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

Earlier today Te Ara’s Flickr photostream received its 10,000th view. That’s something we’re quite proud of, because all the images in this photostream have been contributed by Te Ara staff members.

Huxley Forks Hut, one of Te Ara's popular Flickr photos

Often these are the photos taken by staff when they are out and about researching Te Ara’s Places entries. Sometimes they are photos we resourcers take in-house of objects and, particularly, food. We also pop up photos of our Te Ara Places and theme launches.

Currently, we have 475 images in our photostream. Of course, some of these images are more popular than others. Our most clicked image is this one: Carvings in the Square, Palmerston North, which has been viewed 395 times. One of the reasons for its popularity is because it’s linked up to a Wikipedia page on Rangitāne.

Other popular images include signs and bus shelters and this gorgeous photo of Lake Pukaki. The Tui brewery at Mangatainoka is always popular, as is inside the ladies’ loos at Kawakawa.

Last year, Emily Tutaki, one of our resourcers, travelled to Greece and the UK, and uploaded photos of places of significance to her family to our photostream. Her images of Monte Cassino and Hinemihi are also in our top 25 most viewed.

This unusual view of Te Ara's offices, featuring The Joker and taken as homework for photography class, has found fans on Flickr

We had a flurry of interest in our photos of Dunedin student flats when we added them to the Dunedin (NZ) Student Flats group pool, which is preserving the history of these fine institutions.

As well as our photostream, Te Ara also invites photos from other Flickr members to our group. In each of our Places entries we include an exhibition of the magnificent images contributed by Flickr members. We’re currently working on the Marlborough entry, and would love to see your photos of the area. After Marlborough, we’ll be working on the East Coast and, later, King Country.

Baby shoes

Sandwich board, Salzburg

Seddon?

Globe theatre memorial

Anchor billboard

Tangaroa Sailing

Speights sign

I’ve just gotten back from my first trip to Europe, and being a resources researcher, I found it a bit hard to turn off my camera. Three thousand digital photos later, I’ve trawled through them all in order to show you some of the Kiwi connections we encountered while we were away. I wasn’t away for very long, but it was fun to spot places and things that reminded me of home.

Most of my Kiwi encounters were in the UK, but strangely it was Salzburg where I stumbled upon two quite different New Zealand connections. The first was this display of Bobux shoes in a children’s shop near my hotel. These soft babies and infants shoes are exported all over the world - including to Austria.

This Inligua sandwich board was found in the maze-like streets of the Salzburg Old Town. My rusty German translates the sign as ‘Some things you’ll just never understand/With language you’ll have it much easier’.

Once I got to London, I was spoilt for choice New Zealand associations. At the end of the Mall, just outside of Buckingham Palace, stands the Victoria Memorial, which was completed in 1911. Next to Victory are two figures donated by the ‘people of New Zealand’. Two figures, a man and a woman, represent New Zealand’s role in the Empire. I think that the chap in the photo looks suspiciously like Premier Richard Seddon. But maybe it’s just the beard?

Next, when wandering around Globe, I came across a stone donated by New Plymouth Boys’ High School. It sat alongside those paid for by Sir Patrick Stewart and other theatrical luminaries. This New Zealand connection didn’t surprise me - after all a group of New Zealand embroiderers created the fantastic New Zealand hangings inside the Globe. Sir Raymond Boyce’s cartoons or preliminary drawings for the hangings now reside in Te Papa.

Anchor billboards like this one appeared all over East London. Apparently New Zealand cows are very clever, with skills including tractor driving and cheese-making. Of course, Anchor has been a household name in New Zealand since 1886.

My dad comes from Bristol, and while the family were showing me around the rejuvenated Bristol dock area I found this sign for Tangaroa charters. The ship wasn’t in dock, so I didn’t get to see the beautiful oak ketch which was made in Denmark. I still have no idea why a ship in the Bristol floating harbour is called the Tangaroa, but it seemed appropriate.

