Sesquicentennial memorial

The other side of the sesquicentennial memorial

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Over the last few weeks Te Ara people have been thinking about what will be needed to keep the site up-to-date over the long term. There are certain obvious events that require updates. There are expected events such as the release of the 2013 census figures, which will call for innumerable changes to statistics and conclusions throughout the site. There are unexpected happenings, like the Christchurch earthquakes, which forced us quickly to add new sections to our entry on Historic earthquakes. There are new political developments such as the revised law on the foreshore and seabed, which will need including in relevant parts of the site.

Then there are more subtle changes – such as new scholarly interpretations. If archaeologists suddenly decide that there is evidence for Polynesian arrival long before 1300, many entries will have to change. And there will be changes in fashion and public interest which might require new entries. For our final theme – on creativity, which we are just scoping now – we will have an entries on conceptual art and on video art, which would have been inconceivable when A. H. McLintock put together the 1966 encyclopedia.

All this seemed clear, but it was only when I went down to Invercargill last month that I realised just how quickly entries can date. A couple of months before I had finished writing an entry on Memorials and monuments, a history of the way New Zealanders have commemorated people and events in free-standing objects. I concluded that the great age of monument-building was from about 1900 to 1960; but since then people have been less interested in commemorating ‘great men’ in stone, and relatively few memorials have been put up.

South African War memorial, Invercargill

I had gone to Invercargill for the wonderful Southland Heritage Forum, a real outpouring of energy and passion about local heritage. I had been asked to talk about – you guessed it – monuments and memorials. So to get a local flavour into my talk I took a walk around central Invercargill. There were some old favourites, such as the magnificent South African War memorial isolated in the middle of a busy round-about; and there was one new ‘great man’ statue of local genius and personality, Burt Munro.

I also discovered four memorials to recent commemorative occasions. Directly opposite the South African War memorial in the centre of the city are two memorials commemorating the sesquicentennial of the Treaty of Waitangi. One, which is very large, is inscribed with the words, ‘Now we are one people’ (which may surprise some New Zealanders from further north committed to multi-culturalism) and the other has a beautiful interweaving of Union Jack and koru beneath the tail of a whale – to express the bicultural traditions of the early whalers. These were the first 1990 memorials I had seen.

Millennium memorial

Then just along the road I discovered a striking memorial to the millennium. It was in the shape of an umbrella, and functioned as a sun dial. Shadows cast by the umbrella handle told the local time, and on the walls around was a fascinating inscription explaining how and why a standard time came to New Zealand  (you will see the story in Te Ara also). This was the first millennium memorial I had seen.

150th anniversary weka

Finally, I discovered a cute bronze of a weka which had been erected in 2006 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Invercargill becoming a city.

So here were four monuments to recent anniversaries, all of which were news to me, a self-professed memorial nut. It looks like I need to go and revise my entry. But, before I do, does anyone know of other 1990 or millennium memorials in New Zealand – or is Invercargill alone in its commemorative splendour?

Westport

Some of the things I needed to photograph I knew well – Punakaiki, Ōkarito, the glaciers. Others were less clear-cut in what was needed – such as Grey coal. And others I was just hopeful that I would find something/anything interesting to photograph – earthquakes, Addisons Flat.

Hokitika

Hokitika

The West Coast is renowned for its rain. I was hoping for a bit of rain as it wouldn’t really be a proper West Coast experience without it, but I got quite a bit of rain. On most days. At Kumara the rain cut visibility to less than 50 metres, so no hanging out at Seddon’s house. My day exploring the Haast Pass was also pleasantly evocative, meaning the river at the Gates of Haast was quite wild and the view from Haast Pass was somewhat limited.

Whataroa

Ōkarito

The West Coast is also renowned for its wildlife. I forgot to pack any insect repellent. Well, I didn’t forget so much as it never occurred to me to pack any. Rain or shine they were out in force, from St Arnaud to Haast. One thing I did learn, however, was that it takes a certain fortitude to compose and take a photo while your arms/legs/ears are being nibbled by hoards of hungry sandflies. Of course, once you’re done, there is more than a certain satisfaction in squishing a few of the pesky buggers with a nice slap or two.

Fox Glacier

While I was a couple of months early for the Hokitika Wild Foods Festival, I also discovered great beer (thanks West Coast Brewery), great salmon (thanks Lake Brunner), and great coffee (thanks Lake Matheson and Wānaka … not that it’s actually on the Coast).

