The promise of Waitangi to the world
TASTE MAKERS
Continuing a winemaking legacy WITH PRIDE Rainbow histories enter the List MARKING TIME When does graffiti become ‘heritage’?
Raumati • Summer 2021
Explore the List
12 Origin story
How a Kiwi archaeologist helped unearth the secrets of Stonehenge
16 Taste makers
Award-winning wines are still being produced from the home of a winemaking pioneer
22 Keeping the faith
What’s new in the ongoing struggle to retain our historic churches?
30 Dream big
We visit a Nelson heritage restoration of epic proportions
34 The ongoing promise
Two kaitiaki reflect on their connections to the Waitangi National Trust estate
40 With pride
Recognising the queer histories of our historic places
8 Planting a legacy
The mana of Whakaotirangi, experimental gardener and scientist, continues to resonate
10 Captured in time
In Waiuta, tantalising clues to a once-thriving past remain
Journeys
into the past
44 When in Waiuta
Tips for planning a visit to this historic West Coast former goldmining town
46 Leaving your mark
At what point does graffiti become ‘heritage’?
Reads reflecting our changing times
54 Our heritage, my vision
Jacqueline Leckie, on making our ‘invisible histories’ visible
Make the most of your member benefits!
As this magazine lands in your letterbox, you may be planning your big Kiwi summer road trip.
If that’s the case, make sure you take your Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga membership card with you. There are lots of places to visit and you are entitled to FREE entry with your membership card.
Actively visiting these places and introducing friends and family to them keeps them alive and loved.
And now there's a great new resource for you to discover heritage places to visit, stay and explore. It includes some fantastic itineraries and tours, plus much more.
Go to www.visitheritage.co.nz to start your journey.
NG Ā MIHI | 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.
Mr Des and Mrs Yukito Hunt
Mr Colin and Mrs Barbara Hickling
Mr David and Mrs Dorothy Hinman
Miss Gaye Matthews
Mr S J and Mrs Pam Sedgley
Mr David Barlass and Mrs Julie Barlass
Dr David and Lesley Going
Mrs Frances Bell
Raumati • Summer 2021
Mr Alistair Aitken and Shona Smith
Mrs Alison Oertly
Mr Ian and Mrs Jenny Thomas
Mr David and Mrs Marilyn Ayers
Ms Elaine Hampton and Michael Hartley
Mr Francis and Mrs Annette Piggin
Mr Peter and Mrs Val Osborne
Mr Ross Twiname
Rosa-Jane French
Mr Peter and Mrs Betty Lamont
Mr Wayne Highet and Dale Morgan
Mr Cameron Moore
Mr John and Mrs Caroline Chapman
Dr John and Dr Anna Holmes
Mr Edmund and Mrs Catherine Brown
Miss Wendy Stuart
Mrs Beverley Eriksen
Lady Barbara Stewart
Mr Arnold and Mrs Marjorie Turner
Mr Jeff Downs
Mrs Avis Foote
Mrs Eleanor and Mrs E J Leckie
Heritage
Issue 163 Raumati • Summer 2021
ISSN 1175-9615 (Print)
ISSN 2253-5330 (Online)
Cover image: Nga wai hono i te po Paki by Erica Sinclair
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 a circulation of 9,906 as at 30 June 2021.
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
Living, changing
One of the most interesting aspects of heritage, to me, is the way it’s always changing and our perspectives on it are evolving.
That there’s always a currency, a new way to look at different aspects of the heritage world, is something that struck me when writing the profile in this issue of Andrew Brown.
While living and studying in the UK, the New Zealand archaeologist worked a number of stints on the Stones of Stonehenge Project.
Investigating the origins of the structure, which is sited on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, the project focused on its bluestones, which were quarried 230 kilometres away in Wales.
It’s one of the world’s most famed ancient monuments, and I think a sense of permanence is what shapes a large part of Stonehenge’s identity in many people’s minds.
However, the multi-year, multi-disciplinary project found evidence to support the theory that the stones were part of an earlier monument erected much closer to their source, and later disassembled and re-erected in Wiltshire.
“It was remodelled a number of times and the bluestones were always a part of it,” says Andy, in the story.
“When you start engaging with Stonehenge in that way, you see it much more as a living, changing monument.”
Margo White’s story on page 46 highlights how intent, content and authorship, as well as historic context and age, can all shape our perspectives on graffiti left at heritage places.
One of the areas explored in the story is the tradition of tradespeople leaving their marks hidden in buildings when undertaking work.
One such example is at Old St Paul’s in Wellington, where the names of not only the original carpenter, John McLaggan, and his team, but also those more recently involved with the church, are to be found
within its walls. In 2019 to 2020, while laying new foundations as part of earthquake strengthening work, the builders signed their names in the concrete.
“I wouldn’t encourage everyone who works on a building to leave a mark,” notes Tamara Patten, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Property Lead, Old St Paul’s, in the piece.
“But one of the things that makes working in heritage so wonderful is finding and telling the stories of people connected to a place, and this is a really nice story.”
Changes are also being made to the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero as part of the Rainbow List Project, featured in our story on page 40.
The project aims to recognise sites of significance to New Zealand’s queer communities that have previously gone unrecognised because of longstanding legal and social prejudices.
One of the listings so far updated is Wellington’s Thistle Inn – the setting for the thinly disguised romantic lesbian encounter described in the Katherine Mansfield story Leves Amores, which has long been known to scholars of queer histories. Another is 288 Cuba Street in the city, once home to Carmen’s Curios, owned by the transgender icon Carmen Rupe.
The project is an important opportunity to normalise queer history and ensure the List is diverse.
As Kerryn Pollock, Senior Heritage Assessment Advisor at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, who is leading the project, says, “There really is no excuse for us not to be telling these stories in the 21st century.”
Ngā mihi nui
Caitlin Sykes Editor
Heritage New Zealand magazine prides itself on its good-looking pages. John Bannan, of print firm Blue Star, shares how his role helps the magazine keep looking its best.
How long have you been connected with Heritage New Zealand magazine?
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga has been a client of mine since 2012. During that time we’ve printed Heritage New Zealand magazine and the majority of the organisation’s brochure and stationery collateral. I handle the day-to-day running of the account and ensure all timings are met, the online ordering site is kept up to date and the print quality of any products produced is of the highest quality.
Blue Star has won a number of awards over the years for its work on Heritage New Zealand magazine. Which of those wins stands out for you?
Pride In Print is like the Academy Awards for the print industry.
It’s the pinnacle event at which print companies can showcase their work, so we’re proud to be considered the benchmark consistently for gold medals and awards won at this event.
The Autumn 2020 issue, for which we won gold at Pride In Print, was especially pleasing. The comments from the judges regarding the expertise shown in ensuring an accurate fit and the perfect match-up of imagery across pages were testament to the calibre of the tradespeople who work on the floor in the plant to create the publication. It's great to be able to tell the team that their workmanship has been rewarded in some way, and it makes us proud knowing that what we’re doing is of the highest quality.
Personally, what's a special heritage place for you?
Easily the Stone Store in Kerikeri. I visited there last summer and the fact that it’s the oldest surviving stone building in New Zealand and is still in such good condition just blows me away. It takes you back to yesteryear and how we used to live. That’s why I think Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, by keeping these important heritage buildings in the public eye, plays such an integral part in the fabric of New Zealand.
Please contact Brendon Veale (below) if you would like to become a supporter.
Brendon Veale Manager Asset Funding 0800 HERITAGE (0800 437482) bveale@heritage.org.nz
... WITH BEC COLLIE
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Marketing Advisor
Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga proudly cares for more than 40 properties around the country, which means we need more than just one Facebook or Instagram channel to help us shine a light on our important heritage places online.
Many of the properties we care for have their own social media channels, which enable us to share their unique voices and stories, as well as more of the breadth of work we do as an organisation.
One of these properties is Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House, located in Christchurch. A reasonably new heritage property in the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga portfolio, the house is the former residence of leading New Zealand suffragist Kate Sheppard and her family.
Our social media channels for the house share insights into the life and times of Kate, as well as the regular events held at the house. On 19 September, for example, we celebrated Suffrage Day with an all-day event that included a morning tea at the house and visits to locations of importance to Kate Sheppard around Christchurch.
To ensure you stay up to date with what’s happening at the house and gain sneak peeks of what you can expect during a visit, follow Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House on both Facebook and Instagram:
Facebook: Facebook.com/katesheppardhouse
Instagram: Instagram.com/katesheppardhouse or @katesheppardhouse
BEHIND THE STORY WITH WRITER TRACY NEAL
For this issue you wrote a story about the massive restoration work in progress at The Gables in Nelson. What appealed to you about taking on the story?
I’m among the many hundreds of locals to have slowed down to look and wonder about The Gables when driving along Waimea West Road. My roots run deep in this region, and having grown up in an 1860s Nelson villa, I’m familiar with both the beauty and the pitfalls – the cold! – of living in these early homes.
I’ve long been fascinated by how the design of this home emerged, and, more recently, why anyone would be brave enough to take on its restoration. So when the chance came along to write about it, and therefore step inside, I didn’t hesitate to say “Yes!”.
What's something new you learned about the place in the course of working on the story?
While I knew it was the original Palmer family home, I didn’t connect that our former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer was a member of the same family, and that he’d been part of earlier attempts to get a salvage effort going.
Also, it occurred to me while reading about how The Gables’ bricks were made, that it was possible an early ancestor of mine was involved. He was a London bricklayer who arrived in 1841 and lived on the Waimea Plains. He died a few years after The Gables was built and is buried in a plot at the nearby historic St Michael’s Church.
You're based in Nelson. What's a local heritage site that you'd recommend people visit, and why?
In terms of built heritage, I adore the quirkiness of Founders Heritage Park. It’s a faux village created from many of our early Nelson buildings shifted to the site, from where traditional artisans now make and sell their wares. The old Nelson Evening Mail Building is now a working museum of antique printing presses used for traditional printmaking.
For natural heritage, Pepin Island, which is the domain of local iwi Ngāti Tama, frequently beckons us. Part of the island was once the pā of the paramount chief of Ngāti Tama, Te Pūoho-o-te-rangi. The island itself is now privately owned and operated – open only to the general public on fundraising open days when thousands take to its slopes – and it overlooks a stunning public beach at Cable Bay.
Places we visit
Ngā Taonga i tēnei marama Heritage this month – subscribe now
Keep up to date by subscribing to our free e-newsletter
Ngā Taonga i tēnei marama Heritage this month Visit www.heritage.org.nz (‘Resources’ section) or email membership@heritage.org.nz to be included in the email list.
HERITAGE NEW ZEALAND POUHERE TAONGA DIRECTORY
National Office PO Box 2629, Wellington 6140 Antrim House 63 Boulcott Street Wellington 6011 (04) 472 4341
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.
Wellington, p40, p46
Hurworth, Taranaki, p46
Waimea, Nelson, p30
Hawaiki Iti, Aotea Harbour, p8
Te Kauwhata, p16
Waitangi Treaty Grounds, p34
KIA KAHA TE REO MĀORI
Waiuta, p10, p44
Kakanui, p22
SPRING 2017, ISSUE 146
In 2017 Sean Garwood shared his story about producing 16 oil paintings depicting aspects of Antarctic heritage, including the huts of Shackleton and Scott and the artefacts inside them.
The Nelson-based artist specialises in heritage subjects, and for a new exhibition –A Painted Voyage, documenting aspects of New Zealand’s maritime history – he’s captured more of our historic heritage, including this striking scene (above) of Queens Wharf in downtown Auckland.
Sean says he chose to include the Category 1 historic place in the exhibition because he felt its development was a milestone for New Zealand in its rise as a global trading nation.
The painting is set in 1904 for a number of reasons, he says, including that the best reference sources are from around this period. Rather than being copied
from a particular photograph, the painting is a mixture of several archival photographs that, although quite ‘grainy’, offered sufficient information with which to make preliminary drawings.
“I was very conscious that the vessels included in the painting were visiting Auckland during 1904,” says Sean, who had a career at sea before becoming a full-time artist.
“The early 1900s witnessed an increase in steam-driven vessels, and I wanted to include these alongside the majestic square-rigged sailing ships.
