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

The man in black (photo courtesy of NZPA)

With a good All Blacks‘ win on the weekend, it’s worth reviewing the positives. Their victory over Australia in Sydney last month saw them retain the Bledisloe Cup. Additionally, a bet on the game in Sydney with our prime minister, saw the Aussie PM wearing the ‘All Black’ tie following Australia’s loss. Sportingly, he dressed in a dark suit that emphasised the silver fern on the tie.

The bet on the rugby illustrates the history between our countries. New Zealand was briefly governed from New South Wales, and the first two white women to settle in New Zealand were from Australia (both convicts).

We also have a history of humour. A somewhat apocryphal friend of mine, when was visiting Australia, was asked by a customs officer at Sydney airport if he had any criminal convictions.  ‘No!’ he replied. ‘Do you still need them to get in?’

Following the final tri-nations match against the Wallabies, I’ve put together a subjective list of the top 10 things we share with Australia.

Top 10 things we share with Australia

1. Australian Federation. New Zealand is included in the Australian constitution as one of its states. They asked us to become part of the Australian Federation, but our then premier, Richard Seddon, wouldn’t let God’s Own Country (as he called it) be swallowed up.

2. The Ditch (Tasman Sea). At various times they have crossed it in large numbers to settle here, and vice versa. Former prime minister Robert Muldoon quipped that New Zealanders moving to Australia raised the IQ of both countries. More recently this movement has prompted fears of a ‘brain drain’, though research by Treasury has suggested that it’s a ‘same drain‘.

3. Sheep. We have a lot of them, though we are getting less sheepish.  Australia’s unofficial anthem, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, is about a guy stealing a sheep.

4. Pavlova. Invented in New Zealand and claimed by Australia (or is it vice versa?)

5. Phar Lap. They have his skin and heart and we have his bones. (Outside Australasia that might be considered odd.)

6. The ‘underarm incident‘. (Reminds me of the ‘don’t mention the war‘ episode from Fawlty Towers)

7. The Bledisloe Cup. Gifted by former New Zealand governor general Lord Bledisloe.  He also gifted the Ahuwhenua trophy, and Waitangi treaty grounds to the nation.

8. The Southern Cross. Both countries have the Southern Cross on our respective national flags. Designed at around the same time, ours became official in 1902 while theirs became official in 1954. I can’t help thinking one of the flag designers was looking over the other’s shoulder when these flags were designed.

9. Possums. We got them from Australia and they ran rampant.  Ironically, indigenous Australians rediscovering the art of traditional possum fur cloaks have had to import our possum skins, as theirs are protected.

10. ANZAC Day. Past the joking and nose tweaking, our Aussie cousins share this day with us on 25 April.

New Zealand has more to offer than just the oval ball

Wednesday 9 September marks two years until the kick-off of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. The event provides a huge opportunity for New Zealanders to impress on an overseas audience that while we may (or may not!) be good at playing with the oval ball, our country also has a rich history and culture.

Some 70,000 visitors are expected and rugby supporters from other parts of the world are generally well-educated well-heeled people. During the 44 days of the cup they will be looking for enjoyments beyond the games for themselves and their partners.

So the Ministry for Culture and Heritage is working with the New Zealand 2011 office to encourage a creative and multi-faceted festival alongside the World Cup. Our websites will also work together to present an exciting range of material for visiting rugby fans.

NZHistory.net.nz

NZHistory.net.nz will become the key resource for people who are interested in the story of rugby in New Zealand. The site already has three excellent web exhibitions on rugby:

• A fascinating account of the New Zealand Natives’ tour of 1888–89, in which the team’s 21 Māori and five Pākehā members played a staggering 107 matches in New Zealand, Australia and Britain, and won 78. They also played eight games of Australian rules and two of soccer. The essay includes images of perhaps the first rugby haka and the first rugby use of the silver fern.
• An account of the traumatic Springbok tour of 1981, with some excellent television clips.
• The story of the 1987 Rugby World Cup, featuring, of course, the famous image of David Kirk kissing the cup.

Rugby enthusiasts should also not miss a sound recording of Winston McCarthy (‘Listen, it’s a goal’) describing the 1956 All Black–Springbok match. Since his departure, rugby has never been quite the same.

NZLive.com

Visitors wanting interesting suggestions as to what to do between games will find NZLive.com the essential guide. For someone who is hoping to be in Nelson on 20 September 2011 to watch Italy play, the site already has 36 things to do, which range from Lillia’s Lace Museum to the World of Wearable Art Museum.

