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

Queen Elizabeth II opens New Zealand's 1974 session of Parliament

Today Te Ara commemorates the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, the queen of New Zealand and the nation’s head of state, with two new entries, one on the Royal family and a second on Governors and governors general. Our sister site NZHistory also joins the party with an essay specifically focused on Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.

For those of us under the gold card age of 65, which of course includes a large majority of New Zealanders, Elizabeth II is the only sovereign we have known. She came to the throne in 1952 as a young married woman of 25, with two pre-schoolers. The following year she was crowned in a ceremony which many New Zealanders listened to on their crackling radios. And at the end of 1953 she stepped onto New Zealand soil, the first reigning monarch to do so. As the NZHistory feature on that tour shows, 1953 marked the highpoint of popular adoration for the royal family in New Zealand. About three quarters of the nation stood on apple boxes beside the road to see her and the duke of Edinburgh drive past. As a six year old, I confess to seeing her no fewer than 10 times, and if you look very closely at the clip of her rail journey through Hawke’s Bay you might even see a young boy on the Waipukurau station waving a Union Jack. I remember thinking that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

As our entry explains, sentiments about New Zealand’s relations with the royal family have undergone rockier fortunes since then. Royal tours do not quite attract the enthusiasm of 1953–54; and the royal family has had some knocks to its role as the ideal family. Two of our prime ministers have even declared themselves republicans; and as the entry on governors and governors general explains, we have repatriated that office. The governor general remains the queen’s representative, but those occupying the office are now locals, who are also representative of the New Zealand community with all its ethnic and social diversity.

Yet, just as in the last years of the 19th century Queen Victoria’s stock rose remarkably as she came to commemorate her diamond jubilee (statues of her began to appear around the empire), a similar upsurge seems to be happening to Queen Elizabeth II. Her calm dignity has won huge admiration and another spectacularly successful royal wedding has garnered another generation of adoring fans for the royals.

It is one of the strange accidents of history that Queen Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne came on Waitangi Day, 6 February 1952. This has a remarkable pertinence because the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by Lieutenant Governor Hobson on behalf of Queen Victoria, and there has always been a powerful relationship between the monarch and the Māori community. When Māori believed that the local Pākehā community was not honoring the treaty, they sent petitions or attempted to visit the sovereign. The film in the Te Ara entry of the young queen’s visit to Turangawaewae in 1953 is a testament to how important that relationship was.

So we hope that the entries launched today on both our sites help encourage reflection on a range of important issues – our relationship with the monarch, the role of the governor general, and the continuing meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi. Look and enjoy.

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?

Plaque unveiled at the opening of Te Araroa

A couple of weeks ago I attended the official opening of Te Araroa – The Long Pathway – a 3,000–kilometre walking trail along the length of New Zealand, from Cape Rēinga to Bluff. After the speeches at Island Bay, close to the mid-point of the trail, Governor General Sir Jerry Mataparae declared it open and led a short walk to the viewing point above Island Bay.

Like all the speakers, Sir Jerry acknowledged the vision and dedication of Geoff Chapple, who has spent the last two decades turning a bold idea into reality.

Geoff Chapple and Sir Jerry Mataparae on the viewpoint above Island Bay

The idea of a track along the length of New Zealand is not new. In the 1950s Sir Alfred Reed walked the length (and breadth) of New Zealand, and it was one of the aims of the short-lived Walkways Commission in the 1970s. But nothing happened until Geoff Chapple wrote an article in the Sunday Star-Times newspaper in 1994 outlining his vision for a national walking trail. To get things moving, Geoff and others formed the Te Araroa Trust, and developed this into a network of regional committees who were able to recruit volunteers who gave time and effort to developing sections of the trail.

Only part of the work was physical. A huge amount of effort went into negotiating access, sorting out legal problems over land ownership, and obtaining agreements to link existing tracks controlled by local authorities and the Department of Conservation. New Zealand walking tracks have been developed piecemeal, and it required a complete change of approach to start linking them together.

In 1998 Geoff walked the whole route to test it, and posted a progress account of his travels on the internet – one of New Zealand’s earliest blogs. Gradually a crazy idea was becoming accepted, and funding followed from a variety of sources. There was never enough money, but there is now a complete, signposted route. Walking the whole trail takes three to four months, but a trickle of walkers (many from overseas) have started tackling the whole route, and numbers are growing all the time.

Te Araroa now has its own website, which includes route maps, and Geoff has compiled a handbook, A walking guide to New Zealand’s long trail, Te Araroa.

Cover of Geoff Chapple’s guidebook

Some parts of the trail are less than ideal. Property negotiation can take years, and is ongoing. In order to get the trail open, the trust board has used temporary road bypasses that connect to the next trailhead. The long-term aim, however, is to have a track that is entirely off-road. So over the next decade it is planned to continually upgrade and improve sections of the route.

