A haven for urban farmers – The Stricklaw Street community garden in Christchurch

Over the past few years or so I’ve noticed that urban people have become more interested in growing their own food than in the recent past. Vegetable and herb gardens, and to a lesser extent small fruit orchards, are cropping up in suburban sections again, and on council reserves and even city streets.

Personal food production is not new in New Zealand – in the past people had to grow their own food or perish. Traditional Māori communities spent a lot of time growing food, mainly introduced plants like kūmara (sweet potato) and later potatoes. Food production was a do-or-die task for early European settlers.

The vegetable plot became a typical feature of the suburban backyard. It’s part of the quarter-acre section romance. Most families were self-sufficient in this way until the 1950s. After this, increased use of pesticides and fertilisers by market gardens meant that it was cheaper and easier to buy produce than grow it yourself. Sections became smaller and busy urbanites were less inclined to maintain them. Have a look at Te Ara’s Gardens entry if you want more history.

What has changed? The rise of the contemporary urban farmer is part of wider interest in issues of environmental sustainability in the 2000s. People are starting to think about how they, as individuals and community members, can work towards feeding themselves rather than relying on national and international food distribution chains. Some are also pursuing an organic lifestyle free of pesticides.

Though commercially grown produce is plentiful and relatively cheap, increasing prices have pushed people back to the vegetable plot. Even apartment dwellers are cultivating tomatoes and lettuces in boxes on balconies. Councils have set aside land for community gardens. In Wellington, olive trees line the streets of inner-city Mt Victoria, and the olives are harvested for oil. At the moment there’s a petition on the Wellington City Council’s website asking the council to plant more food-bearing trees on reserves and roadsides. Many schools, urban as well as rural, have vegetable gardens cultivated by the kids.

It will be interesting to see whether the interest in urban food production is sustained – it is fad, fashion, or are urbanites in it for the long haul?

Lord Howe Island skink – probably unaware that it has just switched genus

Getting it right is a major expectation of Te Ara. But sometimes it’s not us, but our committed users, who put us right. Their emails can take us on fascinating journeys in the pursuit of truth. Recently we had three interesting examples.

The week began when Geoff Patterson wrote in to say that his colleague Dr David Chapple had determined in a recently published research paper that there was only one skink genus (Oligosoma), not two as we claimed in our lizards entry. So I sent this off to the author, Kerry-Jayne Wilson, who read the paper and agreed. Going to change the entry, I found it a little more difficult than I had imagined. The entry stated that of the two skink genera, one was endemic to New Zealand but the other had relatives only on Lord Howe and Norfolk islands (and we had a nice image of the Lord Howe cousin). So I was left wondering whether the Lord Howe Islander was also part of this expanded skink genus, or not. So back to Kerry-Jayne, who confirmed that it was indeed.

A couple of days later a representative of Ngāti Kuia wrote in to say that in the dolphins entry we had incorrectly named the dolphin which accompanied Hinepoupou on her legendary 80-kilometre swim from Kapiti to Rangitoto (D’Urville Island). He pointed out that Hinepoupou was from Ngāti Kuia and they believed the dolphin was called Kaikaiawaro, while we had it as Kahurangi. This time I wrote to John and Hillary Mitchell, who wrote the entry on Te Tau Ihu (the tribes at the north of the South Island). The Mitchells confirmed that Ngāti Kuia’s accepted name for the dolphin was Kaikaiawaro, but that kaumātua of other iwi in the area agreed the name was Kahurangi. So we changed the entry to acknowledge both traditions. Interestingly, it was not only the dolphins entry which needed changing. The open water swimming entry also had the story of Hinepoupou and Kahurangi/Kaikaiawaro (so we updated that too).

The third letter came in from Stephen King, whom I quickly recognised as the famous person who sat on top of the tōtara tree in Pureora Forest in 1978 as a protest against clear-felling. Stephen, now the forest ecologist at Waipoua Forest, asked us to change the reference to toatoa from being common in northern forests to being rare in Northland. He said that at Waipoua the species was found only on one ridge, and he was concerned that people collected bark from the trees for dye. It was important to get the facts right to dissuade people from unnecessary collection. Again, I referred the comment to the original author, in this case Maggy Wassilieff, who noted that she confined the use of the term ‘rare’ to those species that appeared on the published list of ‘Threatened and uncommon plants in New Zealand’. But she accepted that it was indeed not often found in Northland, so we made an appropriate change.

It’s great that our users want to see us get these things right. It shows they care and it is a huge help to us. The job does not stop - just one day after a new law came in banning the use of cell phones while driving, I received an email telling us that we say New Zealand is one of the few developed countries that has not banned cell phones when driving. So, the corrections, and keeping Te Ara up-to-date, continue.

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.

To view the quiz you need to have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player

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

Book cover of New Zealanders and the sea (click to see a larger image)

Just in time for New Zealand Book Month (and early Christmas shopping), Te Ara’s new book, New Zealanders and the sea, has hit the shops.

New Zealand’s 18,000-kilometre coastline is the seventh-longest of any country, and nowhere is more than 130 kilometres from the coast – so it’s not surprising that most New Zealanders have a strong relationship with the sea. The ancestors of Māori, and of most Pākehā, arrived here by sea; exports and imports are still largely dependent on sea ports.

New Zealanders and the sea looks at the ways we have engaged with the sea, using it for transport and for economic gain, as a source of food – and, of course, as a place for recreation and holidays. Based on entries from Te Ara’s Earth, Sea and Sky theme, New Zealanders and the sea takes in everything from castaways to the fishing industry to marine conservation to Tangaroa, Māori god of the sea.