The famous Jessie Craig is berthed on the northern side of the wharf and a New Zealand Shipping Company vessel on the south side, which also indicate New Zealand’s strong maritime heritage.”
When carrying out research for the exhibition, Sean connected to the Alexander Turnbull Library online collections and numerous rare shipping books from private collections that depicted historic New Zealand port scenes.
He says the Queens Wharf painting captures a time when ships were household names, ship owners and captains were amongst society's elite, and shipping news was eagerly anticipated.
“As the painting progressed, it really did become apparent how close these magnificent, majestic sailing ships were to the town. They were close enough that people could stroll down to see these ships working their cargo; their bowsprits and jib booms towering over Queens Wharf, almost reaching the other side.”
For more information, visit www.seangarwood.co.nz
DON’T FORGET YOUR ROOTS
There was ‘The Shambles’ – once home to a gigantic orange fungus – and ‘Pink Flat the Door’, conceived as an experiment in cohabitating without rules.
But surely the most famous of Dunedin’s named student flats now has to be 660 Castle Street.
This flat is where arguably New Zealand’s biggest band – Six60 – formed while its members were University of Otago students, and from which the band takes its name.
And this year the mana and heritage of the flat were recognised when the band purchased it, with the aim of nurturing the next generation of performing arts talent within its walls.
In partnership with the University of Otago, the band is offering four $10,000 scholarships annually to performing arts students, plus the chance to live in the flat and be mentored by the band.
The house at 660 Castle Street was one of the named student flats featured in Scarfie Flats of Dunedin, written by Sarah Gallagher, a Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Heritage Advisor, along with Ian Chapman.
In the book, which featured in our Winter 2019 issue, Sarah details Six60’s deep connections to the house, which was originally built in 1923 as a Presbyterian Manse.
It paints a picture of how, despite it being a typical student flat (band member Eli Paewai recalls it was “ugly, draughty, run-down and stank”), the place was fundamental to the band’s genesis and identity.
“That’s where it all began,” lead guitarist Ji Fraser recounted to Sarah.
“It’s where I wrote my first song; it’s where we had our first practice together. It was the beginning of everything.”
Planting a legacy
The mana and legacy of Whakaotirangi, experimental gardener and scientist, continues to resonate in the landscape almost 700 years on
WORDS: DENISE IRVINE
When Whakaotirangi stepped ashore from the great waka Tainui at Kāwhia Harbour, she carried a kete of precious kūmara and taro tubers from her tropical Pacific homeland of Hawaiki.
Whakaotirangi was the principal wife of Hoturoa, captain of the waka Tainui, and she had safeguarded the tubers and some other plants on the long, eventful sea voyage.
She subsequently moved north from Kāwhia, over the hill to Aotea Harbour, where she established extensive gardens with the contents of her kete. The tranquil inlet she chose was named Hawaiki Iti, in honour of the homeland, and gardens were also planted at nearby Pākarikari.
Nearly 700 years later, the mana and legacy of Whakaotirangi, experimental gardener and scientist, resonate through the Aotea kaitiaki of Ngāti Patupō and Ngāti Te Wehi, and all Tainui descendants. In 2017, Whakaotirangi was selected as one of the 150 women celebrated by the Royal Society Te Apārangi for contributing to knowledge in Aotearoa New Zealand.
And earlier this year, Hawaiki Iti, her onceabundant Aotea garden, was recognised and listed as a wāhi tapu site with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, acknowledging its cultural and spiritual importance to Māori.
Diane Bradshaw of Ngāti Te Wehi says Hawaiki Iti is central to Aotea Harbour’s unique identity in Aotearoa New Zealand.
“The ‘footprint’ of our ancestress Whakaotirangi, her life and culture, provides a direct connection to the tūpuna of the Tainui and Aotea waka. The adaptation of tropical food plants to our temperate climate must have been a major challenge, and this landscape retains her legacy today.”
Pita Te Ngaru of Ngāti Patupō describes Whakaotirangi as “the mother of a nation”: “If it wasn’t for her growing the kūmara and taro at Aotea, would we have survived as well as we did? In her small kete there may have been 10 kūmara tubers, and from these she created a massive garden and dished them [kūmara plants] out all over the place.”
Pita describes how Whakaotirangi would have known when it was the right time to plant.
“She would have looked at the bird life here, the sea, the bush, to judge the seasons.”
He says the soil at Aotea would have been very different from the soil in the tropical homeland. There would have been much experimentation by this
talented gardener and scientist, who generously shared her knowledge and plants across the Tainui rohe.
The descendants of Whakaotirangi cherish her legacy. They want her work to be celebrated and understood by generations to come. It is hoped that the wāhi tapu listing will play a part in this.
The application came after hui more than two years ago at Mōkai Kāinga marae, near Hawaiki Iti, led by kaumātua Nick Tuwhangai. It was supported by Ngāti Patupō and Ngāti Te Wehi representatives, including Pita Te Ngaru, Chris Tuaupiki, Polly Uerata, Maxine Moana-Tuwhangai and Diane Bradshaw.
The listing report was researched and written by Isaac McIvor, a PhD candidate in Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato. He worked in consultation with Xavier Forde, who was at that time Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga team leader for listing Māori heritage sites.
Isaac has whānau connections to Ngāti Patupō. He learned about Hawaiki Iti and he and Pita Te Ngaru talked about what a wāhi tapu listing might mean for it; the mahi grew from there.
The 56.7-hectare site encompasses the extensive Hawaiki Iti swamp and the Kowiwi Stream. These days it is hard to imagine the bountiful gardens of Whakaotirangi: there are remnant clumps of wildling taro, and other natural resources such as harakeke, raupō, wātakirihi and ponga fern. Of the legendary kūmara there is no trace.
There are also archaeological remains in the form of pā, storage pits, ovens and middens, indicating the communities the land once supported. Some links endure: Diane Bradshaw says Hawaiki Iti taro is a delicacy served annually at the poukai at Ookapu marae of Ngāti Te Wehi.
Hawaiki Iti has long been part of a privately owned farm and it has felt the impacts of farming activity, forestation and erosion. For local iwi and hapū, the wāhi tapu listing offers greater opportunities for the protection of, consultation on and commitment to the wellbeing of the whenua.
Pita is particularly concerned about the area’s water quality and the depletion of taro stocks. This has spurred his support for the listing. He says about three or four years ago – using an informal arrangement of harvesting by local whānau – he went to Hawaiki Iti with his cousin, Maxine Moana-Tuwhangai, to look for taro. There was not a lot to be found, in marked contrast to its abundance in the late 1970s when he had harvested it as a child for his grandmother.
“This land has been growing taro and other resources for almost 700 years, and it could be gone in five minutes. We’ve eaten the taro and the watākirihi; our mokopuna may only ever hear stories about it. I don’t want that to happen.
"We don’t want to buy the land back, or claim it back, we want to protect it. It is about exercising our kaitiakitanga, our guardianship.”
He says the aim is to work with the owner and see how whānau can clean up the blackberry, preserve the area, preserve what is left of the taro and talk to surrounding farmers about how everyone can work together to improve the water quality. A trust could be established to care for the wāhi tapu, he says.
hapū: sub-tribe
harakeke: flax
kaitiaki: guardians
kete: woven basket
mauri: life force, essence
poukai: a series of annual visits by the Māori King to Kiingitanga
marae
raupō: bullrush
rohe: region, territory
tūpuna: ancestors
wātakirihi: watercress
whenua: land
Pita recalls his grandfather, Te Huia Te Ngaru, telling him how Hawaiki Iti was named – the story passing through many generations.
Whakaotirangi was living separately from her husband Hoturoa, who was elsewhere with his junior wife. When Whakaotirangi planted her kūmara gardens at Aotea, she wanted to show the flourishing crops to Hoturoa, but she knew he wouldn’t come if she simply sent for him. So she asked their son to visit him, and to say that she was near death: “E Hotu, kua tata mate a Te Oti. Oh Hotu, Te Oti is about to pass away”.
Hoturoa felt aroha for Whakaotirangi, so he went to visit her. When he arrived, he looked out upon the land and saw the huge kūmara crop that his principal wife had created in his absence. Overcome with emotion, he fell to his knees. It rekindled his love of Whakaotirangi, and they resolved their difficulties. It was at this place that their mauri came together again. What Hoturoa saw reminded him of his tropical homeland and he named the area Hawaiki Iti – Small Hawaiki.
The dream now, in 2021, is to repopulate Hawaiki Iti with taro and teach younger generations how to replant it, sustain it and make it flourish again. And honour the legacy of the remarkable Whakaotirangi.
LOCATION
The photograph of Waiuta on the front cover of the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero report is a knockout.
It was taken on a cellphone by Robyn Burgess, Senior Heritage Advisor for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, while visiting the site of the former goldmining town in the Upper Grey Valley, which was built around one of New Zealand’s most successful quartz mines.
The photograph, below, shows the chimney and foundations of a bowling green pavilion that was constructed on top of a flattened mullock heap around 1931.
Framed by a vast sky and a layered hinterland, the image references both the isolation and the social infrastructure
of Waiuta, a recently listed Category 1 historic place and once a tight-knit community of 600 people, which is now touted as the West Coast’s best ghost town.
Thanks to an early miner and his camera, the power of photography to speak of places and people is highly pertinent in recounting the Waiuta story.
Czech immigrant Joseph (Jos) Divis came to New Zealand in 1909 following a period of mining in Germany, and over time made Waiuta his home. In his unofficial role as resident photographerminer, he recorded a visual legacy of daily life in Waiuta from 1910 to the mid-1930s, when the town was bustling with activity.
Sam Symonds, Greymouthbased DOC Senior Ranger, says
Captured in time
the Divis photographic record is invaluable.
“The huge collection of photos is a real blessing, and those taken underground are amazing gems. Men in tough conditions, shirts off, smiling at the camera. They would have been blinded by the flash for a few seconds and then gone straight back to work.”
That those gritty scenes below ground ended so abruptly in the winter of 1951 sets Waiuta apart from other old goldmining towns.
It was an unlikely scenario, given the buoyant backdrop of what became the West Coast’s largest-producing goldmine owned by heavyweight player, London-based Consolidated Goldfields, which made a substantial investment in the
WORDS: ANN WARNOCK
The fortunes of West Coast goldmining town Waiuta changed in an instant, but tantalising clues to its once-thriving past remain
Waiuta is located on the West Coast of the South Island, 38km southeast of Reefton.
local mining operations and the development of the town.
And initially the good times rolled. Blackwater Mine, the first mineshaft at Waiuta, was fully operational by 1908, with gold being processed at the nearby gravity-fed and water-powered Snowy River Battery.
In the 1930s an adjacent shaft, Prohibition Mine – New Zealand’s deepest at nearly 900 metres (including 264 metres below sea level) – came into play.
The highly productive Prohibition Mine spurred advances in processing, and a modern ball mill (a type of grinder that was used to grind and blend ore), built close by, superseded the Snowy River Battery plant down the valley.
The leaps and bounds of Waiuta’s mining operation were mirrored in the life of the town.
Rudimentary housing became a permanent built environment with staff dwellings at so-called ‘Nob Hill’ and a large cluster of houses for miners and their families – one local road was even known as ‘Incubator Alley’.
Interestingly, Jos Divis’s photographs reveal that despite the strata of management and miners, the inhabitants of Waiuta mixed without social divide.
The township’s workforce came from the international mining community – including
Australians, British, Italians, Dalmatians and Danes – which meant the population was far from ordinary. So too were its abundant facilities – a swimming pool, bowling green, rugby field, whippet-racing track and tennis courts, plus sporting clubs, an enviable calendar of balls and picnics, and an ardent community atmosphere.
When Waiuta staged its jubilee in 1931, said to be the greatest event in its history, gold prices were rising and a sense of opportunity pervaded the town. Ironically, however, the story of Waiuta was already more than half over.
World War II recruitment triggered a decline in miner numbers, and the gold output from Waiuta plummeted to less than a third of its pre-war volume.
But despite the diminishing forces of war and yield, the end was still a shock.
In July 1951, when the original Blackwater Mine providing essential ventilation to underground workings suddenly collapsed, Consolidated Goldfields made a snap decision to close the mine.
