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

Ben Hana/Blanket Man

All cities (and some towns) have their share of people who live their lives, day and night, out on the streets, whether by circumstance or choice. Most remain nameless to those who pass them by, but some become well known enough to gain unofficial names, often based on their appearance. One of those people was Wellington’s Ben Hana – aka Blanket Man – who passed away on Sunday.

It’s probably fair to say that Hana surpassed the fame of those who came before him, such as Robert Jones (Bucket Man) who traversed the streets of Wellington with a bucket in hand for 20 years and was the inspiration for a character in Maurice Gee’s novel Blindsight. Hana is the subject of a Wikipedia entry, a Facebook page, a documentary (which can be viewed online) and an academic conference paper. He featured in Pip Desmond’s 2009 book Trust: a true story of women & gangs. One year a group of people dressed as Blanket Man for the Sevens rugby tournament in Wellington. There will be many more lesser-known instances of Hana’s cultural influence.

While not all supported Hana’s lifestyle, street presence and behaviour, there is little doubt that he was a true and striking character, recognised and known throughout Wellington and beyond. Aside from the periods in which he was carted off to prison or hospital, he was a fixture on the streets – someone we expected to see, either huddled in his blanket or sunbathing on top of it, sometimes abusive but usually smiling and swaying to music. He literally left his mark on the places he inhabited – his dreadlocks left a black smudge on the wall of the Courtenay Place building he sat in front of most recently. A shrine has been erected at this spot.

I didn’t ever really know Hana, but I did come to understand that there was more to him than a printed blanket and a loin cloth when he turned up to a community garden working bee in Te Aro in 2001. The ground was stony and difficult to work, but he wielded his pick-axe with strength and dexterity, blanket flying, throughout the day. The garden was an act of protest against the inner-city bypass road, and Hana also attended marches and meetings about this – I remember seeing a large blanket hanging off the gallery at the town hall during one such meeting, which signalled that he and his comrades were in attendance. You can learn more about his political beliefs and ideas by checking out that documentary mentioned above.

In those days I used to wear a red coat and he always called me Red Riding Hood. Over time the red coat went by the wayside, but we continued to exchange nods. I passed the legend of Blanket Man down to my son, who dressed up as him one day without prompting.

Amos as Blanket Man

Farewell Ben Hana/Blanket Man. You earned your place as a true man of the streets and a Wellington icon. I wonder how the city will recognise your life and contribution to its street culture?

Ōhura's main street, 2011

Te Ara’s new entry on the King Country is the last of the major regional entries to be published – only Stewart Island and the off-shore islands remain. Te Ara’s encyclopedic map of the North and South islands is now complete.

It seems fitting that the King Country should be the last: it’s off the well-beaten track of State Highway 1, has no cities and no official regional identity, being part of the Waikato and Manawatū-Whanganui regional councils. It’s also popularly associated with Taranaki in the west. However, as the entry attempts to assert, the King Country musters a good argument for regional independence and a cultural and historical identity distinct from these places.

Te Rohe Pōtae (King country) boundaries, 1880s

The English name ‘King Country’ refers to the period in which the Māori King Tāwhiao lived in Ngāti Maniapoto territory after the Waikato wars and land confiscations. He lived in various places within region from 1864 until not long before his death in 1894. Māori referred to the area as Te Rohe Pōtae – the area of the hat. The story goes that King Tāwhiao threw his hat onto a map of the North Island to mark independent Māori territory. Because of this, you could make the argument that Waikato is the true ‘King Country’.

Te Rohe Pōtae hat monument

When I told someone I was writing about the King Country and relayed the story behind its name, they told me they’d always believed it referred to the British king. I don’t know how common this belief is, but I hope Te Ara’s King Country entry will help to reinstate King Tāwhiao in the minds of those who hold this mistaken belief! You can read more about this topic here.

I think the King Country’s 19th century history is what makes the region so fascinating and distinct, but the entry is about more than Māori-European relations in that period. It covers the natural environment – landforms, plants and animals – major elements of the regional economy and its arts, culture and heritage, among other things. The section on the places of the King Country takes readers on a virtual tour of the region, from the beautiful west coast right down to National Park in the volcanic zone, including the region’s three major towns, Ōtorohanga, Te Kūiti and Taumarunui. As I discovered, the mining township of Benneydale is sadly neglected in the published and on-line literature, so it has been great to add a little information about this place.

If you haven’t before, I suggest you take a left or right off State Highway 1 next time you’re driving up the North Island and travel through the King Country instead – hopefully having read the entry first!

Mary Ann Martin

I recently saw the play On the upside-down of the world at Downstage Theatre in Wellington. Written by New Zealand playwright Arthur Meek and featuring Laurel Devenie in an impressive solo performance, it dramatises the life of Mary Ann Martin, an early English settler in New Zealand and wife of the country’s first chief justice, William Martin. It is based on her posthumously published book Our Maoris (1884).

The play charts Mary Ann Martin’s transformation from a genteel English lady conducting awkward, cringe-worthy conversions with Māori on her arrival in 1842 to a hard-working colonial who thrives in her new home. This transformation is represented by her changing attire. She begins fully dressed in hat and crinoline. The hat comes off first, followed by the crinoline, until she’s left wearing a simple, patched dress. Later in the play she wears a woollen rug lined with feather-like fabric in imitation of Māori.

