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CAPITAL TA L E S O F T H E C I T Y

STELLAR ACHIEVERS WINTER 2016

ISSUE 32

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CAPITAL MADE IN WELLINGTON

THE COVER: Starry night pillow fight Stylist: Shalee Fitzsimmons Photography: Tamara Jones Models: Mya (8), Angus (5), Lucy & Indi (5) Assistants: Rhett GoodleyHornblow, Hattie Logan, Laura Pitcher & Elise Catalinac

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C O N TA C T U S Phone +64 4 385 1426 Email editor@capitalmag.co.nz Website www.capitalmag.co.nz Facebook facebook.com/CapitalMagazineWellington Twitter @CapitalMagWelly Post Box 9202, Marion Square, Wellington 6141 Deliveries 31–41 Pirie St, Mt Victoria, Wellington, 6011 ISSN 2324-4836 Produced by Capital Publishing Ltd

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his is our biggest issue ever. I said that last year, and to our delight, this year it is again true. We do have fun (mostly) putting each issue together, and of course are delighted when we receive your feedback. We truly do welcome it, good and bad, although of course we prefer the former. We do make mistakes and are happy to acknowledge them; sometimes the problem is that familiar issue, “a question of interpretation.” I have watched, in recent years, a quite large change in attitude towards journalists and journalism. Often now, interested parties and the public see journalists and publications’ role as one of publicising their event or issue, not as having an independent existence and a role of providing good journalism. Even in a lifestyle publication (generally acknowledged to take a lighter approach to issues of the day) such as this, there is a difference between “I disagree with your writer /columnist/ article and the issues it raised” and “they’re wrong” – or, “I don’t like your story/photo and therefore it’s wrong”. On to celebrations. It’s our third birthday, and to help you celebrate with us we are giving you some wrapping paper, for small but valuable presents. Beautifully designed by Lily Paris West. I thank her for it and hope you find it appealing. In this issue Michelle Duff talks to three locals all involved in some way with Matariki. The celebration of Matariki is at last gaining traction, and this year events have multiplied across the region. Local boy Lima Sopaga talks to Alexander Bisley about his childhood of sport and where it has taken him so far. We look at the bold programming of the NZSO, and the bold walk that is the Paekakariki escarpment experience. Our food writer Unna Burch has created the cake of all cakes for a celebration, and Joelle Thomson recommends red wine for wintry evenings around the fire. And much much more. Thank you to all our advertisers, readers, writers, photographers, designers and contributors who make this magazine possible. See you again in August.

Alison Franks Editor editor@capitalmag.co.nz

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Erenora Puketapu-Hetet, Rangi Hetet, Lillian Hetet, Kataraina Hetet, Veranoa Hetet, Len Hetet, Sam Hauwaho, Te Kawau Maˉroˉ, 2002. Collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

dowse.org.nz 45 Laings Road Lower Hutt 8

CONTENTS

STELL AR ACHIEVERS Matariki approaches – we observe Māori New Year by talking to three stellar people

FAMILIES THAT PLAY TO GETHER

JUBILATION OF BIRDS

GREEN GRO CER'S DAUGHTER

Lightening can strike more than once when it comes to these sporting families

Dan Poyton chirps about a symphonic bird celebration

Chinese Kiwi, writer critic – Helene Wong duels with dual identities

12 LETTERS

PERIODICALLY SPEAKING

14 CHATTER

BY THE BOOK

NEWS BRIEFS

BUS OFF

BY THE NUMBERS

89 INTERIORS

NEW PRODUCTS

94 HOUSE

TALES OF THE CITY

100 ABROAD

26 CULTURE

104 GIDDY UP TOP

110 TORQUE TALK

WHAT THE FLOCK

50 HE-HE

111 WELLY ANGEL

59 FASHION

114 BABY BABY

64 EDIBLES

116 DIRECTORY

COFFEE WALNUT CAKE

118 CALENDAR

LIQUID THOUGHTS

120 ON THE BUSES 9

CONTRIBUTORS

S TA F F Alison Franks Managing editor editor@capitalmag.co.nz Campaign coordinators Lyndsey O’Reilly lyndsey@capitalmag.co.nz Haleigh Trower haleigh@capitalmag.co.nz Dagula Lokuge dagula@capitalmag.co.nz General factotum John Bristed john@capitalmag.co.nz Art direction Shalee Fitzsimmons shalee@capitalmag.co.nz Design Rhett Goodleydesign@capitalmag.co.nz Hornblow Accounts Tod Harfield accounts@capitalmag.co.nz Craig Beardsworth

Factotum

Gus Bristed

Distribution

SHA L E E F I T Z SI M M O N S Ar t D i re c tor

HO L LY A N N C R A IG I l lustr ator & D e sig ner

Shalee blew in on the wind many years ago and found shelter in the hills of Berhampore. She’s our resident art director, stylist and designer. Obscure music enthusiatic, fanatical online shopper and parent to a little monster, Shalee puts the it into Capital. Instagram @madeyouloook

Holly is a designer, illustrator, coffee addict and lover of nature. She is building her career as a freelancer and is currently doing work for Weta Workshop. In her free time you’ll find her drawing in a cafe, walking her dog Radar or rummaging through vintage clothing stores. Instagram @hollyanndesign

ALEXANDER BISLEY Journ a li st

G E O R G E S TA N I L A N D Ph oto g r aph er

STOCKISTS Pick up your Capital in New World, Countdown and Pak’n’ Save supermarkets, Moore Wilson's, Unity Books, Commonsense Organics, Magnetix, City Cards & Mags, Take Note, Whitcoulls, Wellington Airport, Interislander and other discerning region-wide outlets. Ask for Capital magazine by name. Distribution: john@capitalmag.co.nz.

SUBMISSIONS We welcome freelance art, photo and story submissions. However we cannot reply personally to unsuccessful pitches.

Alexander writes for The Listener, North & South, RipItUp and The Guardian and is editor-at-large for Lumiere Reader. He is also a die-hard Hurricanes fan.

George is interested in documentary photography and images tied to the notion of truth. He enjoys using travel to facilitate his photographic practice and often finds himself drawn to making images with a human element. Ultimately, he is interested in creating something beautiful.

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LETTERS

UNSOPHISTICATED GRIPE

FLIGHT OF THE EMU

I am writing to express my concerns regarding the recent article “Post Card from India”, by Dean Watson (#30). I have been a reader of the magazine and have always admired the well curated and beautiful content. This is why I am surprised by this article. From the get go, it was clear that the piece would be a derogatory and stereotypical one. Progressing through the article, it seemed to read as an unsophisticated gripe about the author’s perceived unfamiliar and non-ideal notion of India. A notion that was conveyed in a highly condescending manner, I might add. In addition to this, cultural sensitivity did not seem to be a priority with the inclusion of phrases such as “Ganesh Goliath” and “Indian salespeople are the Donald Trumps of salespeople.” Ganesh is actually a Hindu god, one that is observed and worshiped by many Indians – hopefully it may be clear why “Ganesh Goliath” is not the most appropriate phrase to use. While I understand the freedom, humour and truth of writing and journalism, there are still cultural boundaries and sensitivities that need to be taken into consideration. This simply did not seem to be the case here. The piece had many offensive features, almost as many as the number of complaints the writer had about India. It was condescending, degrading, mocking, clearly uneducated, derogatory and stereotypical with racist undertones. The piece is so saturated with stereotypes I am unsure whether it was predominantly informed by the writer’s holiday there or from an episode of the Big Bang Theory. I was disappointed and offended by this piece. Devanga Wanigasinghe, Wellington

My husband and I are recent arrivals to Wellington having retired here from Newcastle in NSW in January. I wanted to compliment you and your colleagues on Capital magazine as its informative, interesting and insightful articles have provided me with some great reading in the months I have been here. I first browsed its contents when we holidayed here in January 2015 when we first considered making the big move to NZ and then in July when we came back to see if we could cope with the wild and windy weather of this nation’s capital. We’ve been won over by this wonderful city, have bought an apartment and settled in. Capital is a regular purchase and is perused at the coffee table and online. Keep up the great work! Elaine Barker, Te Aro

YEAR-ON-YEAR IMPROVEMENT I was impressed with your Green issue last year and I am even more impressed with this year’s issue. It shines an interesting light on Fair Trade and the issues with actually becoming so. Andrew DeSole, Porirua

COVER MAGIC I wish I knew where you people get your ideas for the Capital front pages from. I love them. I think it would be interesting if you put an explanation inside telling us what the cover is all about. In the May issue it’s obviously all about the green subjects you covered in your green month. But I feel sure you have a story about how the cover might have come about. Jesse Ainsley, Wellington We have a really imaginative art director. Ed

CLIMATE CHANGE I enjoyed the 2015 Green edition of your excellent magazine and was pleased to see the May 2016 issue would also be taking a sustainable, ecologically-focused perspective on happenings in the capital. With the ongoing impacts of climate change a major issue for us all to consider, I was disappointed to see an advertisement for large SUV and light commercial vehicles on the back cover (vehicles such as these being contributors to carbon emissions). Harriet Wild, Mt Victoria

ERRATUM In issue #31 p11, Window Dressing, we mistakenly referred to the Wellington Curtain Bank in Porirua. The Curtain Bank is open between April and November every year at Forresters Lane. Outreach curtain banks take place in five locations a year, including Porirua, but there is not a year-round base. The dropoff point is at the Porirua CAB.

Letters to editor@capitalmag.co.nz with subject line Letters to Ed or scan our QR code to email the editor directly.

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WA R M UP It’s winter, ok – deal with it. We here at Capital HQ find it warming to immerse ourselves in the cosy goodness of “useless” facts. It staved off a mutiny last year when the heaters shorted out for an hour. Many of you will have a cord of wood piled up in your driveway at the moment. Ever wondered what a cord is exactly? A cord is a measurement that is taken once the wood has been neatly stacked – 3.62 cubic metres. If you’re not spatially attuned, that’s a pile 2.44m long, 1.22m high and 1.22m deep. The word “cord” dates back to 1610, and refers to the cord of rope used to measure the length, height and width. Finally, firewood is sold as a “thrown measure,” so once stacked it will reduce by one-third in volume. Feeling warm yet?

BETHANY MITCHELL What led you to get a tattoo? This is my third tattoo and probably the one that means the most. I was an avid self harmer as a teenager, all the scars on my wrist have pretty much disappeared, but I wanted to cover them up. It’s kind of like me moving forward with my life – me taking my body back. Family — for or against? My family are really supportive except for one of my grandparents, which is really sad considering how important it is to me. How did you choose the design? This was a custom piece by Nursey. I didn’t want something that was symbolic. I wanted something that was living on my skin.

C HAT T E R

WELLY WORDS PREMIERE PRATFALL One of the perks of publishing is people plying you with product to promote (another perk is a public platform for prolific alliteration). One such PR plugger (see, I can’t stop now) offered us tickets to a documentary playing at The Roxy. The press release said it was a world premiere, so to expect red carpet and a doozy of an after-party – except the after-party was at The Establishment bar in Christchurch – an hour’s flight from Miramar? Turns out the PR guru behind the press release was based in New York and she hadn’t done her local research. We worked out it was in fact at the Courtenay Place incarnation of The Establishment; and when we got there we were served Perrier, pretzels and Dom Pérignon. Perfect.

SHUDDER ALERT A Wellyworder had a relative from Melbourne staying recently. The usual teasing abounded – we’re blighted by wind and earthquakes and they have to dodge bushfires and all manner of poisonous animals. The Ocker pronounced her country far more dangerous and exciting... then we had two shuddering earthquakes and prolonged assault of 140km winds in quick succession – none of which even raised an eyelid from the rest of the household. The Ocker conceded defeat and was happy to return to her less perilous country. Possibly a Pyrrhic victory?

IT'S COOL TO KORERO This two month issue is 120 pages – our biggest yet, so excuse us for saying... Me ahau ki te moe inaianei. I need to sleep now.

WRAP IT UP “I like to draw, play with visual media and to solve problems through design,” says Lily Paris West about her aesthetic creations. Lily has worked as a graphic artist for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, was art director of Salient, and has produced animated music videos for bands. This month, the Wellingtonian and multi-talented illustrator, animator, designer and singerin-a-band has lent her talent to Capital in the form of limited edition wrapping paper. We’re celebrating our winter birthday issue by giving it away.

VILLAGE LO OP Registrations have opened for the King of the Hill fun run in Wainuiomata on Sunday 3 July. The run includes families with kids and pushchairs and people in costume as well as serious runners. The course is now a loop through the Wainuiomata township before heading to the summit of Wainuiomata Hill, over the Pukeatua footbridge, and back again with only 2km uphill. Serious runners can win cash if they’re first female or male home. kingofthehill.co.nz

NEWS BRIEFS

BAC K ON TR ACK The popular Korokoro valley track in Belmont Regional Park is open again after last year’s floods closed it. Greater Wellington Regional Council has repaired and replaced bridges and boardwalks, and reinstated large sections of the track between Cornish St and the Korokoro dam. The team also felled more than 2,500 overgrown pine trees near the Korokoro Forks to create a safer and wider all-weather track able to cope with the large number of people who use the park.

GREY MAT TER

RAILWAY SLEEPERS

PRIDE IN PRINT

Matt Rowe, a Victoria University of Wellington PhD student, has received a 2015 Neurological Foundation Postgraduate Scholarship worth just over $100,000 to carry out research that could have implications for treating degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s, and brain cancer. Matt’s research will be carried out under the supervision of Dr Melanie McConnell from Victoria’s School of Biological Sciences and Professor Mike Berridge from the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.

All aboard the Passchendaele locomotive – named as a memorial to railwaymen who served in WWI – which will soon be on its way to Taranaki from Paekakariki for the first time. The three-day adventure sets off at the end of July and is run by Steam Incorporated, who can also organise your accommodation. According to John Bovis, business manager and train enthusiast, the treasured Christchurch-built engine is a 100 year old New Zealand icon. Its restoration began when the group obtained it 20 years ago and was completed just two years ago, at a cost of half a million dollars.

Capital’s own Petone-based printers, Printlink, have taken 10 different awards at this year’s Pride in Print Awards. Among their awards was the top spot in the packaging category. They were judged on the playing cards produced for the Ministry of Education’s Game of Awesome, which is designed to help five-to-eight-year-old children read and write. Printlink’s beautiful printing and packaging had every component fitting together perfectly, and Katherine Williams, their operations manager, said that an unsurpassed amount of planning went into the work.

NEWS BRIEFS

ECO DRIVEN Greater Wellington Regional Council has its first allelectric car. The Nissan Leaf produces 80 percent less emissions than a petrol car. With 41 percent of the council’s greenhouse gas emissions coming from their fleet, its chair, Chris Laidlaw, has pledged to lead by example in reducing them. “As council vehicles come up for replacement, we’ll look to replace those with partially or fully electric models.” GWRC and the Wellington City Council are co-hosting an electric vehicle symposium The Future Is Electric in Wellington on 27 June. thefutureiselectric.co.nz

BEAUTIFUL BUILDING

WILL IT FLY BY?

CAREER POLITICIANS

The $12 million Walter Nash Centre in Taita and the new Anzac bus shelter outside the War Memorial Library – two of Hutt City Council’s newest buildings – have scooped regional awards from the New Zealand Institute of Architects. Both are now in the running for the institute’s national awards in November. The centre has attracted over 300,000 visitors since opening in October. Judges described it as “infused with fresh thinking” for integrating a library, cafe and gym under one roof.

Wellington International Airport Limited has officially submitted its resource consent application for its planned runway extension. If no further information is needed by Greater Wellington Regional Council, the application could be notified by June, which would lead to public consultation. Should everything go smoothly, the hearing for the decision could be as early as January or February next year. Considering the number of interested parties, the council are planning to put as much information as possible up online as soon as possible.

Wellington is growing the ranks of “generalist” MPs, according to a study by public relations expert Mark Blackham, and political researcher Geoffrey Miller, who looked at the career histories of all 121 members of the current Parliament. They said that while politicians portray themselves as ordinary people, their findings showed many of them are anything but. “The whole of Parliament is now dominated by generalists, people of no specific experience, and government specialists – people whose only experience is working for government or in politics,” says Blackham.

