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Issue 159 Raumati • Summer 2020
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
NZ $9.95 incl.GST
HITTING THE SWEET SPOT
Basin Reserve’s heritage treasures
DIVING DEEP
Citizen scientists ‘adopt a wreck’
THE FIRE INSIDE
Baking bread in Millers Flat
INTO THE LIGHT Protecting remarkable Māori rock art
Heritage New Zealand
Raumati • Summer 2020 1
Discover the places that tell our stories
NGĀ KŌRERO O ROTO • CONTENTS
Raumati • Summer 2020 Features
30
Journeys into the past
12 Into the light One of the biggest barriers to protecting Māori rock art is that many people don’t know it exists
16 No blank slate Retained and reclaimed heritage in post-quake Christchurch
22 The fire inside The restored bakehouse at Millers Flat is delivering more than fresh bread
44 Tales on the trail Peeling back layers of history while riding Northland’s Twin Coast Cycle Trail
48 Challenge and opportunity What are the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for global heritage retention and conservation?
30 Hitting the sweet spot
Columns
New life for heritage treasures at Wellington’s Basin Reserve
3 Editorial
36 Diving deep
4 Noticeboard
Divers ‘adopt a wreck’ as part of a project to monitor our maritime heritage
52 Books
40 A traditionalist and an innovator The mahi of a renowned tohunga whakairo has drawn people together across time and place
Remarkable stories of freedom and constraint
12 44
54 Our heritage, my vision Bringing Chinese New Zealand heritage stories to light
22
Explore the List 8 Home away from home Not only home to student hijinks, Massey University’s Colombo Hall is also connected to an important international economic assistance programme
10 Saluting an icon A railway bridge stands as a reminder of national icon Sir Truby King’s time spent in a small Catlins community
Heritage New Zealand magazine is printed with mineral oil-free, soy-based vegetable inks on New Silk paper. This paper is Forestry Stewardship Council® (FSC®) certified and manufactured from pulp from responsible sources under the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System. Please recycle.
Heritage New Zealand
16 Raumati • Summer 2020 1
Members– are you missing out? We know how much you, our members, love this magazine.
There are 44 historic places you can visit for FREE in New Zealand, and countless overseas sites to visit when the borders reopen.
Did you know there are so many other benefits you can enjoy?
We’re now rolling out a whole new programme of very popular member-only events, articles, webinars and behind-the-scenes digital content. We use a monthly Members Club enewsletter to tell you about all these benefits.
So if you haven’t provided your email address to us, you are definitely missing out! It is so easy to do – simply scan the QR code with your smartphone to launch your email application, or email membership@heritage.org.nz. Please include your membership number so we can match your details. Of course, by providing your email address, you are agreeing to receive membership-related information, news and benefits. If you have any questions, call 0800 802 010 or email us!
We’re here for you to make the most of your membership. THANK YOU We are very grateful to all those supporters who have recently made donations. While many are kindly acknowledged below, more have chosen to give anonymously.
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Mr Kevin Tonks Mrs Elizabeth Leary-Taylor Dr David Lane and Mrs Sue Lane Mr David & Mrs Mereana Moore Mr & Mrs D I D Bird Barbara Stewart Mr Graeme McDonald
HE WHAKAARO NĀ TE ĒTITA • EDITORIAL
Year, interrupted Heritage Issue 159 Raumati • Summer 2020 ISSN 1175-9615 (Print) ISSN 2253-5330 (Online) Cover image: Amanda Symon by Mike Heydon
Editor Caitlin Sykes, Sugar Bag Publishing Sub-editor Trish Heketa, Sugar Bag Publishing Art director Amanda Trayes, Sugar Bag Publishing Publisher Heritage New Zealand magazine is published quarterly by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. The magazine had an audited circulation of 11,512 as at 30 September 2018. The views expressed in the articles are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Advertising For advertising enquiries, please contact the Manager Publications. Phone: (04) 470 8054 Email: advertising@heritage.org.nz Subscriptions/Membership Heritage New Zealand magazine is sent to all members of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Call 0800 802 010 to find out more.
Tell us your views At Heritage New Zealand magazine we enjoy feedback about any of the articles in this issue or heritage-related matters. Email: The Editor at heritagenz@gmail.com Post: The Editor, c/- Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, PO Box 2629, Wellington 6140 Feature articles: Note that articles are usually commissioned, so please contact the Editor for guidance regarding a story proposal before proceeding. All manuscripts accepted for publication in Heritage New Zealand magazine are subject to editing at the discretion of the Editor and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Online: Subscription and advertising details can be found under the Resources section on the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga website www.heritage.org.nz.
Heritage New Zealand
Earlier this year, when one of our regular photographers Marcel Tromp emailed us some photographs he’d taken at the 2020 Waipū Highland Games, we knew we’d use them in this magazine. The games are held on New Year’s Day in the coastal Northland town and are a quintessentially summer event. Run by the Waipū Caledonian Society, which in 1905 bought the land now known as Caledonian Park on which the games are run, they also express the town’s strong Scottish heritage. But some months down the track, when it came time to lay out one of Marcel’s images for this Summer issue, we thought we’d better check in with the games’ organisers to see if all was on track in a year so filled with interruption due to Covid-19. A quick look at the games’ website and my heart sank. For the first time since 1871, the games in 2021 were cancelled. It was to have been the 150th annual event. The games attract hundreds of competitors and thousands of spectators to the town. What a heartbreaking decision that must have been for the community to make. Thinking that perhaps a photograph of the event in the magazine would be a painful reminder of this interruption to such a long history, I called Ron Davidson, a member of the Caledonian Society. They’d be thrilled, he said, for an image from the games to feature in the magazine. Then he went on to tell me how, in the absence of the games in 2021, the society would instead be opening up Caledonian Park to the wider community to run a community festival on the day. The idea is to offer all local community groups and businesses that have been
financially disadvantaged by Covid-19 an extra chance to raise some much-needed funds, and to come together and celebrate a positive start to the new year. There’s no denying 2020 has been a year many of us would largely like to forget. Covid-19, first and foremost, has presented a terrible global health challenge, but also economic and social ones. The ripple effects amongst businesses and community organisations have been felt keenly, and will be for some time. But in the face of these challenges, stories of this type of resilience can be found all over the country. We may not feel there’s much to raise a glass to at the conclusion of 2020, but I think these types of response are certainly something to celebrate. We’re privileged at Heritage New Zealand magazine that our stories often feature projects that are also cause for celebration. One example from this issue is our piece on the Millers Flat Bakehouse in Otago. Thanks to a community effort spanning almost 30 years, the bakehouse has been restored, as has its oven, from which bread is once again being produced. And as locals flock to pick up their freshly baked loaves, the bakehouse is proving a hub in which the community meets and shares its stories. Like everyone else in our global community, we are unsure what to expect as we roll in to 2021. One thing we can count on, however, is that there will surely be more such warm and fascinating stories from the heritage world to share. Ngā manaakitanga Caitlin Sykes Editor
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Raumati • Summer 2020 3
PAPA PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD
Letters to the editor I really appreciate your magazine, which a friend generously shares with me. I was wondering what happened to the original Christchurch Girls’ High School building in Cranmer Square. I was a pupil there and in the same class as the Parker-Hulme girls – a distressing and dreadfully shocking story, indelibly imprinted on my mind. Have you ever covered that building? The ‘True Colours’ article [Issue 158, Spring 2020] is very interesting. It's always fantastic to see the buildings in their original colours. I did wonder about the ‘pretty-in-pink’ paintwork at Fyffe House, Kaikōura, though; it looks the same colour that was commonly used as an undercoat and just didn't look right – like it was waiting for its top coat. Clare Dudley Editor: Thanks Clare. In response to your query regarding your former high school, Robyn Burgess from the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Southern Regional Office confirms that the old Christchurch Girls’ High School building was later known as the Cranmer Centre, which had a brief spell under the ownership of The Arts Centre then was later sold to Christ’s College. It was once on the New Zealand Heritage List/ Rārangi Kōrero as ‘Cranmer Centre (Former Christchurch Girls’ High)’, a Category 1 historic place. However, after the building was, sadly, demolished as a result of the 2010–11 quakes, it was later removed from the List. I would like to point out an error in the article ‘Change makers’ in the recent Heritage New Zealand magazine, Issue 158. On page 9, first column, it states: "...making New Zealand women the first in the world to win the right to vote". This is an oftrepeated misconception, which is absolutely incorrect.
4 Raumati • Summer 2020
There were various states, territories and the like around the world where women gained the vote well before New Zealand. For example, the territory of Wyoming in the US passed the Wyoming Suffrage Act, which gave women the right to vote in 1869. There are numerous other examples. In the case of New Zealand, it was the first self-governing country in the world in which all women had the right to vote in, but not to stand for, parliamentary elections in 1893. So the key word is ‘country’. Dianne Harlow I was fascinated to read the article on Te Urewera [Issue 158, Spring 2020]; thank you for this. There was a picture of Te Kura Whare with details of the considerations that have gone into the design of this wonderful building. Please could you name the architect that created the design? They deserve recognition. Allison Cattanach Editor: Unfortunately, given the length and focus of our articles, there isn’t always scope to include all the details related to the sites covered, but if you’d like to learn more about the architects involved with this project, you can visit jasmax. com/projects/featured-projects/ te-kura-whare. I congratulate Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga for at last recognising that maritime heritage is a very important part of New Zealand’s responsibility for our national heritage. I refer to an article on the Toroa steam ferry in [the electronic newsletter] Heritage This Month (September 2020) entitled ‘Toroa undergoing restoration work’. May I suggest that the restoration of the Toroa would make a very good subject for an article in [this] quarterly magazine, and could well lead to financial support for the project.
Another suggestion I would like to make is that Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga should prepare a directory of all its heritage buildings or places that are open to the membership and/ or the general public. This directory would list basic details of the buildings/places, showing how to get to them, when they are normally open or how to arrange a visit, and any other specific information that would be useful to a visitor to the area where each one is located. The references need not be illustrated; it is mainly the place and times one needs to know. An example of how useful such a directory would be occurred recently when I was passing through Matakohe (and The Kauri Museum) in Northland. I wanted to have a look at Ruatuna, but on the day I couldn’t find out where it was located or whether it would be open. On returning home I found out from the Northland office that Ruatuna is down a private road and can only be visited by arrangement (not very encouraging to people who supported the Ruatuna project financially). However, my point is that a Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga directory would usefully make such information known while people are planning a journey. I, for one, would be happy to pay to have such a directory. What do other members think of this idea? Chris Grove Lesley Brice, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Manager Publications, responds: I sympathise that it can be disappointing to arrive somewhere only to discover you had to make prior arrangements to visit, or the property isn’t open that day for some reason. A directory is one of various options we’re considering as a means of helping visitors find
Correction In our ‘Ō tātou wāhi ingoa-nui, taku kitenga/Our heritage, my vision’ interview in Issue 158 with Ambrosia Crum, it was incorrectly stated her study investigating seismic retrofitting of wharenui was published by the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Her article was, in fact, published by the Royal Society of the UK. We have conveyed our sincere apologies to Ambrosia for the error.
and enjoy our heritage places, and members can provide feedback and ideas on this directly to membership@heritage.org.nz. Opening hours are, however, subject to change, sometimes at short notice (as we’ve particularly experienced in our Covid-19 world), meaning hard-copy material can date quickly and be difficult to replace. We therefore recommend that visitors check the web for details, so they are forewarned about the availability of the places they’d like to visit.
HERITAGE NEW ZEALAND POUHERE TAONGA DIRECTORY National Office PO Box 2629, Wellington 6140 Antrim House 63 Boulcott Street Wellington 6011 (04) 472 4341 (04) 499 0669 information@heritage.org.nz Go to www.heritage.org.nz for details of offices and historic places around New Zealand that are cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
Heritage New Zealand
MEMBER AND SUPPORTER UPDATE
... WITH BRENDON VEALE
Keeping it local Many of you are making the most of traversing the great New Zealand outdoors as travel to exotic, far-off places is limited and expensive. I hope you are making the most of your membership with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga during this time, as there is plenty happening both in the real world (member-only events at our properties, for example) and online (our heritage webinar series, for example).
Places we visit
As you’ll have seen in the notice on page 2, many of our membership benefits – and even the details about them – are now being delivered digitally via email. Some of you are likely missing out on these, so please let us know your email addresses if you haven’t already. See page 2 for how to do this. I had the pleasure of meeting many of you recently at one of our member events. As there are more of these events on the horizon, do take the time to pop along to one and come and say hello. Our staff love to meet the passionate people who are connected to the heritage places that we’re protecting.
Māngungu, p44
Waipū, p28 Palmerston North, p8
Ōpihi, p12
Wellington, p30
Invercargill, p40
Brendon Veale Manager Asset Funding
Christchurch, p16
0800 HERITAGE (0800 437482) bveale@heritage.org.nz Tahakopa Valley, p10
KIA KAHA TE REO MĀORI
kōrero tuku iho history
kōrero tuku iho 1. (noun) history, stories of the past, traditions, oral tradition. Māori Dictionary
The phrase ‘kōrero tuku iho’ refers to the traditional Māori way of retaining history through the oral passing down of knowledge. The word ‘kōrero’ means to speak, ‘tuku’ means to send and ‘iho’ means down or in a downward direction. The passing down of knowledge from one generation to another through oral transmission such as pūrakau, karakia, mōteatea, waiata, haka, whakataukī and whakapapa, is kōrero tuku iho. This is also known as oral history and oral tradition. It is a living history. Within the words passed down are the voices of the past, and in these voices we hear the wisdom of our tūpuna, forever here with us now and for future generations to come.