One week it was a township, then three weeks later – with houses dismantled for timber or carted away and machinery sold, scrapped or abandoned – Waiuta had all but vanished.
By 1953 the town’s population stood at 14.
But Robyn says the place was not forgotten, and in the 1980s it became “an early draw for heritage tourism”.
The highly motivated group Friends of Waiuta, formed in 1985, now works in partnership with DOC to protect and promote the Waiuta site.
The ongoing restoration of several remaining cottages, historic-site clearance and ecology enhancement are on its trajectory.
A major decontamination programme in 2016 removed material containing arsenic – the result of gold extraction methods used at the Prohibition Mine site –from the area.
President of Friends of Waiuta Margaret Sadler, who lived in Waiuta until the age of four, says many of its members – some based overseas – are descendants of Waiuta miners. She says the group is propelled by “wanting to give others a window into this world”.
The recent commemorations marking the 70th year since the closure of the Blackwater Mine were, she says, “an emotional reunion”.
While only tantalising traces of the Waiuta way of life remain today, the town site continues to resonate.
“Waiuta has outstanding significance and value,” says Robyn. “Its historic mining and domestic features dotted around the valley might seem like a far cry from a bustling town within a noisy mine operation, but remarkably the former mine and town are still so readable, despite the loss of so many of the standing buildings.”
Beyond its physical presence in the isolated West Coast landscape, the poignancy of Waiuta endures.
Queensland-based Andrew Saunders, whose late father Alf started out in the Snowy River Battery in 1929 and moved to Australia when the mine closed, says, “Every time my father went back to New Zealand later in life, he visited Waiuta.
“I think it was the sudden way nearly everyone had to leave without any preparation for doing so – it left them with some longing for the place.”
In 2020 Waiuta became part of Tohu Whenua, a nationwide visitor programme that connects New Zealanders with their heritage and enhances a sense of national identity by promoting significant historical and cultural sites. To learn more about visiting Waiuta, read our domestic travel piece on page 44.
ORIGIN STORY
Andrew Brown has built a successful career immersed in New Zealand archaeology. So how did he get involved in the quest to unearth the secrets of the mysterious Stonehenge?
For Andrew (Andy) Brown, the opportunity to help uncover the secrets of one of the world’s most famous monuments started with a knock on his door.
Mike Parker Pearson, Stonehenge scholar and giant of the UK archaeology scene, is also famed for shouting students a beer. So when the University College London (UCL) Professor of British Later Prehistory called in to the Kiwi’s university office, the then-PhD student heeded the call and headed to the pub.
“We were having a beer and I said to Mike, ‘Do you have any digs on?’ because I’d been in the UK for more than a year and hadn’t done any digging, and really wanted to,” recalls Andy, now a Whangārei-based consultant archaeologist.
“He said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to Wales. Do you want to come?’”
That invitation led to Andy working a number of stints on the Stones of Stonehenge Project. Led by Mike and fellow project directors Colin Richards, Josh Pollard and Kate Welham, the project investigated the origins of the ancient monument and focused on its bluestones. It followed the Stonehenge Riverside Project – a major archaeological study of Stonehenge and its landscape, which ran from 2003 to 2009.
Stonehenge’s smaller bluestones (as opposed to its larger sarsens) originated in the Preseli Hills in Wales –around 230 kilometres away from where the monument stands today on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire. The Stones of Stonehenge Project – which drew on experts from a wide range of fields – aimed to locate the quarries from which the bluestones had been sourced. It also sought evidence to support the theory that the stones were actually part of an earlier monument erected much closer to their source, and later disassembled and re-erected in Wiltshire.
“The findings of the project really showed Stonehenge in a different light,” says Andy. “It was remodelled a number of times and the bluestones were always a part of it. When you start engaging with Stonehenge in that way, you see it much more as a living, changing monument.”
Stonehenge’s place of origin is a world away from Andy’s own – and far from the focus of his career.
Although instilled with a passion for history by his parents during his childhood on a farm just outside
Hāwera, Andy can’t recall an ‘aha’ moment when he realised archaeology was his calling.
“When I went to uni, it was to study archaeology; it wasn’t with a sense that I was going to be an archaeologist. I’d never met anyone who was an archaeologist, and more than a few people said to me, ‘How are you going to get a job doing that?’”
It was in his honours year at the University of Otago, when he joined a research group led by Richard Walter and Chris Jacomb looking at the first century of Māori settlement, that a fire was really lit.
“We did a number of excavations of early sites. I was always just one of the team, and I found it cool looking at things like ovens; and it’s not just one object, you can see from its features how a village might have been laid out and how people were living in that space.”
That work proved a launching point for his academic career. For his master’s degree he looked at changes in material culture in early Māori settlements in Otago, then explored the topic more widely – looking across New Zealand and incorporating other factors like demography – during his PhD at UCL, which is among the top three universities globally for archaeology.
“One area of my master’s that really interested me was how you account for changes in material culture. One of my particular areas of interest was evolutionary theory – thinking about how artefacts change in a way that’s analogous to genetics, where some characteristics are selected for, and others piggyback or change in frequency through random processes.
“Stephen Shennan, a professor at UCL, is a thought leader in this space, so I thought I’d be cheeky and send him an email. He said he’d be interested in supervising, and that’s how my PhD started.”
Andy’s research continued during three years of postdoctoral study at Bournemouth University as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow.
Work on the Stones of Stonehenge Project punctuated his time in the UK. Initially, while at UCL, he was involved in excavating two quarry sites – at Craig Rhos-y-felin and Carn Goedog in Wales – identified as sources of the bluestones.
Later, while at Bournemouth University, he helped supervise a large geophysical survey, led by Kate Welham, Professor of Archaeological Sciences, to identify possible original Stonehenge sites.
“The last year I was there we surveyed a site called Waun Mawn – a weather-beaten place on a Welsh hillside
Camp Waihi
– and we found some stone holes. The year after I left, they found more – and they’re fairly convinced that’s the location of the first erection of stones.”
In 2019 Andy returned to New Zealand from the UK. He now runs an archaeological consultancy, which, in association with Whakatāne-based archaeologist Lynda Walter, carries out projects spanning the upper North Island.
But connections made through the Stones of Stonehenge Project continue.
Josie Hagan joined the project as a first-year archaeology student of Kate Welham, and with an interest in New Zealand, she struck up a conversation with Andy at the pub after a day’s fieldwork.
The pair kept in touch, with Andy later supervising Josie’s undergraduate dissertation at Bournemouth University, where she investigated the suitability of using LIDAR, 3D laser scanning, to explore New Zealand archaeological sites.
Her interest in New Zealand archaeology piqued, Josie has since moved here, undertaking archaeology work for Lynda, and now doing her master’s degree at the University of Otago. Due to finish in March 2022, her project is combining cultural mapping with traditional archaeological methods at a land block just south of Gisborne, exploring how this can support the aspirations of the Māori landowners.
“As undergraduates, we don’t study New Zealand archaeology in the UK, so there was a lot to get my head around when I did my dissertation. But having Andy as my supervisor was brilliant, because he’s just so passionate about New Zealand archaeology,” says Josie.
“Now that I’m here, I feel like it’s a dream come true. It’s been a steep learning curve, but I can’t believe I’m actually here, that I have this job in archaeology, and how different my life is from two years ago.”
Likewise for Andy, the passion for the work continues.
“It’s such a cool job, and a good fit for my personality,” he explains. “You’re always in different situations and get to talk to everyone from CEOs to digger operators, explaining what you want to do and why.
“The nature of the job means you’re also often outside, digging and exploring. Then there’s the discovery aspect, where you’re right on the edge, interpreting something tactile that’s right in front of you.”
There are so many great places that I’ve had the privilege to go to and work at over the years, but in the end my favourite heritage place has to be somewhere in my turangawaewae – south Taranaki.
The place has so many layers of history, with sites from throughout the pre-European period, the New Zealand Wars and beyond into the agricultural period when so many, now disused, dairy factories sprang up.
The site I’d single out is Camp Waihi, south of Normanby and near where I grew up. The camp was the headquarters of the armed constabulary during the conflict with Tītokowaru; the redoubt’s ditches have been ploughed but are still just visible in the paddock. It is marked by a small, often overgrown cairn made of river boulders. On the ground below is the soldiers’ cemetery associated with the camp where many of the casualties from Te Ngutu o te Manu are buried alongside more recent burials.
Right next to the cemetery is Pikituroa Pā, which has a number of storage pits circled by a deep defensive ditch. Little is known about Māori occupation of the site, but its defences were re-used for a redoubt prior to the construction of Camp Waihi. What I love about this place is that it has all these aspects of history interacting within such a small area. n
THE SECRETS OF STONEHENGE
Findings from the Stonehenge Riverside Project and the Stones of Stonehenge Project form the basis of the Secrets of Stonehenge exhibition, which opens in December at Auckland Museum.
The exhibition – a collaboration between English Heritage, the National Trust, The Salisbury Museum and the Wiltshire Museum – features more than 300 ancient artefacts and shines a light on the cuttingedge research that has led to a new understanding of where, when, why and how Stonehenge was built.
As part of the exhibition programme, Auckland Museum is delivering a series of talks that will include presentations from UK-based Stonehenge experts, as well as Andy Brown – who’ll share more of his story of involvement with the Stones of Stonehenge Project – and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Chief Executive Andrew Coleman. For more information, visit www.aucklandmuseum.com
Taste MAKERS
Winemakers at an historic Te Kauwhata winery are proud to follow in the footsteps of the man credited with inspiring viticulturists in New Zealand 120 years ago
WORDS: VENETIA SHERSON • IMAGERY: PETER DRURY
Invivo winemaker Rob Cameron is not given to ostentation and hyperbole. He abhors wine snobs and the pretension that sometimes accompanies wine tasting. But put him in a dimly lit, cobweb-festooned room not much bigger than a double garage, where wines dating back more than half a century are having a lie-down, and he is in raptures.
“It’s like a library of wines,” he says, lifting from a rack a dusty Müller-Thurgau – a sweetish white wine popular in New Zealand in the 1960s. The contents would now be undrinkable, not only because of age, but also because New Zealanders’ tastes have matured. But Rob likes that it still has a place in the cellar.
In another room – a fermenting house dating back to 1903–4 – are huge concrete vats, the material of choice for European winemakers centuries before stainless steel tanks took over with their whizzy temperaturecontrol systems. In a third room – a vast, cool storehouse with lofty kauri ceilings – Rob’s smile broadens.
“My favourite place,” he says.
The room, which was the original wine cellar, is stacked with oval-shaped French oak barrels made from 200-year-old trees, some obtained as part of reparations from Germany after World War I.
“Each [barrel] tells a different story,” says the winemaker. He knows their provenance but remains in awe of their magic.
“They may look the same, but the results will still surprise you.”
It is in this cellar that Rob most feels the presence of his predecessor, the legendary and flamboyantly named 19th-century viticultural scientist Romeo Bragato – the man credited with assessing and inspiring the establishment of viticulture in New Zealand more than 120 years ago.
Bragato was based here for six years from 1902, often arriving late at night during the harvest with a supper of crackers, sardines, pickled olives and claret to oversee the mash.
He once wrote, “It is a fact beyond contention that – in wine-drinking countries – the people are amongst the most sober, contented and industrious on the face of the earth.” Rob thinks they would have got on well.
A Category 1 historic place, the winery occupies a small site on the edge of Te Kauwhata, formerly known as Wairangi (corrected to Waerenga in 1897), a European-style settlement established around a railway station in the 1870s.
1 Rob Cameron says Invivo’s winery is like a library of wines, recording New Zealanders’ maturing wine tastes through the decades.
2 The cellar is a dimly lit space that lays out the story of winemaking through the decades.
3 The winery complex on the outskirts of Te Kauwhata, where 19th-century viticulturist Romeo Bragato worked his early magic.
It is just four kilometres from Rangiriri, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Waikato Wars, in which British troops seized more than 400,000 hectares of prized and productive Waikato land. In 1893 the Ministry of Agriculture established the Waerenga Experimental Station to test the suitability of the clay soils for crops, including vines.
When Bragato first came to New Zealand in 1895, he was a long way from home. According to information available on the Waikato District Council website, Bragato was born in 1858 on an Adriatic Island then known as Lussin Piccilo – at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – and now known as Mali Losinj in Croatia. His parents were Italian, and he studied at the Royal School of Oenology in Conegliano in the province of Treviso, Italy.