BY THE NUMBERS

HISTORY REPOSITORY 65,000+ shelf metres of public archives

held in the Wellington branch of Archives New Zealand (over four million records)

300,000 maps 750,000 photographs and negatives

1776

date of the oldest holding – a letter from Captain James Cook to Captain Charles Clerke regarding their third and final voyage

WHEELY WHEELY GO OD

% of population who bike to work regularly according to a 2014 study by Wellington City Council

1999

year Gino and Joe Cuccurullo established Mediterranean Food Warehouse in Newtown

% of people who would consider biking if protected bike lanes were provided

outlets (Kapiti, Lower Hutt and Wellington)

funding (in millions of $) going into cycle-way projects in the Wellington region over the next three years (source: New Zealand Transport Authority)

tonnes of prosciutto imported from Parma, Italy this year

400

CHANGE THE CHANNEL

number of areas in Wellington Harbour that CentrePort want to dredge to allow larger container ships to berth

million cubic metres of seabed sediment to be removed from the harbour entrance

11.6

maximum current draught (in metres) of ships that can negotiate the shipping channel (draught is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull)

ITALY EATS

200,000 tins of tomatoes from southern Italy

to be unloaded by hand this year (luckily they import wine too, which makes this task more bearable)

cost in $ of some of the cheaper bike deals on Trade Me – c’mon, on yer bike

RAISE THREE CHEERS

TRAIN TO SUSTAIN

500+

families supplied each year with lined fitted curtains by the Sustainability Trust

21,512 $ raised since 2011 for local charities

64 121

cost in $ to get rid of your laptop (e-waste contains hazardous material and some that is in short supply – so, recycle!)

cost of an energy assessment on your home, which gives you its current performance and a list of recommendations and discounts on energy-efficiency products

the number of free events and live music slots every month at The Southern Cross Garden Bar (you can’t go wrong with a weekly sausage sizzle) members of staff kilos of organic fair trade coffee beans churned through each month

Compiled by Craig Beardsworth

P: 04 385 3855 W: THEPILATESSTUDIO.CO.NZ E: INFO@THEPLATESSTUDIO.CO.NZ A: LEVEL 1, 282 WAKEFIELD STREET, WELLINGTON, 6011

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TA L E S O F T H E C I T Y

FUN RU N WRITTEN BY BETH ROSE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEX MCGILL

WA R D R O B E

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Cooking at home

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Running shoes at the ready, it’s marathon season in Wellington.

any participants will have trained for months to take part, and Frenchman Olivier Lacoua, a long-distance runner and general manager at CQ Hotels Wellington, will use the event itself as training for another, bigger challenge on the horizon: the Marathon des Sables. It’s taken less than 10 years for Lacoua to get up to speed for the big international marathons, and he attacks the mighty events for fun. “I started running marathons in 2008 and discovered that my body was coping well, so I ran another one, then another, and later started to run five to six marathons a year, now averaging a marathon a month. To push my boundaries a little further, I started running long distances, 60km (Hutt River Trail) and gradually moved to 100km (Tarawera Ultra Marathon),” says Lacoua. Having recently completed the 100km Ultra Trail in Australia’s Blue Mountains in 18 hours and 23 minutes, his endurance and strength-training for the Marathon des Sables is well under way. But it’s hard to imagine anything could really prepare a person to take part in what’s described by the Discovery Channel as “the toughest foot race on earth.” Participants must run around 250km (equivalent to five and a half marathons) across the Sahara Desert in roughly five days. Temperatures can reach nearly 50 degrees and runners must be completely self-sufficient, carrying all their own water. Lacoua will run both the Christchurch and Nelson marathons as well as Wellington’s marathon in June, and he’s looking forward to taking in some scenery on these relative jaunts. “Wellington Marathon is a great race for anyone who wants to start running. It is very amicable and well organised, and the weather has been fantastic for the past few years now. It is a very iconic course along the bays – places that I recommend to anyone who lives here or comes to visit the capital.” 23

Having explored so much of Wellington as a runner, Lacoua is well positioned to recommend city sights to his hotel guests. “I’ve worked in Wellington since 2004, managing the Ibis Hotel first of all, then moving to Mercure Terrace and since 2010 managing the CQ Hotels Wellington. I moved to Paraparaumu Beach in 2012 and we commute daily – my wife and I – by car. I met my lovely Kiwi wife in San Diego, California in 1992. We worked together on a cruise ship and then worked in France and in the UK. We always had the idea to move to New Zealand, an ideal place to educate our two girls Ophelie who is now 20 and Gena-Lee, nearly 18.” Before arriving in New Zealand, Lacoua completed his Baccalaureate (Professional Diploma) in Food and Beverage Management in Tours, France, where both his parents still live. “I visit them every three to four years with my family but Skype regularly. They were very fast to learn about connectivity and social media, which is great at their age – 80 years old.” While Lacoua still misses the family’s weekend trips to the island of Noirmoutier, three hours’ drive from Tours, Wellington provides enough to keep him busy and entertained and New Zealand is now home. “I love the friendliness of people and how they make you feel so welcome, whether you have just arrived in the country or are just passing through a new city or town for the first time. Kiwis have a very natural sense of hospitality. The capital city is so interesting. Wellington is such a compact city where you can be in the hills of Mt Victoria, Brooklyn or Mt Kaukau for a lunchtime walk or on the sands of Oriental Bay for an afternoon swim. I like many of the clubs, cafes and restaurants in and around Cuba St – great options for lunch or a coffee. I just love the vibrancy of the street, where I often take with me pen and paper to spend time organising my priorities for the day or for the coming week.”

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REARRANGE THESE

to create something no one else has written before Here they are. Twenty-one consonants and five vowels. What happens if you rearrange them? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s when they can become more than twenty-six familiar symbols. They can convey ideas, tell stories, describe characters and situations. They can be anything you want them to be. Something that never existed, until you thought of it. The International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington is where writers play with the alphabet and find their unique voices. Victoria is New Zealandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s globally ranked capital city university. By inspiring and developing art, music and writing, we cultivate creative capital.

For more about world-leading thinking and research at Victoria, go to victoria.ac.nz

CULTURE

ALL T H AT ’ S J A Z Z Saxophonist Louisa Williamson has become the first New Zealander to be accepted into the prestigious JM Jazz World Orchestra. The orchestra, founded in 2012, brings together young jazz musicians from around the world to tour the international jazz circuit, directed by international musicians. Louisa Williamson is in her second year of a Bachelor of Music majoring in jazz performance at Victoria University’s Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music. “I have a passion for jazz because it combines freedom and discipline at the same time. It’s a really rewarding genre if you put in the hard work,” says Louisa, who will meet the orchestra in Germany in June, and will tour Europe in July before returning to Victoria to complete her studies.

TAKE THE ART BUS Thinking about heading out for the 2 June Art Night: Pō Whakaatu Toi? Join the festivities at special late night openings at galleries across the Wellington region, connected by the free Art Night bus. City Gallery, Te Papa, Pātaka, the Dowse, Expressions and Mahara Gallery, 2 June, 5–10pm, free.

FAMILY TIES

SUPER-GROUPIES

Jim Moriarty, a local actor, director and psychiatric nurse, has many talents. He and Nina Nawalowalo from local theatre troupe The Conch are co-directing The White Guitar (28 June to 2 July), back by demand at the Hannah Playhouse having sold out here last year. Part play, part music gig, it's the story of the Luafutu family, written and performed by musician/writer Fa’amoana (John) Luafutu, and sons Matthias Luafutu (an actor) and Malo Luafutu (the rapper Scribe).

German-born Wellington jeweller Karl Fritsch is good pals with London-based Kiwi sculptor Francis Upritchard. Collaborating on installations with Martino Gamper, Upritchard’s furniture-designer partner, they have named their “supergroup” (Gesumptkunsthandwerk). Fittingly, Fritsch is running an object-making workshop on 12 June during Upritchard’s first-ever survey show, Jealous Saboteurs, opening 28 May at City Gallery Wellington. Potter Laurie Steer (10 July) and painter Séraphine Pick (7 August) run other workshops.

CHAMBER MUSIC NEW ZEALAND presents

JULIAN BLISS & NZTRIO

Featuring MESSIAEN’S Quartet for the End of Time.

THURSDAY 28 JULY, 7.30PM MICHAEL FOWLER CENTRE, WELLINGTON chambermusic.co.nz/julianbliss ticketek.co.nz | 0800 842 538

Core Funder

CULTURE

FL AG IT Porirua clay artist and jeweller Stevei Houkamau’s seven flag designs have been chosen for the third annual Waituhi Matariki Public Art Project, and are now hanging on flagpoles in Frank Kitts Park. She printed the designs on rough woven linen to achieve an old-school look. “I wanted them to be vibrant in colour, simple in design, and symbolise the area’s history and people,” Houkamau says. “The main flag represents Kupe and the surrounding hills, with the head of the fish of Māui; the others were inspired by tāniko [Māori weaving].”

MOURNFUL MUSIC

BEHIND THE MASK

POPPY DUST

Dutch composer and communist Rudolf Escher was hiding from Hitler when he composed Music for the Spirit in Mourning. On 30 July, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra plays this score and Strauss’ Sinfonia Domestica, bringing back former principal horn Samuel Jacobs to perform Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4. At the NZSO concert on 6 August, Berlin-based soprano Christiane Libor sings Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Mahler’s sunnier Symphony No. 4.

Craig Geenty moved to Palmerston North two years ago, but the theatre director, actor and lecturer is home to direct one-man show SolOthello (Circa, 15–18 June). Yes, it’s a solo show based on Othello, but set in the pre-colonial iwi wars, with Regan Taylor switching between carved totara masks (full or half masks, depending on whether the characters speak much). Taylor came up with the idea and the longtime collaborators wrote it together.

Designer Poppy Serrano never gets bored, working on projects spanning live art, music videos, dance, films and especially theatre. She’s designed the set for Red Leap Theatre’s play Dust Pilgrim: A Tale of Freedom (6–9 July, Te Whaea Theatre), about a girl fighting for freedom from her mother. With weight representing oppression, Serrano created a pulley system of sandbag counterweights, used by the actors to change the set.

WINTER FEST WINTER FEST June-July

Jazz BandsHIRE FUNCTION

Every Friday evening 5.30pm

FOR ALL CORPORATE & FUNCTION HIRE SOCIAL OCCASIONS FOR ALL CORPORATE & SOCIAL OCCASIONS Contact 04 801 8017 Contact 04 801 8017 stjohnsbar@trinitygroup.co.nz stjohnsbar@trinitygroup.co.nz

CharityMay Long Lunch

24th June supporting Ronald McDonald House

B A R & R E STAU RANT

Catch Pinot

Christmas LocalMid PinotWinter Noirs with food matches Thursday 14th July Jazz Bands

Every eveningDinner 5.30pm WineFriday Maker’s

28th July Featuring Coney Wines

MUSIC

J U B I L AT I O N OF BIRDS WRITTEN BY DAN POYNTON PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEORGE STANILAND | ILLUSTRATION BY HOLLY-ANN CRAIG

t looks as though the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra may be trying its hand at cult worship this July. Illuminations Of The Beyond will embrace orgies of bird calls, ancient Greek and Hindu rhythms, synaethesia, advanced astronomy and some of the more hallucinogenic parts of The Book of Revelations. It’s not a New Age cosmic rite, but one of contemporary music’s epic orchestral pieces, never before heard live in New Zealand, and the last work by one of the very greatest composers of our time. Olivier Messiaen finished it a few weeks before he died in 1992, at 84, and it was first conducted by Zubin Mehta for the New York Philharmonic’s 150th birthday celebrations six months later. Illuminations needs so many players that for the first time in history the NZSO is joining forces with the National Youth Orchestra in a mentorship scheme to make up the necessary 128-strong army of musicians. Generalissimo in charge will be British conductor Sir Andrew Davis, a classical superstar and a great proponent of Messiaen’s Music of the Spheres, in his first New Zealand appearance in Wellington at the Michael Fowler Centre on 8 July. The music of Messiaen (pronounced messy-on, holding your nose casually on the last syllable for the full French effect) tends to give people epiphanies, with its intense human warmth, funky vitality and mystical sensuality. I heard his music for the very first time as a firstyear university student with my German friend Stephan, who was famous for charming lapses in English when excited. Buzzing from the concert, Stephan blurted out: “That music was so good it gave me chicken pimples!” That’s about right – geese just won’t cut it with Messiaen.

Wellington composer Jenny McLeod also had a bolt from the blue in the 60s when she first heard Messiaen’s visionary Quartet For The End Of Time, written and premiered in front of hundreds of prisoners in a German prison camp during World War Two. She immediately took off to Paris to study with him, and they became life-long friends. On the phone, Jenny is at first reluctant to talk because “it’s such a long time ago I can hardly remember”, but soon she just can’t resist. “He was amazing – extremely gentle – and you never heard him say anything against anybody, or even against another composer,” says Jenny, lamenting that New Zealand audiences just don’t know Messiaen’s music well enough and are at risk of “losing the habit” of listening to contemporary classical music altogether. “They can expect lots of colour and exciting sounds – something like they’ve never heard before.” Messiaen is famous for the mystical extra-musical currents running through his music, including his passionate Catholic faith, depicted in a kind of musical technicolour inspired by his unusual condition of synaesthesia, in which he “heard” visual colours. His music is alluringly exotic, inspired by ancient Greek scales, Gamelan and other Asian music. But, most striking and distinctive of all is his constant and ecstatic use of birdcalls, which he personally collected from all around the world and then ingeniously transcribed for performance on Western instruments. Illuminations employs no less than 48 of the world’s bird-calls, including New Zealand’s own mōhua (yellowhead) and riroriro (grey warbler). It more often resembles an Arcadian Twitter account than a symphony.

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MUSIC

Mysteriously, just before its completion, Messiaen deleted a movement dedicated solely to the tui, which has since been performed separately. Although when he was 80 he went to Australia to collect birdsong (these calls feature prominently in the piece), Messiaen never made it to New Zealand. But, over the years Jenny and others supplied him with recordings of our birdsong which he wove into several of his pieces. Jenny, once, arrived unannounced at Messiaen’s apartment in Paris with some new New Zealand birdsong. He wasn’t in so she asked the concierge to let her in. “He thought I got in by magic and was very puzzled how birdsong from me got onto his piano,” said Jenny. “He rang me and invited me out for dinner. That night as I was sitting at the table he started whistling this complicated birdsong for me… he was sort of half-child.” The flute is great for bird imitation, and Bridget Douglas, principal flute with the NZSO, is one of a new breed of NZ musician who is equally at home with Mozart and contemporary music. Messiaen uses a staggering 10 flute players in Illuminations and Bridget is obviously relishing the idea of leading this vital section for the piece. “Messiaen thought birds were the greatest musicians to inhabit our planet – he was so in love with the pure joy and jubilation of their natural music,” Bridget says. “On his calling card he wrote that he was a composer and ornithologist – it blew me away, and it really brings the piece alive for me.” The piece employs a massive woodwind section of 28 players – only 12 is considered on the high side. “It’s insane,” Bridget says. “It’s going to be a visual as well an aural feast, and our production guys have been stressing out about how to fit us on the stage. They’re going to do a stage extension.” Another person with a few logistical headaches for this show is NZSO principal percussionist Lenny Sakofsky, also no slouch when it comes to contemporary music. Messiaen asks for a veritable commando unit of 15 percussionists, bearing such exotic weapons as Thai

nipple gongs, a wind machine and a xylorimba – a cross between a xylophone and a marimba which Lenny has never actually played. “The orchestra has asked me to sharpen my pencil,” says Lenny, and through some “magic” rearranging of parts, “I got it down to 12 players”. Lenny “fell in love with Messiaen” some years back when he played in his Exotic Birds. “His music can be so far out there,” says Lenny. “But some of his slower stuff is just beautiful, you can just soak it all in.” Once Lenny and I had to struggle through several epic weekends together in an attempt to master the notorious rhythmic complexities of NZ composer John Psathas for a tribute concert, so I’m surprised by what Lenny has to say about Messiaen’s music: “John’s got a lot of notes but it’s much easier – you can get into the groove, while with Messiaen I’ve got to think about my rests.” As always with contemporary music, the question remains whether the NZSO will be able to get bums on seats for this brave bit of programming. “I know people get scared of contemporary music and they think they want to listen to Mozart or Brahms, but there’s something incredibly relevant about Messiaen’s music,” says Bridget. “It’s not cheesy elevator music, and so it’s going to stretch your ears more than listening to More FM, but it’s totally mesmerising and he takes you on a real journey.” And let’s face it, modern audiences are behind when it comes to contemporary music. They know Picasso and the films of Bergman but many still don’t know Messiaen or Stravinsky, let alone composers who are still alive. “It’s just as spine-tingling as a great performance of Beethoven’s 5th,” smiles Bridget. “There’s nothing to be scared of, and it’ll probably be Wellington’s only chance to hear it.” And if you listen carefully enough you’ll hear the plaintive warble of the riroriro shyly calling out in this great celebration of the human experience and the beyond. NZSO, Illuminations, Messiaen, conductor Sir Andrew Davis, Michael Fowler Centre, 8 July.