THREE QUICK QUESTIONS WITH WRITER PETA CAREY
1
For this issue of Heritage New Zealand magazine, you travelled to Millers Flat to write a story about the community’s efforts to restore its bakehouse. What did you enjoy most about doing this story? The people. Everyone who stepped through that door had a story, and everyone was warm and welcoming. That’s the beauty of a close-knit, rural community.
2
What struck you most about the building itself and what the community there has been able to achieve with the restoration? The heart of the building is the original wood- and coal-fired oven. It's an absolute work of art – the original oven, but also the recent work that went into restoring it. Phenomenal.
3
What were your impressions of the bread (assuming you managed to taste the final product)? I would have to say ‘delicious’, but it was. No preservative, just beautiful bread, left to rise and, when baked in that oven, superb.
Heritage New Zealand
Millers Flat, p22
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Raumati • Summer 2020 5
PAPA PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD SOCIAL HERITAGE
... WITH JAMIE DOUGLAS Heritage New Zealand Social Media Manager It’s hard pulling the wool over the eyes of heritage supporters – unless it’s knitted attire, of course – given their keen interest in all things farming. The Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Facebook post of 5 September about woolsheds reached more than 21,700 people, an ‘un-baalievable’ effort. Sheep were introduced to New Zealand courtesy of James Cook in 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence in the US. The more than 50 woolsheds on the New Zealand Heritage List/ Rārangi Kōrero underline both the importance of our rural industry and communities in shaping our history, and the affection we have for our farming heritage. Understandably, the emojis were plentiful, with 531 likes, 63 love hearts and four ‘wows’ among the 735 reactions, comments and shares. Early September proved a social media boon, with a post two days before on Auckland’s Mt Eden Prison reaching a captive audience of more than 16,700 people interested in its future. The Category 1-listed historic place has sat empty for around 10 years as a decision on its future has yet to be made. (One person commented that it might serve as new premises for the Auckland office of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Hmm, that’s not quite a lock in.)
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Leaving a mark
Rounding out a busy time in social media was the mid-August Facebook post on Picton's Edwin Fox ship, which reached more than 25,600 people – one of the highest numbers for some time. This Category 1 historic place sits inside a building alongside its own museum that tells its story. If you’re arriving or leaving on the Cook Strait ferries, be sure to walk the few metres from the Interislander terminal and check out the many stories of the ship – such as carrying convicts to Australia, immigrant settlers to New Zealand and soldiers to the Crimean War.
It was the handmade letters, unconventional stencil styles and the residual layers of tar, paint, ink and wool offering clues to their previous life that first drew Annette O’Sullivan to look more closely at the humble wool bale stencil. The typographer and graphic designer has since completed a PhD at Massey University looking at the stencil’s place in New Zealand’s design history over the past 150 years, and its use in branding and visual identity. It’s often said that our economy was built ‘off the sheep’s back’, and wool was New Zealand’s primary earner of export dollars from 1850 to the start of the 20th century. The stencils – originating from sheep brands – were used to mark a station’s identity on bales of wool for export, making them the first brands to represent the country internationally. “In time, stencilled marks represented the quality of wool and reputation of the station and became the visual identity for the station,” Annette notes in her thesis. “Following discontinuation in the wool industry, at the beginning of the 1990s stencil plates and derivative stencil letters were used for new forms of visual identity in New Zealand design.” One example is that of Longbeach Station in Canterbury, home to the Category 1 Longbeach Station Homestead. After purchasing the almost-13,000-hectare station in 1864, John Grigg imported Southdown sheep from the royal flock at Sandringham Estate in the UK, affording him permission to use the royal symbol of the Prince of Wales’ feathers. He incorporated this with the letter ‘G’ from his surname to create a unique symbol made into a branding iron for the sheep, which was later redesigned as a stencil to mark wool bales for export. Today a mark closely resembling that of the original stencilled brand is used on the station’s website and to promote Longbeach Foods – a company selling premium beef from the station. Annette has since curated an exhibition, called The Secret Lives of Stencils, which celebrates the life of the New Zealand wool bale stencil. The stories are told through photographs of objects from iconic New Zealand sheep stations, and offer insights into a fascinating local and national history to which many New Zealanders can relate. The exhibition is being held at Totara Estate (which has its own historic wool bale stencils) in North Otago until May 2021, with plans for it to move to other Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga-run properties in the North Island later in the year. For more information, visit www.vhc.co.nz/thesecretlivesofstencils.
Heritage Heritage New New Zealand Zealand
IMAGE: JANE USSHER
PRETTY AS A PICTURE Could there be a lovelier place in which to while away a summer afternoon? A room featuring deep sash windows with sliding lower panels that operate as French doors and lead to a wide verandah on the northern side of Oruawharo Homestead. The Category 1 homestead in Hawke’s Bay is one of a number of New Zealand’s grand rural houses captured by photographer Jane Ussher and writer and publisher Debra Millar for the recently published book Homesteads. The book details how Oruawharo was in a nearderelict state when owners Peter and Dianne Harris took it on as a retirement project around 20 years ago – and they are still working their way through restoring its 54 rooms. This room, with its pressed-metal ceilings and ornate cornices that have been repaired and painted, demonstrates their dedication to the project. Other homesteads featured in the book include Puketiti Station on the North Island’s East Coast; Gwavas Garden and Homestead in Hawke’s Bay; Merchiston Station in Rangitīkei; Pukemarama Station in Manawatū; Mt Peel Station, Longbeach Estate, Blue Cliffs Station, Surrey Hills Station and Terrace Station in Canterbury; and Kuriheka Estate in North Otago. For more information, visit www. pointpublishing.co.nz/ product/homesteads.
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Heritage New Zealand
Raumati • Summer 2020 7
TŪHURATIA PAPA PĀNUITE • NOTICEBOARD RĀRANGI • EXPLORE THE LIST
Home away from home WORDS: JAMIE DOUGLAS • IMAGERY: BRAD BONIFACE
As well as being the site of student hijinks, Massey University’s Colombo Hall is connected in name and mission to an important international economic assistance programme 8 Raumati • Summer 2020
For the most part, student life at Colombo Hall on Massey University’s campus in Palmerston North is no different from student life anywhere else. Between the hours of diligent study there is still time for typical student hijinks – the precedent for which was set by no less than thenPrime Minister Keith Holyoake when he opened the student accommodation facility in 1964. Karen Astwood, Central Region Area Manager for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, picks up the story from her listing report for the Category 2 historic place on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero. “The opening had been a very formal occasion until someone dubbed ‘Lady Massey’ told off the Prime Minister for the building’s position and not opening all the facilities properly. The PM was a real sport and played along, saying he couldn’t legislate for the sun’s position to change but he could unveil a telephone and toilet roll holder if required.” Karen’s research uncovered a number of gems relayed by former students who stayed at Colombo Hall in the decades following. One supervisor in the mid-1970s recalls removing sheep from the halls; the sound that large pumpkins made when rolled down corridors; opera singing in the stairwell at 2am; trips to A&E to “get students patched up again”; and supervising food fights in the food hall where “the baked potatoes were good for three sub-orbital flights”. The hall is connected, in name and mission, to the Colombo Plan – an international economic assistance programme launched in 1950 aimed at Southeast Asian countries. New Zealand was one of the original seven member countries. Another recollection, from a Levin student resident in 1970, who was given a second chance after being “booted from a nearby
Heritage New Zealand
“It has been a pivotal part of student life at the campus since it opened its doors and continues to be an
LOCATION Massey University’s Manawatū campus is situated near central Palmerston North.
hall for boisterous behaviour”, sums up campus life in the hall of residence delightfully. “The building was nearly new, the rooms light and large, but there were no door locks. Trusting times then, but you could not
trust your fellow residents not to toss in a firecracker during any amorous adventures. “That the Colombo Plan is no more is disappointing. Its role in giving many foreign students an education in and experience of New Zealand was impressive, and incalculable to both the students and New Zealand in terms of goodwill and ‘soft’ diplomacy. It was also an invaluable multicultural experience for locals like me.” And, fittingly, was the recollection of the student lounge being “full of tables and rice cookers, celebrating an Asian meal night” and “the delight Asian students had when they first experienced snow”. Colombo Hall is nestled in the heart of the Manawatū campus that is ringed by
University Avenue. The threestorey block is described as a late example of international modernism in New Zealand. As the listing report notes, this style includes its parklike setting, symmetry, strong and clean horizontal lines and particular features that lighten the building’s appearance. An addition in the 1980s was sympathetically done so as not to detract from the original build. The hall is part of an impressive list of Massey University heritage buildings – most notably the Category 1-listed Main Building and Old Dairy Factory building, and the Category 2-listed Refectory, Craiglochart (Moginie House) and Wharerata (formerly the home of retired farmer Arthur Russell and latterly the Massey University Staff Club).
Massey University’s Provost Professor Giselle Byrnes says it’s fantastic to hear students recounting their experiences while at Colombo Hall, and that they left such a lasting impact. Once a male-only residence, the hall is now open to females as well, with single-room accommodation for 66 students. It remains an alcohol-free zone. “We are really proud of the global partnerships we form at Massey; these create a richer university experience for all involved,” says Giselle. “It is our hope that all international students who join us develop a genuine sense of belonging and connection in such a way that they do see us as their second home.” The granting of heritage status to the hall has created an even greater sense of pride and appreciation among staff and students. “[Colombo Hall] has been a pivotal part of student life at the campus since it opened and continues to be an important part of Massey’s heritage and our commitment to supporting both international and domestic students," says Giselle. She adds that many original student residents of the hall have gone on to become influential in growing the economies in their home countries in areas including agriculture, food, government and politics. “Massey continues to enjoy strong links with these people for the benefit of the university, New Zealand and their countries too.” The university is looking at ways it can continue to tell and share the hall’s history, along with that of other halls across campus “especially during orientation when residents first move in”. “Studying at university is a major part of someone’s life, and when you live in student accommodation like Colombo Hall, it is where you meet lifelong friends and build fabulous memories in a home away from home.” RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Raumati • Summer 2020 9
TŪHURATIA PAPA PĀNUITE • NOTICEBOARD RĀRANGI • EXPLORE THE LIST
Saluting an icon
A railway bridge in a small Catlins community stands as a reminder of a largely undocumented chapter in the life of national icon Sir Truby King For a period in the life of Sir Frederic Truby King, generally known as Truby King, his working week would begin in a remote and unlikely location – the Tahakopa Railway Station in the Catlins. “Apparently during his involvement with the Tahakopa community from 1906 to 1929 he was often at the station at 6.30am on Monday mornings, reputedly with his pyjamas under his suit, ready to catch the train to Seacliff [psychiatric institution] near Dunedin, where he was medical superintendent,” explains Tahakopa historian Don Sinclair. “Along the way he’d send a series of telegrams with instructions for the crew back at his dairy farm.” The achievements of New Plymouth-born King (1858-1938) – indomitable health reformer, infant welfare advocate and founder of Plunket – are largely well recorded in New Zealand’s narrative.
10 Raumati • Summer 2020
But his influence in the isolated Tahakopa Valley – where he established farming, dairying, sawmilling and cheese-making enterprises – is relatively undocumented. The recent Category 2 listing of a private railway bridge built by King across the Tahakopa River, to facilitate his business interests and foster a community, shines the spotlight on the man and his mission in the Catlins. Now encumbered with willow trees, shrubbery and moss, and unpassable, the bridge was built in 1922-23 to specific New Zealand Rail standards at a time when many sawmill bridges were slapdash. It sits in the local landscape as a rare, remaining example of a timber Howe truss bridge. Despite dilapidation, it exhibits the load-bearing technology and superstructure developed by Massachusetts bridge designer William Howe, whose designs found favour in 19th-century New Zealand. Sarah Gallagher, Heritage Assessment Advisor for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, says while truss bridges were not uncommon, only a handful have survived in New Zealand because of harsh environmental conditions.
IMAGERY: DON SINCLAIR, HERITAGE NEW ZEALAND POUHERE TAONGA
WORDS: ANN WARNOCK
Heritage New Zealand
LOCATION The Catlins lies between Balclutha and Invercargill on the boundary between Otago and Southland.
With King’s trademark rigour, he imported Australian hardwood to use in the construction of his bridge. “He was a no-holds-barred type of guy and everything was always the very best. He even ensured the sleepers on the bridge were closely aligned so children could walk across without getting their shoes stuck,” says Don. Beyond its sturdy symmetrical form and large cross-beams, the bridge embodies the story of King’s “most unheralded adventure”, according to its listing report. King’s interest in Tahakopa was ignited during a three-day Catlins camping trip in 1893 with his Scottish wife Isabella, whom he had met while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Isabella wrote in her diary: “The scene is altogether too beautiful for description. The doctor is looking and feeling very well indeed, and he says he has never enjoyed a holiday so much.” Thirteen years after he rowed Isabella up the Tahakopa River in a flat-bottomed dinghy with a tent and provisions on board, King bought the first of his six farms in the Tahakopa Valley and embarked on a vigorous campaign to bring new life and jobs to the community.