Bragato was overseeing the establishment of the wine industry in Victoria, Australia, when New Zealand premier Richard Seddon, under intense pressure from farmer settlers who wanted to develop a wine industry, invited him here.
After Victoria’s state government agreed he could take leave, Bragato arrived in Bluff and made his way north, immediately identifying the potential for viticulture in areas that are today
“Each barrel tells a different story. They may look the same, but the results will still surprise you”
New Zealand’s leading wine-producing regions: Central Otago, Canterbury, Marlborough, Wairarapa (Martinborough), Hawke’s Bay and Auckland. He also visited the Waerenga station where grapes were then grown by the government pomologist, WJ Palmer.
Enthused by what he saw, in 1902 he accepted a position as the government viticulturist for the New Zealand Department of Agriculture, and set about improving the research station, including overseeing the construction of the Mediterranean-style concrete fermenting house and cellar, roofed with red tiles.
A further cellar was added later.
Bragato’s passion and enterprise (he introduced American rootstocks resistant to the pest phylloxera, which had destroyed French vineyards in the 1870s) were quickly recognised locally and internationally. While production methods were crude by today’s standards (the grapes were rubbed off stalks with wooden graters), the results were award winning.
In 1908, six wines were entered in the FrancoBritish wine exhibition. Five won gold medals. The path to success seemed assured.
But by 1908 the government and growers had become nervous. The New Zealand Temperance Union had gained traction and there was uncertainty about the industry’s future. Vineyard planting slowed and the viticulture division of the Department of Agriculture was disbanded.
Bragato’s bold ideas for expanding the wine industry languished in a dusty government drawer. Disillusioned, he left New Zealand for Canada. The research station remained in government hands until 1992 when it was sold into private ownership including – from 2003 – to Rongopai Wines.
Four years later it was bought by BAA Holdings, and subsequently occupied by TK Vintners and Bottlers, which had a connection with longstanding winemakers, the Babich family.
When the winery came up for lease in 2016, Rob Cameron was delighted.
“Bragato was a legend. The winery’s history sat well with our values. We want to carry on its legacy as a top winemaker.”
Rob and his business partner Tim Lightbourne are from different backgrounds, but like a good wine, their blend of skills has been successful. Rob’s family are winemakers at Mangawhai Heads. He was a consultant winemaker in Europe, but always intended to return to New Zealand to expand the family winery.
Tim has a commercial background and an entrepreneurial head. When they met for a drink at a bar in Fulham, London, in 2007, the idea of a winery with a difference was hatched. They decided not to invest in more grapes; “Others can do that better,” said Tim.
In 2008 they launched Invivo, which means ‘in life’, at the winery in Mangawhai. Eight years later they moved the business to Te Kauwhata.
1 Some of the wines stored are now undrinkable, but they still have their place at the complex.
2 The original buildings still house remnants of winemaking from earlier times.
3 The distilling equipment includes a large copper still, which was used to make brandy in the 1950s.
4 Huge concrete vats, painted red, stand in contrast to the stainless steel vats installed when technology advanced.
To learn more about Invivo, view our video story here: www.youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga
Their grapes are imported from other New Zealand regions. Rob does the alchemy; Tim does the pitch.
They have partnered with Irish television presenter Graham Norton (“He’s a great guy; loves our wine,” says Rob) and US actress Sarah Jessica Parker. Those names are on their brands and have helped gain the attention of UK and US markets.
Demand has now outstripped supply given a poor growing season last year, plus Covid-19-related supply issues. Despite this, Invivo is expanding, with plans for an extension to the winery in consultation with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
The winery contains many of the original fixtures, including the red-painted concrete wine vats, the still tower, distilling equipment and the oak barrels. There is a large copper still, which was used to make brandy in the 1950s.
In his listing report for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Senior Heritage Assessment Advisor Martin Jones says many elements of the complex, listed as Te Kauwhata Winery, are rare or unique in New Zealand.
“The complex is a reminder of government leadership in agricultural science and is the only
substantial remnant of the experimental farm established in the 1890s.”
It is also a reminder of the journey of winemaking in New Zealand. The gold medals won by the station during Bragato’s tenure were extraordinary for a young country still learning the techniques of winemaking. But the growth of the industry and the standard of wines have increased beyond perhaps even Bragato’s dreams.
Rob says in his lifetime New Zealand’s winemaking reputation has become incontrovertibly established and admired, not only in Old World wine regions that have traditions dating back hundreds of years but also around the world.
“It would be unusual not to find a New Zealand sauvignon blanc or pinot noir on the wine list of a top restaurant in the UK and US,” he says.
This year, Invivo and its partners won three gold medals and two trophies at the 2021 New York International Wine Awards. Romeo Bragato would have been impressed.
And while that dusty Müller-Thurgau may no longer appeal to today’s tastes, it’s still a sweet reminder of just how far we have come.
KEEPING THE FAITH
WORDS: MATT PHILP
Up and down the country, our historic churches are under threat. And while some communities are finding innovative ways to retain them, heritage losses are also mounting
If you want a snapshot of the perilous state of New Zealand’s historic churches, you only have to consult crowdsourcing site Givealittle.
“Our church is seriously in need of support from all who care about her,” implores the Givealittle page for the 144-year-old St Clement’s Church in the Far North, citing a repair estimate of $350,000.
Another page, for the 1906 St Paul’s Church in the Waipara district, outlines a $2 million quake-repair project to save that local landmark. In Hokitika, meanwhile, the friends of the town’s neoclassical St Mary’s Church recently ran a Givealittle campaign to raise funds for a second engineering opinion on a $7.12 million quake-strengthening estimate. The list goes on.
In Autumn 2012, Heritage New Zealand magazine ran an article called ‘Saving grace’, which pointed to dwindling congregations and ageing buildings with a growing maintenance load as among the reasons for churches being sold off or demolished. The late Stewart Harvey, then chair of the New Zealand Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust, described it as a quietly unfolding New Zealand tragedy.
2
1 The RA Lawsondesigned Presbyterian church at Kakanui is being renovated by its new owners.
Despite a dwindling congregation in recent years, the final service at the Kakanui church was standing room only. IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
“Quite a lot of these little country churches that are part of our history are being lost forever,” he said.
“They are sold off as holiday homes and sometimes moved off site, and the big tragedy of it is that everything inside the church goes – the pews, the plaques on the wall, the church furniture...”
Since then we’ve seen the advent of Givealittle and other crowdfunding sites, and some successful campaigns to restore high-profile churches. On the other hand, the challenges have also mounted, with the advent of more onerous earthquake-related standards and insurance companies’ growing reluctance to cover heritage buildings. The buildings and parishioners haven’t got any younger either.
Faced with all this, church authorities are increasingly making hard-nosed decisions to rationalise their property portfolios. The Catholic Archdiocese of Wellington, for example, last year announced the closure of two churches in rural Marlborough following a review of Mass numbers and other factors.
It’s a curate’s egg, in other words, with both wins and losses. But there are certainly signs that, rather than leaving it to congregants or divine intervention, some communities are stepping up to save their landmark
2
churches, which are often the finest examples of built heritage in smaller towns and have meaning beyond their religious roles.
Bill Edwards, Area Manager Northland for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, says he is seeing diverse approaches to the problem.
“One approach involves doing up a church and it continuing as a place of worship. A good example of that would be St Gabriel’s in Pawarenga.
“In some churches where the congregations have disappeared, they’ve been repurposed. An example there would be in Rawene, where we’ve been involved with the National Heritage Preservation Incentive Fund for a church that has been repurposed as an artists’ retreat.
“There’s a Catholic church called St Xavier’s that has been moved near Russell and has been repurposed as a place of celebration for marriages and so on. It’s still associated with ceremony and significance, just not in a religious framework.”
Bill also gives the example of the circa 1860 St James’ Church at McLeod Bay, Whangārei Heads. When the Presbyterian Church signalled it wanted to sell St James’, locals formed a trust and raised $40,000 to buy the land and building. It has subsequently been turned into a
multi-denominational place of worship, and is available to the public for marriages, funerals and other ceremonies.
At Te Kōpuru, near Dargaville, the Category 2-listed 1902 Anglican St Peter’s Church was recently restored using $162,000 from the Provincial Growth Fund. The Chair of St Peter’s Church, Viv Biddles, says the alternative of raising the sum required locally in a community such as hers wasn’t realistic.
“I put a quiz on once a year and we have the odd potluck dinner in the hall, but if you make $1,500 from a fundraiser, you’re doing really well,” she says, adding that the restoration of the church “has given our community a lot of pride and mana”.
Another success story is St David’s Memorial Church, on Khyber Pass Road in Auckland (see ‘Art and minds’, Heritage New Zealand magazine, Winter 2020). Built in 1927 as a memorial to World War I soldiers, the church was put up for sale earlier this year by the Presbyterian Church Property Trustees, which cited as the reason declining attendance and the prohibitive cost of some required earthquake strengthening.
After an initial national campaign raised $1 million by selling bronze quatrefoils gifted by artist Max Gimblett, subsequent fundraising efforts from the sale
1 Viv Biddles (right) and Kaye Welch, who spent considerable time organising the funding required for the restoration of St Peter’s Church at Te Kōpuru, near Dargaville.
IMAGE: JESS BURGES
2 A structural engineer’s report has put the cost of repairing St Clement’s Church in the Far North at $350,000.
IMAGE: LENNOX GOODHUE WIKITERA
3 The newly restored interior of St Peter’s Church.
IMAGE: JESS BURGES
of commemorative pins designed by jewellery artist Warwick Freeman and through donations, community charity The Friends of St David’s Trust is now in the process of purchasing the church (from the successful buyer of the wider St David’s site) and intends to restore the church and repurpose it as a music centre.
Paul Baragwanath, the group’s founder, says St David’s needn’t have been threatened at all, and that church organisations are being too hasty in quitting their buildings. They need to think more creatively about repurposing them for ongoing roles, he says, lamenting the loss of such “sacred spaces” to private development.
“When a church changes from being a civic space to being a private dwelling or office space, that’s a major loss for society,” he remarks.
“It’s important to have these spaces where human beings can connect and be uplifted and sustained. You can’t underestimate the importance of it for a healthy society.”
There’s something of that thinking in Anna Miles’ and Michael Simpson’s approach to the little 152-year-old church they own in Kakanui – albeit on a humbler scale.
The RA Lawson-designed church featured in the ‘Saving grace’ story as one at risk of closing, being beset by rot and with a tiny congregation unable to pay for repairs. It limped on until Anna and Michael, owners of a horse-breeding operation at nearby Waimate and lovers of heritage, bought it in 2019.
They didn’t have any firm plan, according to Michael. “We just thought we could save it, so we should try. The building needs life in it. We hope that if we restore it and don’t carve it up, we’ll secure its future to be used for things like weddings, or gigs and exhibitions, or if the church wants to hold a service. It’s keeping all the options open.”
They’ve been doing the restoration work themselves at weekends and in other spare moments, initially focused on fixing the roof to keep out rain and birds and tackling areas of rot. New weatherboards will go on this summer.
“When we’re there we open the big double doors at the front and make it welcoming for people to come in,” says Anna, who adds that they plan to nominate the building for heritage listing.
“We’ve talked to so many people who’ve shared their ties with the building, and through that we’ve realised how important the church is to them – we’re just the stewards of it for the moment.”
The rescue at Kakanui is a good news story, as are the others mentioned previously. But there are at least as many losses in the ledger – churches sold or bowled to the dismay not only of congregants but often of their communities.
2
In some cases church owners are being challenged on their calls. In Dunedin, for example, the announcement in 2019 of parish plans to demolish the nearly 100-year-old Highgate Presbyterian Church sparked a petition from residents, an appeal by parishioners and the commissioning by campaigners of a new seismic assessment of the building.
Raumati • Summer 2021
we would not have been able to undertake the postquake work we have,” he says.
However, apart from the various quake-recovery funds, which have now closed, no new funding avenues of any significance have arisen since 2012. Meanwhile, seismic strengthening deadlines are looming, says Gavin, adding that under current rules the CPT can’t access government funding for that work.