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living off the land with Michael Dearth and Ben Bayly

Friday 17th & Saturday 18th June, 2016 For reservations visit seresin.co.nz

waterfall bay dining

Create Your Future Do what you love

art, design, MÄ ori visual art, commercial music and creative media production Massey College of Creative Arts creative.massey.ac.nz

Harmony Repia, Lachie Philipson

CULTURE BRIEFS

CHECK OUT T H E AT T I C Explore Wellington’s past and present and discover the capital’s stories in The Attic. The top floor of the Museums Wellington building on the waterfront has displays that include include clothing belonging to the Wakefield brothers, Chinese herb grinders, and nautical artwork by Frank Barnes. It tells many stories, including those of Dame Whina Cooper, and Richard Fuchs, a brilliant architect and composer whose talents have been rediscovered, and of the Bond Store itself. It features collection items, artwork, images, photographs and audio visual components that portray the evolution of Wellington, from early Māori settlement to today. One of the features of The Attic is the heritage rimu columns and floors, which have been carefully renovated and strengthened.

MURAL OF THE STORY There were sighs of relief (we assume) at the Wellington City Council when the Karori Community Mural on Karori Rd was finished in May, after opposition from a handful of artists and designers who must have preferred the ugly, grey retaining wall. Ruth Robertson Taylor’s design – inspired by late Karori artist Ernest Mervyn Taylor – features giant native birds and architectural landmarks. She consulted community groups and (with artist husband Ian Taylor) ran brainstorming workshops with Karori schoolkids to come up with the design.

A D O GGY TAIL Paddy the Wanderer became a waterfront identity in Wellington in the 1930s. The cuddly, lovable ginger-brown Airedale terrier began life as Dash, the pet of a young girl whose father worked on the waterfront. Over time be became Paddy to the workers at the harbour. As his fame grew, Paddy became a Wellington icon and was loved and cared for by the watersiders and harbour board workers, seamen and taxi drivers. Taxi drivers took him for rides all over the city. The String Bean Puppets, a Wellington company dedicated to sharing the wonder and magic of puppetry, have turned Paddy’s story into a show for children of all ages. 13 July, 2pm, Wellington Museum.

FUSH’N CHIPS Explore Wellington on and offshore, from its islands to its icons. Start with a guided tour of Wellington Museum. For lunch, indulge in a classic Kiwi favourite, fish‘n’chips, before setting sail across the harbour to visit Matiu/Somes Island, to explore at your leisure before returning to the city. Tours begin at 11am, and return at 3.45pm, museumtours@wmt.org.nz and museumswellington.org.nz/

CULTURE DIRECTORY

K I A M AU F E S TIVA L 2 0 1 6 Bold theatre, fresh dance, mana Māori, kia mau. Warming the winter month of June with a spellbinding festival of theatre and dance from Māori artists. Join us, in Te Whānganui-a-tara, at the head of the fish, Te Ika a Māui, Wellington. Eight companies performing over three weeks – together under the stars of Matariki world-class indigenous performance will shine. BATS Theatre, Circa Theatre, Te Papa kiamaufestival.com 7–25 June

SUE DASLER Visit Sue Dasler’s Pottery Workshop and Gallery on the south coast at Lyall Bay, where you can purchase locally made handthrown ceramics, including the tactile South Coast Series, vibrant Tapa range and earthy terracottas.

T HE W HIT E G UITAR The story of the Luafutu family; powerful patriarch John, and sons Matthias and Malo (aka Scribe). Featuring live performances by Scribe, music is the life blood which pumps through this story’s veins, set against the backdrop of living and growing up Samoan in Auckland and Christchurch. Back by popular demand following a hugely successful preview season last year. Hannah Playhouse 28 June–2 July ticketek.co.nz (04) 384 3840

ALAN CARR – YAP YA P YA P “A comedian who owns the space he is working in so much, he could put a flag up.” The Independent Alan Carr will be yapping his way around New Zealand for the very first time in October. The BAFTA and British Comedy Award-winning comedian and chat show supremo returns to his stand-up roots for his hilarious take on life. Opera House Sat 13 August Book at ticketek

M ILLW O O D G ALLERY Presents Nigel Wilson Nigel Wilson captures the raw, natural beauty and distinct character of New Zealand’s southern landscape through expressive, impassioned brushwork and vibrant, descriptive colour.

Online shop now available.

Come and meet him 6–7.30pm, Friday 10 June.

suedaslerpottery.co.nz 64 Kingsford Smith St, Lyall Bay, Mon to Sat 11am–4pm,

10–25 June 291b Tinakori Road 04 473 5178 millwoodgallery.co.nz 33

M ILLW O O D G ALLERY

LA CAS A AZ UL Inspired by the writings of Frida Kahlo La Casa Azul invites you to experience not only Frida Kahlo’s world, but also her unique way of seeing the world. Director Lyndee-Jane Rutherford and designer Ian Harman put their spin on this exquisite piece of theatre, inspired by Kahlo’s intimate diary. “I took my tears and I turned them into paintings.” – Frida Kahlo 25 June–23 July 1 Taranaki St circa.co.nz 04 801 7992

W HAT T H E F L O C K

MR ROBIN Name: North Island robin. Māori name: Toutouwai. Status: Endemic, not threatened. Habitat: Once widespread over the North Island, robins are now restricted to the mature forests in its middle, running from Taranaki to the Bay of Plenty. Populations have also been established on several predator-free islands (including our own Mana and Kapiti) and a few mainland sites encircled by predator-proof fences, including Zealandia, where 76 birds were released in 2001. Look for them: Head to Zealandia or take a tour of Kapiti Island (fees range from $75 for basic return ferry trip to $355 for an all-inclusive Kiwi-spotting overnighter). Robin are small, grey songbirds often recognised by their erect stance, relatively long legs and curious nature. Don’t be surprised to see a robin following you along a walking track or approaching to touching distance when you stop to rest (some will even come to stand on your boot!) Call: North Island robins have four recognisable vocalisations; a loud, sustained “fullsong” which is delivered year-round by territorial or breeding-ready males from atop a high perch; a quieter “subsong” which is delivered by both sexes and most frequently during the moult; the “downscale”, a series of loud calls descending in frequency over three to four seconds; and the “chuck”, a series of single notes delivered loudly and quickly when a predator is present. Feeds on: Mainly invertebrates, from tiny aphids all the way up to adult weta, stick insects and earthworms. Critters that are too big to eat in one sitting are flung from side to side till they are broken into little pieces, then that which can’t be eaten right away is stored in crevices, holes or tree branches to be eaten later that day or the next day. At the end of summer robins supplement their diet with small berries and fruit. Did you know? Robins suffer greatly from both habitat loss and introduced mammalian predators – the latter is their greatest threat today. In areas where predators are not controlled, eggs and nestlings are frequently preyed upon, and because females carry out all night-time incubation and brooding of young, these populations quickly become male-biased. Where predators are controlled however, robin populations increase rapidly and the sex ratio returns to almost 1:1 within a few years. If they were human they would be: Good journalists. Curious, chatty and rarer than they should be.

CULTURE

S I M P LY ST U N N I N G M E AT S

LOVERS’ LEGACY A few years ago, technical writer and adult educator Lillian Owen was asked to write a book about her father, Māori master carver Rangi Hetet (now 79). She soon realised it should ideally be a film, and one is being made of his story now. She got thinking about the importance of her father’s creative partnership with her late mother, master weaver Erenora Puketapu-Hetet. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a retrospective?’” Cue The Dowse’s exhibition Legacy: The Art of Rangi Hetet and Erenora Puketapu-Hetet (from 26 June), co-curated by Owen and Emma Budgen. Owen’s written an accompanying coffee-table book, marrying memoir with photos of the exhibits. They include Rangi’s carved pou, jewellery he carved for Erenora, her own kākahu (cloaks), and outfits they designed for Erenora’s successful bid for Plunket’s Mrs Wellington competition in 1972. For 45 years, the couple taught Māori carving and weaving country-wide, and developed the first marae-based Māoriart programmes, and the first museum-intern programme for Māori. Today Owen runs the web-based Hetet School of Māori Art from Waiwhetū, Lower Hutt. Her sister Veranoa Hetet and Lillian’s daughter Ani Owen continue a weaving tradition begun by Dame Rangimārie Hetet. Erenora Puketapu-Hetet above

Available in-store or online www.prestonsmasterbutchers.co.nz WELLINGTON, PORIRUA, PALMERSTON NORTH

CULTURE DIRECTORY

H E NRY R OL L IN S Live at the Paramount

P E TO N E S ET T LERS M US EUM Re-opened

Returning to Wellington, don’t miss Henry Rollins’ (Black Flag / Rollins Band) spoken word show – a seamless mix of humour and outrage; pop culture, political commentary and personal anecdote. Get your dose of Henry’s healthy skepticism and rugged realism.

After a four-month renovation Petone Settlers Museum has re-opened! With newly restored architectural features to one of New Zealand’s most significant memorial buildings and new, engaging exhibitions telling the stories of Petone, the refreshed museum is well worth a visit. FREE ENTRY

“Thought-provoking, entertaining and exhilarating, the man is a force to be reckoned with.” The Daily Telegraph Sunday 28 August, 8pm. utr.co.nz

enquiries@petonesettlers.org.nz Wed–Sun, 10am–4pm The Esplanade, Petone (04) 568 8373

10 DAYS O F ITALIAN CINEMA Paolo Rotondo and Renee Mark are pleased to be bringing the Cinema Italiano Festival to Wellington. 21 of the best Italian films from the last 2 years will be screening at The Empire Cinema, Lighthouse Petone and Lighthouse Cuba. Opening night 2 June Buon divertimento! 2–12 June Empire Cinema, Island Bay. cinemaitalianonz.com

S TA G E K IS S

P R EFAB M ARK ET DAY

“O God, I want to kiss you all day until I’m breathless with desire!” From Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Sarah Ruhl, comes this sexy, sophisticated tale about what happens when lovers share a stage kiss – or when actors share a real one. Make a date night for one of the hottest new plays to hit the stage – this “Kiss” will leave you… breathless!

M IRO , M ATARIK I Wellington Festival

Prefab Market invites select retailers and individuals to create a unique space offering many of fashion’s leading names as well as hidden gems, jewellery and such like. Prefab Market is known for its provocative retail mix. A further market day will be held during WOW week to allow buyers from afar to attend.

Weavers from across Te Upoko te Ika come together for Matariki & photographs of kaumatua by Ngā Kākano. Entry free

Sat 9 July,10 am–3 pm

matarikiwellington.org 2 June–3 July Mahara Gallery, Waikanae

2–30 July 1 Taranaki St circa.co.nz 04 801 7992

P R E FA B

Prefab Hall 14 Jessie St

M ARK E T DAY

Art Night: Pō Whakaatu Toi, 2 June, 5–10pm Tu Meke performance, 7 June, 11am Weavers in the gallery, 11 & 18 June, 10am–3pm

MATA KI T E JO HN WAL S H 1 9 J UNE â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 18 S EPTEM BER 2016

www.pataka.org.nz

John Walsh Marakihau (post homo travellus) 2007, oil on canvas

F E AT U R E

STELLAR ACHIEVERS WRITTEN BY MICHELLE DUFF PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEORGE STANILAND

Matariki, the Māori New Year, is a time for growth and new beginnings. We talk to some Wellington stars about their plans for the coming year, and what Matariki means to them.

atariki, the Māori New Year, is marked by the rising of the Pleiades star cluster into the sky above New Zealand. Historically, it was a time of festivities to mark the end of the harvest and the start of winter, a time when the pātaka kai (storehouses) were full. For Māori it marks the start of a new phase of life, and is associated with acknowledging ancestors who have passed away and heralding new life. The cluster of seven stars rise in mid-winter, in late May or early June. This year in Wellington most Matariki events are from 6—26 June. Matariki translates to ‘eyes of god,’ (mata ariki) or ‘little eyes’ (mata riki). According to Te Ara, The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, Māori believe the eyes belong to Tāwhirimātea, the god of the winds. The petulant child of Ranginui, the sky father, and Papatuanuku, the earth mother, Tāwhirimātea was so incensed while separating his parents that he tore his own eyes out and threw them to the heavens. In Wellington, Matariki is marked by a month-long events calendar starting 6 June and packed with performance, arts and crafts, storytelling, traditional ceremonies and family activities. See matarikiwellington.org for more.

F E AT U R E

NANCY BRUNNING ACTOR AND DIRECTOR

s a young, up-and-coming actor on Shortland Street in the 90s, Nancy Brunning – or nurse Jaki Manu, as you may remember her – lived in Auckland for a while. She found it too cut-throat. “Back then, it was like if you had a job in television people were jealous of you,” Brunning says. “It was hard work, living there, and I just never really connected with the place or the people.” Wellington, though, is where Brunning’s heart is. The thespian is so passionate about her city – and bringing it to life – that this Matariki she is part of a group of creatives who are staging a takeover of the capital’s theatres. The Kia Mau festival is a celebration of Māori theatre and dance running from 7–25 June, all the way through Matariki. Te Papa Tongarewa, Bats, Circa, and Downstage theatres will run productions from eight companies of dancers, actors and comedians. Matariki, Brunning says, is essentially about remembering those who have passed away and welcoming new beginnings. Telling stories is a huge part of this. “We wanted to create new work at a time that’s familiar to Māori actors, and also to encourage those who aren’t familiar with it to understand a bit more. And we wanted to share the love, which is why we aimed to have something in every major theatre in Wellington.” Brunning, whose most recent high-profile role was as a 1950s East Coast family matriarch in Lee Tamahori’s film Mahana, vividly recalls being captivated by the profession as a young girl, watching Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers on the television at her parents’ home in Taupo. “It was Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, and it was on at 2pm on a Saturday. He was quite a radical director because he was the first person to put teenagers in the roles of Romeo and Juliet. It was so passionate; it was so dramatic. It kept me inside on a sunny Taupo afternoon and I was about seven years old so I didn’t even know what they were saying and what was happening, but I loved it.” Brunning properly got into theatre in the fifth form, going overseas to Portugal for a one-act play competition. The teenager was blown away by the positive international reaction to Māori culture. “They didn’t even know what Māori was, but everyone was so intrigued by our culture and our language so when I came back home I felt really empowered. “At the time I was growing up, being Māori really sucked. People hated you, you were useless, people said you weren’t going to amount to anything. I decided I wanted to grow up and make people love Māori theatre, and make people love Māori culture.” A graduate of Toi Whakaari, Brunning was one of a crew of performers in Wellington in the 1980s – including Jim Moriarty, Rena Owen and Hone Kouka – who made it their business to tell Māori stories. Both Moriarty and Kouka also have work in the Kia Mau festival. In Māori, “kia mau” is a call to action which means prepare yourself, be ready. Theatre is an intimate medium, and Brunning hopes their most recent festival will leave the city breathless.

F E AT U R E

RINO T I R I K AT E N E MĀORI MP FOR TE TAI TONGA

ino Tirikatene knows exactly where he was during the Springbok tour of 1981. Aged nine years, he will never forget being jostled in the sweaty crowds swelling on Cambridge Terrace, alongside his dad and aunty. Hecklers yelled insults from the hotel balcony; the air was tense, and the mood was electric. “I remember my dad looking down and saying, ‘Son, it’s really important that we came down here.’ It was a highly charged scene, especially for a young child to witness, but it felt good that we were doing it.” It was moments like this that made Tirikatene certain he wanted to make a career out of politics – or in his words, to fight for social justice – like his father and grandfather before him. Sir Eruera Tirikatene represented Southern Māori from 1937 until his death in 1967, while Tirikatene’s father died on the campaign trail in 1996, leaving his son to step into his shoes. In 2011 Tirikatene was elected as the member of parliament for the Māori electorate of Te Tai Tonga, the biggest in the country. Geographically, it stretches from Stewart Island, across to the Chatham Islands and all the way up to Tawa. While he spends a lot of his time in parliament, when the Māori New Year arrives Tirikatene will be making his way up and down the country, speaking to those who need him. “It’s Matariki time, so I will be tending to the garden of my electorate,” says Tirikatene, a warmly spoken guy who makes speaking in metaphors like this sound natural. Let’s address the social justice part of his role first, then. Two big issues making headlines in the past month – the rise of homelessness, and child abuse – are both more common in lowincome communities, in which Māori are disproportionately represented. What does Tirikatene observe in his own electorate, and what does he think should be done? “Neither should be happening, not in a first world country,” Tirikatene says. “What we’re seeing now is people living in cars like it’s a regular thing. The whole housing market is to blame, and Government are the ones who can pull the levers. For Māori whānau, the big issues are the costs of living and access to Government services like housing and healthcare.” As for abuse cases like that of Moko Rangitoheriri, Tirikatene says it is time for a nationwide intervention. “We as a country need to stand up.” In his everyday parliamentary role, Tirikatene is spokesperson on fisheries and customs. He is currently clashing with Government over the Kermadec Sanctuary, a proposed marine habitat to be created in the South Pacific ocean about 1,000 kilometres northeast of New Zealand. Tirikatene says Government’s approach has been “carefree,” with no iwi consultation, an oversight that has given rise to a legal challenge by Te Ohu Kaimoana, the Māori Fisheries Trust. Along with pushing for Māori rights at sea, in the upcoming year Tirikatene will argue for more policing of the country’s ports to stop the influx of materials to make pure methamphetamine, or P, a drug he says is still causing untold harm to the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable. He loves what he does. “The role of Māori MPs is to defend Māori rights. You’re always out there defending the pa, because there are a lot of attacks that come and they’re always trying to chip away at the defences.”