“The bridge is a fitting reminder, situated within a community dedicated to remembering King who, along with his
Acquiring a government-funded railway line to Tahakopa was instrumental to his plan and with New Zealand Rail’s presence secured in the valley in 1915 he pushed the go button on his business interests and infrastructure. These included the state-of-the-art Lauriston Timber Company; a dairy farm stocked with Friesian cows sent by train from Taranaki; a milking shed; “the most hygienic and up-to-date cow byre in the South Island”; a cheese factory; and improved local roads. “He used waste wood from his sawmill to create steam in his milking shed, which was spotless like a hospital. Even the cows were squeaky clean,” says Don. And his construction of a private steel siding and a railway bridge allowed everything to hum. Government wagons travelled directly from Tahakopa Railway Station to his sawmill, and rimu logs were sent up the line to the burgeoning construction industry in Dunedin. On the local front, King supplied timber for a new school and community hall, built 24 rent-free houses, supplied employees with fresh milk, offered prizes for the best-kept house and garden, and offered free medical care for everyone – “from babies to bushmen”. Truby King rapidly became the principal employer of labour in the Catlins district. On occasion he brought his Seacliff patients to Tahakopa to help on his farms. In 1922 when King’s first bridge across the Tahakopa River (circa 1916) was deemed unfit for purpose, he pulled out the stops to build the “magnificent edifice” that is now entered on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero. But ironically, the new bridge was abandoned after only six years of use. The Lauriston Timber Company over-extended itself when it set up a second, smaller, bush mill. With financial pressures mounting, King closed the entire operation in 1929. The mill was disassembled, mill houses were relocated, farms were apparently sold and King’s 36-year tenure in the district disappeared. Sarah says King’s efforts in the valley “have all been swept away by the passage of time – the only physical memorial is the rail bridge”. Now the Sir Truby King Railway Bridge is the centrepiece in Tahakopa’s campaign to reclaim its link to a national icon. In 2016 a local community hall called Our Hut (built in 1921) was restored as a heritage hub; a film about Sir Truby King has been created with local input; and a new 500-metre walkway, with information boards and picnic spots, has been built, leading to the historic bridge. In a salute to King’s medical training in the UK and his reputation in Tahakopa for doing “the best of the best”, a bespoke kissing gate crafted in steel and imported from Kent stands at the entrance to the newly opened Sir Truby King Railway Bridge Track. Sarah says the bridge is “a fitting reminder, situated within a community dedicated to remembering King who, along with his wife, fell in love with the area”. RETURN TO CONTENTS
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Raumati • Summer 2020 11
WHAKAAHUA • PROFILE
INTO THE LIGHT One of the biggest barriers to protecting Māori rock art, says Amanda Symon, is that many people don’t know it exists. But as curator at the Ngāi Tahu Māori Rock Art Trust, the archaeologist has spent a career shedding light on the precious taonga
While she has built a successful career in the field of archaeology, Amanda Symon believes her talents may lie more elsewhere. “Yes, I trained as an archaeologist,” she says, “but I’m more an anthropologist at heart, I guess, in that I’m interested in the culture and people surrounding heritage – and not just the past people but the current people connected to these special places. “On a personal level, people really interest me, and that’s probably where a lot of my success has been – in my ability to establish positive relationships across a broad diversity of stakeholders.” Kā tuhituhi o neherā – Māori rock art – is a field shrouded in mystery. The many questions around the artists who created the taonga, and what the artworks communicate and signify, are amplified by where they are found – in caves, rock shelters and outcrops, often on private farmland in remote locations. Amanda began as curator at the trust in 2003 and, having worked in rock art management for almost 20 years, says the main obstacle to the protection of these unique heritage sites is that many people don’t know they exist. “Māori rock art falls through the cracks because, from an archaeological perspective, it’s not easily interpreted or quantified through standard archaeological methods,” she explains. “It is unique as a heritage site type; all the threats and issues in its management are quite different from those of other heritage site types, so it needs a specific focus and framework to protect it.” Amanda herself didn’t learn about rock art until the later years of her archaeology study at the University of Otago. On a field
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WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
Heritage New Zealand
See more of Amanda Symon on our video: www.youtube.com/user/HeritageNewZealand/featured
Heritage New Zealand
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WHAKAAHUA • PROFILE school at Matakaea/Shag Point she met Ngāi Tahu representatives Mau McGlinchey and Gerard O’Regan, who at the time were working on the South Island Māori Rock Art Project – a tribal initiative to survey and record rock art sites within Te Waipounamu/the South Island. “They came along and said, ‘Everyone jump on the bus, let’s go and have a look at some rock art’. That was basically my first connection. About a year after that I started doing small contracts for the Ngāi Tahu heritage unit, some involving Māori rock art. “When the Ngāi Tahu Māori Rock Art Trust was set up I applied for the job of curator and was lucky enough to get it.” Amanda’s work involves implementing measures to protect and manage rock art sites effectively. Her work bringing the desires of the trust into effect involves diverse activities well beyond archaeological field work (although that’s also part of the job), and interactions with everyone from rūnanga members and trustees to scientists, farmers, and funders. For example, because most rock art in Te Waipounamu is applied to limestone, any changes in an area’s wider hydrology can have devastating impacts on the art, so the trust has researched the impacts of freshwater management for a number of years. “The majority of the around-740 rock art sites in Te Waipounamu are on private land – most of them on operating farms – so the rise of intensive dairy farming, and with it the increase in irrigation, is probably one of the single most concerning developments in the protection and management of Māori rock art,” says Amanda. The research, which marries mātauranga Māori with Western science, has modelled the distance at which changes in hydrology may affect rock art, and the wider cultural values of the freshwater bodies, such as springs, wetlands and rivers, often associated with the sites. From this, the trust has developed a framework to establish buffer zones around rock art sites to act as flags for consultation or further investigation when looking at freshwater management activities. It is now working to get the framework embedded in regulation. Education is a major focus for the trust, and through the development of Te Ana, the Ngāi Tahu Māori Rock Art Centre, Amanda was heavily involved in establishing the cultural education and tourism business, including helping to raise the $3 million needed to develop the state-of-the-art facility. The centre is a hub from which Ngāi Tahu guides share cultural interpretations of the art with manuhiri, including through tours to a wāhi tūpuna at Ōpihi that contains 14 nationally significant Māori rock art sites – and is home to the famed Ōpihi Taniwha.
A primary focus more recently for Amanda has been a major ecological restoration of the Ōpihi property – a 10-year project that involves planting more than 47,000 native plants and restoring the natural values that made the area of such cultural importance. “What’s happened over time is that images of the rock art have been extracted from the site – for example, you might see the designs in a book – and they’re divorced from their context. But it’s really important to understand the context in which these artworks were created,” she explains. “This property is right on the Ōpihi River, which was an ara tawhito, an ancient trail, with Ngāi Tahu and other iwi moving from their kāika at the river mouths up the rivers as different resources came into season. Bringing back those ecological values helps restore those cultural values and tell that fuller story of the rock art.” Amanda says she’s seen a shift in the past 20 years among the owners on whose private land the majority of rock art sites sit, towards a greater appreciation and understanding of the cultural and natural values of these heritage places, and she hopes the Ōpihi project will be the first of a number. “There’s an aspiration of the trust to take that work to a larger scale so these sites are better protected. Because this kind of ecological restoration not only provides a physical buffer from farming activities, it’s also a focal point for people’s energies and gives a sense of guardianship and pride.” Another important aspect of rock art, Amanda says, is that it’s very much alive today. “There is a contemporary context for rock art, which is kept warm by Ngāi Tahu artists. It is influencing their work and being transferred into the future; it’s the direct descendants of those who created the art and who are artists themselves, who I think perhaps have the best understanding of it.” Amanda now carries out her curator role for the trust on a casual basis (since 2018 she has been General Manager of Orokonui Ecosanctuary, an ecological reserve and biodiversity project in the Orokonui Valley, just north of Dunedin) but remains as passionate as ever about rock art and its preservation. “Ultimately, my aspiration is that Māori rock art will be recognised as just as significant as any other aspect of our national heritage. And alongside that, that there is recognition of the special connections to the art that the descendants of its creators have, and the right for them to lead and be involved in every aspect of its care, in partnership with landowners and others.” The Ōpihi Māori rock art sites are only accessible via guided tour through Te Ana Ngāi Tahu Rock Art Centre www.teana.co.nz.
Keep an ear out for the new Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga podcast Aotearoa Unearthed: Archaeology for Everyone. Released in early 2021 (and accessible via the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Facebook page), it will include an episode on Māori rock art featuring Amanda Symon and Gerard O’Regan.
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kāika: villages (Kāi Tahu dialect) manuhiri: visitors mātauranga: knowledge rūnanga: tribal council taonga: treasures wāhi tūpuna: ancestral site
Heritage New Zealand
To join Amanda Symon on a visit to the Ōpihi Māori rock art sites, view our video story here:
Ōpihi Māori rock art sites On a lot of levels – apart from the very special art – this is a special place for me. If you just start with the physical landscape, it’s an amazing place. You walk onto what looks like a normal farm, but then you drop down into a gully where there are these magical limestone formations. They are beautiful in and of themselves, but then in those limestone formations is all this amazing rock art. And the further you walk, the more rock art reveals itself. Then there’s the personal history I have there. The family of the landowner has been on that property for several generations, and initially, when I met him, he
wasn’t strongly interested in rock art. In fact, at times it had been a bit of a vexation to him as he had had a lot of people coming onto the land without his permission to visit the rock art. In the space of 10 years, however, our relationship strengthened to a point where we took up the lease of 13 hectares of his farm. Although he’s never allowed us to pay rent for the land, he sees it is valued and I think he’s really stoked that something so magical is happening there with the ecological restoration. It’s so heartening to see the energy you’ve put into establishing a relationship yield such amazing results. n
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TE WĀHI • PLACE
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WORDS: MICHELE HOLLIS
NO BLANK
SLATE
The heritage landscape of Ōtautahi Christchurch has altered almost beyond recognition since the Canterbury earthquake sequence began in September 2010. Some 10 years on, Michele Hollis looks at how memories are being retained and reclaimed
“We have used the central city as a blank canvas” – ROGER SUTTON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, CANTERBURY
IMAGE: ROB SUISTED
EARTHQUAKE RECOVERY AUTHORITY, 2014
Heritage New Zealand
It was the second time in the history of this place that important markers of identity and physical reminders of people and events had been erased on a widespread basis. For Māori, the Avon River – Ōtākaro – was a vital transport route and source of food and materials. The surrounding swamps were criss-crossed by ancestral trails. The people harvested fish, birds and plants for many purposes and lived there seasonally, preferring to build their permanent homes on dry ground along the coast. In 1850 early immigrant Dr Alfred Charles Baker described the river as “everywhere bordered with a luxuriant growth of flax”. Here Ngāi Tahu, including the hapū Ngāi Tūāhuriri, read a landscape alive with memories, marking sites of significance and speaking of conditions to come. The people had developed fluency in the language of this place over hundreds of years. When 19th-century Europeans trekked over the hill from Lyttelton, they saw empty land: a swamp that could be drained to build a better version of life in Britain. In the words of University of Canterbury history professor Katie Pickles, “a feature of colonial settlement was to start with a blank slate, leaving out the indigenous past”. “We could’ve learnt a lot,” says Lynne Te Aika ruefully. Lynne is a trustee of Matapopore, which provides advice and design expertise on the
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Christchurch rebuild to Ngāi Tūāhuriri and Ngāi Tahu. “In the earthquake, the suburbs worst impacted were those that were drained. Look at a map from the 1840s – we didn’t live in those swamp areas for a reason; they shouldn’t have been built on.” Arguably the most significant imposition on the indigenous heritage landscape was the standard colonial grid. That pattern has underpinned the central streetscape, bordered by four wide avenues, ever since. (Now the new convention centre Te Pae disrupts the grid.)
What came down, what remains
After the quakes, an estimated 44 percent of protected heritage buildings within the four avenues was lost. Some fell down. Most were pulled down during the period when protections under the district plan were overridden by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011. Public safety was an important factor, but not the only one. In 2011 journalist Rebecca Macfie, writing in The Listener, identified four key things contributing to the high rate of heritage demolition: insurance; the “sweeping
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powers” of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Agency; new building requirements; and “the demographic makeup of Christchurch commercial building owners”. In essence, passive investors with good pre-quake insurance cover had every incentive to cash up rather than repair their heritage buildings in the face of stringent new building standards, exponentially higher insurance costs, and a fear that tenants would never set foot in old buildings again. Many of Christchurch’s most iconic buildings, however, are still standing, although the built landscape no longer has the complexity of pre-quake days. In terms of Category 1-listed Gothic Revival buildings, the former Trinity Congregational Church was rescued by the Christchurch Heritage Trust, and Christ Church Cathedral is in the early stages of reinstatement. Further west, Canterbury Museum, Christ’s College and the Christchurch Club have survived. The Arts Centre – an entire city block – is more than two-thirds open again. The Provincial Council Chambers has been mothballed, braced and capped to keep out the weather, pending restoration.