Knights Point

Probably my greatest discovery was that while my whistle stop four-day tour covered the highlights, though only one of the glaciers, I could have easily spent two or three times as long just exploring the side roads and numerous walking trails I raced past. One day…

Haast

And one thing that I’d be taking with me would be a camera or two (or three). While my recent trip was for work, it probably wouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone (including my manager) that I snuck in a bit of photography for myself too, including the photos above and this one of me at the Haast Pass lookout … in the rain … pretending to be photographing.

Haast Pass

We’ve just completed the last of our Roadside Stories, audio guides to places around New Zealand. The final two areas we’ve covered are Northland and the West Coast. You can find out more about them and download them here: http://www.mch.govt.nz/roadside/.

'Simpson' (centre) and his donkey carrying a wounded soldier, Gallipoli, 1915

The image of the humble private and his donkey bearing wounded soldiers to safety has a universal resonance, with Biblical overtones of donkeys and Good Samaritans. Simpson was killed on 19 May 1915, less than a month into the Gallipoli campaign. He became a folk hero in Australia, his story combining self-sacrifice, mateship, courage and compassion. He was held to represent all the finest qualities of the Anzacs, in particular the stretcher bearers. Simpson’s image is represented in a statue near the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, and another at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. His grave at the Beach Cemetery, Anzac Cove, has become a site of pilgrimage.

There is an ironic New Zealand connection to the John Simpson Kirkpatrick story. The most famous image of ‘Simpson’ is a painting by New Zealand soldier-artist Horace Millichamp Moore-Jones, entitled Private Simpson D.C.M. & his donkey at Anzac. Moore-Jones was at Gallipoli until November 1915, when he was evacuated wounded. He does not appear to have met Simpson. The artist painted at least two versions of his ‘Simpson’ painting, the first of them painted in Dunedin, in 1918. Moore-Jones based his ‘Simpson’ on a photo of a man with a donkey. The photo was in fact of New Zealand medic Richard ‘Dick’ Henderson. There had been a number of men and donkeys rescuing wounded soldiers at Gallipoli, although Simpson was the most well known. Moore-Jones, who died in 1922, appears to have been unaware of his error, which was only cleared up in 1950. There is a statue of Henderson in front of the National War Memorial in Wellington.

Horace Millichamp Moore-Jones's painting of Simpson and his donkey

Despite my assumed familiarity with the Anzac story, I knew nothing of Simpson’s connection to South Shields, my partner Janis’ hometown in the North East of England. During a recent visit, I was surprised to come across a large statue of John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey in the main thoroughfare of Ocean Road. I learned that John Simpson Kirkpatrick, the sum of all Anzac virtues, was in fact a Geordie. He was born in Tyne Dock, a tough working-class neighbourhood of South Shields. Young Jack, as he was known, is said to have always had a love of animals. He was particularly fond of the horse he drove in his childhood job on the milk rounds and the donkeys that people rode at the South Shields seaside.

A statue of John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey in South Shields

In 1909 the 17-year-old Jack went to sea, leaving home a few days after his father died. He jumped ship at Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1910, having long desired to spend time in Australia. Jack worked as an itinerant miner, farm labourer and sailor around Australia and its coasts. Although he liked a drink and the occasional scrap, Jack always sent about a quarter of his pay home to his widowed mother in South Shields. By the time war came in 1914, Jack was thinking of a return trip to England – apparently a motivating factor in his enlistment in 1914. For reasons that remain mysterious, he enlisted under the name John Simpson.

Instead of a direct trip home, Jack ended up at Anzac Cove, where his exploits and early death brought him lasting fame. The figure of Simpson, the man with the donkey, was held up by pro-conscriptionists and recruiting sergeants as a great example of loyalty to king and empire, and support for comrades at the front. This image fed into the huge debate going on in Australia over the introduction of conscription. With casualties mounting and the Mother Country calling for more men, the New Zealand government had introduced conscription in 1916. In contrast to New Zealand’s direct approach, the Australian government held two referendums on conscription. In each of the referendums, held in 1916 and 1917, the majority of voters rejected its introduction.