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HARITINA MOGOSANU STARGAZER

f it sounds unconventional to uproot your life and travel halfway across the world for a better view of the night sky, that’s because it is. But then Haritina Mogosanu isn’t exactly typical. Romanian-born Wellingtonian Mogosanu has always had an affinity for the cosmos. She loves everything to do with space, the night sky, and the possibility there could be life in other galaxies. “When I was a little girl I fell in love with the stars. I couldn’t be an astronomer. I grew up in a communist country where you didn’t do what you wanted to do, you did what you were told.” As an adult Mogosanu wanted to see Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky, before she died. A circumpolar star – one that circles one of the earth’s celestial poles – Canopus is not visible anywhere in Europe. “I was inspired to see it, so that’s why I came here. I had no idea of Māori astronomy, or of how beautiful the night sky looks here. In New Zealand, the centre of the galaxy goes right above us.” A risk analyst for the Ministry for Primary Industries by day, by night Mogosanu runs the New Zealand Astrobiology Initiative and the Mars Society of New Zealand. Astrobiology is an umbrella term for the branch of science concerned with the existence of life on earth and in space – think the stuff NASA does, or what Matt Damon was doing in The Martian. “It’s asking ‘What is life? Are there aliens? What is the future of humankind?’” Mogosanu says. “Are we alone? I hope we’re not, I don’t know. The thing is, the more you find out the more you discover you don’t know.” Māori astronomy is particularly special, Mogosanu says. Different meanings are attached to the same constellation according to the time of year, and Māori navigators used the stars to find their way in a way that was foreign to Europeans. “They used starmarks instead of landmarks, it was quite incredible.” When she’s not collating the most recent space research Mogosanu is also a science curator at Space Place, in the Carter Observatory. During June, there will be a special Matariki night sky talk in each planetarium show, including facts about the star cluster and traditional Māori stories. And Mogosanu’s pick of Matariki? The dawn viewing at Mt Victoria on 18 June, complete with telescopes and explanations from the experts.

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Since 1995, the New Zealand School of Food & Wine (NZSFW) has been educating food and wine lovers around New Zealand.

Evening Wine courses

With the relocation of our wine tutor and well-known wine writer Joelle Thomson to Wellington, NZSFW is delighted to be able to offer the Wine and Spirit Trust WSET Level 2 Introduction to International Wines. Over 6 sessions you will learn about leading international grapes that dominate our world of wines. • Wellington: starts Weds 29 June (6 sessions), 5.30pm - 9pm • Auckland: 13, 14 & 27, 28 August (2 weekends), 9am - 4pm WSET Level 3 This qualification is open to students who hold the WSET Level 2 Award in Wines & Spirits offers a more detailed and intensive study of the great wine regions of the world. Join us over 5 weekends. • Auckland: 10, 15, 16, 17, 30, 31 July; 14 Aug & 3, 4 Sept

NZQA Sommelier Programme This full time programme offers the hospitality professional or the wine enthusiast a qualification that provides comprehensive understanding of the principle wines and spirits of the world through practical tastings and discussion. Earn 4 WSET qualifications. Student loans and allowances available. Monday to Friday, 9am - 2:30pm • Auckland: 5 September - 25 November • Auckland: 28 November - 17 February

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As winter sets in, spare a thought for Hataitai installation artist Gabby O’Connor, who spent 24 days in Antarctica last October. She lived in and worked from a “village” of nine shipping containers built on four-metre-thick ice, over the 500-metre-deep McMurdo Sound. She wasn’t there just to make art, but was also collecting data alongside scientists from the K131, NIWA’s team of Antarctic ice-ocean scientists, which is working to link Antarctica to global climate variability and change. Her job was observing sea-ice platelets, aka ice crystals. “There are false floors with trapdoors. We’d melt a hole in the ice then scoop up platelets with a kitchen sieve taped onto a bamboo pole. Then we’d measure the salinity, temperature and velocity of the ocean.” The trip inspired Studio Antarctica, showing at Pataka Museum from 19 June. A five-metre disc-shaped sculpture made from clear packing tape, with thousands of coloured adhesive tape “platelets” attached to the underside, will be suspended from the ceiling. The platelets were made by hundreds of Wellington schoolkids in workshops run by O’Connor and K131 oceanographer Dr Craig Stevens, about art and Antarctica. Beside the sculpture, timelapse photography of platelets rotating and melting will be projected onto a purpose-built curved wall, while paintings, drawings and photographs of Antarctica adorn another wall. O’Connor, who has two children, is all about bridging the gap between art and science through school workshops, public talks and, of course, her artwork. Moving here from Melbourne 15 years ago, she’s exhibited in Japan, Canada, Holland and the UK as well as Australasia. She now has a temporary desk at NIWA – and can call herself an interdisciplinary researcher. “My work proved useful so I’m going back in October for a month to see more of what happens under the Antarctic sea. How lucky am I?"

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POSTCARD FROM AUSTRALIA BY DEAN WATSON

ear Wellington, I’ve finished travelling around Malaysia and India and I’ve ended up in this island nation that has a flag remarkably similar to yours. You might want to do something about that. Preferably something that costs less than $26 million. I’m in Melbourne. On purpose. I know, I know. Wellington has everything a human being could want to be happy (nice people, ocean views, Lewis Road Creamery chocolate milk), but Melbourne is my home and my family is here. So my partner and I, not necessarily in that order, decided to move permanently to Melbourne. Sometimes, when I’m naked and the wind blows, I feel like I’m in Wellington. But it’s not the same. For starters, in Wellington, my partner and I had our own little place to stay. We could turn our music up loud, jump up and down on the bed and have really loud arguments with lots of swearwords and nobody would bat an eyelid. In Melbourne, we can’t afford our own place. So we’re staying at my parents’ place until we can. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful and we’re incredibly lucky it’s a four-bedroom house, so we have privacy to an extent… however, Mum thought this would be a good opportunity to buy a new mattress for herself and my dad to sleep on. And then give my partner and I the 25-year-old mattress that my brother, my sister and I were conceived on. Again, don’t get me wrong. We’re incredibly lucky to be sleeping on 25 years of good times and rock ‘n’ roll. Australia also has Netflix, so you’ll be pleased to know I’ve been wasting just as much time as I did when I lived in Wellington. The company we entrusted to ship all of our stuff across to Melbourne must watch

a lot of Netflix. It’s been two and a half months and our eight boxes of hopes and dreams have yet to arrive. Hope they didn’t put them on the Interislander. Nobody wants to end up in the South Island. You can’t watch Netflix on South Island Wi-Fi. If you work in the media like I do, there are so many more opportunities in Melbourne. This is where Rupert Murdoch was born! But on the downside, this is where Rupert Murdoch was born. After 10 months in Wellington and a further five weeks in Malaysia and India, I’d forgotten how busy Melbourne was. A lot of people have been breeding since I’ve been away. Hopefully not on the bed they were conceived on. Melbourne is busy every day in a way Wellington is busy when the All Blacks win the world cup. Imagine living in a country without commercial helicopter pilot Richie McCaw to protect you. That’s the reality I’m now facing. Who’s looking out for me now? I know the current Australian Prime Minister isn’t, whoever it is. I miss Wellington so much. I miss the people, the food, the chocolate milk, the harbour views and the spelling mistakes on stuff.co.nz. Heck, I miss the speling mistakes in Capital magazine. I miss the main news story of the day being Whittaker’s chocolate kiwi or new research revealing that a New Zealand spider species has the fastest jaw in the world, as was the case at the time of writing. I miss Snapper – the fish and the smartcard. I miss having the same prime minister for more than one year. I miss it almost as much as I missed being home, in Melbourne. It’s good to be home, but it’s good to have Wellington in my heart. Love Dean

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FA M I L I E S T H AT P L AY T O G E T H E R WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER BISLEY | PHOTOGRAPHY BY INGE FLINTE & BEX MCGILL

Some families produce more than their fair share of star sports people. We talk to two families about their top-level performers.

here is an unbreakable bond between Highlanders/All Black rugby star Lima Sopoaga and Brisbane Bronco/Kiwis league player Jordan Kahu, say their parents. The two families grew up together around the corner from each other in Alicetown, Lower Hutt. Marg Kahu, Vasiti Sopoaga and husband Lene Sopoaga have welcomed me warmly, around Marg’s homely Wakefield St kitchen table. “You’re making me tear up,” says Marg, Jordan’s mother. This is because Lima’s mother, Vasiti, is paying tribute to the great support Marg gave her when she was a young mother living in Alicetown, a long way from her family in Dunedin. The bond that their sons Lima and Jordan share was forged as they grew up between the two families’ residences in this neighbourhood. Lene laughs as he recalls the boys’ spirited rugby and cricket games with their brothers Tupou and Jared. A story in the NRL News quotes Jared, Jordan’s older brother, as saying that they cut their “footballing teeth playing two-on-two against the Sopoaga brothers, Lima and Tupou, back in Wellington” and that they “used to fight about anything and everything.”

“I think it was just our competitive nature, we’d compete for everything. We’d have a running race down to the dairy. Anything and everything you could think of we used to compete about, and I think that’s what makes us so competitive and strive to be the best we can be.” Marg agrees: “The boys imitating their favourite players resulted in many broken windows in this back yard.” But she adds, “I love their foolishness and seriousness, sledging and banter.” Both families have children achieving at high levels in sport in school and beyond. Jared Kahu played rugby league for the Brisbane Broncos until he chose to come back to New Zealand, and the youngest brother Toko is the forth of his family to captain the Wellingon College First XV. On the phone from his Dunedin flat, Lima Sopoaga, Super Rugby Player of 2015, has the same winning sincerity and candour as this family trio. Unlike some sports stars who let celebrity go to their heads, Lima seems to be grounded in the respectful, generous, communitarian values that are so obvious at Wakefield St. This year, Lima is again Super Rugby’s form first five-eighth – his goal-kicking giving him a slight edge – but his family won’t let him coast.

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“I’ve got three brothers and two sisters. I’m the oldest and my family are always keeping me grounded, especially my sisters. They watch most of my games and usually I get a message from my sisters about how many kicks I missed or how many tackles I missed, or about how I need to be a bit fitter. Those two are never far from a bit of good teasing,” he laughs. Like many All Blacks, Lima uses his sense of humour as one of his weapons. His humour is influenced by his younger brother Tupou, who plays rugby league for the Penrith Panthers in Sydney. Tupou also interviews his teammates for Panthers TV, and has a radio show. Tupou told NRL.com “It’s based on love. Usually I’d get my mates who were in trouble with their missuses and dedicate songs to them on behalf of them.” Hearing this, Lene chuckles: “That boy talks a lot of smack.” Lima enthusiastically recalls those early backyard games with Tupou and the Kahu brothers. “Tups is bigger than me so I just gee it up a little bit and say that I smashed him. In my head I did, but I was probably the one getting smashed myself,” he laughs. “Not only playing rugby, but a lot of BYC [backyard cricket] and basketball. It was awesome having him and Jordan and Jared to grow up with and play sport alongside. They are some of my fondest memories.” A few years later, Lene Sopoaga and Jordan Kahu’s father, David, coached the boys’ rugby teams until they went to Wellington College. Today, Lima’s best friend is both representing the Kiwis internationally and rockin’ the maroon, playing for rugby league’s iconic club, Wayne Bennett’s Brisbane Broncos, who were defeated by the narrowest of margins in 2016’s electrifying Grand Final. Lima says, “To see Jordan succeed and play in a black (the Kiwi rugby league team) jersey himself is pretty unreal, and pretty awesome. We send

each other texts on game day and thoroughly support each other.” Last year, Lima brought his youthful approach of being “excited by the challenge rather than burdened by it” to the underdog Highlander’s champion 2015 season. The Highlanders, their collective approach shining, spectacularly beat the Waratahs (Super Rugby’s wealthiest club) in the Sydney semi-final. Jordan celebrated the win from the stands, leading Lima’s friends and family in a haka. “If I turn around and see family and people that had always been there for me give me that haka. That reception was something I’ll never forget. It was quite stirring – it gives me goose bumps thinking about it,” says Lima. The ride continued in Wellington, in one of Super Rugby’s greatest, most emotional finals. With their third upset knockout victory in a row, the Highlanders shattered longsuffering Hurricanes fans, winning the championship 21 to 14. Then came the bigger challenge. Lima debuted in the black jersey for the All Blacks in Dan Carter’s No 10 position as first five-eighth against the Springboks. This was at the graveyard of so many All Blacks dreams, including the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, Johannesburg’s freezing seething Ellis Park. Showing coolness and composure, Lima played a blinder. He kicked three conversions and two penalties, and split South Africa’s defences with a long run, before a slick basketball pass to Highlanders Captain Ben Smith out-wide. The All Blacks won 27 to 20. “I’d waited my whole life, so my mind-set was ‘Why not go and enjoy it?’ Not be afraid of all the pressure; enjoy the pressure and love it, because I could walk off that field and that could be it. I might

Top: Lima Sopoaga Bottom left: Lene Sopoaga, Marg Kahu & Vas Sopoaga Bottom right: Lene

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never be an All Black again… I can’t really explain how cool it was to be out there.” The dream season didn’t have the dream ending, though. Widely considered unlucky not to make the Rugby World Cup squad, Sopoaga found it tough watching the knockout stages on TV. “One hundred percent. The only two games I watched the whole tournament were the South African semi-final and the final. Obviously I was still really disappointed. It was tough to be in New Zealand and everything was about the World Cup. You know, there was a reason why Dan Carter was picked, and he proved again why he’s arguably the greatest 10 to ever play. It was pretty special to watch him and know that I’ve been able to share some time in the black jersey with him. You saw the special things that he did in that final and in the semi, and I’d say without Dan Carter we wouldn’t have won.” Last year, with 191 points, Lima snared the record for most points scored in one season by a Highlander. “Yeah,” he says, “2015 was a hell of a ride.” This year, he’s leading the star-studded backline intelligently, and on track for another decent haul. As in their recent 17–16 home victory over the Hurricanes, he bleeds blue and gold. “I feel like I’m in a dream world when I think about getting to put that jersey on. It’s all pretty surreal when you’re in there, and I never take it for granted.” Lima says All Black and Highlanders halfback Aaron Smith

complements his style. “Aaron’s all fire and I’m a bit ice cold. As a combination he’s the one who brings the energy and I’ve sort of got to rein him in.” And Lima enjoys a lively rivalry with Hurricanes skipper Dane Coles. “In his early days Dane was a bit of a hothead. He definitely pushes the boundaries. He’s quite funny. When you are mates, you’re in for a few cheap shots at the bottom of a ruck. I might get a jab to the head or an eye gouge or two from him. Me and him get on like a house on fire. But I’d say Dane Coles would be one of my least favourite players to play against because I’m always looking over my shoulder trying to run away from him.” Lima describes Wellingtonian Jamie Joseph, the Highlanders’ coach, as a top bloke. “I’m really thankful to him. He let me develop, he let me make mistakes down here and maybe he thought that his investment wasn’t going to pay off. In 2014 he let me have the reins again after a pretty disastrous season in 2013 and we ended up making the quarter-finals, and then in 2015 he got some reward on that investment.” Joseph’s a hard man, but fair and calm, too. “He’s a pretty tough work master, old Jamie Joe. He’s definitely got some old school in him. But he’s a straight-up character and the boys enjoy him.” Post-rugby, Lima wants to be a youth-aid cop. “Help kids that are less fortunate than me.” Lima finds it rewarding volun-

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SPECIALISING IN Dermal fillers Muscle relaxants Tattoo removal PRP therapy teering at a CYF Dunedin halfway house in his down-time. Vasiti, Lima’s mother is most proud of her son’s generosity to people he doesn’t know, and notes his habit of giving away his game jerseys and boots at the stadiums. “He nearly walked back with just his undies on after one game in Oz.” Lima remains massively hungry for the black jersey. “It’s true what everyone says, you jump in there and you get a taste and you just want more,” he says. “The highs and the pressures of being in the All Blacks [are] like a drug. If I can keep playing some good football for the Highlanders then hopefully I’ll be able to get back in there and have a few more tests. But if not, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve already felt what it’s like to be at the bottom and to miss out so that doesn’t scare me anymore. It is what it is and life always goes on.” There are three leading contenders for that All Black No 10 jersey that Lima wants. Aaron Cruden is the establishment favourite while Beauden Barrett is superb off the bench for the All Blacks. But for my money, Lima is the one who deserves to be in the All Blacks Wales squad, playing in Wellington on 18 June. Whatever happens, there are blue skies ahead for Lima Sopoaga.