1 Lynne Te Anika, of
Ngāi Tūāhuriri, with Cathedral Square behind her. 2 Christchurch Town
Hall – saved, restored and reopened. 3 Shand’s – saved but
no longer in context, wedged next to another survivor, the former Trinity Congregational Church. 4 Canterbury Museum –
currently fundraising for redevelopment. 5 Municipal Chambers –
braced. IMAGERY: FRANK VISSER
Heritage New Zealand
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The former Municipal Chambers, a Category 1 building in Queen Anne style, remains at the intersection of Oxford Terrace and Worcester Boulevard. Losses were particularly drastic for the less-fêted post-war Modern architecture. The Town Hall was saved and is now listed as a Category 1 historic place; others, most notably Peter Beaven’s Lyttelton Road tunnel building, did not make it. Chair of the Christchurch Heritage Trust Dame Anna Crighton says there are still some heritage buildings at risk, such as the Category 2-listed Harley Chambers on Cambridge Terrace, which is “crumbling away”.
New heritage wins
The post-quake context forced a reassessment of what constitutes a win for heritage. Where interiors were wrecked, it has proved possible to develop sympathetically behind façades. Investor Richard Peebles says he was reluctant to take on projects that were “effectively just a façade”, but Peebles Group’s work on the old AJ White’s (McKenzie & Willis) and
Duncan’s buildings honours the bulk and form of the originals, and government grants made the projects viable. Heritage advocate Jenny May admits that she was “somewhat sceptical” about the rebuilt Isaac Theatre Royal, where the interior was replicated (with some salvaged materials) behind the original façade. But she loves it: “That sense of place, that’s just as important because a building is only bricks and mortar and timber; it’s the people who give it life.” Of all measures, relocation would have to be the most drastic, because a building loses its connection with its site. But when Shand’s, the oldest surviving timber commercial building in the CBD, was weeks away from
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1 Heritage consultant Jenny May in
the rebuilt Isaac Theatre Royal. 2 Harley Chambers – deteriorating. 3 Provincial Chambers – mothballed. 4 Duncan’s Building – reopened. 5 AJ White’s – a completely new
building behind the façade.
IMAGERY: FRANK VISSER
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Heritage New Zealand
demolition, the Christchurch Heritage Trust bought it for $1 and moved it a few blocks. In 2019 Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga reviewed Shand’s place on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero and concluded that it still warranted Category 1 status. The story of how Shand’s was saved has become part of its value. When the buildings have gone, it’s important to keep the stories alive, says Christine Whybrew, of the Southern Region office of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Efforts to do this include walking tours, apps, postcards – and even heritage mini-golf. Ultimately though, these have all been temporary, transitional projects. “It’s only alive as long as we’re putting energy into promoting it,” says Christine. “I think we probably need to look to the elements that are permanent, and that’s actually the natural landscape. The river has been used really well for storytelling by mana whenua.”
Pākehā heritage – a society that, for all its considerable faults, still valued spirituality, good governance, education and that whole process of learning and discovering, the acquisition and sharing of scientific and cultural knowledge.” Lynne Te Aika, meanwhile, says Ngāi Tūāhuriri wants to share the stories embedded in the new public buildings and open spaces. She expects it could take “another 10 to 15 years” for the rebuilt city to emerge. During that time, a full generation will grow up laying down their own markers and exploring a changing landscape in which some stories inherited from their parents and grandparents have few physical anchor points, while other stories are revived and reinterpreted.
mana whenua: person or people who whakapapa to tangata whenua group/s of an area, with recognised authority of that place
A post-colonial city?
The Canterbury Earthquake Memorial sits on the bank of Ōtākaro/the Avon River between Montreal Street and Rhododendron Island. It pays respects to the 185 who died, the many who were injured, and everyone who helped in the rescue and recovery. Oi Manawa, it is called – the trembling of a heart, shuddering and shaking. Ngāi Tahu gifted the name to the families of survivors and the city. Lynne Te Aika has led the gifting of names to new public buildings and schools across the city. “We have a chance to put our language back into the landscape through naming,” she says. “We have a chance to reshape the city’s traditions by being more encompassing of Ngāi Tahu stories and beliefs … In time, we will re-indigenise the landscape.” Matapopore’s influence in the government-funded ‘anchor projects’ is sometimes obvious, such as the aluminium cloak of kākāpō feathers by artist Lonnie Hutchinson on the south side of Te Omeka, the Justice Precinct. But its work is often subtle, with each project drawing on cultural narratives written by Ngāi Tūāhuriri scholars. For example, at Tūranga, the new central city library, two roof gardens are oriented to points of significance to Ngāi Tūāhuriri. For Pākehā, Christchurch’s Gothic Revival survivors could afford the city an opportunity to learn and confront our history, argues Dr Jessica Halliday, Director of Te Pūtahi: the Christchurch Centre for Architecture and City-Making. “One of the things [I believe] Māori are asking Pākehā is, ‘Who are you?’. And one of the things that is complicated, nuanced and contradictory, but that I appreciate about those buildings, is they do put the processes of colonisation and the imposition of particular English values and traditions on this place directly, unequivocally, in view. “And alongside the horrific destructive powers of colonisation, there are other values and stories, traditions and craftsmanship locked in those buildings that I can connect with as part of my
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PAPA TE HAPORI PĀNUI• •COMMUNITY NOTICEBOARD
The fire
INSIDE
It’s taken almost three decades, but a community’s efforts to restore its historic bakehouse are delivering more than just fresh bread
Once you’ve crossed the Category 2 Millers Flat Bridge, its girders painted school-room blue, the building comes into sight. Small, sitting out on its own, the stark black letters on the freshly painted tongue-and-groove exterior stand out: ‘N. Campbell, Baker’. And as you approach its front door – the timber etched with the patina of the past century – you can already smell the bread. But it’s when you step inside the building that you really need to pause to take it all in: whitewashed stone walls, stacks of old bread tins, kauri flour bins, a coal range (now unused), and along the entire fourth wall, a discrete assembly of small doors, sliding plates (the fire’s dampers), and the flicker of flame from the wood and coal fire. This, the Millers Flat Bakehouse, is the only surviving wood- and coal-fired bakery in New Zealand. And it is a thing of beauty. It has only survived, however, because a few locals decided it should. The story of how Betty Adams, Dennis Kirkpatrick and a number of other locals banded together to restore this small town bakehouse, first built and operational in 1908, is as heartwarming as the bread now emerging from its oven.
WORDS: PETA CAREY • IMAGERY: ADAM WALKER
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Heritage New Zealand
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TE HAPORI • COMMUNITY
1 The Millers Flat Bakehouse
dates back to 1908. 2 Ric Hunt, volunteer and
trainee baker, uses the ‘peel’ to move loaves around in the oven. 3 Some of the original loaf
tins and cooling trays line a kahikatea bench top in the bakehouse. 4 The oven’s fire, fuelled by
coal and wood, must be alight for three days to ensure sufficient heat for the oven.
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Ric Hunt, wearing a wide grin and smudged apron, is having a ball. He’s been up since 6.30 on this Saturday morning – checking on the oven temperature, mixing the dough and piling it into tins to ‘prove’ – but he’d lit the fire on the Wednesday and prepared a good 20 loaves the night before. He’s now pulling them out of the oven. Above him, a wooden brace holds the ‘peel’, which looks much like a paddle. Ric reaches up to grab it and the pushing and pulling of the loaves begins. The peel is essential for pushing loaves in through the tiny cast-iron oven door, around the cavernous space (as temperatures can vary from one side of the oven to the other), and finally out and onto the historic kahikatea benchtop. (Kahikatea, or white pine, contains a tannin in the timber that prevents contamination.) He taps the surface of the browned crust, and with leather gloves turns the loaves out of their tins. Perfect. Ric was a gib-stopper most of his life. Now semiretired, he’s taken on the volunteer role of baker, on at least the first Saturday of every month, or by special arrangement. Stoking the fire, mixing the dough, perfecting the loaves – there was a lot to learn, but he had the country’s best teacher in Dennis Kirkpatrick. Based down the road in Roxburgh, Dennis is a secondgeneration baker and owner of the famous Jimmy’s Pies. He learned the art of working a wood- and coal-fired oven from his father. As a child in Invercargill, he and his siblings would be up early, bringing in the coal and wood, helping to make the pies before school. “There were six of us. We didn’t get much of a childhood,” he says with a touch of sadness. When the family moved to Roxburgh, to a bakery with an electric oven, that old wood- and coal-fired oven in Invercargill went the way of most in New Zealand and was demolished.
But Dennis remembered it. And when Millers Flat local Betty Adams contacted him back in 1991 with the idea of restoring the bakehouse, he agreed to help. From 1991 to 2019 – that’s how long it took the Millers Flat Bakehouse Restoration Trust to raise the funds and complete the restoration. Betty, now well into her ninth decade, has a photograph of herself in the late 1930s standing in front of the bakehouse alongside the three daughters of the second-generation baker, Nathaniel Campbell (Jnr). It wasn’t long after, in 1939, that the bakehouse lease was sold, and the new owner took the business to Roxburgh. “I’ve lived in Millers Flat all my life. And every day when I went to school or crossed that bridge, that bakehouse was always there, increasingly derelict,” she says. “Initially our aim was just to restore the exterior, perhaps just as a meeting place or museum, but later we realised the oven could also be restored, and that we could have a working bakehouse.” The challenges in those 28 years were many. There were fundraising lunches, which required hard work but raised little, and a farming initiative, fattening bobby calves to sell, with the profits going to the bakehouse. But it wasn’t until the trust applied to the Lottery Grants Board and major donor Central Lakes Trust that the committee secured sufficient funds for the restoration. Firstly, it had to own the land – a complex but ultimately inexpensive process – and then gain more land for power, water and septic systems before the restoration work eventually began. Carl Feinerman of Breen Construction led the restoration work and laughs quietly as he recalls the sight that first confronted him.
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“The first stage was to redo the front of the building,
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Step inside Millers Flat Bakehouse – view our video story here:
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TE HAPORI • COMMUNITY
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“The oven was collapsing, the bricks caving in. There aren’t many people in the know about how to build a stone oven, so it was a
“Initially the building was actually melting into the earth. We had to jack it up, and reinstate joists and bearers underneath. The first stage was to redo the front of the building, replacing old weatherboards, to showcase what was possible.” But it was when he investigated the oven that the real fun began. “The oven was collapsing, the bricks caving in. There aren’t many people in the know about how to build a stone oven, so it was a case of trial and error.” Carl explains that they had to remove (and later rebuild) the entire roof to access the oven, build interior wooden frames on which to lay the topmost bricks, and infill with sand to support the brickwork. But although he could access two-thirds of the oven from above, finishing and cleaning up the last third meant crawling inside the oven itself. “I’m a fairly small chap, so of course that was my job.” Carl attended the grand opening of the bakehouse at Labour Weekend in 2019 and admits he was overwhelmed by the size of the crowd, and very proud. “The difference from old to new, inside and out, is astonishing.” After 28 years of work, Betty was also very proud: “I was delighted, the fulfilment of a dream.” What Betty might not have anticipated, however, is that the bakehouse would give Millers Flat far more than just fresh bread. It has become the very heart of the community.
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On this Saturday, Ric now has around 40 warm loaves of bread to sell, and at 12.30pm the doors open to the locals lined up outside. As they walk inside they pass through the front room. Once a tearoom, it’s now filled with the history of Millers Flat and the surrounding area, with blackand-white photographs on the walls, and a team of volunteers selling crafts and memorabilia. The bakehouse is suddenly bursting with lined faces – descendants of farmers, shepherds and gold diggers, and local truckies – as well as their children and grandchildren. Locals pause, meet, natter and exchange yarns, and the photographs provide a springboard to their stories. This writer’s favourite is an image of shepherds and farm workers in front of the beautiful Teviot woolshed. “It held 40 shearing stands,” a local farmer tells me. “Back in the day it was the biggest working woolshed in the Southern Hemisphere.” Sadly, this 137-metre-long building was destroyed by fire in 1924; all that is left now are the remains of the beautiful arched stone façade, and rubble. I learn that the head shepherd standing in front of the Teviot woolshed is the grandfather of local Johnny Rae. It leads Johnny to tell me a story about his own father,
George Rae, who was also a shepherd on neighbouring Beaumont Station. Caught in the hills in a snowstorm in 1938, Johnny tells me, George sought refuge in a cave-like fissure in the rocks. Looking up he spied a box, clad in bark cloth. Knowing he daren’t open it, the young shepherd journeyed to Otago Museum and handed it over. “No, not even a thank you,” went the story. But George did find out what it contained: “Seventy pairs of huia feathers and 25 bunches of little orange kākā feathers,” recounts Johnny. As an ice cream container fills up with $5 bills (the cost of each white-paper-wrapped loaf ), people slowly filter back out the door. The bread, when I taste it, is delicious: “The coal-fired oven does that,” says Dennis. “As the temperature drops, the flavour of the bread improves.” And as Ric begins the clean-up, the fire within those whitewashed brick and stone walls slowly dies back. But the stories, the people and the warmth of this local community endure.
1 Trust volunteers Julie
Asher and Hilary McKenzie in what was the old tearoom of the bakehouse, now a museum and craft shop. 2 Ric Hunt stands proudly
over the day’s batch of 40 still-warm loaves of bread. 3 Local farmer Johnny May
is a regular, lining up to buy a loaf of fresh warm bread every first Saturday of the month.
