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

Black singlets, as worn by all self-respecting shearers

Happy Friday the 13th all. In honour of Black Friday, and the fact that black seems to have become our national colour (especially here in Wellington, I’m told), here’s a not-at-all-exhaustive list of black things featured in Te Ara:

• black robins
• black singlets
• a black goat on Black Peak
• ‘George’, a black African
• black stilts in flight
• black spot on an apple
• black coral (which is actually white when alive)
• blackbirds (and the female blackbird isn’t actually black either)
• black beetles
• Black Magic (crossing the line to win the America’s Cup
• black flounder
• black sand beaches
• Black Grace dancers
• black swans (how can something so graceful be so bad tempered?)
• black matipo (or kōhūhū)
• black-water rafting
• black tunnel-web spiders
• black-eyed geckos
• black shags with chicks
• and, despite my un-patriotic lack of interest in rugby, I couldn’t leave out the All Blacks.

Great spotted kiwi

The kiwi has been named the Forest & Bird Bird of the Year. This was a great comeback after failing to make the top 10 last year, which I suspect was partly due to cultural cringe. Even this year the kiwi was lampooned as a ‘flightless national bore’ during voting. However, enough New Zealanders showed loyalty to our iconic national symbol to see it fly to the top of the list in 2009.

Though there may be a love-hate relationship with the kiwi it’s an important icon for New Zealanders who have named themselves, their currency, a Melbourne Cup-winning horse, a lottery and national league team after it. Well-known kiwi characters include Goodnight Kiwi, Fighting Kiwi (kiwi with taiaha on flag), Kapai Kiwi and Tahi the one-legged kiwi.

Just recently someone’s managed to find a kiwi in space, though it may be a bit like seeing ET in a nutrigrain – you see what you want to see.

Goodnight Kiwi

Golden Kiwi

Kiwi in space?

The kiwi has at times suffered a bit of an identity crisis. After seeing a kiwi skin in the 1800s a traveller claimed, ‘The emu is found in New Zealand, though we were never fortunate to meet with one.’

Americans (for whom kiwi means kiwifruit) must be confused by New Zealanders claiming to be a ‘fuzzy edible fruit with green meat’. Though not as confused as the child  who not so long ago approached a passerby outside Wellington zoo with a shoebox in tow. The child asked what he should do with the kiwi he had caught in his shoebox. The passerby asked to look at it. The lid was then removed to reveal a not-so-cuddly hedgehog.

Not kiwis

A kiwi?

Not a kiwi

The waka, suspended above its tank (photo by Fin Bird)

The word got around at morning tea time: there was a waka (canoe) in our building. It had arrived earlier that morning, and was being welcomed with karakia (prayers).

In small groups, we were allowed to venture down and see it, so we set off down the stairs and through a maze of chilly corridors. And there it was, suspended above a tank and being carefully tended by conservator Dilys Johns.

Actually, it’s only part of a waka – the prow. It was found in the Hutt River, near Woburn, in 2006, and has been kept wet in a container ever since. Who made it, which iwi (tribe) they were from, or when they made it are all unknown. But it is thought to date from before Europeans came to New Zealand, so is at least 200 years old.

Apparently it was never completed, but I noticed that the inside of the waka had been worked to a very smooth surface. The outside was rougher, but that may have been due to sitting in the mud at the bottom of the river for so long.

It was this mud that Dilys – with the help of various interested and very keen Ministry for Culture and Heritage staff over the course of the day – was working at removing; gently scraping with ice-cream sticks, then hosing the surface. Once the mud is removed it will be submerged in a chemical – polyethylene glycol, or PEG. If it was just left to dry out, it would crack because it has been wet for so long. PEG will replace the water in the wood, so it can keep its shape and eventually be dried out.

This is the same conservation method that was used on the English warship the Mary Rose and the Swedish warship the Vasa. Like those ships, this waka prow may eventually end up as a museum piece. But, before then, it has to do two years of time soaking in its tank, and then around two years slow drying.

The arrival of the waka was the culmination of several months work by the ministry’s Heritage Operations unit, who had to put their thinking caps on to find a home that was big enough to house the enormous tank the waka is submerged in. Security and climate were also considerations – the room needs to be a constant temperature and preferably cool and dry.