NZLive.com also has feature articles about matters of interest to rugby fans, including:

• a short history of Eden Park, once a lake called Cabbage Tree Swamp and now the site of the cup finals
• a preview of the Portrait Gallery’s exhibition, featuring 100 life-sized images of rugby players.

Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Te Ara will be offering visitors a number of resources:

• The Places entries will provide in-depth guides about the history, geography and culture of the different regions of New Zealand for anyone visiting the country.
• The entries about New Zealand Peoples will give interesting stories about some of the people who settled in New Zealand from the countries represented in the tournament. For example, when Scotland plays in Invercargill on the second match of the tournament, the visitors from the old country can find out in the Scots entry about their compatriots who settled the far south.
• Other entries will enrich people’s understanding of the places they visit. When on 18 September, the French play Canada at Napier, visitors can learn about the story of the French and the Canadians in New Zealand, and they can learn all about Napier and Hawke’s Bay. But they will also be encouraged to learn about the gannets they can see down at Cape Kidnappers, or the 1931 earthquake, which transformed the landscape around them.

Exactly how we pull all this together into one easy way for visitors is our challenge – a geo-portal is one obvious solution. But what is certain is that NZLive.com, NZHistory.net.nz and Te Ara believe that together they have much to offer in presenting New Zealand to the world. We look forward to the challenge.

This post is cross-posted on Lively.

Before you folks in Auckland and Wellington get your pens poised to continue slugging it out as to who has more galleries and plays and general sophistication, let me say that this post is not about your fair cities but about Hawke’s Bay.  And it is not only about high culture either – it is rather drawing on the original meaning of the word which as the OED says means ‘cultivation or husbandry’. Culture in this sense is opposed to wild or uncultivated, and is found in such words as ‘agriculture’, ‘horticulture’ and ‘viticulture’.

After reading Kerryn Pollock’s wonderful new entries on Hawke’s Bay and attending the launch in Napier on Thursday, the overwhelming impression of the region is of a land radically transformed by human beings. Kerryn points out that only 6% of the land is now indigenous forest, the smallest proportion of any region in the country. The process began early – just look at our map of forest loss, and you will see that Māori settlers had cleared or burnt nearly all the forest of the region down to Dannevirke before Pākehā set foot in the area.

Once the Pākehā landed they set about transforming it further. Tussock was replaced by imported grasses, and large areas were fenced for sheep. Hawkes Bay, along with Canterbury, became the centre of large-scale pastoral farming. The best evidence of this today are the huge homesteads still to be found there. Other cultures quickly sprang up - as Kerryn explains, horticulture began with J. N. Williams’s  orchard in 1892. Twelve years later the first canning factory opened, the forerunner of James Wattie’s ‘tin can alley’. It’s worth clicking the interactive in Te Ara’s stonefruit entry to see how far Hawkes Bay still dominates the acreage of those fruits. Viticulture began very early with French Catholic missionaries bottling the first vintage in 1851 and it still has the second highest area in vines of any New Zealand region.

Other forms of cultivation also took place. The region is noted for its innovative architecture – not only the splendid art deco style which was the response to the destruction of the 1931 earthquake, but the James Chapman-Taylor Tudor-style houses before the quake and the John Scott churches and houses after the quake. And Hawke’s Bay is proud to have two amateur scientists, each in their way unique personalities, who were able to document the transformation of the land – Joan Wiffen who discovered dinosaur bones in the Mangahouanga Stream in the north of the Bay; and Herbert Guthrie-Smith whose Tutira, the story of his farm and the way it was transformed by the impact of European plants and animals has become a New Zealand classic.

So if you really want to look at how human beings have cultivated the land and erected a civilisation upon it, take a virtual visit to our two new entries on Hawke’s Bay – and then perhaps you might want to go to our cultural capital for real.

A family pyramid

What connects us to those we love? What words do we use for these connections – aroha, alofa, love, agapē, liefde, érōs, amour? How do we become lovers, welcome the arrival of babies and juggle paid work, parenting and community activities? Does gender make a difference and, if so, how? What spiritual beliefs and practices are important when we farewell those we love, and how are burial practices changing?

Over the next year Te Ara will develop a new set of entries on ‘social connections’. New material is being written on whānau/families, love, courtship, marriage, civil unions, sexuality, birthing practices, adoption, contraception, childhood, gay and lesbian lives, ageing, funerals and inheritance. Entries on Māori love stories, Mills & Boon romances, dance floor courtship, and internet dating will be found alongside information about state regulation of marriage/civil unions, separation and divorce.