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PAPA WHAKAAHUA TINO PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD • BEST SHOTS
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Heritage New Zealand
WO RDS AND IMAG E : MAR CEL TR OMP
Fun and games The coastal Northland town of Waipū has a proud Scottish heritage and its Caledonian Society has run the Waipū Highland Games since 1871. Early visitors to the New Year’s Day event – considered one of the world’s most prestigious Highland events – are greeted by the drone of bagpipes tuning and young dancers warming up. As the day progresses, athletic competitions run alongside various cultural events, so there’s plenty to keep everyone entertained, amused and educated. I was commissioned to cover the games in January 2020, and it felt like an athletic challenge in itself – lugging heavy equipment from one event to another under the hot sun, not wanting to miss anything. For this shot, I was able to risk slipping my camera under the safety netting as the 7.2-kilogram hammer was whirled and released with almost balletic grace, helped along by a fierce, guttural grunt. Sadly, as with so many events in our communities, the January 2021 Waipū Highland Games – which were to be the 150th – have been cancelled because of uncertainties due to Covid-19. But the town is undeterred. Instead, the Caledonian Society is opening up the home of the games – Caledonian Park – for a one-off community festival to mark a positive start to the new year. The 150th Waipū Highland Games are scheduled for New Year’s Day 2022. TECHNICAL DATA Camera: Canon 5D IV Lens: 24-70@35 Exposure: 1/640s @ f5 ISO: 200 RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Raumati • Summer 2020 29
PAPAWHARE NGĀ PĀNUI •MAHI NOTICEBOARD • BUILDINGS AT WORK
HITTING THE
sweet spot Once threatened with demolition, heritage treasures at one of New Zealand’s most picturesque and historic cricket grounds have been conserved and upgraded. Jamie Douglas pays a visit to Wellington’s Basin Reserve IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
30 Raumati • Summer 2020
Heritage New Zealand
See more of the Basin Reserve on our video: www.youtube.com/user/HeritageNewZealand/featured
Even in a sport so focused on history, heritage and tradition, it was a poignant moment. In February this year, as New Zealand met India in a test match, the newly strengthened and refurbished Old Pavilion Stand, after a closure of eight years, was filled once more with patrons. A heritage hero had returned to its rightful place at New Zealand’s home of cricket, the Basin Reserve. Basin Reserve Trust Chair Alan Isaac and Mayor of Wellington Andy Foster reopened the stand just before play in the test match. Alan also formally named the new players’ pavilion as the Ewen Chatfield Pavilion, in honour of the Naenae Old Boys, Wellington and New Zealand stalwart. The formalities were topped off by a 10-wicket win against India, which also marked the Black Caps’ 100th test match victory. Needless to say, it had been a great few days for Alan, a former Wellington ‘A’ player, New Zealand Cricket Board member and chair, and International Cricket Council president – alongside the cast of many involved in progressing the Basin Reserve’s redevelopment.
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NGĀ WHARE MAHI • BUILDINGS AT WORK 1
1 The Old Pavilion Stand is
back to its former glory. 2 Basin Reserve Trust
Chair Alan Isaac enjoys the refurbished heritage features. 3 The grand staircase is
an impressive sight on entering the Old Pavilion Stand from Sussex Street.
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“I’m a Wellingtonian and, for me, the Basin is an iconic part of Wellington,” says Alan. “If you walk around the ground, you can read all about events that have been held here. It has been a much-used green space for a lot of Wellingtonians – it’s part of what Wellington is. “The Old Pavilion Stand is much more functional now and it adds to the iconic nature of the ground. It needed to be more than just a nice old building. The light is shining on the Basin Reserve, and New Zealand Cricket is keen to play more games here. “While it is primarily a cricket ground, we also have obligations to council to have as many events as we can. The council has done a really good job at managing this project.” The Basin Reserve is owned by Wellington City Council, with activities overseen by the Basin Reserve Trust. The management of the ground is contracted to Cricket Wellington. In its Long-term Plan 2015-25, the council committed $21.5 million to upgrade the reserve and, pleasingly, progress has been quick.
“When you’re out in the middle, the old stand has a presence again. It’s a valuable piece of infrastructure for the city” The groundsman’s cottage, dating back to the 1880s, has been resurrected from a dilapidated state and conserved and upgraded. The RA Vance Stand, built between 1979 and 1981, has been refurbished, as has the Don Neely Scoreboard. There has been a complete rebuild of the players’ pavilion, while terrace seating has been refreshed. But for heritage supporters, it’s the Old Pavilion Stand that has generated the most excitement. Opened in 1925, it was saved from demolition – or
Heritage New Zealand
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being ‘clean bowled’ in cricketing parlance – and strengthened before it reopened to spectators at that match in February. Demolition was a distinct possibility for the old stand until the council voted in 2018, six years after it closed, in favour of spending $7.7 million on earthquake strengthening and refurbishing. Public opinion was mixed. Comments in news articles ranged from “$7.7 million? Our dollars are being knocked for a six ... the council have all gone mad” to “There’s a reason the Coliseum is 2000 years old – it hasn’t been demolished! We need to preserve some things and this stand is one of them! Well done to the council”. There was much to fix to ensure the grand old stand met 21st-century standards of functionality and comfort. Following an expert architectural redesign by Roger Shand, specialists were first called in to deal with decades of accumulated pigeon poo (and the removal of its feathered suppliers) before a broad scope of works was carried out by Armstrong Downes Commercial.
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NGĀ WHARE MAHI • BUILDINGS AT WORK
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This included seismic strengthening the entire stand structure, including replacing the stand’s roof and framing, refurbishing heritage timber panelling, heritage tiles and nosings (anti-slip stair trims), and re-using heritage timber panelling and existing steel windows. The main entrance, staircase and exterior were returned to their original state and the public toilets upgraded. “One of the major challenges was to deliver this project in time for the test match against India in February, and it was a joy to see the stand fully occupied,” says Richard Van Looy, Preconstruction Manager at Armstrong Downes Commercial. Richard says it was a pleasure to work with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga to restore the building’s functionality through an empathetic design. “It is always a challenge, but also a privilege, to gently strip bare such a building to its bones and strengthen from within, then recloak it to an improved version of its former self.” Cricket Wellington has moved its headquarters into the Old Pavilion Stand, and the popular Cricket Museum is set to return by February 2021. Cricket Wellington Chief Executive Officer Cam Mitchell says “a really good job” has been done in making a 95-year-old building fit for purpose and fully utilised again. From the early 1980s, the RA Vance Stand had progressively made the Old Pavilion Stand lose its lustre as a workable, useful space. Now it is set to flourish, with a modernised interior fitout featuring
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offices, kitchen facilities and a library. Distinctive heritage features remain, including the grand staircase that meets you as you walk through the main entrance doors, and two original ticket booths. “The feedback on the whole redevelopment has been very positive. And it’s not just a cricket venue – there were 95 functions held here last year, so the rooms are really well utilised. There’s junior rugby on Saturdays here, and girls’ football on Sundays. The feedback from parents and the kids is they love being at the Basin. “When you’re out in the middle, the old stand has a presence again. It’s a valuable piece of infrastructure for the city. It’s very visible – you can see it and appreciate it from outside the ground.” There is no question the Basin Reserve is an historic site and held in great affection worldwide. The Edward Dixon clock – a remnant from the original Caledonian Stand that preceded the Old Pavilion Stand but is front and centre on it – again ticks away as players and patrons come and go. Heritage recognition has come in its Historic Area status with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, with specific Category 1 and 2 listings on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero for the William Wakefield Memorial and Old Pavilion Stand respectively. While a range of sports and events – including rugby, football, athletics, cycling, parades and military and rock concerts – has been hosted at the ground, the association is strongest in cricket. The Old Pavilion Stand and the like have been silent witnesses to many vocal patrons enjoying some incredible days at the Basin Reserve.
1 Preparations are well
in hand to reopen the Cricket Museum by February 2021. 2 Wellington and
New Zealand cricket stalwart Ewen Chatfield. 3 The restored clock
is a feature of the Old Paviliion Stand.
Heritage New Zealand
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THE NAENAE EXPRESS For a period of time the Basin Reserve was a home away from home for former international test and one-day cricketer Ewen Chatfield. Dubbed ‘The Naenae Express’, the proud Wellingtonian was honoured with the naming after him of the new players’ pavilion. As well as taking 123 test and 140 one-day wickets, he took a record 403 wickets for his province. “The naming honour was not just for me but for my family as well,” says Ewen. “For many years the Basin was my first home, so I’m thankful to them.” It’s fair to say there have been plenty of changes at the Basin since Ewen started playing there in the 1970s. After a tour of the revamped Basin Reserve with Cricket Wellington’s Cam Mitchell, there were smiles, reflections and one-liners. “The Basin upgrade is very special, especially the old grandstand. When I first started playing, we had our changing rooms underneath the old grandstand, and we’d walk out the door on the side to go onto the field. “The changing rooms were very small in those days, and we only ever had 12 people in there. We used to sit outside on a grass embankment in sun chairs. Then they built the RA Vance Stand and the change facilities moved there.
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To experience more of the Basin Reserve, view our video story here:
“The Basin is very special ... I still think most people think of the Basin as the home of cricket. There are not many grounds like this around the world. “It’s great the old grandstand has been done up and kept. As a player you used to look at it all the time because that was where the only clock was when I was playing. So when you were getting hungry it was always looked at to see when lunch was.”
RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
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PAPA TE MĀTAI PĀNUI WHAIPARA • NOTICEBOARD TANGATA • ARCHAEOLOGY
Diving
deep
Recreational divers are being enlisted to ‘adopt a wreck’ as part of a citizen science project that helps to monitor our maritime heritage
WORDS: KIM TRIEGAARDT
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Heritage New Zealand
Craig Johnston of Pahia Dive during a GIRT dive on the Rainbow Warrior.
IMAGERY: ANDREW VIDUKA
Heritage New Zealand
New Zealand’s maritime heritage has a problem. With nearly 2195 shipwrecks scattered along 15,000 kilometres of often treacherous coastline, nature itself is slowly eroding and washing away the story of our early seafaring history. To understand what is happening to our underwater cultural heritage, it is important to monitor our wrecks systematically and regularly. However, that’s a challenge for New Zealand as the country has only around five trained maritime archaeologists who do maritime archaeological work on contract, and they do not necessarily monitor underwater heritage. It’s a serious predicament as much underwater heritage is poised to vanish forever. However, Australian maritime archaeologist Andrew Viduka, Assistant Director Maritime and Commonwealth Heritage with the Australian Government, has a solution he believes will work across Australasia. Gathering Information by Recreational and Technical Scientific Divers, or GIRT, is a citizen science initiative he has designed as part of a PhD project that taps in to the vast resource and capabilities of recreational divers who can be trained to do basic wreck surveys. “GIRT is a method of observing shipwreck heritage using systematic observation and measurement, by collaborating with divers as citizen scientists for data collection,” says Andy. Under Andy’s GIRT programme, each diver signs up to ‘adopt a wreck’. This is a wreck they are interested in and agree to monitor, noting what is happening to the physical condition of the wreck within its surrounding environment once a year using the GIRT methodology. “This is absolutely no-impact citizen science. It is observational only,” Andy says. “Divers are shown how to systematically document the physical condition of a wreck and monitor the movement of sediment over or near the site. We’re not asking them to do anything to the wreck apart from take photos and make observations.” GIRT piloted in South Australia in 2018. Since then, Andy, with the support of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, has held training sessions in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and Kerikeri. To date, nine wrecks have been adopted by GIRT members, including the iconic Rainbow Warrior. “As soon as I heard about GIRT, I knew I wanted to do it,” says Northland commercial diver Brett Sutton. “It was a chance to satisfy a long-held interest in archaeology and at the same time survey the Rainbow Warrior, which was the first wreck I dived on as a teenager about 20 years ago. “I’ve always been interested in the story of the Rainbow Warrior. It’s unique because it was state-sponsored terrorism and it’s important not to forget it happened.” After the GIRT training, Brett started looking at the wreck with a new perspective. “You start to understand all the chemical processes
“The data collected by GIRT members can inform science-based decisions on what actions need to be prioritised by archaeologists” that happen as the wreck breaks down. You learn about how sediment and sand movement around the base of the wreck affects it, and how wave and current energy can degrade the structure.” Brett says doing a regular survey of the Rainbow Warrior will also ensure it remains safe for divers. “We might see indicators that it’s degrading and getting unsafe; maybe it needs to be protected more. It’s just a way of keeping track of all the changes.” It’s that data collection that is at the heart of GIRT. GIRT members agree to share the data they collect with members of the public and can also choose to attach their data to the Australasian Underwater Cultural Heritage Database, which contains New Zealand’s register of shipwrecks. By getting members to share their data with the public and provide their information to a database, not only will everyone be able to see what is physically
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TE MĀTAI WHAIPARA TANGATA • ARCHAEOLOGY 1
“It’s a great opportunity to get young people out shipwreck hunting and get their imaginations engaged with the past” happening to our unique non-renewable underwater heritage, but the condition of sites will become a part of a permanent record. “The data collected by GIRT members can inform science-based decisions on what actions need to be prioritised by archaeologists. If you don’t know there is a problem, you can’t come up with a conservation plan,” says Andy. People are familiar with wrecks like the Rainbow Warrior, HMS Pandora, HMSC Mermaid and MS Mikhail Lermontov because of the stories around them. “Citizen science divers [like Brett] can play a huge role in telling the stories of their adopted sites,” says Vanessa Tanner, Manager Archaeology for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. “By doing this, it will ensure that other people understand and better appreciate a site’s value.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Susanne Rawson – a conservator and material culture specialist, a student in Victoria University of Wellington’s
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Museums and Heritage Studies programme, and an enthusiastic GIRT participant. As part of her PhD research, Susanne has been documenting sites that are in Taranaki’s intertidal zones, including the cargo ship SS Waitangi and the coastal steamer SS Gairloch. “The Waitangi gets uncovered every couple of years by shifting sand, but the Gairloch is publicly accessible. It’s a destination on the beach. I believe GIRT is an exercise in getting people to understand there are archaeological principles we apply to shipwreck sites, and it can be a learning opportunity. “It’s a great opportunity to get young people out shipwreck hunting and get their imaginations engaged with the past.” But while Susanne welcomes the GIRT model, she feels there are some unresolved issues. “We can provide the quantitative data that shows how fast we are losing wrecks. But we have to be able to justify why it’s important these sites need to be preserved, because when we do, essentially we are
1 Craig Johnston and
Serena Gilmore take photos and measurements of the Rainbow Warrior. IMAGE: ANDREW VIDUKA 2 Students Jacob
Miller and Sasha Finer join Susanne Rawson at the wreck of SS Gairloch near Ōākura. IMAGE: SUSANNE RAWSON 3 Photogrammetry of
the Rainbow Warrior – a 3D image created from hundreds of photos taken by Andrew Hutchinson during a GIRT dive.