The Kirkpatrick pub – a fitting tribute to John Simpson Kirkpatrick

The use of John Simpson Kirkpatrick as an image of Australian loyalty to empire had a deep irony. Not only was Jack a recent Geordie immigrant to Australia, he was also a staunch socialist. Having grown up working class in a depressed industrial area, Jack referred to England as ‘that louse bound country’ (quoted in Peter Cochrane, Simpson and the donkey: the making of a legend. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1992, p. 19). He wrote home to his mother, ‘what they want in England is a good revolution that will clear some of these Millionaires and lords and Dukes out of it’ (quoted in Simpson and the donkey, p. 18). Despite these views, Jack still ended up dying in the Great War after having rescued many of his comrades. Along with the memorial statue, there is another monument to him in South Shields: the old South Shields School for Mariners building, right by the statue, is now a pub and nightclub, named The Kirkpatrick in his memory. Jack, a canny South Shields lad who enjoyed a good ‘bit a crack’ (a good yarn), a ‘bloo aat’ (drinking session) and the occasional punch up, would surely have approved of such an honour.

A veteran and a young serviceman at Hamilton cenotaph, Anzac Day 2010

Waitangi Day and Anzac Day are this country’s major occasions for historical remembrance – and which one is the most significant for the nation is one of our more interesting debates.

In April every year since Signposts began we have tried to acknowledge Anzac Day in some way. This year our acknowledgement has taken on unusually large proportions: we are launching no fewer than 13 new entries – a bumper crop of newly minted stories from our Government and Nation theme. They each in their way tell us about the diverse meanings of Anzac Day.

• The First World War was where it all began, with New Zealanders landing on what is now officially called Anzac Cove, halfway up Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915.  Although we now commemorate the day with a dawn service, most of the Kiwis landed in the later afternoon. One of those who landed that day was George Bollinger. Make sure you watch his story, the first of a projected series of War Stories about New Zealanders’ lives in the Great War. As the entry shows, only about 8,000 New Zealanders served on Gallipoli. Far more of the 100,000 Kiwis who went overseas fought, and too often died, on the Western Front.

• Australia and New Zealand picks up from the fact that for New Zealanders, if not for Australians, Anzac Day also recalls the close kinship with our Tasman brothers and sisters. This entry explores the ups and downs of this, perhaps our most important, relationship.

• Public holidays tells us that within a year of the landing Anzac Day was being remembered; and in 1920 Anzac Day became a public holiday.

• In 1949 a new law affirmed that Anzac Day officially commemorated those who had fallen in two other overseas wars. The first of these was the South African War. The entry on that war tells us that some 6,500 went and fought on the veldt (South Africa’s open plains), but more died of disease than from gunshot.

• The Second World War was the other overseas conflict recognised in the 1949 legislation. Ian McGibbon’s entry on that war is a brilliant summary of New Zealand’s involvement. The war re-shaped New Zealand and re-shaped the world.

• At the end of the Second World War, as after the First World War, New Zealanders hoped that they would no longer have to go and fight overseas. It was not to be. The world divided into an ideological conflict between the so-called ‘free world’ and the communist world; and in 1950 New Zealanders once again sailed overseas. They went to fight in the Korean war – the first of a number of engagements covered in Asian conflicts.

• In Europe the ideological conflict was largely a diplomatic, rather than military, stand-off. We cover this in Cold War.

• New Zealand soldiers also began to go overseas to serve as peacekeepers. The extent of our service in this role is covered in Peacekeeping.

• Since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in September 2001, terrorism has become a major focus for New Zealand’s allies. Our involvement in anti-terrorism is the theme of Terrorism and anti-terrorism.

• For more than a century the major burden of these foreign commitments has fallen on our Armed forces. Our entry shows how the army, navy and air force have evolved over time.

• When members of the armed forces returned from overseas, particularly following the world wars, they were frequently physically and mentally scarred and had missed out on job opportunities. Veterans’ assistance describes how society tried to help them return to full lives as civilians.

• On Anzac Day veterans often march with their mates, and all wear the medals that they have earned from their service. Military medals will help you understand the meaning of those medals.

• In New Zealand the focus of Anzac Day services is the local war memorial, which usually lists those from the area who died in overseas wars. The memorial is where wreaths are laid and services are held. Memorials and monuments provides a history of New Zealand’s memorials, both those that commemorated particular armed conflicts and also those that recalled major people and events of civilian life.

So before you get up on Anzac Day and head off to the local dawn service, take a look at some of these 13 entries. We are confident that this will make your appreciation of the day very much richer.

