vegetable soup. We were told to gather around a leader who had a big sign marked by the colour of our cards. So I joined the other 11 people in the pink group…

Read more on the Real NZ Festival blog…