Heritage New Zealand
HOW DO I GET STARTED WITH GIRT?
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n Complete a one-day GIRT workshop that covers survey methods, creating mud-maps of sites, condition photography, photogrammetry and collecting the subjective and objective data. (An online version is in the works – keep an eye on the website to register: www.girtsd.org.) n While the GIRT programme currently focuses on divers, you can get by without being one. There are plenty of intertidal structures, such as waka landing sites, abandoned hulls and old wharves, that need recording. n Create a basic GIRT kit that contains scales for photography/photogrammetry, a 30-metre measuring tape, slate and pencil and a camera in an underwater housing to add to your dive gear.
Then what? asking the public to contribute financially through rates and other programmes.” However, its strength is that it is community based. “You don’t have to be a professional archaeologist, but you have to be open to listening and working with the community. Most people in the community want their heritage known so it can be protected.” Brett agrees that the New Zealand diving community, which used to be very hunter-gatherer focused, is starting to change. “Mixed-gas diving lets people dive on more complex dives, so there is a growing fraternity of people who want to work on these projects. GIRT allows that to happen because it’s supporting networks of like-minded people who want to contribute to saving their maritime heritage.” It’s that engagement that Vanessa says will see Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga continue to support GIRT. “The programme enables a greater level of monitoring and recording of wrecks as more and more people are introduced to the methodology. It’s engaging communities with their heritage.” And that’s good news for members of the diving community, who hope that the more attention GIRT brings to our shipwrecks, the more it will help drive conversations around how to best conserve them – and highlight the seafaring past that’s integral to our national character. Writer Kim Triegaardt has SCUBA-dived since the early 1980s. Her early dives were on an unidentified Boer Warera wreck off the Riet River near Port Alfred on South Africa’s Eastern Cape coast, which sparked a lifelong interest in the stories that wrecks tell. A committee member of the Underwater Heritage Group of New Zealand, Kim completed her GIRT training in 2019 but is still considering which of the more than 2000 wrecks she should adopt.
n Adopt a wreck and get diving or exploring the intertidal zone. Draw a mud-map of the wreck (or other maritime heritage structure) then measure and take photos – the more the better to create 3D images of the site. n Answer some basic observational questions and log your data into the GIRT website: www.girtsd.org. n
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SEE A 3D MODEL OF THE RAINBOW WARRIOR The Rainbow Warrior trawler, belonging to Greenpeace, sank in Auckland Harbour after it was bombed by French secret agents in 1987. One person died in the attack. The ship was raised and transported to the Cavalli Islands near Whangaroa, Northland, where it was sunk to create an artificial reef and dive attraction. People interested in the latest GIRT survey of the Rainbow Warrior, Warrior, conducted in November 2019, can view a 3D model of the site at https://skfb.ly/6UrBv. /skfb.ly/6UrBv. n RETURN TO CONTENTS
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PAPATAPUWAE NGĀ PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD O NGĀ TŪPUNA • MĀORI HERITAGE
WORDS: HELEN BROWN • IMAGERY: NICOLE GOURLEY
A traditionalist
AND AN INNOVATOR The mahi of renowned tohunga whakairo Tene Waitere, the exquisitely carved Te Wharepuni o Anehana in Waihōpai, Invercargill, has drawn people together across time and place
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On 19 October 1932, Wynn Kirkby and his wife Kathleen (née Anderson) emerged – newly married – from the exquisitely carved wharepuni nestled in the gardens of Victoria Park, the Anderson family estate, on the outskirts of Invercargill. Inside, the wharepuni had been festooned for the occasion with pink and white cherry blossoms. When the newlyweds stepped down from the mahau in their finery, they passed the aptly carved form of an embracing male and female pair depicted on the tokoihi. A perfect venue for nuptials, the little ‘Māori house’ situated in the beautiful grounds of the home of the bride’s parents was also a Māoriland novelty for the Pākehā wedding guests. As everyone headed to the terrace of the main house for the wedding breakfast, two planes flew overhead, showering the bridal party with bunches of cream roses suspended from tiny silk parachutes. Far from its place of origin, and seemingly at odds with its surroundings, the wharepuni was the work of Tene Waitere, a renowned tohunga whakairo of Ngāti Tarāwhai (Te Arawa). Tene had died in Rotorua at the age of 77 a year before the Anderson-Kirkby wedding. While his obituary acknowledged him as “the last of the great Arawa carvers”, his great-greatgrandson Jim Schuster says, “Tene was not afforded the fame during his lifetime that has since come to be attached to his story and his work.” Speaking from his home at Ruatō on the shores of Lake Rotoiti, where Tene spent his formative years as a trainee carver, Jim says that as recognised by historian Roger Neich, Tene was both a traditionalist and an innovator. One of a small but influential group of now-famous Ngāti Tarāwhai carvers, Tene created
Heritage New Zealand
carvings that spanned the tribal and commercial worlds, leaving a legacy of whare whakairo, pātaka, waka and other taonga dispersed around New Zealand and the world. Tene was born in 1854 at Mangamuka in the Far North to Ani Pape of Te Arawa, and Waitere of Ngāpuhi. Ani and her children later returned to live at Ruatō on Lake Rotoiti, where Tene was apprenticed from around the age of 12 to tohunga whakairo Wero Taroi. “As Tene was part Ngāpuhi, he was never given chiefly roles within Ngāti Tarāwhai,” says Jim. Free from the time constraints that came with positions of tribal responsibility, Tene dedicated his life to humbly providing for his family as a worker, a huntergatherer and a prolific carver. “If anything, his carving spoke for him,” says Jim. “His fame went out in wood.” Today, Tene is regarded by many as the most innovative Māori carver of his time. Jim says he was one of the key people who “took Māori art to the world”. Tene established his reputation as a carver working on wharenui around Rotorua and Taupō. One of the wharenui on which he worked, Hinemihi at Te Wairoa, famously sheltered survivors, including Tene and his whānau, during the Tarawera eruption of 1886. Carving was a tapu occupation and Tene was versed in its rituals and restrictions. However, in 1897 he broke from tradition when he assisted his daughter and only child, Tuhipō, with the birth of her daughter Rangitīaria (later the famous Guide Rangi, who guided tourists around the thermal attractions at Whakarewarewa). “In giving up those sacred restrictions, Tene freed himself to experiment and be more innovative with whakairo,” says Jim. While he continued to work on projects for his own people,
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NGĀ TAPUWAE O NGĀ TŪPUNA • MĀORI HERITAGE
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1 Anderson Park House. 2 Joyce Robins on the mahau
of Te Wharepuni o Anehana. 3 The wedding of Wynn Kirkby and
Kathleen Anderson, Te Wharepuni o Anehana, 19 October 1932. Courtesy of Jenny McLeod. 4 Ngāi Tahu ki Murihiku
and friends in front of Te Wharepuni o Anehana. L–R: Marcia Te Au Thompson, Evelyn Cook, Anna Gorham, Winnie Solomon, Michael Skerrett, Winsome Skerrett and Michelle Frey (Invercargill City Council).
including whare, pātaka, waharoa, and war memorials, Tene also undertook private commissions for collectors, and well-to-do Pākehā clientele. When working for Pākehā, Tene experimented with non-traditional compositions such as naturalistic figures and perspective. While his Māori clients typically paid him “with a cow or a case of whiskey”, wellknown Pākehā art patrons, such
as Augustus Hamilton, “paid him by the square foot”, says Jim. From 1892 Tene was employed as a professional carver by CE Nelson, the first manager of the Geyser Hotel at Whakarewarewa. From a large workshop behind the hotel, Tene produced small items for tourists, such as pipes and walking sticks, alongside grander works such as mantlepieces to decorate the hotel. During this period, he also worked on Rauru,
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a fully carved whare whakairo that was later sold by Nelson to a German museum. Soon other Pākehā collectors began to commission model meeting houses from Tene. Among the Pākehā elite, having a ‘Māori house in the garden’ had become the height of fashion – popularised in no small part by the relocation of Hinemihi to the landscaped gardens of Clandon Park in Surrey, England, by the former New Zealand Governor Lord William Onslow in 1892. So when prominent Southland businessman Sir Robert Anderson was developing Victoria Park in the 1920s, he commissioned Tene to produce carvings for a wharepuni for the garden. The commission was born out of both vogue and personal interest – Sir Robert had a small collection of taonga Māori and owned a ‘Goldie’ (an artwork by Charles Goldie, well-known portraitist of Māori dignitaries). The whakairo were shipped south and affixed to a basic structure, built to measure. At the suggestion of Sir Robert’s daughter, Kathleen, who loved dancing, a sprung floor was installed. The family moved into their stately Georgian home, designed by renowned architect Cecil Wood, in 1925. Set amidst rolling manicured lawns, flower beds and specimen trees, it became known as ‘Invercargill’s No. 1 residence’.
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Heritage New Zealand
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kaitiaki: guardians kaumātua: elder mahau: porch mahi: work mokopuna: grandchildren pātaka: food storehouses poupou: wall panels rūnanga: community tangata whenua: people of the land tapu: sacred tohunga whakairo: master carver tokoihi: front central post tukutuku: woven latticework upoko: head waharoa: entranceways wāhi tupuna: site of ancestral significance whakairo: carvings whare: houses wharepuni: small house whare whakairo: carved meeting house
Aside from hosting the wedding and occasional gramophone-accompanied dances, the wharepuni sat quietly in the garden, somewhat overshadowed by its grand reinforced-concrete neighbour. In 1951, following the deaths of Sir Robert and Lady Anderson, Victoria Park (renamed Anderson Park) was generously gifted to the city of Invercargill by the Anderson family for use as an art gallery and public park. Despite being an artwork in itself, the wharepuni was relegated to use as a storage space for the gallery proper, and a curiosity for visitors strolling through the gardens. For local tangata whenua Ngāi Tahu, the whare was something of a mystery. As kaumātua Peggy Peek recalls, it was simply spoken of as “that wee place in the bush at Anderson Park”. In the early 1970s, when a young Māori welfare officer, ST Tuhakaraina, became aware of the wharepuni and its state of neglect, he launched a campaign to restore it,
forming a Meeting House Restoration Committee chaired by respected Ngāi Tahu leader George Te Au. When the committee exceeded its fundraising goals, members agreed to donate the surplus towards the achievement of the longstanding Ngāi Tahu aspiration to establish a marae in Invercargill. This gesture laid the foundation for a special relationship, albeit not widely recognised, between the wharepuni and Murihiku marae (which was subsequently developed between 1983 and 1990). The connection was further amplified when the carving crew working on the marae, led by Taka Panere (Ngāti Kahungunu), concurrently carved poupou for the interior of the wharepuni, realising Sir Robert’s long-held dream that the inside would be decorated with Māori artwork. Later still, local weavers Anna Gorham (Ngāi Tahu) and Winnie Solomon (Ngāti Pikiao) wove tukutuku panels. While the Anderson family always knew that the wharepuni had been carved in Rotorua, the
name Tene Waitere was not associated with it until the mid1980s when Neich confirmed it. Emily Schuster – a greatgranddaughter of Tene, and Jim’s mother – and Sir Robert’s daughter, Kathleen Kirkby, each donated towards the restoration and care of the building around this time. Tene did not generally name the whare he produced for his Pākehā patrons; however, when the wharepuni was added to the New Zealand Heritage List/ Rārangi Kōrero as a wāhi tupuna last year, Jim gave it a name – Te Wharepuni o Anehana (‘Anehana’ being a transliteration of ‘Anderson’). After 95 years of anonymity, the name signalled a new beginning and an opportunity to revisit the relationship between Tene the carver and Sir Robert the patron, through their mokopuna. Jim hopes the listing will assist with the recognition, care and preservation of this taonga for future generations. The physical care of the building has been the responsibility of Invercargill City Council since 1951, but local Ngāi Tahu also recognise their role as kaitiaki, in terms of its ongoing cultural care. Upoko of Waihōpai Rūnanga Michael Skerrett believes that “the individual carvings should be named by Ngāi Tahu so they may be known and cared for as befits their mana”. This is in keeping with the views of the descendants of Tene Waitere, who recognise that the wharepuni belongs in Murihiku, and to Murihiku. Standing on the mahau of Te Wharepuni o Anehana, now officially named for her family, Sir Robert’s great-granddaughter Joyce Robins fondly recalls her visits to Victoria Park as a child. “Learning more about the history of the wharepuni and its carver has been a journey of discovery for all of us,” she says. “We now need to keep it warm with people and activity.” RETURN TO CONTENTS
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PAPA PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD KŌPIKOTANGA • DOMESTIC TRAVEL
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Heritage New Zealand
1 Riding the 1200-metre
boardwalk towards Hōreke village. 2 Cycling beside Waikare
Estuary, just outside Ōpua. 3 Crossing an old rail
bridge in the Ngapipito River Valley.