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OU T BAC K STYLE The Australian outback is coming to Wellington. Known for durable clothing, boots, shoes and accessories, the iconic Australian label RM Williams is opening its flagship Wellington store at 75 Willis St. It was founded in 1932 in Adelaide by entrepreneur Reginald Murray Williams, or RM as he liked to call himself, to provide hardwearing products for the harsh climate. RM Williams is available in 15 countries around the globe, and is now adding Wellington to its stable.

A ROYAL MOVE

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After 19 years, Rex Royale has moved, temporarily while their Cuba St store is refurbished, to Manners St. Fitting the old Rex into the new space has involved some challenges, as it is smaller, and has a different vibe, according to an employee. “We’ve got a lot more mirrors! There’s a different sort of clientele here – different street, different people,” she adds. “The bouncer at Matterhorn reckons he’s going to start charging us as so many people are asking where we’ve gone!”

New local label Children Of Promise (COP) fuses fashion with philanthropy. Using natural fibres and supporting youth in need, COP gives 10% of profits from every item sold to a local charity that supports the wellbeing of local youth. Limited edition capsule ranges are to be produced throughout the year, using mainly silk for its fluidity, trans-seasonal and tactile properties. Designer Jes Chang has previously worked at labels such as Starfish, Nyne and Little Brother.

Fashion mavens searching for “just the right garment”, filled the hall at the last market day held at Prefab Hall in April. A trio of stall holders described their venture into selling as “very worthwhile.” Another said it was “like a party”. Organiser Cath Hanna is planning to hold several more of these market days this year, with the next planned for 9 July.

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B R O W N FA S H I O N Local models will have the chance to strut their stuff at Pataka in Porirua at the 2016 Miromoda fashion design competition and runway show. The show offers Māori fashion designers an opportunity not only to showcase their talent, but also to win one of eight spots at New Zealand Fashion Week later in the year. “Porirua is very excited to be hosting this prestigious fashion show and we are excited that local models will have the opportunity to strut the catwalk,” according to Mayor Nick Leggett. “Miromoda has been instrumental in raising the brown model count in New Zealand Fashion Week,” says Ata Te Manawa, cofounder of the design competition and show, now in its eighth year. “Pataka approached me for something local that wasn’t wearable arts. This is not a Maori ‘feel good’ fashion show – this is high-end fashion.” Te Manawa hopes to find upcoming designers to hit the world stage, like Steve Hall, last year’s winner of Miromoda and of Dunedin’s ID International Emerging Designer Award, see #22. Winners will be announced on 25 June after the competition and show. Miro is the technical term in traditional Māori weaving for twining fibres. Moda is Italian for fashion.

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F RUM PY WOM E N H E R E Nadya France-White is on a mission to lift fashion standards in Wellington. Frustrated with what she perceives as the frumpiness of Wellingtonians, she went to the Big Apple, to source beautiful knitwear and clothing with a difference. A recent design and fashion graduate of Massey University, she has recently opened a store, called Ena after her cherished grandmother, on Ghuznee St. It’s not all overseas designers however. She also supports local design, allowing local artists such as Wellington weaver Marta Buda, skin care products from Martina Organics, and recent Massey graduate Alanah Bruce to exhibit their work next to emerging and established international brands.

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THE LAST SUPPER Since Neolithic times, winter-solstice feasts have brought good company and good cheer to the year’s longest night. Wellington musician Andrew Laking has started one – called Lōemis – in Wellington, to take place on 25 June at Vogeltown Bowling Club. Ex-London chef Sam Watherston will serve a three-course banquet combining peasant food from centuries ago (hearty stews, roast chestnuts, cured meats) with current European dishes. Between courses, novelist Elizabeth Knox, poet Ashleigh Young, and MiddleEnglish professor Robert Easting read, while quartet Aurora Four sings Icelandic hymns. loemis.nz.

BANANA DRAMA

WINTER WINE AND DINE

MIND FO OD

This year Thunderpants will be repeating their All Good Banana Philanthropants campaign. Sales from their banana-printed underpants go to support Kaibosh food rescue. Last year nearly $3,000 was raised. The campaign runs through June and July. Thunderpants are available at stockists throughout Wellington and New Zealand.

Two midwinter lunches have been announced by organic Marlborough winery Seresin. Presented by illustrious chef Ben Bayley (formerly of several Michelin-starred restaurants) and restaurateur Michael Dearth. The lunches have become a high-profile event on the local calendar. To be held in June at Waterfall Bay in the Marlborough Sounds, each event is limited to 45 people. This year they celebrate Seresin’s 20th vintage.

Food titles have featured in Commonwealth Short Story regional winners for 2016. The stories were chosen from among 4,000 other entries. Awardwinning author Tina Makereti wrote Black Milk in response to a series of Fiona Pardington photos in an exhibition. She says it is a surprise to win with “this strange little story”. Stephanie Seddon says Eel is a very personal story with a universal rite-of-passage theme. Now in the UK, she wrote it from her memories of growing up on a farm in New Zealand.

SOUTHERN CROSS GARDEN BAR. RESTAURANT . . events activities occasions entertainment FolLow Us on K @thecross.co.nz Like Us on I southerncrossnz

EDIBLES

ARTISAN P O P- U P Food stalls are becoming the thing in the Moore Wilson’s “alley”. Two new pop-ups “showcase local artisans and their take on Wellington street food”. Supplier of Gallic delicacies is French Can Can, which boasts the Michelin-starred patissier Eric Hauser. Eric’s partner Sophie sells crepes with tasty fillings. You’ll recognise her in her best blue beret. After them comes Miramar food truck Eat, Street and Meatballers. Next door Jimmy Tika has been selling his slightly Balinese version of Louisiana slow-cooked pork belly Po Boy sandwiches.

GO OD BUGGERS EAT

BIGG FLAVOURS

HA-HA-HA WINNER

A charity lunch is being held on 24 June at St John’s bar and restaurant on the waterfront. These lunches are held biannually, and this one will be supporting Ronald McDonald House. One table will seat 80 guests, who will enjoy four courses. St John’s will also host a winemakers’ dinner on 28 July. Hosted by Lisa Coney of Coney Wines in Martinborough, diners will again enjoy four courses.

The beauty and simplicity of country life and its seasonal bounty is the basis of Mary Biggs’ new cooking classes at Te Puhi, a farm near Featherston in South Wairarapa. Mary, who is Le Cordon Bleu trained and has been cooking since she was “a wee dot” teaches in her own contemporary country kitchen. Classes include a farm and garden forage, a threecourse meal matched with local wines and a set of easy recipes to take home.

House of Dumplings has been named one of four winners of the Sustainable Business Network’s Good Food Boost competition. As part of the prize, owner Vicky Ha will receive eight weeks’ mentoring from some top foodies in Auckland and the opportunity to take her dumplings to the Foodbowl innovation facility in Mangere, to test out new production and packaging techniques. End result: we might see her fare “dumpwinging” its way around the country.

THE FOREST CANTINA

COFFEE WA L N U T C A K E UNNA BURCH

Think of Wellington – what comes to mind? Yes... the wind, but come on, coffee is up there. Too right! Walk the streets and you will be spoilt for choice for where to drink your next drop. On that walk, too, I bet you will smell that distinctive smell of the beans roasting in one of the many local roasteries. So what better way to celebrate Capital’s third birthday than

INGREDIENTS Makes 2 x 23cm cakes Begin the day before For the cakes 2 cups (100g) walnut pieces 2 cups Fair Trade sugar 450g butter, softened 2 heaped tablespoons Fair Trade instant coffee (or espresso) 2 tablespoons boiling water 8 free-range eggs 3 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda

with the taste of the capital – coffee and walnut cake. Now this cake is a whopper, so feel free to halve this recipe if you don’t feel the need to layer such a grand cake. However you choose to bake it, serve it with a mug of your favourite brew with lots of whipped cream on the side (‘cos if you’ve committed to cake, you gotta take it all the way!)

METHOD For the cakes (I usually do the cakes the day before so they are completely cool for the buttercream) Preheat the oven to 180°C, with a rack in the centre. Line the bases of two 23cm springform cake tins with baking paper (don’t skip this step, they will stick otherwise); grease the sides with butter and then dust the buttered sides with flour, banging out excess flour. Set aside. In a food processor, blitz the walnuts and sugar together to form a nutty crumb. Add the softened butter and pulse to form a paste. Remove from the processor and scrape into a large bowl. In a separate smaller bowl, mix the coffee and the water together to dissolve the coffee (leave water out if using espresso). Add this to the butter mix with the 8 eggs, and mix well. Sieve over the flour, baking powder and baking soda and fold through gently, being careful not to over-mix as this will give a tough cake. It should be a nice smooth but thick batter. If it is a little too thick, add a tablespoon of milk. Divide the batter between the two prepared cake tins and bake for 50-60 minutes, rotating the tins once during cooking. Cook until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean. Cool completely in the tins before running a sharp knife around the edge and removing. If making the day before, cover so that it doesn’t dry out. Cakes must be completely cool before decorating.

SECTION HEADER

THE FOREST CANTINA

For the coffee buttercream 250g butter, softened 1 vanilla pod, scraped 2 1/2 cups icing sugar 3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5 teaspoons Fair Trade instant coffee (this is to taste depending on the strength of the coffee you use) 2 teaspoons water good pinch of salt 1 tablespoon milk (if needed)

For the coffee buttercream In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment (or by hand, it just takes longer) beat the butter and the vanilla seeds for 2 minutes. Mix the coffee (start with 3 teaspoons first) with the water and add to the butter, and mix until combined. Add the icing sugar and a good pinch of salt and beat for 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides and then beat for a further 3 minutes until light and fluffy. Taste; if you want more coffee flavour, add more coffee to the tablespoon of milk. If you are happy with the taste, just add the milk on its own (this will lighten the buttercream so it is even fluffier) and beat for another 30 seconds. Taste and add a little extra salt if needed. This helps balance the sweetness. Set aside.

THE FOREST CANTINA

To garnish Fresh figs Walnut pieces Chocolate pearls Flowers Beeswax birthday candles Whipped cream for serving

To decorate If you want a nice straight cake, cut the domes from the cake with a serrated bread knife. Place one of the cakes on a cake plate and fill with almost 1/2 of the buttercream and spread out well. Top with the other cake. I like to invert the second cake so the flattest part of the cake is now the top. Dollop the remaining buttercream on top, smoothing down the sides. I went for a “naked” cake sides, and the buttercream doesn’t have to be thick. Smooth the buttercream over the sides, then gently expose parts of the cake by scraping the icing off with a scraper or palette knife. I had a little remaining buttercream, so I added it to a piping bag with a star nozzle and piped in a crescent shape. I then added figs in clusters, then the chocolate pearls (from Moore Wilson’s), flowers and walnuts. You might like to decorate the cake more simply with just walnut halves. Enjoy with whipped cream and extra coffee!

LIQUID BREIFS

W I N T RY BEER Beer is the new Black! Sprig & Fern have two new black beers out this winter and as we went to print we heard the first was to be out on 1 June. It’s a 4% sweet stout called Black Tyre, and in early July there’ll be a new 6% Black IPA. Sprig and Fern’s Tracy Banner says their Harvest Fresh Hop Pilsner will have just run out, but don’t worry because they’ve got more – Kohatu (a type of hop) Pilsner will replace it, and as that runs out there’ll be Southern Cross coming up. Expect to see Tracy as a judge in the upcoming West Coast IPA challenge.

ROLL OUT THE BARREL

HOPPINGLY SUCCESSFUL

TOAST TURNS 25

We heard rumours about The Dark Day at the Malthouse. Mover and shaker Colin Mallon says that The Dark Day is a tradition, held on the nearest Friday to the shortest day of the year. On that day, 19 June this year, they will have more than 20 stouts, porters, winter warmers, firm favourites and rarer barrel-aged brews ready to warm the inner man.

Still on the beer front – 25 NZ brewers are celebrating hoppiness on 29 July, with IPA beers that have been made especially for the annual West Coast IPA Challenge between The Malthouse and Fork and Brewer. It is the ninth event, and both establishments say it is usually their biggest day of the year. The event, which originated at the Malthouse and was originally supported only by the Epic and Hallertau breweries, has grown so much that it now has to be spread between the two pubs.

Toast Martinborough turns 25 this year. Organisers are calling for a dignified silver anniversary event on 20 November to celebrate the occasion, which was launched when Shortland Street had only just hit TV screens in this country and seafood vol au vents and asparagus rolls were de rigeueur on the menus of wineries at the annual festival.

The presents

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LIQUID BRIEFS

BLACK BEAUTY WRITTEN BY JOELLE THOMAS

Are the 2013 reds from Hawke’s Bay really “the best wines ever” made there? A taste test aims to find out…

here’s no shortage of hype about that vintage, which certainly followed one of the longest, driest summers ever on record. It produced many very good wines, which continue to trickle onto shop shelves. Impressive though many of the wines are, some big Hawke’s Bay reds from that year do not live up to the hype; and some that do are extremely pricey propositions. Gems nevertheless abound in the low price range – if you are going to buy bargain bottles of Hawke’s Bay red wine from the supermarket, an online store or at a specialist store, my advice is to give the cool green year of 2012 a complete swerve. Most lower-priced wines from the 2013 vintage overdeliver on oomph, power and seductive big flavours in the glass, but some are over-rated. And at the top end, my short list got even shorter recently when I tasted through 12 wines which had been rated by another independent consultant. High sunshine hours are nothing new for Hawke’s Bay but the length of the 2013 summer and the dry weather at the tail end of it (2013 was officially a drought year for the Bay, but not until so late that the grapes had already fully ripened), combined to provide winemakers with a distinctly warmer than average year. It was a perfect year for ripening cabernet sauvignon and syrah grapes. However there are few plantings of either of these lateripening, thick-skinned, super-tannic black grapes in the Bay. It is curious, then, that the best reds from 2013 were made from cabernet sauvignon and syrah. And it’s interesting to note that while cabernet sauvignon has doubled globally over the past 20 years (to 300,000 hectares growing) it has shrunk massively in New Zealand – from 614 hectares in 2005 to 297 hectares today. The global growth confirms that cab’ sauv’ remains massively popular, while the local decline reflects the fact that this country’s cool climate can hardly ever fully ripen it. Even in sunny Hawke’s Bay, most winemakers suggest it only ripens properly about two years in every 10. Murphy’s Law means that now there is very little cab’ sauv’ left in the Bay, the region has just had a trio of outstanding vintages in 2013, 2014 and 2015. And 2016 is looking pretty swish too. The best of these years is widely considered to be 2013, and the fanfare is louder than usual. It’s a big claim to describe a region’s vintage as “best ever on record”, but that’s what most winemakers in the Bay are saying. Gimblett Gravels Wine Association commissioned Master of Wine Andrew Caillard to test 46 wines in a blind tasting. 72

Caillard came up with his top 12 wines from that tasting and I also put them to the test, inviting another Master of Wine, Stephen Bennett, and winemaker Lynnette Hudson to do a blind taste with me. A handful of the wines tasted distinctly green in flavour, which surprised me. I expected most to taste the way that diving into a red velvet pillow feels: plush, soft and smooth. But cab’ sauv’ is notoriously unapproachable when young. There’s a reason that cabernet sauvignon’s supermodel structure of massive dark fruit and overwhelming tannins are often balanced with merlot’s soft fleshy curves, and I suggest that the blockbuster reds from Hawke’s Bay from 2013 will taste a lot better after 10 years in bottle rather than two. For the record, here are my top four wines from my tasting of the Gimblett Gravels tasting – and I have written a note about the latest Tom for good measure, too. 2013 Vidal Legacy Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2013 Villa Maria Braided Gravels Organic Merlot 2013 Esk Valley Winemakers Reserve Syrah 2013 Mission Estate Jewelstone Syrah 2013 Tom Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot The Tom is the outlier because it’s made with grapes grown in Hawke’s Bay’s Bridge Pa Triangle rather than the vast 800 hectares of Gimblett Gravels, which is where all the other wines on this list come from.