She becomes fluent in the Māori language and gains great respect for the people and their customs. She rails against ignorant English visitors who denigrate the intelligence of Māori and bitterly opposes land laws and post-war confiscations which transfer the land to the hands of settlers, ever-growing in numbers.

Devenie’s performance is powerful and gripping, so we suffer with Mary as she sees control slipping from Māori and the tide turning towards war. We also share in her personal pain when she miscarries during a trip around the Rotorua area, ending her and her husband’s hopes for children.

The end for Mary is bitter – her husband is relieved from his post after complaining about the treatment of Māori, and her beloved Māori foster son, whom she called Sancho after a character in the novel Don Quixote, is killed during the land wars. She laments on receiving this news as she has heard Māori women do.

I was tremendously moved by this play and Mary Ann Martin’s story. But is it history? Well, not entirely.

I read Mary Ann Martin’s Dictionary of New Zealand biography (DNZB) entry before going, so I’d have some notion of her life story. After the play ended and I recovered, I started to think about the gaps between the entry and the play.

The entry didn’t mention a foster son called Sancho and said that William Martin resigned from his post because of ill health, as does William Martin’s DNZB entry. I got Our Maoris out of the library and discovered that Sancho was actually a grown Māori man and seems to have been more like a servant. As my colleague Jock pointed out, religion was entirely absent from the play, yet the DNZB entries and Our Maoris make it quite clear that religion was a central concern in their lives.

Does this flexibility with the ‘facts’ really matter? In a blog post on the Auckland Theatre Company (ATC) website Arthur Meek is quoted as saying ‘It’s not a history play. It’s a play about who we are and how we’ve come to be like we are.’

I’m not sure what he means by that first sentence, because the play is about a real woman and is based on her writings. Perhaps it’s a way of saying that he’s employed some artistic licence with respect to historical facts. Many writers working with historical subjects do this – it’s a valid technique, but I think the audience needs to know it has been employed.

I’m not so sure that the play’s audience will realise this, unless they have prior knowledge of Mary Ann Martin’s life. A review on Kiwiblog says ‘the play is based on the actual history of that period,’ which suggests the reviewer thinks that everything in it is true.

The ATC has described the play thus: ‘suppressed for 150 years, ATC’s latest work uncovers the words of a woman who dared to challenge colonial injustice.’

This suggests some ‘truths’ have been uncovered, whereas it’s fair to say that some of them, as portrayed in the play, are in fact fictional.

I’m not sure we can really say that Mary Anne Martin ‘challenge(d) colonial justice’ – she was critical of colonial policy and deplored the land wars, but after going through Our Maoris, I have trouble seeing her as a radical crusader for justice. Her mission was to convert Māori from heathenism to Christianity and for me this complicates her character – Christianity was just another form of colonialism.

Despite my qualms about historical accuracy, I rate this play highly. I was transported back the mid-19th century New Zealand by the writing and Laurel Devenie’s performance. It’s on at Downstage until 10 September. If you are interested in New Zealand history (however it is portrayed!) and Māori-Pākehā relations, you really should go.

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.

NIWA – the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research – has just released the monthly climate summary for May 2011. Climate data indicates that the average monthly temperature was 12.9°C, which is 2.2°C higher than the 1971–2000 May average temperature and the highest since reliable records were first compiled in 1909. A difference of 2.2°C is a lot.

May was also wet in some places and dry in others. Nelson and the north-west South Island experienced 2.5–3.5 times the normal rainfall and many parts of the North Island received far more rain they ordinarily would. By contrast, southern Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, Banks Peninsula and Fiordland received less rain than usual.

The warmth and wet were caused by predominating north-westerly winds. Auckland’s deadly tornado at the start of the month occurred when this warm air came up against colder air during a storm.

Kōwhai blossoms are meant to herald the beginning of spring

Prior to NIWA releasing this information about May temperatures I observed some unexpected changes in my garden. Firstly, I noticed my young kōwhai tree had sprouted its first ever flower pods. This was probably in late April or early May, and it’s now flowering. Then, last weekend I discovered some daffodil bulbs had sent up shoots and that my beautifully scented daphne had started to flower.

This was all very nice, but rather surprising and a little strange. I associate all these changes with spring, not the end of autumn – perhaps winter at the earliest for daphne. I’ve since learned that kōwhai flowering is staggered between July and November so the trees do not compete for birds, which is very ingenious. But May is not July, and I’m sure my bulbs would not ordinarily have poked their shoots up this early.

I think awareness of climate change made me think about these changes in more detail, notwithstanding the fact that it’s not possible to say there’s a connection between climate change and May’s record average temperature. They felt odd – my feeling was ‘but it’s too early for you all to appear!’

When I heard May was so warm these changes started to make sense. The average temperature at Wellington Airport for May was 14.2°C, 2°C higher than normal and the highest since records were first taken there in 1962. In Kelburn, a suburb near the CBD, the average temperature was 13.7°C–2.2°C higher than normal and the highest since records began in 1928.

Has this unseasonably warm month tricked my plants into flowering early and will the colder winter months fell my blooms untimely? Have you noticed any environmental changes or phenomena which you can now relate to this warmth? This could even extend to people – I saw some wearing t-shirts and shorts in  Wellington recently. It wasn’t that warm!