New migrant family

People connect not only as lovers, parents and children, but also as Māori and Pākehā, Samoan and Chinese, Catholic and Protestant, Morman and Buddhist. Aotearoa New Zealand is a place where for hundreds of years tangata whenua have been interacting with waves of new settlers. Te Ara will look at connections between Māori and non-Māori, between established settlers and newcomers, and how refugees and recent migrants build new community organisations. Racism and attempts to establish connections across difference will also feature in the social connections theme.

Relationships with others make us what we are as individuals and as a nation, but they can also be painful and damaging. So there will also be entries on family violence, the neglect and abuse of children, and crimes such as aggravated robbery and assault. How have voluntary organisations, churches, communities and the state responded to the challenges of abuse, neglect, poverty, disabilities, inequality and violence? What has been the response of the state? What public debate has occurred and how has it changed over time?

For many people religion/spirituality is central to their connectedness to Atua/God/Yahweh/Allah, to people, to other living things and the environment. How has religion and spirituality connected people and what tensions and conflicts have been associated with religious difference? What was the impact of missionary activity on Māori and what is the current place of Māori within established Christian churches? How do religious institutions respond to connections and differences among those in their communities? Contributors to Te Ara are currently writing entries that look at some answers to these questions.

The Claris family in 1912

Health and well-being also depend on social connections – on our relationships with family members, others in our communities and health practitioners. Te Ara will look at the interactions between providers and users of health services, at relationships among health professionals (like doctors and midwives) and new health initiatives like marae-based healthcare.

The web is a key way in which people now connect. And you can connect to Te Ara by sending us your stories about whānau/family, community organisations/clubs/societies, religious activities or health groups. Do you have photos of family events, balls and dances, church camps, public meetings, protests or community activities that we could use? Would you like to share your account of what it was like to set up a new community organisation?

Please go to http://www.mch.govt.nz/projects/web/teara/my-story.html if you have a story you would like to contribute, or join our Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/teara/ if you have images you’d like to contribute.

We are keen to receive material between 1 August 2009 and 1 March 2010.

And only connect!

Some of my family history – the gravestone of John and Priscilla Yeatman

-

Family history sells. Websites designed to help you track your rellies or discover your Highland origins net millions in revenue each year. New Zealanders have embraced the search for their family’s past. We do the tours of the castles overseas; we walk the little lanes where ‘our settlers’ lived. We’ve got on board the genealogical bandwagon with a vengeance.

A couple of weeks ago I spent my sabbatical uncovering ways the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (DNZB) can best carry out birth, death and marriage research for our newest biographies. We’ve discovered that the hardest part is bypassing privacy restrictions on recently living people – and those who fit within our current area of research and interest are people who died in the last decade or so. But online resources, such as the website of the Public Record Office in the United Kingdom, can now make our search easier

Every week we get numerous enquiries from genealogists who want to make use of our biographical database. Researchers compiled the database at the time the first DNZB biographies were written. Today it’s still a great source of background information on about 13,000 New Zealanders.

The National Library of New Zealand runs a family history centre, which gives access to a treasure trove of tools to help you uncover your roots. During my stint there, I was surrounded by other enthusiasts.

Using computerised databases has supplanted spending hours in front of the microfiche reader; but many of the fiche records are still valuable. At the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Family History Centre in Hataitai, Wellington, I put the fiche to a test. I knew my great-great-great grandfather James Spence had got off a ship from Glasgow at Port Chalmers, Otago, in 1868. Scottish Parochial Registers, held on microfiche, quickly put together a picture of James’s parents and grandparents. They conveniently hadn’t moved far from the village outside Glasgow that they and their antecedents had lived in for about the previous 300 years. Archives New Zealand also holds a wealth of material for those who want to track the ships their Anglo rellies arrived on. I could now see why family historians get addicted.

You’ll often hear older Pākehā New Zealanders refer to themselves as Scottish, Irish or French. They are, of course, referring to their family history. I’ve always found this tricky – I consider myself a Kiwi; I was born here and this place is my heritage. I know I’ve got a bunch of long-dead relatives who were born in Glasgow and Stoke Wake and Hull and Jersey and Swansea, but I don’t feel one bit Scottish, Welsh or English.

Though recently I found that two of my English relatives, John and Priscilla Yeatman – who arrived here in 1875 under the Vogel scheme for assisted immigrants – are buried at Greendale Public Cemetery near Darfield in mid-Canterbury. I was in Christchurch last weekend, and my Kiwiness didn’t stop me making a little visit to pay my respects.