HOW TO BUY GREAT WINE When it comes to big reds, we all look for power. This can mean a deep ruby colour, full body and massive tannins – they can come across as grippy, smooth, coarse or velvety. A little refreshing acidity doesn’t go astray either; acid makes our mouths water. Then we want different flavours so that the wine is not one dimensional – fruity flavours can be red, dark, baked and dried – and hopefully there’s a little spice, earthiness and perhaps a hint of oak. Great wines leave an outstanding impression of balance in their levels and types of all these elements. And, most important of all, they should also end on a lingering impression of deliciousness in the mouth. That is how I arrived at this short list; I hope the wines provide you with a long journey into a great vintage from this country’s second largest wine region.

WINTER IS FOR COOKING Pictured: Saffron-buttered Pumpkin with Herbed Brown Rice from Emma Galloway’s

A Year In My Real Food Kitchen.

$39.95 in-store and online. Bonus recipe at www.moorewilsons.co.nz

man vs steak, whisky ... and balls. e ballsy lunch, back by popular demand. Tickets through Visa Wellington on a Plate. (04) 498 3762 | portlander.co.nz | Corner Featherston & Whitmore Streets

P E R I O D I C A L LY S P E A K I N G

SAFE AS HOUSES WRITTEN BY JOHN KERR

Nearly all of New Zealand’s rental properties fall short on some basic measures for keeping tenants safe and healthy, but Wellington is leading the charge in raising the quality of rental housing with a new “Warrant of Fitness” check.

he home can be a pretty dangerous place. Any number of hazards are out to get you, from loose carpets tripping you up to shoddy wiring starting fires. And that’s just in the short term – a bad house can also take its toll on your health in slower, insidious ways. Mould, cold and damp can chip away at your wellbeing, their effects beginning with minor colds and ending up with nasty infections that can lead to serious illness.

Some moulds, such as the notorious “black mould” Stachybotrys chartarum, have been linked to serious illnesses (of the terrifying bleeding-from-the-lungs variety). Thankfully occurrences of black mould are rare and the severe reactions even rarer, but other more common moulds can still produce spores that irritate and inflame airways. Mould aside, even just constant dampness and cold can set you up for infections.

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P E R I O D I C A L LY S P E A K I N G

Regulations for housing quality in New Zealand, especially for rental homes, are unclear. According to Dr Lucy Telfar-Barnard, a Wellington healthy housing expert, the various bits of legislation outlining standards for rental housing are complicated, vague and under-enforced. “There is nothing firm and comprehensive for landlords that says: this is what you do have to do to meet society’s expectation of what the house you are renting out should be like,” she explains. This is important. Half the people living in Wellington do not own the home they live in, and even those who are lucky enough to be on the property ladder still suffer the consequences of low-quality rental houses because illness and injury place strain on the health system. “It matters to society as a whole,” says Lucy. “We are all sharing the burden of landlords not maintaining their property through the health of their tenants.” Lucy and her colleagues at the He Kainga Oranga/ Housing and Health Research Programme at the University of Otago, Wellington, are on the case. They have developed a 29-point rental housing Warrant of Fitness checklist, and it is coming to a home near you – soon. Wellington City Council has agreed to work with Lucy’s team on rolling out the rental WOF in the capital to test the initiative. Just like a car, the home in question will not have to be perfect to pass its WOF, but it will have to be reasonably safe for tenants. The rental checklist includes some basic health and safety pointers like working plumbing, proper insulation and correctly placed smoke alarms. There are also some less obvious tick boxes on the list: Are stairways well lit to prevent falls? Is the street number clearly visible from the road so emergency services can find the house? Is the hot water set at the right temperature – not so hot as to burn, but hot enough to prevent dangerous bacteria breeding? If your hot water cylinder is below 60°C you could be turning your tank into a Petri dish of Legionella bacteria – the

culprits behind the Legionnaire’s disease, a nasty and sometimes fatal form of pneumonia. The criteria for the rental WOF were not pulled out of thin air. “Everything in there has solid health research behind it that shows it makes a real difference to tenants’ health,” says Lucy. “It is not about nice-to-haves or aesthetics.” The requirements of the rental WOF seem basic, but some are woefully lacking in New Zealand rental homes. In a pilot study on rentals across New Zealand, including Wellington, a whopping 94 percent of properties failed their WOF – and the researchers think that might be an underestimate! A pretty grim result, but there is some good news: many of the common stumbling blocks are cheap – or even free – to fix. The main reasons for houses failing the WOF included lack of reliable and efficient heating, poorly placed or missing smoke alarms and incorrect hot water temperature. Lucy points out that even the more expensive fixes that might be required by WOF, such as insulation or ventilation repairs, are minor compared with the overall value of a house. The WOF pilot study shows that it is easy to make rental homes safer, but landlords are not going to do it without some nudging. The next step is a trial in which Wellington and Dunedin councils will introduce rental WOFs, and Lucy’s team will compare the outcomes with those of Lower Hutt and Invercargill, where rental WOFs are not required. The results of the city versus city trial, which Lucy hopes to get under way this year, are likely to bolster efforts to get the programme rolled out nationwide. Some of the WOF criteria seem like small tweaks and changes, but, Lucy and her team say, if required throughout the country they will add years of healthier life, and reduce costs to health system and, ultimately, save lives. Want to see if your home passes the WOF? A full version of the checklist is available here: tinyurl.com/rentWOF

QUINOVIC

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The Curtain Store is locally owned and operated Where good old fashioned service still applies. Great product knowledge on all window dressing and finishes. For a no obligation free measure and quote call us today.

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The Body in the Library: Writing crime fiction 6pm-8pm, starts Tuesday 26 July

Slow Cooked Weekends:

Delicious slow cooked meals to warm you up in the cooler months

Islam in Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s World 6pm-8pm, starts Wednesday 3 August

The Queens of Ancient Egypt 6.15pm-8.15pm, starts Wednesday 3 August

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BY THE BOOK

R E-VE R SE GERMAN LANGUAGE ON CUBA

INTRODUCED BY CLAIRE ORCHARD

The Pol ar C apt ain’s Wife

BEGINNERS INTERMEDIATE ADVANCED

I imagine you are much preoccupied with the cold,

Next beginners: Mon/Wed from 8th June

inching your way between icebergs of a menacing blue.

ENQUIRE NOW: german@wellington.goethe.org 04 385 6924 / 021 829 027

This picture satisfies us both; it is your duty to sound out the buoyant and laden, and think betimes of your wife stranded amidst the furniture. Being a little drunk I wander from room to room, touching temperate surfaces – a book, a clock, a chair – missing the body heat we stowed in that chamber our last night together. By Chris Orsman, from The Lakes of Mars, AUP (2008)

BREAKDOWN Bio: Chris Orsman was born in Lower Hutt in 1955. He lives in Wellington and has published three main collections of poems. He is married, with two young sons.

chasing the scream

In brief: By foregrounding the explorer’s wife’s perspective, this poem gave me a new appreciation of what it might feel like to be not the adventurer but the one left behind. Imagining her husband in situ, “inching your way between / icebergs of a menacing blue,” she hopes he remembers to “think betimes of your wife,” for, if you can be menaced by icebergs, you can also be “stranded amidst the furniture.” Orsman’s vignette of a woman alone and “a little drunk”, wandering “from room to room touching / temperate surfaces” points to parallels between the polar explorer’s icy solitude and his wife’s isolation. Believing him to be at least making progress, by contrast she feels stuck, marooned in her own home. The specific items on her list, “a book, a clock, a chair”, create an impression of a woman with time on her hands, time spent worrying at her unspoken fear: that the warmth of “our last night together” may never be repeated. The perilous undertakings of intrepid explorers require those who love them to possess some serious guts as well.

www.unitybooks.co.nz

BY THE BOOK

PAY B A C K In June Wellington novelist/playwright Whiti Hereaka will choose six fledgling Māori writers for the fourth biennial Te Papa Tupu Writing Incubator (a partnership between the Māori Literature Trust and Huia Publishers). Over six months, six pairs of mentors and mentees will work on a manuscript, anything from fiction and non-fiction to film scripts. As a 2012 mentee, Hereaka worked on award-winning young-adult novel Bugs, before becoming a mentor herself in 2014. “Te Papa Tupu has helped my development as a writer enormously.” So far five books from the programme have been published.

FUTUNA FAVOURS THE B OLD If you’ve never had a squiz at the architectural masterpiece that is Karori’s Futuna Chapel, now’s your chance. Edited by Gregory O’Brien and architect Nick Bevin, VUP’s new title Futuna, Life of a Building ($50) is a collection of photographs and essays telling the story of the chapel’s construction nearly 60 years ago, its eleventh-hour rescue from a developer, its transformation into a non-denominational centre, and everything in between.

HORROR STORIES

ARO VALLEY UNVEILED

Who knew Wellington was teeming with fantasy writers? Locals make up a dozen of the 22 authors featured in At the Edge (Paper Road Press, $35), an Australasian anthology of sci-fi and fantasy stories launching in Wellington on 5 June at Au Contraire, New Zealand’s sci-fi and fantasy fan convention. Local publisher and writer Marie Hodgkinson (above) raised more than $2,200 on Kickstarter for the book, which follows her award-winning anthology Baby Teeth (2013).

Wellington collective Lawrence & Gibson keeps its 10th-birthday celebrations going by publishing Brannavan Gnanalingam’s third book in June. A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse is about a mysterious briefcase found in Aro Valley – and New Zealand’s response to Islamic terrorism. Meanwhile, Wellington biologist Danyl McLauchlan has written his second novel Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley (VUP, $30), a sequel to the well-received farce Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley.

Chair

noun

A seat, especially for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest for the back and often having rests for the arms.

And often in need of recovery

Upholstery

noun (pl) -steries

1. the padding, covering, etc, of a piece of furniture 2. the business, work, or craft of upholstering

Call or visit the Craftsman. Ask for Mark. 70 Constable Street, Newtown P: 04 939 9402 E: service@uphol.co.nz W: uphol.co.nz

BY THE BOOK

THE GREENGROCER’S DAUGHTER WRITTEN BY SARAH LANG | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNA BRIGGS

s a Chinese New Zealander and a Wellingtonianturned-Aucklander, Helene Wong doesn’t fit into pigeonholes. Her career as an actor, public servant, screenwriter, critic and more can’t be summed up briefly. But now, if someone asks what she does for a living, she simply says “writer”. That’s partly because she’s spent 20 years and counting as a film reviewer for the New Zealand Listener, one week on, one week off – but mainly because her first book has just hit the shelves. The title of her memoir – Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s Story – consciously echoes Michael King’s classic Being Pakeha Now: Reflections and Recollections of a White Native, thankfully with a slightly shorter subtitle. Fittingly, Wong gave the Michael King Memorial Lecture at the Auckland Writers Festival on 15 May, speaking about “being a New Zealander but not a New Zealander”. It sold out. Wong, who’s spent roughly half her 66 years in Wellington and the second half in Auckland, could pass for 46. She’s fiercely intelligent and brisk without being brusque, with understated humour. “I would have quite liked to be a rock star or a martial artist, but I’m happy being a writer,” she says. Her book is the upshot of 35 years struggling with her dual identities. “I hate the term ‘emotional journey’ but it really was one for me.” It began in China in 1980, as Wong and her parents visited their ancestral village Sha Tou, and their relations. It was Wong’s first visit to China, and the first in a half-century for her parents, who left as children. “I went in thinking I had only one identity as a New Zealander, with just a smidgen of Chinese, and came out knowing I had two.” Wong shocked herself by bawling

all night. “They were deep sobs, something primal, and I wanted to investigate that.” Wong began researching her family history, as far back as possible. She wondered: could this become a play? A screenplay? Realising there wasn’t enough external action, she shelved the idea. “Then I had a monumental midlife crisis. It was about self – my identity – as much as my direction. I couldn’t see how the Chinese part fitted.” She returned to the project, eventually amassing so many documents, notes and piles of paper that she indexed them in order to find things – and to avoid tripping over. She’d realised such a big project could only become a book, but was busy with other work. “When Bridget Williams approached me to write a short book, I said, ‘How about a long one?’” She started the “big push” of writing in January 2014, creating a deadline by buying plane tickets to Europe. The ploy worked. In November, she holidayed in Spain and France with husband Colin Knox, who is currently professor of Māori innovation and business development at AUT. The couple chose career over children. “We got a lot of satisfaction from our jobs and having a child would mean one of us, probably me, would have to throw that away. Then we thought, ‘We’re a bit past it – it’s not going to happen and it’s all right’.” After that seminal trip to China, she changed her surname back from Knox. The pair spent two years at Harvard while Knox got an MBA. After travelling, they moved to Auckland for Knox’s work in 1988. “I’m very happy in Auckland,” Wong says, “but Wellington is the heart of my book.”

BY THE BOOK

“I went in thinking I had only one identity as a New Zealander, with just a smidgen of Chinese, and came out knowing I had two.”

Her book brings alive the Chinese quarter of Wellington – especially Frederick St, where the Tung Jung Association building still stands, though the Haining St opium dens are long gone. For decades from 1908, Wong’s grandfather James Chin Ting and wife Ng Shee Ting ran the Te Aro Seed Company, which moved several times before settling on the corner of Courtenay Pl and Tory St. Wong’s mother Dolly, one of 13 children, lived above the shop. Meanwhile, Wong’s father Willie was stacking shelves at Wong Nam Fruiterer in Taihape. Willie and Dolly ran the Utiku general store near Taihape for 13 years. The youngest of their five children was too young to remember brother Ken, who drowned aged 17. Her parents never really talked about it. “But Mum once said my father was never the same.” When Wong was a toddler, the family moved to Avalon in Lower Hutt, running Rata Fruit Supply in Naenae. But safe, secure suburbia had a flipside. The only Chinese child at Avalon Primary School, Wong was taunted about her facial features and called “Ching Chong”. Sometimes, despite her parents’ pleas to ignore it, she’d yell or swear back. But she was so embarrassed by her “Chinese-ness” that she ignored racist jokes, wouldn’t speak or dress Chinese, even avoiding other Chinese in the street. Wong won a scholarship to private school St Oran’s and left as Dux. “But I never knew what I was going to be.” Turned down by broadcasting school, she studied sociology at Victoria University, where she met Knox, marrying him because her parents would never countenance her living in sin. Graduating with first-class honours, she had various social-welfare roles at the State Services Commission. In 1978 she was invited onto the Prime Minister’s Advisory Group, covering the social-affairs portfolio for two-and-ahalf years. She wasn’t a Robert Muldoon fan, but wanted to work with marginalised groups, and he wasn’t a bad boss.

“My career path has been drifty. People saw things in me I didn’t know I had, offered me things, and I thought, ‘That’s interesting, I'll give that a go’.” That’s how she became the first script-development executive at the NZ Film Commission. After working as script/casting consultant on Illustrious Energy, a 1988 film about Chinese goldminers, Wong became a freelance script consultant. She also directed TV documentaries: Footprints of the Dragon about the Chinese diaspora in New Zealand, and Unbearably Beautiful about New Zealand women’s struggle to look attractive. Acting has been more a hobby than a day job, partly because there’s been little demand for Chinese faces. In her varsity days, she joined a university revue (musical comedy/skit troupe) then became a mainstay of BATS Theatre in the 1970s and 1980s, also directing plays. She’s since had small roles in TV shows (remember Grace Kwan’s mum on Shortland Street?), films, theatre and commercials, and filled in as TV programme manager at NZ On Air. Wong isn’t an everything-happens-for-a-reason type, but she’s glad her chameleon career has led to this book. She hopes it will encourage more Chinese New Zealanders to write their own stories – and more New Zealanders to walk in their shoes. Wong doesn’t believe the tide of Chinaphobia in New Zealand completely receded after the “revived racism” of the 1990s. Back then, after being quoted in the NZ Herald about challenging racism, she received a letter calling Chinese “yellow c***s” with veiled death threats. A few years later, a young woman ranted at and threatened her on the Auckland waterfront. She still doesn’t feel safe from racism. “It can come out of nowhere.” Not much shocks her, but a series of assaults of Asian students by Auckland teenagers in March did. “Someone’s passing on these attitudes to young people, so we still have a way to go and a job to do.”