Opening the Te Araroa Trail is a huge achievement. We salute Geoff Chapple and everyone who has been involved in its development.

The route of Te Araroa, the long trail

Carmen with former MP Georgina Beyer at Parliament in 2006

At Te Ara we were saddened to hear of the passing of Carmen Rupe in Sydney. The irrepressible, flamboyant Carmen (Ngāti Maniapoto) was a ground-breaker in so many ways. In the resolutely conservative Wellington of the 1960s and 1970s she was openly and proudly transsexual – and incredibly glamorous to boot. As an entrepreneur she provided the city with a series of glittering businesses, many of them involving commercial sex. Her unswerving insistence on being exactly who she was has been an inspiration to many – especially in New Zealand’s then-fledgling transgender community.

Carmen was a loved and respected kuia of the Australian and New Zealand queer communities, spending the last 32 years in Sydney, where in recent years she was the caretaker of a community centre attached to a block of flats in Surry Hills. However, she had been ill on and off for a number of months after a fall and hip surgery, and died from kidney failure on the morning of 15 December, aged 75.

Carmen was born Trevor Rupe, one of a family of 13 from Taumarunui. After a stint in the army (where, with characteristic confidence, she lip-synched in drag at a farewell concert), she moved to Sydney, working in the sex industry and as a drag performer – including performances with a live snake. Returning to Wellington in 1967, she rented a former clothing factory in Vivian Street and opened Carmen’s International Coffee Lounge, fancifully decorated and staffed by glamorous transgender hostesses who served tea, coffee, toasted sandwiches and pastries – as well as various sexual services, which customers requested through an ingenious system of positioning their cups and saucers. ‘All my girls were boys, or had been boys at some time,’ Carmen wrote in her 1988 memoir Carmen: my life. ‘They had to be beautiful … Dress in high fashion was de rigueur.’

Her other business ventures included striptease club The Balcony, an Egyptian tearoom in Cuba Street (’I had the walls sprayed with golden sand which sparkled … a large wooden elephant from Egypt stood by the doorway’), a curio shop, a massage parlour, and a brothel in a big old house in Hataitai. Her unsuccessful 1977 bid for the Wellington mayoralty – backed by businessman Bob Jones, under the slogan ‘Get in behind’ – saw her shoot to national prominence. In 1979 Carmen returned to Sydney, where she spent the rest of her life. Last year the Sydney Morning Herald featured her in this affectionate photographic tribute and interview, where she discusses the need for facilities for the transgendered elderly.

Carmen will be much missed by her many friends and admirers. The hundreds of tributes that have appeared online in the last day describe her as a ‘transgender goddess’, a ‘legend’, ‘the showgirl of all showgirls’ and a ‘GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] icon’. One thing is for sure: she was a pioneer and a role model for many. Moe mai ra e te kahurangi, moe mai ra.

United Nations Human Rights Day poster, 2010

The 10th of December is Human Rights Day, and to mark the occasion Te Ara has just published a fine entry by Paul Rishworth on human rights.

The date was chosen to commemorate the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed on this day in 1948. It was during the Second World War that the term ‘human rights’ first began to be used. This is not surprising, given that so much of the emotional focus during those years was a concern about the horrifying attack on people’s dignity and indeed life by the Nazis.

But the concept of rights goes back far earlier than this – to the rights written down in the Magna Carta in 1215 by the English barons in their battle against ‘bad’ King John; or to the Bill of Rights prepared by the English Parliament in 1688 following its battle against another king, James II. The British came to believe that their possession of rights was one of the distinctive marks of their citizenship – and the ‘rights and privileges of British subjects’ was written in to article three of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Historically, this concept of rights largely involved a protection for subjects against possible abuse by governments or kings. It was about what government could not do to individuals. This remains important, especially in a society such as ours where parliamentary sovereignty is absolute. However, in the 20th century the concept was expanded in two ways:

• It came to cover certain positive things government should provide for people, such as the right to health or education.
• It came to involve protecting people against abuse from other citizens as well as government. Particularly important in this respect was the right not to be discriminated against on the grounds of gender, race, religion or disability.

Our new entry explores these matters in a New Zealand context and it is illustrated with some powerful images which really bring the issues to life in a personal context. Look particularly at the photo of protestors outside a Turkish cafe in Invercargill where two Israeli women had been refused service, and at the image of comedian Philip Patson, who uses a wheelchair and couldn’t attend the opening night of a Human Rights Film Festival in 2006 because there was no wheelchair access.

What the entry implies in the end is that human rights are not just about defending ourselves from possible abuse from authority; they also oblige us all as individuals to ensure that everyone in this society is able to fulfil their personal potential. So I urge you to read our new entry on Human Rights day and think about how it applies to you.