Headline from the Thames Star, 17 April 1912, p. 2 (from Papers Past)

The centenary of the Titanic disaster on 15 April has brought extensive media coverage of this historic event. But how did the New Zealand media of the time – which in 1912 meant newspapers – cover the tragedy? A glance at the wonderful resource of Papers Past, the National Library’s digital newspaper archive, gives us some clues.

The Titanic disaster received wide-ranging newspaper coverage in New Zealand. The fact that the ship was equipped with modern Marconi wireless meant that word of the sinking was transmitted to Britain and North America as it was happening. This in turn meant that newspapers in London and New York were cabling news outlets around the world with accounts, often not very accurate, of the unfolding drama.

One of the optimist first headlines: Marlborough Express, 16 April 1912, p. 5 (from Papers Past)

Titanic sank at 2.20 a.m. (ship’s time) on Monday 15 April 1912, less than three hours after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. This was around 5.20 p.m. on 15 April in New Zealand. The first reports of the accident were in the New Zealand papers the next day. The Evening Post’s headline was typical ‘Shipping Disaster: Titanic Sinking: Mammoth Liner Collides with Iceberg’ (Evening Post 16 April 1912 p. 7). The Evening Post gave little detail of the accident, but commented on the size of both Titanic and of the ice floes in the Atlantic, plus details of previous accidents with icebergs. Some of the distinguished passengers on board were mentioned. At this point New Zealand papers simply reprinted the cables they received on the disaster, including the line that all the passengers had been saved (Marlborough Express 16 April 1912, p. 5).

The next day’s papers brought the grim news of ‘Fifteen hundred drowned: Titanic gone under: Unprecedented disaster‘. Some papers gave figures for the number of survivors, varying between 675 and 866. These seem to have been more guess work by journalists than based on any hard information. (Bay of Plenty Times, 17 April 1912, p. 5, and Ohinemuri Gazette, 17 April 1912, p. 2.)

Marlborough Express, 24 July 1911, p. 2

The reading public was already familiar with Titanic and its sister ship Olympic, as New Zealand newspapers had carried many reports on the planning and construction of the ‘mammoth’ White Star liners (Grey River Argus, 24 January 1910, p. 4, and Poverty Bay Herald, 22 February 1910, p. 5 ). Titanic had been heralded as the ‘Largest ship afloat’ on its launch at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast (Marlborough Express, 24 July 1911, p. 2).

Within days of the sinking, the papers recounted tales of manly British heroes going down with the ship. Americans were also conceded to be heroic, being of course members of ‘the English-speaking race’. Those passengers and crew from France or from southern or eastern Europe did not rate a mention (Grey River Argus, 18 April 1912, p. 4). Some papers went beyond the tales of heroism to ask why the disaster had happened. Were the liners too big, was the route safe, had the ‘rage for speed’ in trans-Atlantic crossings led to neglect of safety? (Evening Post, 18 April 1912, p. 6.)

New Zealand papers also began to report the accusations against some of the male survivors, in particular Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line. It was reported that Ismay claimed he was ‘simply a passenger’ on the Titanic and did not make any suggestions to the captain regarding the ship’s speed or route. He also claimed to have only entered a lifeboat when there were no women or other passengers remaining on deck (Evening Post, 23 April 1912, p. 7).

Poverty Bay Herald, 19 April 1912, p. 5 (from Papers Past)

Some of the reactions of New Zealand newspapers to the sinking of Titanic seem very familiar. One of the earliest questions asked was ‘Were there any New Zealanders on board?’ (Poverty Bay Herald, 19 April 1912, p. 5.) The papers were unable to identify any New Zealand passengers, but did find the lucky Mr J. A. Frostick, of Christchurch. While in Britain he had booked to cross the Atlantic on Titanic, but was forced to cancel the trip due to business engagements (Grey River Argus, 19 April 1912, p. 5).

A number of papers reported that the ‘adventuress’ May Hallet had been made a widow, as her husband, Donald Campbell, was assistant purser on Titanic. May Hallet was a jewel thief, car thief and confidence trickster who, between 1909 and 1911, had gained notoriety in New Zealand through conning the well-to-do. Her husband, an Australian, had formerly been purser on the Ulimaroa, a trans-Tasman steamer (Wairarapa Daily Times, 14 May 1912, p. 4, The Observer, 18 May 1912, p. 5 and NZ Truth, 30 January 1909, p. 4).