1 New weatherboards are about to go on at Kakanui.
2 New owners of the Kakanui church Anna Miles and Michael Simpson: “We just thought we could save it, so we should try.”
3 The roof of the church has been bird- and weatherproofed ahead of a larger restoration.
IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
There’s certainly an argument to be made that in some cases owners are being too hasty. But that only goes so far. In ‘Saving grace’, the then assembly executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church pointed out that Dunedin’s magnificent First Church was arguably of national significance, certainly of huge historic significance to Dunedin, yet the cost of its upkeep was falling entirely on the shoulders of a small congregation. Some high-profile churches, such as Auckland’s St Matthew-in-the-City, have generated income by hiring out spaces for corporate events, but that’s not an option for everyone.
Funding church restoration and seismic strengthening is a major challenge, says Gavin Holley, General Manager of the Church Property Trustees (CPT), the body that manages the assets of the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch.
After the Canterbury earthquakes, the CPT repaired and in many cases restored 34 earthquake-damaged, heritage-listed churches and halls, supported by funding sources such as the Christchurch Earthquake Heritage Buildings Trust and Christchurch City Council heritage funding.
“We also remain incredibly grateful to the Lottery Environment and Heritage Committee, without which
“The biggest challenge, however, is that earthquake [natural disaster] insurance is unaffordable for all but a few of our churches.”
In Wellington, where 25 Catholic churches have been deemed earthquake risks, the prominently located 1908 St Gerard’s Church and Monastery in Mt Victoria closed its doors this year after the owners failed to raise the estimated $10 million to get it strengthened.
Felicity Wong, Chair of Historic Places Wellington, says there’s been some talk recently that the iconic building above Oriental Parade could be turned into a hotel. While that’s certainly better than losing it, it’s not ideal.
“What we have to grapple with is how we repurpose buildings that were built by the public for [public] purposes,” says Felicity, who believes public money should be used in the case of St Gerard’s.
That doesn’t go for all threatened churches, however.
“I think it’s a question of focusing on the ones that are really iconic, putting our eggs in fewer baskets, and then trying to broaden out the usage,” she says.
“That means collaboration between the religious orders and communities, so we can find modern, vital purposes beyond the religious constraints of these buildings.”
WORDS AND IMAGE: MARTIN SLIVA
Touching base
My friends live in an old Norwegian house on Rakiura/Stewart Island. On one of my trips to Rakiura, I rented a kayak to explore the history of Kaipipi Shipyard (often referred to as ‘the Whalers’ Base’) at Paterson Inlet.
Founded in 1923, the Kaipipi Shipyard was a repair base for Norway's Rosshavet (Ross Sea) Whaling Company, while also providing a base for the whalers who operated in the Antarctic waters.
TECHNICAL DATA
Camera: Sony Alpha A55V
Exposure: 1/50sec at f/11
Focal Length: 12mm (x1.5)
Lens: Sigma 10–20mm F3.5
Dream BIG
A little over four years ago, a Nelson couple took on a heritage restoration of epic proportions. Now, more than halfway through the project – undertaken largely by themselves – we check in on progress at The Gables
WORDS: TRACY NEAL • IMAGERY: VIRGINIA WOOLF
It had once been a grand home. More recently, however, The Gables had stood as a crumbling monument to the dreams and ambitions of Nelson’s early European settlers.
The 400-square-metre brick-and-plaster building, sited beneath the rolling hills of Waimea West, near Nelson, was certainly on its last legs when Keith and Lorraine Davis first noticed it in 2005, while on holiday from the UK.
Says Keith: “Every time we went down Waimea West Road, we’d always slow down – much like everyone else who slows down to take a look at this house.”
But it was less the building’s decayed state and more its distinctly British bones that caught the couple’s attention.
The Gables – built from bricks that were dug, prepared and then fired on the site – is modelled on a home in Suffolk, England, from where the original owner, John Palmer, came. The entrepreneur arrived in Nelson on the barque Phoebe in March 1843, building The Gables in 1865 as a family home and later operating it as a store and accommodation house and as a base for his carrying business.
Alison Dangerfield, Central Region Area Manager for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, says the distinctive building, believed to have been designed by James Thorn, who signed the specifications for the building, is one of only a few of its style in New Zealand.
Chasing the dream
That holiday in 2005 convinced the Davises to move to New Zealand. They returned to the UK, sold up their building industry businesses, and farewelled the stress of busy lives. They admit it was a gamble.
Keith’s multiple gas-fitter qualifications weren’t recognised by New Zealand authorities, but a job offer on his arrival got them over the residency line.
They bought in to the Kiwi dream – initially in the form of a property in the Motueka area and a holiday home in the Marlborough Sounds – but the dream was not complete.
One day in September 2017, on another slow drive past The Gables, Keith noticed a small ‘For sale’ sign on the building, and within days it was theirs.
“I think the house drew us here,” says Lorraine, a firm believer that the spirits of long-dead former occupants beckoned them to the building. She and Keith suspect these spirits are manifested in the silent coloured orbs that occasionally bounce around rooms as they work.
A neighbouring bungalow bought by Keith’s father served as a base while they began the rebuild, which was delayed by a decline in the health of Keith’s father, and his subsequent death.
The bungalow was then sold, and Keith and Lorraine moved into The Gables in January 2020. The house had no bathroom and no running water, and rats were living in nests throughout its decaying scrim and sarking walls and ceilings.
“I’ve since taken six rats’ nests out of the roof of one room – I had six dustbins full of rat crap and more than a century’s worth of dust to deal with,” says Keith.
Work in progress
Alongside his experience as a gas service engineer, Keith trained in many other aspects of the construction trade and has undertaken most of the work himself. He has approached the colossal renovation “gable by gable” from a 60-page plan he drafted near the beginning of the process.
“The way I look at it, each room is really its own house. In simple terms, it’s segmented into six boxes downstairs and six upstairs, with a staircase and hallways.”
The east-facing lean-to, which now houses a stylish kitchen and living area complete with a butler’s pantry and laundry, was the first section of the house made habitable.
1 The Gables’ long-sealed doorways have been reopened to reveal an original, well-worn wooden staircase that once led to the maids’ quarters.
2 Owners and restorers Keith and Lorraine Davis outside the cedar-clad lean-to, which houses a new kitchen and living area.
The cedar-clad weatherboard exterior now offsets white joinery made in the original, traditional colonial style. The rest of the home’s plaster exterior has been freshly painted in the heritage colour ‘Butter Yellow’.
Keith says a major milestone has been redoing the floors. Records show that although the base runners were mataī, borer had destroyed the floors, which were made largely of kahikatea, and poor ventilation at ground level had caused wet rot.
He says the challenges have been less about the physical work than higher-than-expected costs – and finding an expert who can craft the classical Egg and Dart plaster cornices to the standard required.
“It’s a traditional English build so it didn’t frighten us at all. I knew all the floors upstairs and down were knackered when we bought it. I knew all we’d have was an east wall and a west wall, and a couple of internal walls holding them together.”
Realising the vision
The grandson of the building’s original owner, a Nelson businessman and horticulturist also named John Palmer, still farms part of the original land at Waimea West. He says he is delighted to see this significant and important restoration going ahead.
“To see someone doing this is just fantastic. There wasn’t the capacity within the family to do it, but Keith is doing a tremendous job.”
John says he and his cousin, former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who had earlier investigated ways to salvage the building, had calculated restoration costs at several million dollars.
The restoration of the Category 1 building has been supported by two grants from the National Heritage
Preservation Incentive Fund, which provides incentives to encourage the conservation of privately owned heritage places recognised on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero.
Alison Dangerfield says the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Board, which allocates the funding, did not place onerous requirements on the rebuild. The aim was to achieve the best possible outcome and the grants were given as a helping hand.
A RESTORATION IN PROGRESS
When the Davises took ownership of The Gables, its north and south exterior walls had bulged and were close to collapse. Keith says the north wall had pulled away from the building by 75mm, and the south wall by 50mm, most likely due to the weight of the original slate roof.
1 Keith approached the renovation from a 60-page plan he drafted.
2 Each room is being stripped and relined.
3 The Gables is now freshly painted in heritage colour Butter Yellow.
4 A stylish new kitchen is a central feature of the lean-to.
5 One of several newly renovated lounges.
6 With its dormer attic interior, an upstairs master bedroom is reminiscent of a cosy English cottage.
7 Keith has expertly tiled the ensuite bathrooms that will complete each bedroom renovation.
“A project involving a building of this age and complexity is huge and involves so many processes.”
She says the building is well known throughout the NelsonTasman region and there is a high level of enthusiasm for its revival. “It will be a joy to look at once it is completed.”
Keith says that is likely still a couple of years away. The home has been reroofed, work on the north gable is almost finished, and the focus is now on the south gable before moving on to the middle gable.
He credits Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga for guiding the process in a way that respects not only the cultural necessity to preserve our heritage but also the couple’s own capabilities and knowledge as renovators in a foreign land.
Keith and Lorraine envisage The Gables again becoming a family home, but they are also thinking ahead to its potential use as accommodation.
While they haven’t once regretted taking on the project, Lorraine admits that the dust, which still manages to seep through sealed doorways cloaked in sheets, can be trying.
Keith says he is enjoying being occupied by the project, but when it gets a bit much they pack up and go fishing. His single piece of advice to anyone thinking of taking on a similar project is to make sure you have either the expertise to do most of it yourself or seriously deep pockets.
The final stage of what will likely be a five-year project will be landscaping, after which The Gables – and its ghosts –can rest easy.
David Vanstone, who owned The Gables from 2000 to 2003, had secured the walls with six tie rods running the length of the building. One of Keith’s first jobs was to remove the failing walls and rebuild them in concrete block, plastered over, with outlines etched into them to replicate the original ashlar masonry.
The floors downstairs are being rebuilt with hardfill and overlaid with reinforced concrete, insulation and a floating timber floor of imported oak. Tradespeople have been employed to help with the concrete flooring and some of the building work.
Each room is stripped back to accommodate electrical cabling and insulation before being relined in GIB plasterboard.
Upstairs, the floors are being entirely rebuilt before work can commence on the ceilings and walls.
Custom-made wooden joinery has replaced many of the rotten window frames. Keith says it was a major mission, but made easier by the expertise of their joiner, who is familiar with the irregularities of old houses.
The installation of new services required oversight by iwi and an archaeologist. The property required new drains, rainwater tanks and a septic field of a size suitable for a property with six bedrooms, each with an ensuite, or a 12-person home.
Long-sealed doorways have also been reopened to let in more light to the building’s core, and to showcase a well-worn wooden staircase that once led upstairs to the maids’ quarters. n
THE ONGOING PROMISE
In the lead-up to Waitangi Day 2022, two of those charged with overseeing one of our most important historic sites reflect on their connections to the Waitangi National Trust estate
WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGERY: ERICA SINCLAIR AND JESS BURGES
Nga wai hono i te po Paki, Waitangi National Trust board member since 2020
Commemorations for New Zealand’s national day are known to start early. But for Nga wai hono i te po Paki, a particularly memorable Waitangi Day started earlier than most.
“It was 2009, when I was around 12 years old, and I remember getting up at what felt like 3am a day or two before Waitangi Day and heading down to Tūrangawaewae Marae for karakia and to prepare the waka taua,” she recalls.
“It was my father’s first visit to Waitangi after being anointed King, and six waka taua, more than 200 paddlers, and more than four busloads of us travelled from Waikato to Waitangi alongside him. It was a huge kaupapa – unforgettable.”
The daughter of the Māori King, Kiingi Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII, Nga wai is the most recent appointee to the Waitangi National Trust Board, but
her connections to it stretch back generations and beyond its origins.
She picks up the thread of connection in the 1850s with the formation of the Kiingitanga itself, a movement founded on a principle, amongst others, of kotahitanga – to unite iwi across the motu. When the trust was established in 1932, the Māori King was among its first members, and the board position now held by Nga wai – representing the Māori people living south of Auckland in the North Island – went on to be occupied alternately by members of the kāhui ariki and the Te Heuheu lineage.
“I feel this is an important role, and it represents a lot of people. I’m using it as an opportunity to learn and create different ways of connecting people – much like our tīpuna and absolutely aligned with that notion of kotahitanga.”