WORDS: MARY DE RUYTER • IMAGERY: RUTH LAWTON
TALES
ON THE TRAIL Riding Northland’s Twin Coast Cycle Trail is as much a chance to peel back layers of history as it is to clock up kilometres
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Heritage New Zealand
Some stories on Pou Herenga Tai – the Twin Coast Cycle Trail take imagination to conjure up – such as how the peaceful rural scene we’re surveying between Kaikohe and Ōkaihau ever “rang with the crashing of mighty trees falling, the lowing of bullock teams ... and the screaming of saws”. That’s when the Rowsell and Rowsell sawmill #3 (1935-45) chewed through forests of kauri, kahikatea and tōtara to provide housing material, fence posts and spars for the area’s growing community. Other stories are easier to envision – in the landscape, the buildings and the people you meet on the trail. The 87-kilometre ride stretches from Ōpua in the Bay of Islands, to Hōreke on Hokianga Harbour, and is rich
with Māori and colonial history. It can be ridden in either direction, but most people start in Ōpua or cycle to each coast from Kaikohe. The foundation for much of the trail is the railway line that transported coal and flax to the coast in the mid to late 1800s – and later, meat, butter and timber. Steel tracks are still visible at times through the hardpacked gravel path. It’s an idyllic start, gliding on e-bikes alongside Waikare Estuary in the winter sunshine, shifting aside to let speedier locals pass. Photo stops are many and picturesque: a rowboat gliding across glistening water; the imaginatively named Long Bridge (at 230 metres, the longest curved wooden bridge in the Southern Hemisphere); and Taumārere Railway Station, once part of a bustling town. Today the Bay of Islands Vintage Railway uses the line to take passengers from Kawakawa to Taumārere. On the main street of Kawakawa, Kings Theatre Creative is a community space housed in Kings Theatre, a 1936 building that spent much of its former life as a movie theatre. Today art hangs on the walls and volunteers are designing mosaic flooring for Te Hononga Hundertwasser Memorial Park, the town’s new cultural hub, which opened next door in October 2019. Kings Theatre Creative Director Lau’rell Pratt bought the Kings Theatre building in 2014 because she “kept driving past and being really sad it wasn’t open!” she laughs. Bringing the theatre alive again is part of creating a new sense of self for the community. “Heritage is a big part of identity, and restoring old buildings creates a living culture.” The sun beats down. A river valley, two bridge crossings and farmland give way to pine forest as we climb towards Kaikohe. Just outside the town, we’re reminded that land rights are an ongoing issue, 180 years after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. A board in English and te reo Māori states the claim of Te Uri o Hau and other hapū to ancestral lands used by the cycleway. Our guide Rōpata says it’s important to know about the issue, but he’s never had any trouble over it. “I’m more likely to get a wave and a ‘Kia ora!’ as I cycle past.” On the main street of Kaikohe, Left Bank stands as an example of what heritage buildings can offer a town. Built in 1916 for the Bank of New Zealand, the Category 2 building gained new life in 2016 when locals Di Maxwell
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KŌPIKOTANGA • DOMESTIC TRAVEL
1 Heritage buildings and
a small rail circuit at Pioneer Village Kaikohe. IMAGE: RUTH LAWTON 2 The beautifully restored
Left Bank restaurant and accommodation, Kaikohe. IMAGE: ELITE IMAGE 3 The trail ends at Māngungu
Mission House, where an interior restoration project is revealing layers of history on the walls. IMAGE: AMANDA TRAYES
1
ALONG
THE TRAIL NORTHLAND FIREHOUSE MUSEUM, KAIKOHE: An impressive collection of firefighting memorabilia from here and overseas. There’s everything from brass helmets, badges and uniforms to toy fire trucks – and life-sized examples ready for photo opportunities.
LEFT BANK, KAIKOHE:
PAHEKE LODGE, ŌHAEAWAI:
TE RITO MARAE, MOEREWA:
OKAIHAU RAILSTAY:
This neoclassical, Category 2-listed gem offers five ensuite rooms upstairs, a local menu at Mint Restaurant, and 11 backpacker beds downstairs.
This 1862 Category 2-listed house is now a three-bedroom B&B, with beautiful established grounds and five listed trees.
Marae stay and cultural experience on a small family marae, in a wharenui built in 1946.
Three restored rail carriages (and one custom-built) provide boutique accommodation with vintage charm. n
> For more information visit https://www.twincoastcycletrail.kiwi.nz/
PIONEER VILLAGE, KAIKOHE: Stories abound in the village’s many heritage buildings and collections, brought here from previous lives around Northland. It’s worth paying extra for the guided tour – there’s so much to discover.
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Heritage New Zealand
EXTEND
YOUR TRIP 3
and Jack Poutsma bought it and embarked on a two-year restoration project – at a cost, all up, of nearly $2 million. Today it provides food and boutique accommodation for visitors and employment for locals. Instead of retiring comfortably, Di and Jack poured their energy into making the building shine again, from earthquake strengthening and recreating ceiling mouldings to painstakingly chipping glue and vinyl off beautiful native timbers. “Often if I was sanding down timber, I’d think, the last person who worked on this piece of timber sat here doing this 100 years ago. That sense of connection with the past is just incredible,” says Di. She says they will probably never recoup the financial outlay, but it doesn’t matter. “Life’s not all about money, is it?” Back in the saddle next morning, cycling gently uphill to Ōhaeawai, we pass through a rail tunnel with ‘1915’ above the entrance, marking the year it opened. It’s another reminder of the many hands that carved paths through the landscape, and the people who travelled those paths. Once, people walked the train line between settlements such as Kaikohe and Ōkaihau, as it was quicker than going by road. During the first Covid-19 lockdown, says the trail’s General Manager Adrienne Tari, more locals walked the trail than ever before. We take it slowly down the switchback hill and are rewarded with riverside riding and glades of native forest on ‘Snow’s Farm’, which gives way to dusty
country roads and, on the approach to Hōreke, home to a bustling shipyard in the 1820s, a wonderful 1200-metre-long boardwalk over mangroves. Stop for a moment here and let the quiet descend. The trail ends at Māngungu Mission House (Category 1), where an interior restoration project is revealing layers of history on the walls of this late-1830s house. Alex Bell, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Property Lead for Te Waimate and Hokianga, and conservator Rose Evans have removed the 1970s-era wallpaper and are preserving some of the older wallpapers and linings in situ. Eventually they will produce replica prints from remaining fragments. One wall has a phrase in te reo Māori written on it, possibly in charcoal, and Alex is using UV light to decipher the words. Other walls are lined with newspaper and pages torn from books. “It was the cheapest form of lining in those days,” he explains. This summer, Māngungu Mission House will be open as a work in progress, so visitors can see the walls that recount the history of this house. Like cycling the trail, the more layers you peel back, the more stories you uncover.
Take time either side of cycling the trail to explore Northland further. Russell is an obvious candidate, with listed buildings including Pompallier Mission and Printery (Category 1) and Christ Church (Category 1), and, across the water, the nearby Waitangi Treaty Grounds. On Hokianga Harbour, catch the restored Rānui ferry from Hōreke to sleepy Kohukohu, one of New Zealand’s first European settlements. Today Kohukohu has a small creative community, historic houses and an arched stone footbridge (Category 1) thought to be the country’s oldest surviving bridge. There are galleries to visit and character-filled places in which to stay, from cute cottages to a restored boatshed. n
The author cycled the trail courtesy of Northland Experiences, which tailors multi-day guided trips around interests such as culture, heritage and conservation, and stayed in Kaikohe courtesy of Left Bank. RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Raumati • Summer 2020 47
PAPA PĀNUII •TE HAERENGA NOTICEBOARD AO • INTERNATIONAL
1 2
48 Raumati • Summer 2020
Heritage New Zealand
&
WORDS: LYDIA MONIN
CHALLENGE OPPORTUNITY Covid-19 has wreaked havoc in many sectors, including among national heritage organisations, in which revenue and member support are driven strongly by domestic and international tourism. What are the implications for heritage retention and conservation?
The Beefeaters have guarded the Tower of London since Tudor times, but then Covid-19 came along and for the first time in 500 years there’ll be redundancies in the ranks of these icons of Britain’s royal pomp and pageantry. If Yeoman Warders are being laid off, what will heritage look like in a post-pandemic landscape? When Covid-19 arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, it was just as heritage organisations were gearing up for the start of what would usually be the busy summer season. Instead, the grand old buildings stood empty. And gone were the tour buses, the indulgent afternoon teas, the gift shop purchases and the hope that one-off visitors would become paid-up members. Weddings and special events were struck off calendars as invitations to Zoom crisis meetings pinged into email inboxes. The 125-year-old National Trust – covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland – announced that 1200 jobs would go as it grappled with a loss of nearly £200 million. Its counterpart in Scotland faced losses of £28 million and said 400 jobs were at risk. An emergency fundraising campaign called ‘Save Our Scotland’ was launched. Around the world small to medium trusts, already on shoestring budgets, quickly found themselves facing existential crises. Catherine Leonard is the Secretary General of the London-based International National Trusts Organisation (INTO), which represents more than 80 heritage organisations around the world. She says about 40 percent of INTO members had to seek extra grants and loans from their governments and about one in eight had to cut or furlough staff.
Heritage New Zealand
3
1 2 3 Britain’s National Trust has introduced a new pre-booking system for its heritage properties as a result of the pandemic. IMAGERY: SUPPLIED
Raumati • Summer 2020 49
HAERENGA I TE AO • INTERNATIONAL
1 Doorwerth Castle in the
Netherlands. 2 The gardens of 16th-
century Palazzo Moroni in Bergamo were opened as an homage to the Italian city most severely affected by Covid-19. IMAGERY: SUPPLIED
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50 Raumati • Summer 2020
Trusts with a strong local focus and membership fared better than those relying heavily on international tourism. In general, says Catherine, private funders were generous and flexible, governments less so. Accordingly, North American organisations have managed well, possibly because of a long philanthropic tradition. Once more, New Zealand seems to have bucked the trend. Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, despite being mostly government funded, has proved resilient to the pandemic. It helped that Covid-19 arrived here during autumn, but it was the public funding model that saved it from the challenges experienced by the National Trust, whose predominant source of funding is its nearly six million members. “Covid has turned everything on its head,” says Brendon Veale, who is Manager Asset Funding for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Brendon, ironically, was in Britain (courtesy of INTO) at the
beginning of the year, learning how an organisation can be less reliant on government funding and more like the National Trust. “The fundraiser in me has been taught throughout my career that the more an organisation can rely on a variety of sources of support, the more likely it is to have a sound financial future,” says Brendon. He adds that, despite the benefit of government funding for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga during Covid-19, “I haven’t changed my mind … we need to build multiple, sustainable funding sources.” Pandemics require global solutions and heritage organisations around the globe have been supporting each other by pooling ideas and finding answers. Brendon says Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga is working a lot more closely with sister agencies. And despite Australia’s Covid-19 setbacks, talks are continuing about developing heritage experiences within a potential trans-Tasman bubble. “We’ve never done that before. We’ve never worked directly with people to create a heritage product somewhere else.” Like many heritage sites, Doorwerth Castle in the Netherlands is heavily reliant on elderly volunteers, who are more at risk from Covid-19 than others. Without the offer of help from a group of furloughed KLM cabin crew members, the castle would have remained closed after the country’s lockdown. “They know everything about hospitality, they speak languages, they know how to deal with difficult people, they are just really great,” says Doorwerth Castle’s General Manager Carine van Ketwich Verschuur van den Hout. She expects to see less of her younger recruits as more flights resume, but they’ll always be ambassadors for the castle. Covid-19 has also sped up technological changes that were already in the works. With heritage sites closing down, there were more virtual tours, some offering behind-the-scenes glimpses of areas that would usually be off-limits to the public, and these have been particularly popular. The National Trust has now introduced a new prebooking system that would have taken years to develop in normal times. “There would have been so many committees and decisions and discussions and boxes to tick and hoops to jump through – and they managed to turn it around in a matter of weeks because with Covid-19 everyone’s working at pace,” says Catherine. Visits to National Trust sites are now spread out across the day and it’s easier to plan how many staff and volunteers and even how much coffee is needed. A new booking system gave Carine her best July ever. She thinks in the past people may have turned up at Doorwerth Castle spontaneously but left again if the carpark looked too full, never to return. But now if they decide to visit on a particular day and it’s booked out, they lock in a future slot instead. Natural heritage has also benefited during these troubled times, with Covid-19 pushing people out of
Heritage New Zealand
2
“It’s amazing how people will say, ‘We always go to England or France to visit castles and we never realised we had a castle so close by’” the inner cities and back into the outdoors, searching for the most scenic routes for daily walks. It was good for our wellbeing. ‘We won’t say anything about your haircut if you don’t say anything about ours’, read a sign near an unkempt garden in one National Trust property. The trust had tried to keep its gardens open for exercise at the beginning of the lockdown, but was so overwhelmed by crowds it had to close them. Italy’s national trust, Fondo Ambiente Italiano, opened the gardens of its newest acquisition, a 16th-century aristocratic palace in the heart of Bergamo, as an homage to the Italian city most severely affected by Covid-19. Doctors and other health workers were offered free admission to the gardens and a one-year trust membership for their work during the pandemic. There’s a sense of rediscovery in the air. “It’s amazing how people will say, ‘We always go to England or France to visit castles and we never realised we had a castle so close by’,” says Carine. Britain’s National Trust emerged out of lockdown to find more urban visitors and more diverse groups of people visiting its sites.
