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

In honour of the launch of Te Ara’s entry on the West Coast, find out how well you know ‘The Coast’.

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Westport Borough Council building – the West Coast meets Los Angeles

Although Napier and Hastings are often identified with the art deco style of architecture, it is also found in other parts of New Zealand, including Westport – the art deco capital of the West Coast.

This is because Westport was badly damaged by the 1929 Murchison earthquake. In the subsequent reconstruction in the 1930s several of the town’s larger buildings were erected, incorporating art deco features:

• The Buller County Council chambers featured in an issue of four art deco stamps produced by New Zealand Post in 1999.
• The Westport Borough Council building uses simple classical lines to produce a solid municipal building. It looks like solid stone, yet is really stucco. With a palm tree and the sun shining, it could be in Los Angeles.
• The post office building was badly damaged in the earthquake, and has been partly reconstructed using typical art deco symbols over the windows.

Many older movie theatres were built in the 1920s and 1930s, and have external decoration in the art deco style – often a good way to dress up a building that is little more than a box. One of the most out-of-the-way examples is the Lyric Theatre in Granity, with an art deco facade. Unfortunately there are no surrounding buildings to hide the other three sides.

One of my favourite Westport buildings was the St James Theatre, with art deco detailing on the front and a modern mural on the side. I photographed it a few weeks ago for the West Coast regional entry in Te Ara (due to be launched in December). But sadly this was one of the last pictures of the building ever taken.

It was long been known to be structurally unsound. During a movie session on Sunday 12 October a large crack was noticed on the back wall, and the roof was sagging. The next day it was examined and condemned. The grand piano was hastily removed, and demolition began. Before anyone could say ‘heritage’, the building was gone.

With thanks to the Westport News (www.westportnews.co.nz) for information on the last days of the St James Theatre.

The Denniston incline – a West Coast icon

With New Zealand’s highest rainfall, the highest mountains, and glaciers extending down to near sea-level, the West Coast has the feel of frontier country, combined with spectacular scenery.

West Coasters have always had a reputation for being independent minded, and suspicious of authority and regulations. Gold mining, coal mining and forestry kept the economy going for many years, but nowadays tourism and farming are major employers. Farmers are belatedly realising that the West Coast’s drought-free qualities make it prime dairying country.

The West Coast features in Peter Hawes’s new play, The gods of warm beer , at Centrepoint theatre in Palmerston North. Two young rugby players are poached by league scouts, and suffer the humiliation of upsetting the whole community. It’s a wonderfully evocative play about life in Westport in 1951. Even if the audience probably didn’t understand some of the subtleties of West Coast life, they loved it.

The West Coast will be the next region to feature in Te Ara’s Places theme, and will be published in December 2008.

If you have photos of the West Coast, we’d love you to contribute them to our Te Ara group on Flickr. We’ll select around 20 images for an online exhibition, like the exhibition in our recent Southland entry. We’re particularly interested in things that are distinctive about the region. Visit our Flickr group for more details.

Harold Wellman relaxing

Geologist Harold Wellman (1909–1999) is the subject of an exhibition by painter Bob Kerr, at Bowen Galleries, Ghuznee Street, Wellington (18 August to 6 September).

One of the most influential earth scientists in the 20th century, Wellman was the first to recognise New Zealand’s gigantic Alpine Fault, which bisects the South Island. The exhibition focuses on a six-week trip Wellman made to South Westland in 1941 with fellow geologist Dick Willett, to trace the fault along the western edge of the Southern Alps. (Click to preview some of the paintings on Flickr.)

A man of varied interests, Harold Wellman appears in several Te Ara entries:

• Prospecting for uranium (Radioactive minerals)
• Understanding coal rank variations (Coal and coal mining)
• Establishing the New Zealand-wide Fossil Record File (Fossils)
• Lighting a fire in the rain (The Bush)
• Carrying corrugated iron (Iron and steel)
• Exploring for copper (Mining and underground resources)
• The ‘Wellman method’ for structural analysis (Fossils)
• Discovering rare fossils (Fossils)

Harold Wellman seems to be in the spotlight at the moment, as he also features in two new publications: Atoms, dinosaurs and DNA by Veronika Meduna and Rebecca Priestley, and The Awa book of New Zealand science edited by Rebecca Priestley. Also, my biography of Wellman, Harold Wellman: a man who moved New Zealand has recently been reprinted by Victoria University Press.

The 1968 Īnangahua earthquake

24 May is the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Īnangahua earthquake. With a magnitude of 7.1, it remains New Zealand’s largest on-land earthquake for more than fifty years.

Six people were killed in accidents related to the earthquake, including a helicopter crew repairing power lines. There was enormous damage in the surrounding hills, with huge landslides. State Highway 6, through the upper and lower Buller gorges, was closed for many months. Most large structures such as bridges survived with little damage because they had been designed to withstand large earthquakes.

I was asleep in the upper storey of an old wooden house in Westport. Just before 5.30 a.m. there was a huge earthquake, followed by an explosion above me. It turned out that the chimney had fallen over, and bounced down the corrugated iron roof. I can remember holding on to the bed, and wondering how long the shaking was going to last. It was much worse close to the epicentre, over 30 kilometres away.

40 years later there is little evidence of the earthquake. Most of the big landslides have naturally revegetated. But the people who lived through the earthquake will always remember.

There is a small museum at Īnangahua village, with many pictures of the earthquake, which is open most days.