While helping to direct the care and preservation of one of the nation’s most important historic sites is part of her role on the Waitangi National Trust Board, Nga wai says heritage preservation is a strong theme running through her wider mahi.
Her main day job is overseeing the Kiingitanga collection, which contains more than 3,000 taonga.
“We have taiaha, patu, whāriki, korowai, diaries dating back to the 1800s, chandeliers, gifts from across the Pacific – it’s a vast array. These taonga contain significant kōrero and heritage that pertains not only to Waikato but also across the motu and the wider Pacific, and we want to capture and share that.”
She and her partner also own a business that offers tours of the Waikato Wars battle site of Rangiriri, which they have run for more than three years. And she is a highly experienced kapa haka tutor.
“I’m very involved in my culture and my heritage. It’s how I’ve been brought up, it’s who I am, and it’s how I choose to live.”
At 25 years old, Nga wai is the youngest member of the Waitangi National Trust Board. She says she’s grateful for the support she’s received as its newest member, but that her youth is also an asset.
“My hope is that I can bring the views of my generation to the board and that future focus will influence the board’s decisions in how we care for the land.
“Prior to coming into this position, I really didn’t know much about what the Waitangi National Trust did, or that there was this huge estate at Waitangi that belongs to the nation. So I’d really like to look at how we can raise the profile of the trust and its kaupapa, particularly among my generation, because it’s a nationwide kaupapa, and an important one.”
While a Covid-19 scare meant she wasn’t able to travel to the Waitangi Day 2021 commemorations, Nga wai says she’s hoping to be there in 2022.
“I definitely see myself participating in all the traditional events of Waitangi Day, and immersing myself in the experience. I’ve been brought up surrounded by my culture, I thrive on it, it’s who I am, so being involved in the day will be another way for me to recharge my batteries.”
Nga wai hono i te po Paki oversees the Kiingitanga collection, which contains more than 3,000 taonga.
Pita Tipene, Waitangi National Trust board
member since 2016 and chair since 2018
The vast body of water surrounding the Waitangi National Trust estate is but a trickle where the Taumarere catchment begins at Mōtatau, the home of Pita Tipene.
But the small Northland community has very close connections, explains Pita, to Te Pitowhenua/the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and particularly one of its most iconic buildings –Te Whare Rūnanga.
In the years leading up to the 1940 centenary of the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi, the MP for Northern Māori Tau Hēnare, of Mōtatau, and Minister of Māori Affairs Sir Apirana Ngata proposed the construction of Te Whare Rūnanga as one of the contributions to the centenary commemorations.
Te Whare Rūnanga was to stand next to the Treaty House as a tangible symbol of partnership and nationhood.
“Those leaders asked our Ngāti Hine people to mobilise and provide the timber, so people like my dad, Kohekohe Tipene, set about the task. There are even photos of my dad pit-sawing the timber,” says Pita.
“They cut the timber into slabs, which were taken to our marae at Mōtatau where they were prepared and fashioned by carvers commissioned by Ngata, who had brought them up from Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, and several were even from Rarotonga.
“All of the carvers stayed on site at our marae and were taken care of by the local people in the six years leading up to the centennial in February 1940.
“I remember sitting around the table as a child hearing these stories; as you get older you see things with greater depth and understanding as to why our grandparents, aunts and uncles did what they did. I sit in that whare now and look at those carvings and go ‘āe mārika! [amazing!]’.”
As a descendant of Ngāti Hine rangatira Kawiti, Pita has been on the board as a trustee since 2016 and became its chair in 2018. The tohu of Kawiti is found at the very top of the treaty, despite his not signing on 6 February 1840 – instead getting his two
sons to sign as a type of limited concurrence. He signed later, on 13 May 1840, and within five years saw that the treaty was not being upheld so, together with Hone Heke and other rangatira, waged war on the British forces and their Māori allies.
It’s a legacy, says Pita, that still resonates strongly today and drives him in his role as chair. He points to ‘Te Tangi o Kawiti’ – the well-known lament delivered by Kawiti in January 1846, following the battle of Ruapekapeka – and in particular a line Pita translates as “Look to the horizons of the sea”.
“It was a metaphor,” explains Pita, “for always maintaining a global orientation, remaining strategic and staying optimistic, and we hold tight to those words.
“The mission statement of the Waitangi National Trust Board is ‘To illustrate the ongoing promise of Waitangi to the world’. That kaupapa means everything we do here needs to illustrate the promise, which is Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and
importantly where we’re going as a nation.”
In the tradition of the foresight exemplified by Hēnare and Ngata, conversations about how the promise of Te Tiriti o Waitangi will be illustrated to the world now and as we approach 2040 are already happening.
It’s an important opportunity, he says, because the bicentennial represents a symbolic time to reflect on the nature and state of our nationhood. He also emphasises the important role the trust plays in upholding the intangible values of the estate.
“When people think about Waitangi, they tend to think about the Treaty Grounds only. But it’s actually a 506-hectare estate, and we need to manage that in a way that is balanced and fits with the wairua, the spirit, of the land.
“Many people, when they come here, find solace just through walking in the bush. As the guardians of a national treasure, we have a huge responsibility to protect that.”
kāhui ariki: royal family karakia: prayers, blessings kaupapa: mission korowai: cloaks kotahitanga: unity, solidarity mahi: work motu: land, country patu: weapons, clubs rangatira: chief taiaha: long wooden weapons taonga: treasures, prized things tīpuna: ancestors tohu: signature, mark waka taua: war canoes whāriki: floor coverings
WHERE WE STAND
It’s the place where some of the most momentous events in New Zealand’s history occurred: the choosing of the first national flag, Te Kara o Te Whakaminenga o Nga Hapu o Nu Tireni, in 1834; the signing of He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tīreni/ The Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand in 1835; and the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840.
Te Pitowhenua/the Waitangi Treaty Grounds – the first to be named a Tohu Whenua in 2019 – is one of our most nationally
significant historic sites and part of a wider 506-hectare estate that is administered by the Waitangi National Trust.
The trust was established by an Act of Government in 1932, after the estate was gifted to the nation by then Governor General and his wife, Lord and Lady Bledisloe. A century on from the appointment of the first British Resident, James Busby, who was housed at Waitangi, one of the trust’s first priorities was the conservation and restoration of Busby’s house, which was renamed the Treaty House.
The Waitangi National Trust comprises descendants and representatives of those directly associated with the site, including signatories to the treaty.
The members of the trust have cared for and preserved the site over time in order to tell the story of our nation.
The carved meeting house Te Whare Rūnanga, which stands facing the Treaty House – symbolising the partnership between Māori and the Crown –was opened on the centenary of the signing of the treaty; visitors can also see the ceremonial war
canoe Ngātokimatawhaorua, built to mark the centenary. More recently the estate has become home to Te Kōngahu Museum of Waitangi, which opened in 2016 to tell stories of the historic site and share taonga associated with it.
On Waitangi Day 2020, Te Rau Aroha was opened.
The museum honours Māori members of the armed services, with one of its three galleries dedicated to members of the 28th (Māori) Battalion’s A Company, most of whom came from Northland. n
With PRIDE
For 181 years the site of what is now the Thistle Inn (‘the Thistle’), in downtown Wellington, has hummed with conversation and companionship, and would have done so well before, given its proximity to Pipitea Pā.
Today its warm wooden interior continues to welcome a regular clientele, sipping pints and enjoying the atmosphere of a place that holds many memories within its walls – as well as one, quite literally, on the wall.
In 1907, the now internationally renowned writer Katherine Mansfield set a short story called Leves Amores in the Thistle, which enigmatically began: “I can never forget the Thistle hotel. I can never forget that strange winter night”.
A
new project is seeing queer histories find their places in the New Zealand Heritage List/ Rārangi Kōrero
The story went undiscovered until it was found among the papers of her former Oxford schoolmate, Vere Bartrick-Baker, and published in the appendix of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Mansfield, A Secret Life, in 1988.
A framed version of the story now hangs on the Thistle’s dining-room wall, and its existence continues to affect the way the history of the inn is told today.
Reading the story while in the pub is to experience a kind of time travel, as the imagined atmosphere of an old hotel in the early 1900s comes vividly to life inside the Thistle of 2021.
But it’s the story’s evocation of another kind of atmosphere that qualified the place as an
WORDS: ANNA KNOX • IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
early candidate for the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Rainbow List Project, which aims to recognise sites of significance to New Zealand’s queer communities. The thinly disguised romantic lesbian encounter that Mansfield so brilliantly described has long been known to scholars of queer histories.
The Rainbow List Project now puts that unique part of the Thistle’s history on the official record.
The Thistle Inn that stands in downtown Wellington today is not the original, which was opened in October 1840 and burned down in 1866. The new structure, erected the same year over the 1840 basement, which is still used today and can be seen through a section of glass flooring in front of the fireplace, is a now rare example of a mid-19th-century timber commercial building and has outstanding historical significance as one of the oldest hotels still operating in New Zealand.
“It’s the oldest continuously licensed hotel still operating today,” argues the pub’s current owner, Lyn Middleditch. Although other premises around the country also make that claim, Lyn points out that it’s the continuous licence that matters.
“They put a tent up when it burned down in 1866, and kept serving people,” she explains.
Lyn and her partner George bought the building in 2002 on something of a whim, although growing up in Wellington she would often walk by it on her way to the Thorndon Baths (now Thorndon Pool). She recalls the smell of the brewery, which she says was quite beautiful.
“One night in 2002, we were walking past with a friend who was a land agent, and I said, ‘If that ever comes up for sale, I’ll buy it’. That was on the Saturday, and we bought it on the Monday. I hadn’t been inside.”
And when she did?
“It was completely wrecked. The place was a mess. There were no gutters, no downpipes or anything. The walls were dripping inside.”
Extensive renovations that aimed to return the place to its former glory took two years to complete. The interior today is beautifully upkept, the wood shining, the paintwork regulary freshened.
“We just wanted to put it back to how it was in 1866,” says Lyn. “We got as close as we could in every detail.”
A wing designed by prominent local architect Thomas Turnbull and added to the west side of
1 Kerryn Pollock is leading the Rainbow List Project, in which Wellington’s Thistle Inn is one of the first listings to be updated.
2 A copy of the story Leves Amores by Katherine Mansfield is framed on the wall of the dining room.
3 The dining room features a collection of photos of other historical Wellington pubs, most of which no longer exist, plus historical Wellington scenes.
4 Kerryn outside the Katherine Mansfield Room, which business owner and manager Richard Walshe is establishing upstairs at the Thistle, featuring photos of and information about the writer’s life and work.
2
“I’d love to get nominations for places where the queer history is really significant and forms a major part of the heritage value”
1 The former home of Carmen Rupe’s ‘Carmen’s Curios’ on Cuba Street in Wellington.
3 St Andrews on The Terrace in Wellington.
the building in 1896–7 remains, but all subsequent modifications were stripped in the renovation, and the TAB and pokies removed.
While not directly involved in the listing update, Lyn is supportive of the Thistle’s inclusion on the Rainbow List in relation to the Katherine Mansfield story, even though the Thistle’s established history isn’t one of queer encounters.
However, she adds, “There were the rooms upstairs, tiny narrow rooms, sixpence a night. No one knows what went on there really, I suppose.”
It is one of those rooms, exactly, that is described in Leves Amores: “So I looked round at the dreary room. The one filthy window faced the street. She could see the choked dust-grimed window of a wash-house opposite. For furniture the room contained a low bed, draped with revolting, yellow, vine-patterned curtains, a chair, a wardrobe with a piece of cracked mirror attached, a washstand. But the wallpaper hurt me physically. It hung in tattered strips from the wall.”
Including queer histories as part of the official record is the primary motivation behind the Rainbow List Project.
“Many people and places have queer histories that have not been recognised because of legal and social prejudice,” says Kerryn Pollock, Senior Heritage Assessment Advisor at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, who is leading the project.
“There really is no excuse for us not to be telling these stories in the 21st century. They present us with an exciting opportunity to normalise queer history and ensure the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero is more diverse in its representation.”
The project came about when Kerryn’s colleague Meighen Katz went on a queer heritage tour run by Gareth Watkin during Wellington’s Architecture Week in 2019.