New Zealanders rallied round, raising funds to help the victims of the Titanic sinking (Marlborough Express, 25 April 1912, p. 4). Special church services and concerts were held to raise money for survivors, while sailors gave money from their pay to help the widows of their fellow seafarers (Evening Post, 19 April 1912 p. 7). One unnamed Wairarapa resident offered to adopt the one-year-old child who had been saved from the disaster (Wanganui Chronicle, 2 May 1912, p .4).

The Titanic disaster raised many maritime safety issues, including the shortage of lifeboats on liners and other passenger ships. New Zealanders were led to question whether the ships that plied their own coasts were safe and whether they had adequate provision of lifeboats (Colonist, 23 April 1912, p. 5).

While all parties saw the Titanic’s sinking as a tragedy, the varying conclusions drawn from it illustrate the polarised views common in 1910s New Zealand. A. A. Adams, rector of the state school of Greymouth, lectured his pupils on the King’s Birthday. He explained that ‘the thrilling accounts of the wreck of the Titanic … cause us to thank God we are British’ and went on to hail the heroism of the British seaman ‘from the humble stoker to the commander’ (Grey River Argus, 5 June 1912, p. 2).

Maoriland Worker, 14 June 1912 (from Papers Past)

In contrast James Thorn, writing in the socialist newspaper the Maoriland Worker, analysed the death rate among the different classes of Titanic’s passengera. He argued the disaster illustrated the results of class distinction and that charity towards the survivors was being ‘utilised to shield from well-deserved censure the negligently criminal powers that be.’ (Maoriland Worker, 14 June 1912, p. 2.) He also pointed out that the chivalry of male passengers was being used by British politicians as an argument against giving votes to women.

This assertion was also being used closer to home, as in a Press article that considers whether ‘women and children first’ is an outdated rule (Press, 8 June 1912, p. 10). It concludes:

There comes now and then a time when man proves himself greater than Nature, when he commands the survival of the weakest instead of the strongest. The ’sacred law of the sea’ must abide. And no true man would have it otherwise.

Thursday 29th March marked the centenary of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s last entry in his diary, made on the fatal trip back from the South Pole in 1912. At some point soon after that entry Scott became the last of the five-man polar party to die.

As a child in the 1960s I grew up reading the ladybird book Captain Scott: an adventure from history. I knew by heart the names of that lost polar party: Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Evans. With Scott Base, Scott’s Hut and our sprinkling of Scott memorials, New Zealanders could be forgiven for feeling some sense of ownership of this story.

The Discovery, one of Captain Scott's ships

The dramatic tale of the escape of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition also seems to hold resonance for New Zealanders, with the added connection that the Endurance’s captain, Frank Worsley, hailed from Akaroa. Scott’s Discovery (1901) and Terra Nova (1910) expeditions, and Shackleton’s Nimrod (1908) expedition, all departed south from either Lyttelton or Port Chalmers, in each case to the accompaniment of massed cheering crowds. In the ensuing years neither criticisms of imperialism nor the recognition of Scott’s human flaws seem to have diminished ongoing public interest in the heroic age.

The name of Norwegian Roald Amundsen, the first to the pole, does not seem as honoured in this country. Initially, he was condemned for keeping secret his intention to race Scott to the South Pole. Amundsen was briefly forgiven by the New Zealand public when, on his way back from Antarctica in 1912, he made a lecture tour of our main centres. Crowds flocked to hear him speak and to see his ‘100 moving pictures and coloured slides’ of the southern continent. At this time the fate of Scott’s expedition crew was still unknown. In February 1913 the tragic news of their demise reached the outside world. As imperial propaganda, heroic British failure trumped the Norwegian polar triumph. New Zealanders largely adopted the British view of Amundsen as a dog-eating cad, unfairly winning by conducting an efficiently organised expedition.

In modern times New Zealanders have tended to ignore the other great heroic-age explorer, Douglas Mawson, no doubt due to his ultimate sin of being Australian. The Englishman Scott and the Anglo-Irish Shackleton, on the other hand, still retain their icy glamour.