There are stories of flocks of sheep driven along the beach or transported by sea; of the isolated lives of lighthouse keepers and their families; of Māori methods of fishing and storing the catch; of the appropriate attire to wear to the beach, and how that’s changed over time; of Nola and Berry Edwards and their shell-encrusted car.

And – like Te Ara – New Zealanders and the sea is beautifully illustrated, with remarkable images of whaling, of rescued castaways, lighthouses, waka and 1960s surfers – as well as these likely lads sitting outside their caravan with a few cold ones.

New Zealanders and the sea is available at all good bookstores, RRP $69.99 (ISBN 978-1-86953-681-7).

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).

An iconic image of Mt Taranaki (Mt Egmont)

Taranaki is the next region to get its very own Te Ara Places entry. We’re currently editing the text and pulling together images and other resources, and it will be launched in early December.

And you can contribute to it by adding your pictures of Taranaki to our Flickr group pool!

We’ll be including in the entry an exhibition of photographs of the region. To have your Taranaki snaps considered for the exhibition, add them to Te Ara’s Flickr group pool in the next couple of weeks, as we’ll be making our decisions soon. Some images that have already been contributed include New Plymouth’s foreshore, the Wind Wand and Mt Taranaki (Mt Egmont).

We’ve found these exhibitions to be a great way of including more wonderful images than we otherwise could. You can look at similar exhibitions for Otago, Hawke’s Bay, Southland and the West Coast.

Another cultural organisation that is using keen Flickr photographers to help record our country’s heritage is the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. They have started an NZHPT Images Project group on Flickr, and are inviting people to contribute their images of historic places in New Zealand.

They’re posting lists of specific places they want photos for, and their latest list includes many in the Taranaki region – perhaps you might have photos you could add to both their pool and ours!

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.

Confidence trickster Amy Bock – an early Tasmanian import

Have you ever seen those postcards with a map of New Zealand – showing the North Island, the South Island, and the West Island (Australia)? In Tasmania I saw postcards with Australia identified as ‘North Tasmania’. As this suggests, the attitude of Tasmanians to the mainland is not so different from the New Zealand attitude to its bigger brother.

But what about the relationship between New Zealand and Tasmania? In a tour of Te Ara I found many links. In the animal world, the forest-loving black possum is a Tasmanian import; and so is New Zealand’s most common frog.

Abel Tasman himself provides a first human link, sailing as he did between the island he named Van Diemen’s Land and the west coast of the South Island – he took 19 days.

Tasmanian aborigines had an even tougher  time of it than Māori in New Zealand once Europeans came to stay. But it’s striking to see parallels to the Ngāi Tahu experience – intermarriage, and the survival of muttonbirding on offshore islands through many generations. Those offshore islands also drew sealers and whalers – many of whom worked in both Tasmanian and New Zealand waters.

The convict experience differentiated the two colonies. For convict-free New Zealand, self-government in 1854 was a fairly easily gained status. However, for Tasmanians 1853, the year the transportation of convicts ended, was fundamental. Even the colony’s name was changed – from Van Diemen’s Land – as a way of burying the convict past.

Through the later 19th century, the human traffic went both ways. Tasmanian-born Gabriel Read, who made the first important gold strike in Otago in 1861, in fact spent most of his life on Tasmania, apart from four or so years in Otago.

Cross-dresser and confidence trickster Amy Bock also hailed from Tasmania (born in Hobart in 1859), as did trade unionist Stephen Boreham (born 1857). Retail baron John McKenzie was in business in Tasmania when he came on a motorcycling tour of New Zealand and decided to migrate, opening his first store in Dunedin in 1910.

People who crossed in the other direction included missionary son and New Zealand official George Clarke Jr, who was a church minister in Hobart from 1851 and, at the turn of the century, chancellor of the University of Tasmania for nine years.

Both premier Frederick Weld and governor Thomas Gore Browne did tours of duty as governor of Tasmania, the latter from 1861 to 1868, and the former from 1875 to 1880.

A more unusual ‘crossover’ was that of W. B. Perceval, New Zealand’s agent general in London from 1891 to 1896. Replaced without warning by William Pember Reeves, he served as agent general for Tasmania for another two years.

For the contemporary visitor to Tasmania there are reminders of New Zealand links. The British 99th Regiment, based in Hobart from 1846 to the 1850s, erected a memorial, still in the grounds of the Anglesea barracks, to the 24 of its number who died in fighting in New Zealand in 1845–46. (Jock comments: it’s Australia’s very first war memorial.)

There are Mawhera and Waimea streets in Hobart – and at the top of the latter a Waimea Heights primary school. Otago Bay is at one remove – named after the only ship ever commanded by mariner and novelist Joseph Conrad, which was broken up at the bay in 1931.

Tasmania, like New Zealand, has a settlement called National Park. When the park – now called Mount Field National Park – was established in 1916 it was the only one, just as Tongariro once was in New Zealand.

A recent theatrical link was Wellington actor Stuart Devenie’s performance in Geoff Chapple’s play on Joseph Hatch’s controversial exploitation of Tasmania’s remote Macquarie Island (1889 to 1920), which was performed to acclaim in Hobart in April 2009. A few months later, when I visited, a television reviewer was recommending the ‘quality Kiwi series’ Go girls, whilst a dress shop owner’s favoured label was that of Trelise Cooper of Auckland. And everyone seems to be wearing Kathmandu branded clothing - there are three outlets in Tasmania and countless others through the mainland states.

But one New Zealand product that you can’t find in Tasmania are our apples – though that’s not too surprising in this, the biggest apple-producing state in the Commonwealth.