It seems that Benjamin Franklin’s claim that out of adversity comes opportunity rings true for heritage in a time of Covid-19. Catherine thinks it’ll be “less about preserving the past and more about focusing on the present and what those assets can bring to people today”. In Britain, this could mean holding more concerts and informal events at properties that don’t have hugely important collections requiring high levels of conservation and heritage management. Globally, she thinks a few organisations might have to mothball themselves for a while – or possibly close for good – but “national trusts have protected places through earlier pandemics, world wars, changes in climate and other threats and they’ll continue to do so into the future”. Brendon Veale is hopeful of a return to normality both here and overseas. Our post-lockdown surge in domestic tourism suggests a buoyant summer season ahead, and he’s promising better reciprocal member benefits when New Zealanders are finally allowed to travel to overseas heritage sites again. “But right now,” he says, “having the security of very sound government funding is nice, definitely.” RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Raumati • Summer 2020 51
NGĀ PUKAPUKA • BOOKS
I
ara Mansell
ga, Le1 1893/7a sheet
Jessie Munro & Barb
Front cover Signatory Margaret Alexande r and her husband (wearing his blacksmi Andrew th’s apron) with their daughters Ann and Euphemia. Virginia Alexander Suffrage Petition – Te Petihana Whakam ana Pōti Wāhine. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatan
Courtesy Jan Sanders,
Left 1893 Women’s
Archives New Zealand
Signing into hiSto ry
n late July 1893 a roll of 546 petition sheets , glued end to end and wound around a length of broom handle, was dramatically unfurl ed across the floor of Parliament to reveal the names of almost 24,000 New Zealan d women seeking the right to vote. As a result, a new Electoral Act was signed into law on 19 Septe mber, making New Zealand the first self-governing country in the world where all women could vote in parliamentary electio ns. In the National Librar y of New Zealand the Women’s Suffrage Petition stands proud as one of the nation’s landm ark documents, alongs ide the Treaty of Waitangi and the 1835 Declar ation of the Independen ce of New Zealand. The petition’s great roll included Sheet 370, signed by 56 women (and one man), nearly all living on small family farms in Clevedon–Wairoa South. This is the story of who they were, and how they signed this rural distric t into history.
Signing into history
Clevedon women and
the 1893 Suffrage
petition
370
Jessie Munro & Barb
ara Mansell
WORDS: M A RI A N NE T R E MA I N E
Chain reaction Remarkable stories of freedom and constraint The contrast between freedom and constraint can be confusing; these words are not always opposites. Some constraints are chosen, others are imposed. One of the places in which you would expect an unwelcome lack of freedom is prison, usually a place with guards and locked cells. Mark Derby explores an example in Rock College: An Unofficial History of Mount Eden Prison (Massey University Press, $45). This fascinating book unpicks the history and the people behind the intimidating stone structure built by former prisoners and seriously lacking in creature comforts, with many intriguing stories hidden behind its grey rocks.
A prison of a different kind, which restricted people without using bars and walls, was the
52 Raumati • Summer 2020
Quail Island colony. This prison, surrounded by sea in Lyttelton Harbour, where leprosy sufferers were sent to keep them away from the general population, provided inhabitants with highly effective constraints. In a book called The Dark Island: Leprosy in New Zealand and the Quail Island Colony (Bridget Williams Books, $39.99), Benjamin Kingsbury explains the discomforts endured by colony inhabitants between 1906 and 1925 – the years the leprosy colony existed. With just a few inhabitants in the colony, it was easy for the Health Department to ignore its responsibilities to provide proper food and comfortable accommodation. The book tells the story of how the department had an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to leprosy sufferers: it was left to a Lyttelton doctor
to go out and examine them, to the parishioners and vicar of a Lyttelton church to occasionally go out for church services, and to the wife of the island’s quarantine caretaker to provide food on an ad hoc basis. This book gives surprising insights into the way people afflicted by the disease were treated. Attitudes towards them were driven mainly by fear and ignorance. Although leprosy was not a particularly contagious disease, its powerful stigma aroused repugnance rather than empathy. Finally, in 1925 New Zealand leprosy sufferers remaining on Quail Island were sent to Makogai – a much larger, better organised leprosy colony in Fiji. Because the book paints such a clear picture of life on Quail Island, you feel yourself experiencing the barrenness and the boredom. Well researched, well written and absorbing, it shows part of a mysterious, unknown past in this country.
More historical awareness is offered with Signing into History: Clevedon Women and the 1893 Suffrage Petition, by Jessie Munro and Barbara Mansell (Steele Roberts, $30). Although New Zealand women won the right to vote later than New Zealand men, New Zealand
was the first self-governing country worldwide to grant the vote to all adult women. Jessie and Barbara tell the stories of the 57 women living in Clevedon who signed the petition and show us photographs of the women, their homes and their relatives. Meeting the women on the page makes the process of gaining the right to vote for women seem more tangible. Before I read this book, women’s suffrage was little more than a fact and a date to me, but now I feel I have met 57 of the women who lived at the time and chose to sign the petition.
Similarly, the material in When Darkness Stays: Hōhepa Kereopa and a Tūhoe Oral History, by Paul Moon (David Ling Publishing, $29.99), allows us to benefit from the knowledge Paul gained during time spent with Hōhepa Kereopa, a Tūhoe tohunga, and shares their warm friendship. As Paul says, “Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we just sat in silence” (page 15). The words of Hōhepa, explaining the world he experienced and how his people lived, are introduced in each section with an overview by Paul to orient the reader towards the breadth and focus of the things Hōhepa is about to describe.
Heritage New Zealand
GIVEAWAY We have one copy of Rock College: An Unofficial History of Mount Eden Prison to give away.
tohunga: priest, expert
This is a book that has to be experienced – the sadness of a loss of freedom, and a great deal of pain, yes, but there is an overwhelming sense of wonder in all you gain from the words of Hōhepa, and the book conveys the sense of being in his presence.
Another book that allows you to see the world through someone else’s eyes is Ko Taranaki te Maunga by Rachel Buchanan (BWB Texts, $14.99). A friend raved about how wonderful this book was. Like Rachel, he’s from Taranaki, but while Rachel is Māori, he is Pākehā. Enthusiasm for a book is infectious, so in spite of a certain scepticism about such extreme enthusiasm, I felt I had to read the book for myself. In reading this book, you meet Rachel. She writes in her own voice, talking directly to us about her feelings, in particular her feelings about Pākehā apologies for what happened at Parihaka. Rachel sees herself as an expert in apologies: she has
heard about many attempts to atone for the ransacking of the pā in 1881 by the 1500 police and volunteers who were led by then-Native Minister John Bryce. This was an infamous moment in history, clearly beyond any words of apology. Yet Rachel explains that the Taranaki people found ways of turning these events around by realising how much the invading force had lost. The invaders were dramatically weakened, losing even the power to fire a single shot when confronted by the determined strength of the non-violence of the iwi. By contrast, the story itself has lost none of its power.
In the collaborative account in Victory at Gate Pā? The Battle of Pukehinahina-Gate Pā: 1864, by Buddy Mikaere and Cliff Simons (New Holland, $39.99), a Māori and a Pākehā historian write about the battle, discussing the conflict from both perspectives. On the day, 200 Māori faced 1700 Pākehā at a hillside near Tauranga. The battle is remembered as a Māori victory. Pākehā troops were sent fleeing. But the small Māori force crept away afterwards under cover of darkness, taking their wounded with them. The Māori warriors were recognised because of their chivalrous approach to battle
in accordance with the Māori code of fighting, as outlined in a letter sent before the battle to the commanding officer in Tauranga. The letter stated that wounded or unarmed soldiers, or those who sought sanctuary in a church, would be spared. Unarmed Pākehā, as well as women and children, would be unharmed. These rules for the conduct of battle transformed opinions of Māori among the Imperial force and they became seen as worthy opponents, deserving of respect. The two authors explore not only the history surrounding the battle, but also how their family histories have affected their understanding of the event.
Running is one way many people gain a special sense of freedom. Running has such an important place in New Zealand history, it is surprising that more running histories have not been written. In The Kiwi Runners’ Family Tree, Volume One: 1800s–1999 (Inspired Kids, $30), Dreydon Sobanja wants to inspire readers by showing some of the many different kinds of running and reasons for running. The types of running surveyed, with short biographies of some exponents, include sprinters, middle-distance runners, long-
To enter the draw, send your name and address on the back of an envelope to Book Giveaways, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, PO Box 2629, Wellington 6140, before 30 December 2020. The winner of last issue’s book giveaway (100 Days that Mapped a Nation) is Elayne Sanders, Whakatāne.
distance runners, marathon runners, hurdlers and steeplechasers, race walkers, paraathletes and mountain runners, as well as ultra-distance and adventure runners. Dreydon’s ambition is to see more diversity in runners’ backgrounds. He hopes his book will encourage investment in developing the potential of a wide variety of runners and giving them a chance to succeed.
Books are chosen for review in Heritage New Zealand magazine at the discretion of the Books Editor. Due to the volume of books received, we cannot guarantee the timing of any reviews that appear and we are unable to return any copies submitted for review. Ngā mihi. RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Raumati • Summer 2020 53
PAPA Ō tātou PĀNUI wāhi ingoa-nui, • NOTICEBOARD taku kitenga • Our heritage, my vision
INTERVIEW: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGE: MARCEL TROMP
Creating
CONNECTIONS Chinese New Zealand heritage is not well known, but now more than ever these stories need to be brought to light, says Richard Leung My great-grandfather on my mother’s side came out to Dunedin in 1915 and was a poll tax payer, and when my grandfather came out about five years later he paid the poll tax as well. My father came over from Hong Kong in the 1960s to study, while my wife is a great-great-granddaughter of Choie Sew Hoy – an iconic name in the Deep South. A special heritage place for me is what was my grandparents’ house, on Scotland Street in Dunedin. It’s where I first lived as a baby, but it became especially interesting to me about seven years ago when I was working on a book about Chinese New Zealand ANZACs. I discovered it had once been home to the Lo Keong family. Joseph Lo Keong was the second Chinese person in Dunedin, while his wife Matilda was the first
Chinese woman in New Zealand. They had several children, including their son Victor, the Chinese New Zealand ANZAC soldier and engineer who mapped out the Bulford Kiwi in the UK. When my ancestors came, Chinese were not accepted in New Zealand. There was the poll tax, and a lot of legislation against Chinese. With that background, their idea was to put their heads down, work hard and assimilate. The number of Chinese at that time was very small so they had to fit in and, as a result, all that Chinese history and heritage is not well known. I see my generation as the link between the older generation – where we still have memories of working in fruit shops and market gardens – and the newer generation – my children and even some people’s grandchildren, who don’t have those connections
anymore. So it’s really important for us to collect all that history for future generations. With the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust, for example, we’ve commissioned several history books, and from a New Zealand Chinese Association (NZCA) standpoint, we’re working in a number of ways to bring our heritage and history into the mainstream. The SS Ventnor memorial in the Hokianga is a big one. It’s a project that is bringing together our community with local iwi and we have projects planned to make those connections even closer. We’re also building a Chinese New Zealand history website and we’re involved in an advisory role with the Ministry of Education as it develops the New Zealand history curriculum. We’re proud to be the guardians of our history and that our
community has given us the mandate to do this work. At the end of the day, this history belongs to the community who lived it and that’s something I hope people and institutions will appreciate more as we go into the future. Ultimately, carrying out these activities requires a lot of resources. The NZCA is a totally voluntary organisation, but we have a rich history of more than 80 years. Some of our programmes have been running for a very long time – our major Easter sports tournament, for example, has been happening for 72 years – and I want to ensure that heritage carries on for my children and grandchildren, so that’s why I volunteer. Richard Leung is National President of the NZCA and a trustee of the Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust. RETURN TO CONTENTS
54 Raumati • Summer 2020
Heritage New Zealand
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