During our northern winter visit to Britain last January, Janis and I visited the Scottish port town of Dundee. I was surprised to find Scott’s ship the Discovery, flanked by statues of emperor penguins, berthed by the quay near the Dundee railway station. Dundee was kown for ‘jute, jam and journalism’, and as the home of the comics Beano and Dandy, with statues of Minnie the Minx and Desperate Dan in its main square.

Cartoon characters Minnie the Minx and Desperate Dan

Dundee was also one of the last places to build reinforced wooden ships for polar whaling. The Terra Nova, Scott’s ship for his 1910–12 expedition, was a converted whaler built at Dundee. The Discovery was purpose-built in Dundee for the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901–4, a combined effort between the British government, the Royal Geographic Society and private subscribers. The Discovery expedition was significant as the first major scientific mission to Antarctica, involving experts in geology, botany, meteorology, physics and marine biology. This was also the first Antarctic journey for Captain Scott, Sub-lieutenant Ernest Shackleton, and the surgeon, zoologist and artist Edward Wilson

A pen of sheep beside the Discovery – a New Zealand connection

The Discovery is berthed beside the impressive Discovery Point museum. Here the story of the expedition is outlined, along with the ship’s subsequent history. The museum also celebrates the unsung heroes of polar exploration: the men who built the ships. After seeing how the reinforced hull was built – with four layers of different types of wood – the intrepid visitor gets to wander around the ship and inspect the marvels of its construction at close hand.

New Zealand connections also pop up. The museum houses a harmonium that was gifted to the expedition by the people of Christchurch and used to entertain the crew in the long antarctic night. A group of plastic replica sheep, penned by the ship, represent the 45 sheep donated by New Zealand farmers to feed the hungry explorers.

The harmonium donated to Scott's expedition by the people of Christchurch

The Discovery’s 1901 stop-off in New Zealand resulted in one of the crew deserting and another dying by falling from the crow’s nest. Two volunteers stepped in, both sailors from HMS Ringarooma, stationed off the New Zealand coast at the time. One of the volunteers was Tom Crean, the ‘Irish Giant’, who later served on both the Terra Nova and Endurance expeditions.

The Discovery went on to an extensive career of arctic and antarctic adventures. These included the two BANZARE (British Australian New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition) voyages of 1929–31. Douglas Mawson, the Australian veteran survivor of the Antarctic heroic age, commanded this expedition. Under pressure from the Australians and the British, our government coughed up £2,500 for BANZARE, although bureaucrats and politicians spent a lot of time arguing over which department would pay for the two Kiwi scientists who sailed on the Discovery. The two young researchers later became leaders in their fields. The ornithologist Robert Falla would eventually become director of the Dominion Museum, while meteorologist Richie Simmers became director of the Meteorological Service.

In conclusion, the Discovery at Dundee was a pleasure to visit, and it reinforced my belief that we southern-hemisphere folk always feel at home with penguins.

Obviously most of our work on Te Ara goes into completing the first stage of our comprehensive online guide to New Zealand’s peoples, natural environment, history, culture, economy, institutions and society, but, as is the nature of websites, nothing is ever really complete.

Freda Cook, no longer faceless thanks to a contributed image

Got the picture?

There is ongoing work on the biographies, and an important part of this is adding new images when they come in. Often they arrive via our Contribute an image page. This allows members of the public, like you, to provide photographs of people that would otherwise be unavailable because they are not held in public collections.

It is particularly good to get images of the many lesser-known or locally important but nationally obscure people who find a place among the biographies. When deciding who to include in the DNZB, the selection policy stressed ‘representativeness’ rather than just ‘importance’. People who might otherwise have remained faceless, such as the irrepressible socialist and peace activist Freda Cook, brilliant preacher Ānaru Ngāwaka, and chemist and writer of dreadful poetry William Skey now have images thanks to family members who have provided them from their private collections.

Contribute here

Recently we have made some exciting technical changes to the ‘Contribute an image’ page. Well, it’s certainly exciting for me, as this is the aspect I look after and the page redesign was my idea. Hopefully this redesign will make it easier for you to help us with images, whether it is contributing a photo you have or letting us know where we may be able to find one.

To take a not-quite-random example: have a look at the entry on Alice Palmer (no relation as far as I’m aware). Although not widely known, she was clearly a significant figure in union circles – an early campaigner for equal pay for women and the first woman to hold high office in the Public Service Association. She died as recently as 1977 and although she had no children, there may well be other relatives who remember her and have photographs of her. But I digress.