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BUSINESS

BUS OFF Graham Atkinson used to be Mr Fixit for Stagecoach, the company that previously ran the buses in Wellington. He probably knows more about bus services than any other single person, having been a driver himself for over ten years, followed by another ten years sorting out problems for bus operator Stagecoach. Retired from NZ Bus, formerly Stagecoach, he’s now working for Australian bus operator Transit Systems, a potential bidder for Wellington’s bus services. He talks frankly to JOHN BISHOP about the challenges of running public transport in the Wellington region and what he thinks ought to happen.

he problem with Wellington is its peculiar shape and size. Everything is inside a small area called the CBD, and it’s fed from north, south, east and west. I’d look to reduce the number of vehicles moving in and out of the area, especially at peak times, but not between 10am and 3pm, when there is not a traffic problem.

I’d provide a more reliable public transport system by ensuring that its movement was not affected by private vehicles. More buses? Not necessarily. There are alternatives like light rail and modern trams. The design of the roads in Wellington is such that it is not practical to have two tramlines on the same street, so the option

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would be to revert to the old inner route-outer route strategy used by buses in Wellington before the oneway street system. A monorail is impractical. The beauty of light rail is that capacity can be increased very easily. We see it on the trains now. A train has six carriages at peak times, but two carriages at off-peak, and there’s still just one driver. Light rail could also connect Upper Hutt and Masterton to the airport through Wellington railway station. Technically it’s feasible. But (and this is the killer but), Wellington is not a large city/region even by New Zealand standards and there just isn’t the population to justify the level of investment that would be needed. The best option for Wellington City is buses. But I’d never advocate getting rid of rail to the Hutt Valley and Porirua.

tickets and give change did not. Although there has been a concerted effort in recent years to get bus drivers to be friendlier and it is paying off. Your thoughts on double-decker buses? Double deckers are able to move large numbers of people, but there are some restrictions using doubledeckers on commuter routes. They take longer to load, and can’t pass other traffic so easily, meaning slower journey times through the city. Replace the trolleys? The key routes have already been upgraded – Newtown, Seatoun, Island Bay, Karori, all up to current safety standards. The big difficulty is in the underground wiring which feeds electricity from the substations to the boxes and then to the overhead wires. All that wiring is pre-World War Two. Trolley buses were originally to be phased out in 1980/81, then in the 1990s, then the late 1990s, and then 2005, and now it is to be 2017. Over that time only limited work was done on the wiring from the substations to the trolley boxes – just “if it breaks fix it” stuff. Much of it now needs replacement. One figure I heard for this was $50 million.

What did you learn driving buses? Wellington is very unusual. There is no segregation on the grounds of class. The buses are for everyone. In the early days of Infratil’s owning Stagecoach (the previous bus operator in Wellington) I’d get a call from my boss about a problem on the network somewhere that morning. It could have come from an Infratil director or senior executive who was delayed getting to work that morning. The message to fix it came down from on high. It’s perfectly acceptable in Wellington for senior public servants and top business people to take the bus. That’s not so in many places overseas. One of the great things about being a driver is that you come to work and when you go home again at night, there is nothing left in the in-tray. Every day is different. The people who like driving buses are people who like dealing with people and who like driving. It’s possible to be a driver without interacting with people very much. Snapper cards [smart fare cards] and bus passes make that possible in ways that having to issue

Three ways to improve public transport in Wellington, please? Integrated ticketing is a must. Someone in Whitby going to Newtown takes a bus to the station, a train into Wellington and then a bus. Three tickets. We need one ticket. Secondly there has to be a reliable frequency; every ten minutes on major routes is ideal. That’s only possible where capacity justifies it. We learned from the circular buses in Wellington (and Auckland) that if it comes around every ten minutes people will wait for it. Longer and people won’t wait. Interchanges also have to be easy and attractive. Get off one form of transport and walk across the road to get another. Make the waiting area pleasant and safe.

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Simple help is here for people with pelvic problems and incontinence. “Though the issue affects more women than men, many suffer in silence especially if the problem has been there since childbirth and a woman may think it is normal to be incontinent.” Susan Mofo-Guyton is a prominent physiotherapist in Wellington and Hutt Valley and has been working in these regions for the last 10 years. She has completed postgraduate qualifications in Continence and Women’s Health physiotherapy from Perth focussing on problems of the pelvis, bladder and bowels. Other problems that she helps with are pregnancy related ante and post natal musculoskeletal pain and mastitis of the lactating breast. For more details, visit www.nextlevelphysiotherapy.co.nz or ring 04 472 4198

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INTERIORS

WILD NIGHTS Let your imagination run wild with blankets, throws and cushions this winter. Stylist: Shalee Fitzsimmons Photography: Tamara Jones Models: Mya (8), Angus (5), Lucy & Indi (5) Assistants: Rhett Goodley-Hornblow, Hattie Logan, Laura Pitcher & Elise Catalinac

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HOUSE

WINTER G L O RY WRITTEN BY KAREN SHEAD | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNA BRIGGS

It was love at first sight for Teresa and Marty Read when they saw the house they now call home, eight years ago.

ven though it was in a “terrible state” and had been converted into two flats, whereas they were looking for a family home, one look inside the 1910 villa and they saw its potential. “It was the pressed tin ceilings,” says Teresa. “We loved them. When we saw the ceilings, I knew we had to have it.” The family had just returned from an 18-month stay on the west coast of Ireland in Teresa’s home village of Murrisk, and were originally looking to buy in Wadestown – the suburb where they had lived before going overseas. They drove past the classic villa, which stands tall on Raroa Rd in Kelburn, went inside to have a look and were smitten. They knew they had their work cut out, but with the help of Marty’s sister, architect Victoria Read, they brought the house back to its former glory. “Victoria has incredible vision,” says Teresa. “She came to look at the house and said you need to do this, this and this.

And when we compared her ideas with the original plans, it was like the house used to be.” Marty, who works for the city council in finance, researched the history of the house. His research revealed that it may have been designed by George Troup, a renowned architect best known for designing the Dunedin railway station. A framed copy of the original plans for the house hangs in the hallway – a gift from Marty to Teresa. You can see how the house is similar to its origins, with just a couple of differences – a wall is missing in the main living area and there is an extension at the rear. “In total, we pulled out five internal walls,” says Marty. They both clearly remember the first stages of the renovation, when they knocked down a chimney where the bricks just crumbled away. The first phase of renovations involved converting the property back to one house, putting in a new staircase (there was no

HOUSE

internal stairwell), insulating and renovating all rooms, and creating an open-plan living space. The open-plan area runs the length of the house. At the front is a lounge area with sofas and coffee table. This leads to the kitchen and then the dining area, with French doors opening to a back courtyard and steps up to a lawn and garden. “The kitchen was designed to look more like furniture,” Teresa explains. “There aren’t any wall cupboards, which works really well, and it is quite minimalist and modern.” There is an island in the middle of the kitchen and a side unit with oven runs along one wall. The kitchen has clean, clear surfaces. At the end of the kitchen a door leads to a scullery and a separate laundry. The scullery helps to explain how kitchen surfaces can be so clear when you have a family of five, or six if you include Jack the dog. On the other side of the island is a large, eye-catching dresser. “Victoria recommended having a dresser here and making it a feature.” The inside of the dresser is covered in floral wallpaper from the Designers Guild, giving it a retro feel. While they were carrying out the renovations, they stayed in a two-bedroom

flat in the city. Not easy with three young boys who were, at the time, all under five. Micaiah is now eleven, Johnny, nine and Oran, eight. Teresa says by the time they moved, in 2009, they were desperate to get into their house. “We just wanted to have the space.” Six years later, after enjoying some time in their family home, they carried out the next stage of renovations and some extensive garden landscaping. An extension was added to the rear of the house which included a master bedroom with en-suite and dressing room. It also has pressed tin ceilings in keeping with the rest of the house. They also gained a media room downstairs, accessed through the formal living room. It’s perfect for movie nights. The formal living room, which they transformed from a toy room in 2014, has a feel all of its own. In the same way that a room may have a feature wall, this is like the feature room of the house. With its darkly painted walls, crackling fire, and interesting mix of objects and furniture, it certainly draws you in. “The dark colour was my idea,” says Teresa. “I like interior designer Abigail Ahern and got inspiration from her. I thought I’d try it out and if it worked, good, if it didn't, I could re-paint it.”

HOUSE

It worked. “We are always in here. It is perfect for the winter when you have the fire going. The boys love it too, they like toasting marshmallows on the fire.” The room contains a mix of new and old, and of Teresa and Marty. Old chairs which belonged to Marty’s granny have been re-upholstered, and the tapestry which sits alongside the fireplace, was his grandad’s. “I saw it as a pretty girls’ room,” Teresa admits. “And I saw it as the man’s room,” says Marty. They reached a happy compromise. “It is a bit of mixing and matching, a bit of the old and the new. I get my pink and tassels,” says Teresa pointing to the fringe on the lampshade, “and he gets his antlers and taxidermy.” Although they have similar taste, Marty is a little more traditional whereas Teresa likes things which are a bit quirky. “I like things that have a story or sentiment, maybe a bit more eclectic.” The combination works in their living room.

They still have some work to do, but want to have a bit of a breather before they embark on anything else. “The kids’ rooms are a work in progress,” says Teresa. “And we want to put in a new front door and do some more work on the garden,” adds Marty. But, for now, they are happy with the changes they have made to their welcoming family home. “We love it,” Marty adds. “We have been able to do everything the way we wanted and have ended up with a really eco-friendly home.” And their favourite part of the house? Both agree on the living room. “I love curling up in there with a book and a glass of wine with the fire roaring,” says Teresa. “It heats up like a sauna,” adds Marty. “It is very relaxing. You close the door and feel like you are in a different world – you get away from the stresses and strains of life.” Perfect for a Wellington winter.

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E L E M E N TA L WINTER BACH ESCAPE WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY IAN APPERLY

Sometimes it’s good to leave your passport behind and to take holidays that don’t involve long journeys. Look around your region and find adventures close to home.

ellington is slowly cooling down after a long, hot summer. It’s back to work and months before the next public holiday. The days are getting shorter and the mornings cooler. Winter storms are on the horizon, which means it’s time to escape to the bach for the occasional weekend to recharge the batteries, watch the weather, and rug up and walk the beach or bush. Several years back my wife and I investigated buying a bach. There were problems with this. First, to get something decent was going to cost a second mortgage. Then there was the question of where to buy, Kapiti Coast, the Wairarapa, or further abroad? Upkeep, maintenance, insurance, climate change, burglary, and a host of other negatives persuaded us we should keep our money in the bank. We also discovered the many book-a-bach-online services. We were spoiled for choice. Prices ranged from $60 a night into the hundreds. You can search for amenities, such as a spa pool or a fireplace, whether you can take your furry companions, and a host of other details. You can request cleaning if you don’t fancy doing the dishes on the way out the door. Our first bach rental was in Ngawi, a small fishing village at the end of the world. You drive to Martinborough, then as far south and east as you can go, to Cape Palliser. It’s wild country, open to the Southern Sea. The fishermen have massive tractors that allow them to launch full-size fishing boats from the gravel beach. We stayed in small green bach. It had a single bedroom off an extensive lounge. The lounge had a

log burner, and you looked out the windows to the Southern Sea. It howled the first night, and we hid under the covers watching the fire and listening to the rain on the roof and windows. We were hooked. That bach is gone now, sadly eaten by the everencroaching sea. The thing with baching is that it offers you all the benefits of owning a bach and none of the downsides. You can arrive, relax, then leave, having paid your fee for the weekend. We’ve stayed in Raumati, Waikanae, Peka Peka, Foxton, Himatangi Beach, Martinborough, Ngawi, Lake Ferry, Ocean Beach, Tora, Castlepoint, Otaki, Mt Holdsworth, Masterton, and much further afield. Every bach is unique and has a character imbued by its owners. Some are spartan with the bare minimum required, and others are adorned with the owner’s own art and craft pieces. At the high end, sprawling baches with waterside access and views of the horizon are common. For extended family gatherings these are a great choice and amazing value. Or there is the single-room bach with outdoor bathrooms, tucked into the sand dunes out of the weather, with a single log burner, a pool table, a collection of bunk beds, and a double. Old woolsheds that have been converted into sleepers are popular with my family. One of our favourites is in Ocean Beach south of Featherston. It still has that lanolin smell of wool, the floor is original with slats. All the tools are in place, and a large fire is mandatory in the drafty wooden place. It has comfortable couches and a big paddock for dogs to run in.

Top: Palliser baches Bottom: Lake Ferry

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A single-room bach in Mt Holdsworth near Masterton perches high on the side of a steep valley. You need a four-wheel-drive to reach it, though the owner, who lives down the road, was happy to ferry us up and down. Again, a big fireplace and a kitchen that is outside the bach, along with one of the most beautiful long-drops I have seen. In a northerly storm the wind sounds like a jet engine and on a clear night you can see to the end of the universe. A gypsy caravan setting just out of Masterton lies on a quiet river bend. There are four caravans, hand-built in the original gypsy style by the owner. Three sleepers, a kitchen, and bathroom. You cook on an outside BBQ, and it has a fire pit, spitting distance from the river. It also has an outdoor bath, under the stars, heated by lighting a fire under it. My wife Sarah loves a good bath. We have found many different baths on our adventures. One that sat outside under the stars with a view of a naked West Coast beach, was heated by an old wetback system that had been lovingly restored like some mad steampunk, bronzed, creature. A small fire powered this beautiful hissing contraption, the whole carefully tucked into some macrocarpas for privacy. Another notable bath sits in Peka Peka behind a tinted floor-to-ceiling window looking out across the dunes and the beach, through the tussock and toi toi to Kapiti Island herself looming in the background as the sun sets. Other peoples’ baches are interesting because they are full of paraphernalia that the owners have collected, and visitors have added to. Bookshelves are common, and usually stuffed with an eclectic selection of paperbacks that have seen better days, smelling faintly of summer and suntan lotion with their leaves starting to yellow. Almost every bach we have stayed at has had Monopoly in one form or other – the original, the New Zealand

version, and high-tech copies with EFTPOS cards. Chess, draughts, snakes and ladders, playing cards, and The Game of Life feature frequently. When we began our adventures some years ago, phone and internet access were non-existent in most places, and they still are today in some areas, though they are creeping in now. It’s nice to find places where technology hasn’t invaded just yet. To be able to leave Wellington City behind for two or three nights and not have the incessant demands of a smartphone-powered life is an excellent break for the mind. The booking systems are much more streamlined today than a few years back. Both renters and owners can leave feedback on each other after a stay, as on other accommodation sites with ratings. So far we have not had a negative review, and we guard our reputation fiercely. If we had bought a bach all those years ago, we wouldn’t have had all these adventures. We’ve explored all the small towns between here and Palmerston North and Masterton. We’ve found local pubs, cafes, restaurants, shops, and beaches that most people will never see or experience. For a handful of dollars over a weekend, it’s fantastic value, especially when you consider the cost of a mortgage or staying in a hotel. And of course, lying snuggled in bed, in the middle of a winter storm, fire raging inside and the wind and rain thundering outside, dog curled up at your feet, is just simply good for the soul. Wellington is elemental and embracing all of her moods, colours, costumes, and character through baching is an amazing experience. I’m writing this from a bach at Peka Peka, with the first winter fire under way. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to my book, sneaking long looks at Kapiti Island, with a dog in my lap, a drink in my hand, and no smartphone demands; in fact, it may be time for a nap before lunch.