You can find out more about this waka in this article in the Dominion Post, or in this piece on Māori Television’s news show Te Kāea (you’ll find it 9 minutes and 50 seconds in).

The spread of a tsunami, 2004

The devastating tsunami that hit the coasts of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga on the morning of 30 September – with waves up to 6 metres high, flooding as far as 1.6 kilometres inland, and killing at least 150 people – was caused by a massive undersea earthquake of magnitude 8.3, some 190 kilometres south of Apia. The Samoa–Tonga region is one of the world’s most seismically active areas, where the Pacific and Australian plates collide – as they do diagonally across New Zealand.

Tsunamis are broad waves in oceans or lakes, caused by large disturbances, locally or far away – movement of the sea floor during earthquakes, landslides under or into the water, or even the impact of a meteor. The New Scientist has a detailed explanation of the causes of the 30 September tsunami.

While tsunamis might seem a remote possibility in New Zealand – perhaps explaining why some people headed for the beach rather than the hills during Wednesday’s tsunami alert – in fact the country has experienced many tsunamis over the centuries. Māori tradition discusses a huge wave that killed many people on the western side of D’Urville Island, and there is archaeological evidence of early Māori moving inland or uphill from coastal settlements, along with evidence of tsunamis near the abandoned villages.

Since Pākehā settlement, there have been no tsunami deaths in mainland New Zealand. But the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake generated a tsunami in Cook Strait which destroyed sheds more than 8 metres above the sea at Te Kopi in Palliser Bay. In March 1947 the coast north of Gisborne was hit by a tsunami after an earthquake. A bridge was swept away, the Tatapōuri Hotel was flooded, and some buildings were sucked out to sea. June Young, whose family owned the hotel, remembers the giant wave, and the seaweed that was left hanging in the power lines. Remarkably, no one died.

But, tragically, this week’s tsunami has wreaked devastation across the south coast of Samoa and American Samoa, and on Niuatoputapu island in Tonga. Those losses are being keenly felt in New Zealand too, as a Pacific nation where many Samoans and Tongans make their home, and the site of the world’s largest Polynesian city. At least three New Zealanders died in the tsunami, with many more still unaccounted for at the time of writing.

New Zealanders have already given over $350,000 to relief agencies’ tsunami appeals; here’s a list of agencies, if you’d like to make a donation.

Cross-posted on Lively.

Howard Morrison (far left) and the Howard Morrison Quartet, 1962

It’s a song that many throughout the world know. A song that was given to our local tongue by Howard Morrison when he sang ‘Whakaaria Mai‘ for the queen at a royal command performance in 1981. It’s a song that today is in my mind, and perhaps in the minds of many, as we remember Sir Howard Morrison, who died in Rotorua today, 24 September 2009, aged 74.

Known as ‘The Sinatra of New Zealand’ and ‘Ol’ Brown Eyes,’ he first came to prominence with the Howard Morrison Quartet in the 1950s and went on to establish himself as a successful solo performer. With a career spanning five decades, his influence extended beyond entertainment through to work with the Department of Māori Affairs and concern about achievement among young Māori.

Accolades followed him throughout his life. He was recognised first in 1976, becoming a member of the Order of the British Empire, and again in 1990 when he received a knighthood. When, in 2007, Dr Ngahuia Te Awekotuku (then Chair of Te Waka Toi) presented Sir Howard with the Te Tohu Tiketike a Te Waka Toi, she characterised Morrison as ‘Not just a great artist and entertainer but an outstanding New Zealander.’

With the closing lines of ‘Whakaaria Mai’, we remember you.

Ki kona au
Titiro atu ai
Ora, mate
Hei ahau koe noho ai

There I will be
looking
In life, in death
let me rest in thee

———-

For more on Sir Howard Morrison:
• biographies from NZHistory.net.nz and NZMusic.net.nz
• television clips from NZOnScreen and their discussion forum
• the New Zealand Herald obituary
• the cover of Te Ao Hou from March 1962, featuring the Howard Morrison Quartet, and the full-text article.