If you click on the silhouette icon labelled ‘Contribute an image‘ in Alice’s biography, this takes you to a page with two options, each going to a separate page. The most daunting option is to actually contribute an image. It’s daunting because it is full of quite specific instructions, but hopefully it will streamline the process for both the contributor and the person at our end – i.e. me. If someone has a digital image of Alice, and can give us clearance to use it, by filling out this form they make it a relatively straightforward process for us to upload it to the site.

The simpler option is Suggest where an image can be obtained, if you happen to know where an image of that person could be found.

I’ve been researching the founding of Auckland and Wellington for another project and wanted to know the extent of Ngāti Whātua land ownership in early Auckland. So I went to their iwi entry in the Māori New Zealanders theme and came across this map showing their 1850 land holdings. But it was hard to read and lacked the detail I was after. I wanted to be able to zoom into the Auckland isthmus and get a better idea of the ownership boundaries. As it is included in one of the first themes to be completed, I concluded the map was put up on the site before Te Ara adopted the zoomify tool.

Alexander Turnbull Library, Reference: MapColl 832.4799/1840/Acc.317

It was a completely different experience when I began analysing William Mein Smith’s 1840 plan for Wellington (shown above). Though I’d seen it many times before in books, the full-screen zoomify allowed me to focus in on the detail and make many new discoveries. One thing I hadn’t noticed before was the position of the public wharf – at the end of Taranaki Street. In trading towns like Wellington, wharfside land was the most prized because it rapidly increased in value. So when the time came for the first settlers and investors to choose their sections this land was picked first – if you look closely you can see the numbers 1 and 2 on the sections either side of the wharf.

Of course, Te Aro pā also occupied this land. Its inhabitants refused to budge so its new ‘owners’ could move in, leading to one of the first conflicts between settlers and Māori in Wellington. I’d sometimes wondered why the New Zealand Company had simply not accommodated Te Aro pā in their planning, as they did Kumutoto (Woodward Street) and Pipitea pā (Pipitea Street). After identifying the high value of the Te Aro pā land (through the zoomify), I’ve decided the Company probably figured it was easier to raze Te Aro pā than upset its powerful investors. It didn’t quite go to plan: the pā remained a Wellington landmark long after the New Zealand Company perished.

So, I think it’s brilliant how Te Ara’s continuing adoption of new technology is allowing people like me to discover new things that can help advance knowledge and understanding of where we live.

(Another) Matakana wedding

I recently attended a family wedding at Matakana, a wine-growing and farming settlement 70-odd kilometres north of Auckland. I travelled up from Wellington via Whanganui and the King Country, and my visit caused me to reflect on the way some rural townships have carved out new identities and thrived, while others have not, and have diminished accordingly.

In the early 1990s local developer Richard Didsbury bought Matakana’s old sawmill site with the view to creating a boutique village and farmers’ market, and this is exactly what happened. Matakana was not completely reinvented – its history as a farming and fruit-growing district is clearly relevant to its present identity as a food and wine destination – but the chichi village I visited, packed with people on a Saturday morning, is surely a far cry from the Matakana of old.

I was intrigued to see that the old dairy factory now houses a design store that would be at home in any of New Zealand’s bigger cities. Having seen many dilapidated, disused dairy factories on my travels around the country, this seemed to me, if I needed more evidence, that Matakana had successfully cemented its status as a thriving small township – or ‘village’, as it is now branded.

So, what factors contributed to Matakana’s success? I can think of a few things right away. Its proximity to Auckland is key – Aucklanders can boot it up State Highway 1 via the new toll road in just over an hour, which probably isn’t very long to all to those accustomed to slow traffic. Matakana is a wine-growing area replete with vineyards and fancy wineries and, like other such spots in New Zealand – Hawke’s Bay for instance – related food, retail and tourism businesses have been established in the wake of the vines. Individuals such as Richard Disbury have also clearly played their part.

I couldn’t help but contrast Matakana with some of the places in the King Country I know are struggling, such as Ōhura and Benneydale. These places are too far away from major population centres, are not on main transport routes and their economies have not been propped up by new industries to replace the old, as has happened in revitalized country towns.

Do you know of any towns off the beaten track which have overcome the tyranny of distance to thrive in the 2000s? What is the key to their success?

And for more on Matakana, check out our latest Roadside Story audio guide.