This Southerner Speights pub was closed the Sunday afternoon I wandered around Fleet Street and Brideswell. A closer inspection of the menu didn’t find any New Zealand-themed food - but according to their website they do sell Speights and Steinlager.

Huntly power station – one of the photos you'll be seeing in the Waikato entry

Last time we blogged about Flickr, we were asking people for images for the Taranaki Places entry.

Busy as usual, we’ve moved on since then and will be launching the Waikato Places entry at the end of May. As usual, our Flickr friends have contributed dozens of fantastic images of the region. As well as images we’ve sourced from Flickr that will appear as part of the entry, we’ll also be staging our fifth Flickr exhibition (the link goes to our Otago Flickr exhibition). The Waikato exhibition isn’t online yet, but you can take a look at the exhibition pool to get an idea of what’s in store.

Now that the Waikato entry is well underway, we’ve started work on the Nelson entry. For Te Ara’s purposes, the Nelson region comprises Nelson city and Tasman district; the latter takes in Golden Bay, Abel Tasman National Park, Motueka, Murchison, Nelson Lakes and nearby areas.

We would love for you to start adding your Nelson photos to the Te Ara pool. We’re looking for photographs of Nelson landscape, culture and people, but in particular inland Nelson and Murchison are on our list. Thank you to the photographers who have already started adding images!

In a new feature, you can view thumbnails of recent additions to Te Ara’s Flickr pool at the bottom of Te Ara’s redesigned homepage ( which was launched in January).

The Resources Team at the Police Museum – not part of the rogues gallery (click for full picture)

On the 29th of March Te Ara’s Resources Team attended the launch of the New Zealand Police Museum’s new website and first ever online exhibition.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about our visit to the re-launched Police Museum. Their new website gives staff the opportunity to show more of the collections and education work they do. It also gave Canadian intern Chelsea Nichols the opportunity to stage this new exhibition, ‘Suspicious Looking‘.

‘Suspicious Looking’ is an exhibition about 19th century mug shots, those often unflattering but fascinating snaps taken by police when someone is arrested. The exhibition has a rogues’ gallery of criminals, along with the crimes they were arrested for. The list of crimes is intriguing – fancy taking a guess at what the sentence for being a rogue and a vagabond would be in 1888? Try a year behind bars.

The museum is a great, hands-on place (as you can see from the above photo of the members of the Resources Team), so why not check it (or the new website) out.

Police physical culture class, 1906

A few weeks ago the resource team were very excited to go on a field trip to the New Zealand Police Museum. The Police Museum is part of the Royal New Zealand Police College campus in Porirua, and was first opened to the public in 1996. The museum was re-launched in September 2009, after a complete re-think and re-fit. However, collecting objects began in 1908, when police commissioner Walter Dinnie decided to bring together weapons and other implements used in crimes as teaching resources for the police college. The museum still collects object evidence from criminal cases, as well as social history objects around policing.

We were visiting to find out more about the museum since its re-launch. We were also there to discover whether the Police Museum would be able to help us with resources – images, objects, videos and other media – for our upcoming themes: Social Connections, and Government and Nation. These themes will have entries about such things as youth offending, victims of crime and the police service.

We found potential resources galore – the new galleries are full of fascinating objects and stories. Objects such as illegal gambling paraphernalia taken as evidence, stab-proof vests issued to police officers, and Rhys, the stuffed police dog.

The museum tells the stories of day-to-day community policing, as well as the work of forensic photographers and scientists. It also covers many of New Zealand’s worst crimes: Aramoana shooter David Gray’s weapons are on display, as well as a death mask of one of the Burgess Gang. The museum also looks at events like the Erebus disaster, when New Zealand police were sent to Antarctica to help locate and identify victims.

One highlight was the 1981 Springbok tour protest footage taken by the police. Now on display, it has never been shown to the public before, and it is quite an experience to watch the protests from the other side of the line.

The museum is definitely worth a visit, and you can expect to see some of their wealth of material on Te Ara in the future.