Top: Gypsy caravan Bottom left: Lake Ferry Bottom right: Gypsy caravan kitchen

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G I D DY UP TOP BY JOELLE THOMSON

Wellington’s newest walk is the most expensive leg of the Te Araroa trail so far and it’s not for the faint-hearted.

e’re standing at the top of the first precarious staircase on the new Paekakariki Escarpment Track, and I’m having to eat my words about vertigo. Today my fear of heights is affecting me badly. Bird’s-eye views don’t get much better than this, but my heart is racing, my hands are clammy and I feel giddy every time I glance down at the narrow black ribbon of road, which winds around the rocky coastline between Paekakariki and Pukerua Bay. This spectacular 10-kilometre walk is the newest and most expensive part of the 3,000-kilometre Te Araroa Trail, which stretches from Cape Reinga in the far north to Bluff in the deep south. It’s being called a must-walk for every self-respecting Kiwi; and, as one of those, and a keen walker, I was in boots and all when the idea came up, but all five of us discovered that it’s not for the faint-hearted – nor those given to vertigo. One such person died on the day we walked the track in late April this year. He didn’t fall, although I would have understood if he had; he died from heart failure. “It was bloody devastating,” said Te Araroa chief executive officer Rob Wakelin, when I phoned him for a chat about this track, its steepness and its safety. Wakelin reckons it was physically impossible to build a gentle, meandering track along this stretch of coast, and says that it was always going to be like this: a little scary for those with vertigo, and a little too difficult for those who are not relatively fit. It begins gently enough. Drive or take the train to Paekakariki, and cross the main road to the start of the track. Distances are clearly posted along the walk, which begins as an easy meander through scrubby low-lying bush, parallel to the State Highway – which, incidentally, was only built in 1940. As we began the walk on a sunny autumn day, my earlier misgivings after viewing the website fell away with each step. Then the first vertical staircase appeared in front of us. As the pictures on the Paekakariki Escarpment Walk website had promised, there were no handrails and the sturdy steps in front of us were very steep. The walk is graded as a day visitor track, but all of the online information states clearly that it is not for everybody. As Wakelin says, it’s absolutely not a doddle, but it’s hugely rewarding once you’ve done it. I agree. Wholeheartedly. But I was fearful during about 60 percent of its dramatic, narrow length. The 10-kilometres length (or 20-kilometre round trip if you don’t jump on the train at the

other end) was not the problem. In fact that was part of its allure. But I found the steepness and lack of handrails to be overwhelming at times. Again, Wakelin agrees. “I absolutely agree, when you’re standing at the top of that first big flight of steps, and look down, you can have a bit of a moment. It’s good as gold underfoot and that moment can quickly pass, but that, too, is part of what makes it such a great experience and part of its overall appeal.” It’s hard to disagree. The views are spectacular. Gaze in one direction and the South Island glistens in the ocean, while Kapiti Island looks magnificent in the other. The trouble is the steepness – and, for some, those steps. There are nearly 500 of them in total, with no handrails. They are all connected by narrow dusty pathways carved into the sheer vertical coastline. Add in a couple of 40-metre-long swing bridges across lush green gullies to enhance the drama of the experience. Even for me, the swing bridges were a thrill. Strong and new, they seemed like the safest part of the journey. Wakelin says there is a loose recommendation for walkers to be at least eight years old, but this is not an absolute. Parents are expected to make the judgement call. He and the others who built the track imagine that younger children may struggle to complete the track. No dogs or bicycles are allowed because it is not a multi-purpose track. Of the call for defibrillators after the two deaths on the track, Wakelin says that practical issues could make this difficult. “We’ve been very explicit about what lies ahead and for the most part, people have been understanding,” but he concedes there have been comments about how steep it is, “so we’ve had to do a bit of navel-gazing.” The most likely result will be the duplication of existing signage to create a second filter for those embarking on the walk. The key messages are that this walk is not for people who suffer from vertigo, or for those with medical conditions relating to hips, knees or hearts. The rest is common sense. Dogs and bicycles cannot fit on the track, which is extremely narrow for most of its 10 kilometres. And it’s also pretty exposed up there; wind and sun beat down, so hats, sunblock and a plentiful supply of water are helpful. As is courage. I’m glad I can tick this one off. Now to the next leg of Te Araroa.

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TAIPA - MANGONUI 1,662 WHANGAREI 55,400

ROTORUA 65,280 NEW PLYMOUTH 56,300

GISBORNE 43,656

WANGANUI 43,560 PALMERSTON NORTH 80,079

NELSON 46,437

BLENHEIM 30,600

GREYMOUTH 9,850 HOKITIKA 2,967

WANAKA 7,390

ASHBURTON 19,600

TIMARU 37,205

499, 986

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LIVE THE DREAM WRITTEN BY VANESSA ELLINGHAM

hen one of my girlfriends emailed an hour after our arranged Skype date to say she was sorry she’d forgotten to Skype in, but “thought you’d probably be busy looking at pretty old buildings or eating a pastry anyway," I lost the plot altogether. “What does she think I’m doing?” I wailed into my laptop screen at my mum, the unfortunately next caller. “Having a good time?!” Of course I was supposed to be having a good time, all the time, because I was on my Big OE – the young New Zealander’s overseas experience, sold as a rite of passage. I was following in the footsteps of my gran, who moved to Scotland and made some new friends but missed kumara; my dad, who moved to the USA and found a career; and my cousin, who moved to London, met a man in a pub who had once visited her hometown, Upper Hutt, and married him. I had launched myself headfirst down the Brain Drain, expecting fun times 24/7. Except three months in, I wasn’t feeling it at all. I had moved to my boyfriend’s homeland, Denmark, settling in Copenhagen for a kind of romantically sponsored overseas adventure.

So actually yeah, I did find myself living in a charming, 100-year-old brick townhouse with pink hollyhocks lining the front fence, and I was stuffing myself full of creamy pastries, but only because I was miserable, not to mention unemployed, desperate for some consolation delivered by a familiar but pixelated face. Unlike the Contiki kids I knew, I craved more than a Facebook album of my sunburned self cuddling up to a bunch of Aussie dudes in matching T-shirts, drinking in a hostel where we’d woken up too late to see any of Europe’s sites. I was envisioning a life, not a holiday. My new life would include a new language, a bevy of trendy Scandinavians as friends and hopefully a job I could stick at. But none of that had happened yet, and I’d almost run out of cash. My first birthday abroad yielded 20 emails all asking some version of. “How’s it going LIVING THE DREAM?!” when all I’d been doing was folding the laundry, a chore I had wrongly assumed would disappear from my life as soon as I hopped on a plane. Friends back home tuned out when I tried to describe what it’s like looking for a job when you can’t read the clas-

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Many Kiwis talk about the Big OE as if it is inevitable. But let’s remember, it requires a certain amount of privilege to afford one in the first place and a serious amount of ambition – or parental handouts – to keep yourself going once you get there. Not everyone has that opportunity. And it’s ok to have a different dream altogether. The Big OE is no more than a parental conspiracy. Surely you’ve heard the saying. “If you love something, set it free, and then cross your fingers it comes home when its visa is up and settles down the road from you, not rabbiting on about ‘that time in London’ for the rest of its days.” My own overseas adventure hasn’t been all unemployment and smelly cuisine. Just like all those people still trying to sell you the dream, I, too, have welcomed the incredible, hilarious, life-giving moments, enough of them that four years since I left New Zealand I still live in Europe, and I’m unlikely to move home any time soon. In the end, an OE is just a life lived elsewhere for some amount of time. Wherever you end up living, you still have to do your laundry.

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sifieds, eating smelly pickled fish to fit in with your new friends, and that disorienting sense of loneliness that never quite seems to subside. Unwilling to be exposed to the idea that this version of real life might await them if they ever embarked on their own OE, they quickly changed the subject back to all that fun I must be having. Clearly they didn’t want to hear about it. That would take another three years, when finally an old school friend emailed to ask whether I had any tips for finding a job in another language. Luckily it didn’t take me quite so long to stop feeling sorry for myself. It’s high time Kiwis abandoned the idea of the Big OE as an inescapable, booze-filled, singularly fun time. Much like the quarter-acre pavlova paradise, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and viewing it that way doesn’t leave any room for an individual experience. Growing up on those isolated isles, we’re encouraged to venture out and see what the world has to offer us. It’s a beautiful idea. But if we come home full of lively stories, we’re arrogant prats, and if we admit we’re having a hard time away from home, we’re somehow letting down the team.

T O R Q U E TA L K

VOT E TO SHA R E A couple of Wellington men have developed Mevo, a car-sharing system for travellers who want a car, but use it infrequently. Beginning in Spring, subscribers will be able to pick up an immaculate “green” Audi E-Tron hybrid car and use it for as short or long as they want and put it back when they’ve finished using it, all for a monthly fee and $10 an hour. Mevo’s Finn Lawrence and Erik Zydervelt are aiming at inner-city dwellers who would happily use a car, if it were available, for a few hours or a few days – to travel to an event or for business trips. They point out the savings, saying that the cost of owning a car in Wellington can easily be $10,000 a year, and that with Mevo there is no need to worry about maintenance, insurance, garaging, or cleaning. It’s as simple as going to pick one up. They say it has been shown overseas that one shared car could eliminate the need for ten little-used privately owned vehicles. Their planned new business depends to an extent on the result of the Wellington City Council vote to be taken in August on a car-sharing policy. It would allow car-sharing providers to place cars in public parking spaces and make them available to the public 24 hours a day. The business partners are taking waiting list sign-ups for their first pod of cars. mevo.co.nz

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AN EXCELLENT KOREA MOVE WRITTEN BY ROGER WALKER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY RHETT GOODLEY-HORNBLOW

The issue of affordable housing is a hot topic at the moment and one that occupies a lot of my energy in my day job.

o I was quite taken aback when I heard our esteemed finance minister saying recently that affordable houses would not necessarily be attractive to look at. I disagree, minister. Perhaps you could consider how the building industry could learn from the car industry, and how clever compact design, component sharing, and factory production methods can reduce costs. Modern cars have more performance, more features, more bells and whistles, and are safer, more economical, and better built, than ever before. And they can be extremely attractive to look at. More than one hundred years ago, Henry Ford first addressed the issue of affordable cars. He wanted his employees to be able to buy them along with everybody else and he knew that he had to drastically cut production costs to achieve this ambition. The Model T sold like hot cakes and the modern car industry was born. The cars were available in “any colour you like as long as it’s black”. That was one of his money-saving changes – black was the quickest drying paint. (That said, I am in no way suggesting that an affordable house should be any colour you like as long as it’s beige.) I have long been fascinated by “carwinian evolution”. First came the Europeans, who now sell on quality, racing pedigree, and reputation. Next came the Americans, who had more materials and space, so they embraced comfort. Then came the awaking of the East, led initially by the Japanese who embraced the market by promoting the car as a reliable and predictable transport appliance. We now have the flowering of Korea. I really like the Koreans I have met. They have animated personalities and gesticulate, sometimes wildly – the “Italians of the East”. So maybe unsurprisingly, after Ssangyong’s financial rescue not so long ago by Indian industrialists Mahindra and Mahindra, its first new offering is a small Italian-designed SUV called the Tivoli, which shares its name with a splendidly romantic town in central Italy.

In New Zealand there are three Tivolis, (Ssangyong like to accent the O). All have a 1.6 litre petrol 4-cylinder engine, 6-speed auto box with manual override, 3 steering settings, a high-strength steel body, spacious seating for 5, generous legroom and boot space, alloy wheels, 10 separate storage areas, full A/C, ESP, ABS, cruise control, and bluetooth streaming, as well as an alarm and immobiliser. The 94KW/160NM engine is transverse mounted which frees up body length to allow that rear-end space. The Sport at $25,990 + ORC has 16-inch wheels and three airbags. The newest Tivoli XLV at $34,990 +, released at the March 2016 Geneva Motor Show is the LTD with 250mm added to the rear end to provide 720 litres of capacity (up from 423 litres). The LTD, at $31,990 +, sports two-tone paintwork, 18-inch wheels, 4 more airbags, 7-inch media-centre reversing camera, front and rear sensors, LED running lamps, and “leatherette” seats. Looking at our photograph, you may be worried about the décor you see on the LTD I drove. Don’t. It’s a one-off result of an in-house Australasian promotional competition to “wrap” the vehicle, and won a prize for a Kiwi signwriter. Ssangyong’s Tivoli has won car of the year awards in Korea, Turkey, and Belgium. To put their money where their mouth is, Ssangyong provide a 100,000km warranty and three years of free AA Roadside Assist. The controls are light, easy to reach and very responsive. There is even an analogue clock in the centre of the dash, as there is in a Bentley. It proved as friendly as a puppy. We went round the winding roads of Korokoro, down the motorway and through city streets. The engine was quiet and obedient. The handling was fluid and all settings of the steering were precise. A few people stared at the graphics, but I didn’t mind. I was of course metaphorically gesticulating back at the bland tedium of the surrounding cars.

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WHAT WOULD DEIRDRE D O? THINK KING LEAR I am about to move in to live with a new partner. My children say, to protect myself, we must have a legal agreement regarding our assets. I do not have much, but own my own house and have some other funds which my previous partner and I worked hard to accumulate. I am anxious that it will change the atmosphere of trust and friendship between us all and make them seem greedy. How do we handle this? Anxious, Thorndon Tricky and I agree you may seem churlish, but actually this sort of formal agreement and legal clarity is not being untrusting at all. It is good life management! You say “them” being greedy? This is between you and your partner surely? Not about your children.

GREEDY CHILDREN Surely inheritance is just that, what you inherit, if you are lucky, when someone dies, not an expectation? Are children entitled to know how much money they are likely to be left when we die? My daughter asked me recently, her reasoning was that she was trying to plan her family finances; I made it clear I thought she shouldn’t ask. She was annoyed and is now avoiding me. Irritable, Northland

I am with you on this. Inheritance is a privilege and an unexpected bonus. Some people feel very strongly that we should each make our own way in the world and any assets they may have should be theirs to distribute. There are often charities or causes that they want to support. Ensure that you have it legally seen to, but it is your decision alone. It is disappointing your daughter is behaving as she is but time will settle it and you need to be calm and friendly. Would you consider giving her money now perhaps to help, if you are intending to do so anyway?

MOVE ON My girlfriend (of five years) says she doesn’t ever want to have children. Do I assume she will change her mind, or do I move on? We are both 24. Planner, Newlands Take her at her word and get back out into the world. The relationship may restart at a later date but for now accept what she says – move on!

If you’ve got a burning question for Deirdre, email angel@capitalmag.co.nz with Capital Angel in the subject line.

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HORMONE HAPPINESS BY MELODY THOMAS

ne of the wonderful gifts of young parenthood is the way that sleep deprivation and hormones seem to either wrap your memories in delicate cotton wool or delete them entirely. This is why parents over a certain age will always assure you their children were angels, that the years when they were little were the best ones, and that childbirth isn’t as bad as the movies might suggest. It’s why my own parents – who once considered fostering me out to another family, who fought to get me into the college I desperately wanted to attend only to watch me expelled a year later, and who spent countless nights lying awake imagining identifying my body at the morgue – now laugh when I assure them I was a horrible teenager. “You weren’t that bad”, they say – ruffling my hair affectionately and rolling their eyes as if the whole thing has been exaggerated for dramatic effect. I was that bad, but something about the passage of time and my eventual transformation into a rational and mostly responsible adult has allowed them to view their memories through an eternally rose-coloured lens – to laugh or shrug at things that once threatened to completely derail them. I imagine every person who reads this will be able to recall (or half-recall) a time when they complained about a loss or dulling of memory with age – and yet most of us won’t stop to consider what a blessing this might actually be. Imagine the weight we would be burdened with if every painful, guilty, anxious, sad or bored moment stayed with us beyond the time when we were actually feeling it (not to mention the fact that, had our own parents been able to recall the early years in accurate detail, many of us might have decided to remain childless…) Forgetting can be a wonderful thing. Especially because for some reason – and I

suspect it has something to do with evolution and the need to propagate the species – the stuff that sticks around tends to be good. Try as I might, I can’t really recall the details of my first labour, or how many months I suffered from twohourly night wakings, or the pain of cracked nipples. But I will never forget the moment our brand new babe was laid on my naked chest, or her first, gummy smiles and impossibly wobbly steps, or the sound of her laughter pealing down the hallway during a tickle fight with her dad. It is these kinds of things that I’m trying to remember in the last weeks leading up to the arrival of our second child, because there have been so many moments over the last 38 weeks where the stress of pregnancy plus work plus motherhood has had me wishing the baby would just hurry up and arrive. But then what? When I’m sitting up at 3am, breastfeeding an insatiable, unsettled infant who has already woken more than once that night, will I find myself wishing for a year to have passed? And when my one-yearold is still not sleeping, will I pray for two? Of course it’s completely normal at times to count down the minutes till bedtime, the days until school holidays end or the months until that next birthday. But it’s also important to remember that the stuff that feels impossibly hard, like it just might break you entirely, is not the stuff that sticks. That, while it might be exhausting, and boring, and frustrating, one day we will almost certainly look back on this exact time in our lives and say it was the best – the tiny, beautiful details forgotten but the general impression one of a life well-lived, or as my own dad assures me, “One, big, happy blur.”

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