“There were lots of buildings and sites, of which some were listed and some weren’t – 288 Cuba Street, once the home of Carmen’s Curios, was one.”
Meighen realised there was no record of the transgender icon Carmen Rupe in the listing report (List No. 5349), which was then updated to include the Carmen story as a pilot for a proposed Rainbow List Project. The Rainbow List currently has six completed updates with more to come.
As well as these updates, Kerryn wants to add entirely new sites to the New Zealand Heritage List/ Rārangi Kōrero, where queer history forms a major part of the heritage value.
“These updates, where we add a part of a story to a listing report, are great. But I’d love to get nominations for places where the queer history is really significant and forms a major part of the heritage value,” she says, citing the Stonewall Inn in New York as an example of a heritage place listed because of its importance in the queer civil rights movement.
“Are there places associated with the homosexual law reform movement in Aotearoa New Zealand that can be listed? I want to know!”
2 3
The six listings already upgraded as part of the Rainbow List Project are: the Thistle Inn (List No. 1439), St Andrew’s on the Terrace (List No. 3571), Carmen’s Curios (List No. 5349) and Lilburn House (List No. 7645) in Wellington; Rewi Alley’s House (List No. 5448) in Taranaki; and Glenaven Methodist Church (List No. 3371) in Dunedin
Heritage listings updated or included on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero are always supported by scholarship and strong evidence, and the criteria of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014 must be met.
All information updates and new List entries must be supported by a good amount of reliable evidence, says Kerryn.
“We do an assessment to see if there’s enough evidence to go and do the proper research, and then we do that research. It’s the exact same process we have for any other listing.”
Kerryn emphasises that Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga is not in the business of outing anyone.
“The overarching principle is that we are not ‘firstouters’ and that we base our list updates and additions on reputable scholarship and evidence.”
In Mansfield’s case, of course, no outing was required. She is now a well-established figure in queer history, both in New Zealand and internationally, although she wasn’t when she wrote the story, at just 19 years of age, when the Thistle itself was just 67.
While the hotel still stands, Mansfield died tragically young, at 34, leaving a great legacy of literature. That includes the enduring, imaginative words that have preserved a memory of the Thistle Inn as it was in 1907 and have also inadvertently created a unique site of queer heritage.
In turn, the more prosaic words on the entry for List No. 1439 are helping to preserve that.
You can read the full Katherine Mansfield story, Leves Amores, here: https://bokship.files.wordpress. com/2012/02/katherine-mansfield.pdf.
WHEN IN Waiuta
The story of Waiuta is extraordinary. Built around the most successful gold-producing mine on the West Coast, the township all but vanished over three weeks in 1951 after 45 years. Off the beaten track, it’s described as the ‘real deal’ for those wanting to learn more about the mining history of the remote West Coast
Snapshot
Waiuta is located between Reefton and Greymouth in the rohe of Ngāti Waewae. It’s a 40-minute drive from Reefton or a one-hour drive from Greymouth. As you near Waiuta, you drive through rainforest and beech trees.
In 2020 Waiuta was given Tohu Whenua status (Tohu Whenua is a visitor programme connecting New Zealanders with unique heritage sites).
In 2021 Waiuta was recognised as a Category 1 historic place.
DOC manages the 63-hectare site. There is a bookable lodge at Waiuta that sleeps 24 people: doc.govt.nz
Other accommodation close to Waiuta can be found at the Ikamatua Hotel, or in Reefton.
You can’t camp at Waiuta, but you can stay in a fully self-contained campervan. Waiuta is best explored on foot, but several tracks are suitable for bikes.
There is cellphone coverage in the vicinity of the main carpark at the Blackwater Mine and at Waiuta Lodge.
What to take
A good map of the area and the Waiuta site, which is available from i-SITE centres in Greymouth and Reefton.
Good walking shoes and plenty of warm clothing.
Travellers heading to Waiuta from Greymouth can pick up provisions at the store in the small village of Ikamatua, located about 25 minutes from Waiuta. Travellers heading to Waiuta from Reefton should stock up in Reefton.
WORDS: ANN WARNOCK • IMAGERY: CLAUDIA BABIRAT
Must dos
The former Blackwater School (1913) on the road into Waiuta offers an insight into past school life with its original desks and inkwells.
Walk the easy loop track around Waiuta, taking in the Blackwater Mine and what’s left of the town’s surprising amenities, including a rugby field with posts intact, a bowling green, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a series of cottages, a barber shop and a police lock-up.
Walk, bike or drive up to Prohibition Hill to appreciate the scale of the landscape with the Southern Alps/ Paparoa Range in view, and connect with the ruins of the mine and a ball mill (a type of grinder that was used to grind and blend ore).
Walk to the Snowy River Battery site via a 2.5-hour steep return track.
Hike the 11-kilometre Big River Track from Waiuta, which takes approximately four hours each way. Stay overnight at Big River Hut; you can book a bunk through DOC.
Research
Top tips
West Coast people speak the language of local history and are generally very open to questions and advice.
Access to Waiuta is by a narrow, winding gravel road. Towed vehicles are a no-go. Take care.
Allow a minimum of three hours to explore the Waiuta site. Ideally, at least a day.
There is a sink with water supply at the main carpark and flushable public toilets.
Don’t miss the on-site interpretation panels with information and stunning photos (circa 1910–35) by Czech immigrant minerphotographer Joseph Divis.
Private tours of Waiuta are available. Details are on the Friends of Waiuta website: waiuta.org.nz
Locals advise keeping an eye out for a double rainbow, sometimes seen due to local weather conditions.
Watch: Whispers of Gold (2020), an acclaimed 40-minute documentary on the rise and fall of Waiuta and its journey towards Tohu Whenua status: whispersofgold.com
Read: A range of publications is available through the Friends of Waiuta, including Through the Eyes of a Miner: The Photography of Joseph Divis (2010) by Simon Nathan, and Waiuta, 1906–1951: The Gold Mine, the Town, the People (1990) ed. Gerard Morris: waiuta.org.nz/shop/
WORDS: MARGO WHITE • IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
LEAVING YOUR
Vandalism or inscription of history – at what point does graffiti become ‘heritage’?
On 31 May 1866, as carpenter John McLaggan was completing his work on Old St Paul’s in Wellington, he wrote his name and those of his eight fellow carpenters on a shallow panel carved out of the first pillar of the western aisle of the cathedral.
The men’s names were hidden from view until a century later when, during a restoration of the building, someone noticed that a section of the pillar had screws in it. The panel was unscrewed and the names of McLaggan and his team, who built what is now recognised as one of the best examples of Gothic Revival architecture in the world, were found written on the back.
“It’s an absolute heritage gem,” says Tamara Patten, Property Lead, Old St Paul’s, for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
“We knew who John McLaggan was, as he was a significant carpenter in Wellington, but it’s probably the only evidence we have of other people who worked on the building.”
The panel was screwed back in place, preserving the pillar in its original form and protecting the
pencilled signatures from exposure to the elements. Visitors can’t see them, but they’re told that they’re there, and shown photographs of the names on the section of pillar. People are intrigued to hear of the secrets concealed within a building, says Tamara.
History has a way of repeating itself. Between 2019 and 2020, Old St Paul’s underwent earthquake strengthening, following the Kaikōura earthquake.
Tamara visited the building as the new foundations were being laid, and saw the builders had signed their names in the concrete. They were embarrassed that she’d seen what they’d done, but she was delighted.
“We’ve got the names of the first builders hidden somewhere in the building, and now we’ve also got the names of the latest builders who worked here hidden in the building. There might be other names somewhere that we haven’t found.”
In another context – on your neighbour’s new driveway, for instance – writing your name in newly laid concrete could be considered an act of vandalism.
“But these guys were deeply involved with the building for over a year, so they slightly cheekily signed their names in the concrete, and I’m delighted they did.
“No-one will see them until the day the church might need to be repaired again. I wouldn’t encourage everyone who works on a building to leave a mark, but one of the things that makes working in heritage so wonderful is finding and telling the stories of people connected to a place, and this is a really nice story.”
Builders and other tradespeople, it turns out, often leave their marks, including on heritage buildings such as Pencarrow Lighthouse, which stands at the entrance to Wellington Harbour.
“They’re
The first lighthouse in New Zealand embodies the stories of early European settlement, shipwreck and the country’s first female lighthouse keeper. Written on the wall behind the door into the lighthouse are the names of tradespeople who have worked on the lighthouse over the past 40 years. They’re people who’ve helped maintain the building – sandblasting it in preparation for repainting, painting it, repairing the roof and so on.
“They’re not old markings, but I think they’re neat, because it’s about the individuals who have cared for a property,” says Tamsin Falconer, Central Region Manager of Heritage Assets for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.
“They’re not tagging their names – ‘I was here with my girlfriend’. It’s more ‘I’m putting my name to my work’.”
Leaving your mark or name behind is a tradition among tradespeople, says Michael (Mike) Deavin, and he’s part of that tradition. As an ecclesiastical joiner, he is about to complete the restoration of the 804 sash windows of Wellington’s Old Government Buildings –after almost two years of work.
He’s left his name, which he has written in pencil, in the pockets of the windows. Lead stands the test
not tagging their names – ‘I was here with my girlfriend’. It’s more ‘I’m putting my name to my work’”
of time, he says. “Ink fades, discolours. I have seen writing several hundred years old written with a piece of lead.”
He’s also left a note on the weather, and made a few social comments on current events, such as the latest news on the pandemic. His marks are hidden from view, “but in 100 years’ time, if they need to restore or remove the windows, my name will jump out at them!”
Mike wouldn’t describe his or other builders’ marks as ‘graffiti’, but as a record of maintenance, and of pride in their work.
What would be more conventionally regarded as graffiti also has a place in the heritage value of a building, he’d argue, such as the graffiti in the attic of Old Government Buildings.
As a tour guide of the building, he’s familiar with the graffiti left by civil servants who were likely to have been sent to the attic to do the filing (there are filing cabinets in the wall of the attic). The attic is uncomfortably hot in summer and bitterly cold in winter, and those sent to do the filing found ways to express themselves on the walls. They evidently weren’t always happy. Yes, there are swear words.
There are also caricatures of political figures, a nice drawing of a tall ship passing in front of what looks like Mt Victoria, and a drawing of a naked woman with her legs open “and a very graphic drawing of a vagina”, says Mike.
At the time of writing, he was about to install a 3x2-metre sheet of perspex to protect the graffiti from
the knocks and rubs of passing legs and shoulders. It was written by people in the early decades of the 20th century and is a testimony to lives lived, and our history.
“I did say to my boss, ‘We’ll be drawing attention to the vagina!’ But it’s art! We can’t remove it. We decided that people have to be broadminded.”
2 3 In 1866, carpenter John McLaggan wrote his name, and those of his eight fellow carpenters who worked on Old St Paul’s in Wellington, on a shallow panel carved out of the first pillar of the western aisle of the cathedral.
IMAGERY: HERITAGE NEW ZEALAND POUHERE TAONGA
4 Ecclesiastical joiner
Mike Deavin is also a tour guide at Wellington’s Old Government Buildings, where visitors can see first-hand the graffiti in the building’s attic.
So while some of the writing on walls, or inside the windows, such as that left by tradespeople, could be described as legitimate graffiti, at what point does unwanted graffiti also become part of the fabric and texture of heritage? This is a question those working in heritage often grapple with, and with no clear consensus.
It depends on context, the age of the mark, who left it, their intent, what the mark reveals, and the story it tells.
Tamsin points to the writing on the original walls of Hurworth Cottage, built between 1855 and 1856 by Pākehā settler and future four-time premier of New Zealand (Sir) Harry Atkinson, and the only remaining building of the small Taranaki settlement of Hurworth that flourished during the 1850s.
In 1860, during the first Taranaki War, Atkinson and his family fled their home, concerned their safety was at risk, as did Atkinson’s extended family, who were living in the surrounding cottages.
The cottage was renovated over the years by various owners, until it was donated to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga in 1967 and was restored to its original specifications in the following years. It was during this time that the wallpaper was peeled back, revealing the messages and drawings that family members had left for each other when they returned to check on their property.
There are hand-drawn cartoons of a naked Māori warrior with moko, chasing three fleeing soldiers. There is a party invitation: “Hemi Barrett takes a farewell/ Benefit on Thursday night/ Previous to his departure for Victoria/ On his way to Europe/ Colonial Hospital March 23.”
It’s thought that as 23 March fell on a Thursday in 1865, this was written in that year. Hēmi’s identity is unknown, but, as Tamsin says, “Seeing those messages on the wall transports you back to the stories of the people, what it meant for them to abandon their homes, what was behind the conflict, and the many issues around that.
“I can’t imagine what it would have been like, in the 1970s, to pull back the wallpaper and see this, to realise the historical significance of what they had found.”
1 Marks left by builders and other tradespeople at Pencarrow Lighthouse.
“Ink fades, discolours. I have seen writing several hundred years old written with a piece of lead”
4
2 3
1
Mike Deavin surveys some of the graffiti in the attic of Old Government Buildings; he has left his name in pencil hidden in the pockets of the restored sash windows.
5 Marks left on the original walls of Hurworth Cottage, Taranaki, include messages and drawings.
IMAGERY: RICHARD ROBERTS, TOUCH DESIGN
“It really humanises the cottage: the people who were there, who took pieces of charcoal from the fireplace and left messages for each other”
You could call it graffiti, although the people who made it were writing on their own walls, rather than on someone else’s property. That section of wall is now protected with a sheet of clear acrylic so visitors can see the words and images but cannot touch them.
“It really humanises the cottage: the people who were there, who took pieces of charcoal from the fireplace and left messages for each other.”
The value we place on the writing on any wall changes with the passing of time, as has been described and detailed by Dan Boys, Creative Director of AT Creative, formerly known as Audio Trails, which brings attention to natural and cultural heritage through the creation of downloadable audio guides and locationaware apps. This includes alerting people to and engaging them in what would be called ‘graffiti’.
Dan has run tours and workshops on the graffiti scratched onto the Grade 1-listed Triumphal Arch at Cannock Chase, north of Birmingham in the UK, of which nine have the initials NZ or NZRB (New Zealand Rifle Brigade) adjacent to their names, covering the period 1917–19.
Given the age and military context of the graffiti, there is a good argument for those marks to be seen as contributing to the heritage value of the arch, if not to heritage in its own right. What might have been considered an act of vandalism at the time by the then owners of the estate “now gives us a connection to those men who in many cases lost their lives shortly after making their marks”, says Dan.
Graffiti is complicated though, especially for heritage advisors, who must navigate the line between
protecting heritage buildings and their furnishings from unwanted graffiti and advising on dealing with unwanted graffiti, but also recognising and preserving graffiti that has become part of the heritage fabric.
Alison Dangerfield, Area Manager Central West for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, appreciates the significance of graffiti, but says this significance can depend upon when it happened and what the story encapsulated.
“It depends on the message, which can be everything from challenging to poignant. Graffiti can be evidence of what people were thinking.”
However, she cautions against romanticising graffiti, often defined as ‘defacing’ other people’s property.
“The value of any graffiti depends on what people are saying. But if they see someone else’s property as a blank canvas on which to express themselves, I’d prefer them to express themselves somewhere else.”
Dan agrees. When considering graffiti and what constitutes heritage, there is the recurring question of permission.
“You have to put yourself in the shoes of the mark-maker and also the person who owns or is the guardian of the property or monument and so on.
“If someone scribed their name on my house, I’d be pretty annoyed, but if I found some marks from 30, 40 or 50 years ago that contained a name, year and/or message, I’d find that pretty exciting.
“So I don’t think there is a set time scale when graffiti becomes heritage. It is all about context and what it means to the reader or viewer, and their relationship with the person or people, the story, and the history.”
To see more of the Old Government Buildings graffiti, view our video story here: www.youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga
WORDS: MARIANNE TREMAINE
Change is afoot
Reads reflecting our changing times
Reading A Queer Existence: The Lives of Young Gay Men in Aotearoa New Zealand, by Mark Beehre (Massey University Press, $45.00), makes you realise how much things have changed in a relatively short time – and how much we take those changes for granted, almost forgetting things were ever otherwise. Yet I remember travelling home in the car with my parents, brothers and sister when I was around 10. We had been visiting two of my parents’ male friends, who lived in a flat together. One was fussing over the other because he had a cold, in a way that made it clear they were a couple. Going home, my father said, “We’ll have to get new babysitters,” to which my mother firmly replied, “They were all right before –and they’re all right now!”
More than two decades later, Fran Wilde toiled with the homosexual law reform legislation, refusing to give up until it was finally passed into law. Mark Beehre discusses the changes it brought and provides insights into the lives of 27 gay men and their experiences growing up and coming to terms with their sexuality. Mark has studied art, and his photographs of the men are stunning. But the photographs reflect just one point in time; the interviews included in the book immerse you more deeply in their stories.
One interviewee says: “It seems to me there are intersecting circles of who one is attracted to emotionally and romantically and sexually. Then there’s that spectrum of how your sense of gender fits on the line from masculinity to
femininity. And there’s another intersecting thing about fitting in, or where you’d put yourself on the spectrum of social conventions and norms... A whole set of concentric circles” (page 129). Their struggles to understand themselves and their places in a gendered society have led these men into a far deeper analysis of gender and norms than many people take the time to engage in.
A change in norms is also evident in The Forgotten Wars: Why the Musket Wars Matter Today (Oratia Press, $39.99). Ron Crosby explains the importance of understanding the musket wars to illuminate the reasons behind some of the differences that still exist between tribes today. These differences are the outcomes of specific historical events that have shaped the relationships. Competing for land affected customary relationships between iwi and hapū during the musket wars, the outcomes of which have not been forgotten. Ron argues for teaching about the wars in our schools to give students greater insights into the links and barriers they can see within tribal relationships but do not always understand.
Also highlighting the changes created by war, Our First Foreign War: The Impact of the South African War 1899–1902 on New Zealand, by Nigel Robson (Massey University Press, $55), deals with the way that memories of the Boer War have languished in the shadows of the two World Wars that followed. Nigel believes the Boer War had a huge effect on New Zealand, particularly in the development of strong ties between not only Australian and New Zealand soldiers but also their two countries.
The war was seen in New Zealand as a chance to prove the country’s military capabilities and its loyalty to the empire. Nigel explains that scouting out the enemy’s location and movements was a critical factor in strategy planning during the conflict, and New Zealanders proved themselves to be exceptionally good scouts. This book does not aspire to be a war history, but rather a social and economic history of the times and an assessment of the way the conflict affected New Zealand and its future.
The changes reflected in The Takapuna Tram (Alibi Press, $39.99) relate to past ways of engaging in recreational
activities. This children’s book is based on a poem by Elizabeth Welsman Dawson, with illustrations by Elva Leaming. Terry Carson, the grandson of Elizabeth Dawson, has shaped and collated this material into a book that tells the story of a steam tram that ran in Takapuna, on Auckland’s North Shore, in the early 1900s. This charming book describes the fun of a day out along with the thrill of the journey. The poem recounts other exciting things to do in Auckland, such as going to the zoo, riding on an elephant, and travelling over or on the harbour by seaplane or ferry. The lovely illustrations also show the fashions of the time.
A different type of recreational activity features in The Wellington Street Races: The Definitive History of New Zealand’s Iconic Motorsport Events, by Richard McGee (Bateman, $49.99). Writing in the foreword to the book, Robbie Francevic notes that racing on urban streets was the ultimate test for many drivers, and drivers on the Wellington circuit couldn’t relax for a second due to the ever-present walls and barriers and lack of genuine straights. In his book, Richard covers the character of the Wellington waterfront as a
The leadership lesson of this book is the importance of humility, which gives access to the wisdom and experience of others with no expectation that a leader should find all the answers within themselves
circuit and how the race came into being, gives an overview of 12 separate Wellington waterfront races, and explains why the races ended. There is good coverage of the differences between the competing cars, the people involved and the excitement of the races. The book also features great photos; some are so effective you can almost feel the way a car has swooped around a corner. This is a splendid way to relive an important part of New Zealand’s motorsport history.
There is considerable insight in the clearly written book Mana Whakatipu: Ngāi Tahu Leader Mark Solomon on Leadership and Life , by Mark Solomon with Mark Revington (Massey University Press, $35). The leadership lesson of this book is the importance of humility, which gives access to the wisdom and experience of others with no expectation that a leader should find all the answers within themselves. For example, Mark Solomon talks about the importance of getting in the queue for food, rather than expecting others to bring it to you. Being in the queue, he says, gives people a chance to interact with you when they might be too shy to do so in front of a crowd. And of course it’s also an opportunity to obtain information that expands your own understanding of the complexity of local issues.
Nowhere is leadership more important than in tramping and climbing, and in The Spirit of the Mountains: Alpine Adventures and Reflections (Mary Egan Publishing, $39.95), Ron Hay takes you into the mountains. The joy of this book is in the way it brings you close to the actual experience of being in alpine areas: the snow,
GIVEAWAY
We have one copy of The Takapuna Tram to give away.
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 2021.
The winner of last issue’s book giveaway (Tableland: The History Behind Mt Arthur, Kahurangi National Park) was Mr T Fitzpatrick, Auckland.
the tussock, the waterfalls, the beautiful plants and the magnificence of the views. So for anyone unable to spend time in alpine areas, one solution is to immerse yourself in this book. You will almost smell the crisp, sharp, pure mountain air just by looking at the photos.
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.
I’ve always been interested in the social histories few people know about – the history of New Zealand’s Gujarati community, for example. How many Kiwis would know about their rich culture, their sizable contribution to New Zealand or the ongoing discrimination many face today?
I call these stories our ‘invisible histories’. We tend to know about and value the histories of powerful people – privileged white men, mostly. And that’s important. But to really understand ourselves and our heritage as a country, I believe it’s important to explore these lesser known histories too.
I first started down this track in the 1970s, as an undergraduate student at the University of Otago. I’d grown up in a working-class family that valued education but had very few material possessions – for years we had no car, or even a refrigerator. I understood a bit of what it felt like to be an outsider.
One of my lecturers, Hew McLeod, was a specialist in Sikh history. He encouraged me to research New Zealand’s Gujarati community, which I did for my PhD. I was obviously inspired by him. But I’ve always felt drawn to give neglected communities a voice and speak out against racism. That’s what I wanted to do in my thesis and have done in the books I’ve published since.
To me, it’s important to break down stereotypes and help people see the nuances in human history. Yes, some of it is mundane – like the reality that many Gujarati immigrants who came to New Zealand chose to live in rural areas and didn’t become shopkeepers.
Some of it is simply important to have on record,
such as how, in the 1920s, New Zealand’s Indian and Chinese communities had to bear the brunt of white supremacist groups who wanted to ‘keep New Zealand white’ and put a stop to Asian migration.
When it comes to preserving our social history, I do have a few thoughts. I think it’s important for gatekeepers of information to better balance the need to protect personal privacy with the need to release information for public scrutiny. Too often our gatekeepers favour the former, which prevents important stories from being told.
It’s a challenge for me right now, looking into the history of depression in New Zealand. I think we need to understand the impact of electroshock treatment on patients, for example. What was it like for our mothers, fathers, uncles and aunties? How can we learn from their experiences today?
In August, Jacqueline Leckie published Invisible: New Zealand’s History of Excluding Kiwi-Indians (Massey University Press), adding to her PhD thesis on the history of India’s Gujarati immigrants in New Zealand and a book on the history of Indian settlement in New Zealand. She taught for 27 years in the University of Otago’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, which she headed for five years. Jacqueline has also lectured in Fiji and Kenya and made many trips to India. She is currently an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies and a Conjoint Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle.
Noticing the NUANCES
Seeing our ‘invisible histories’ gives us a better understanding of ourselves and our heritage, says Jacqueline Leckie
INTERVIEW: JACQUI GIBSON
A Resene CoolColour is designed to reflect more of the sun’s energy than a standard colour reducing stress on the coating, the substrate and the building, keeping them cooler. Available only from Resene.
9 300 6260 o ce@greencycle.co.nz
Stay informed with our monthly e-newsletter, covering the latest heritage news and events
Consider leaving a gift that will last forever
A gift in your will could provide a lasting legacy for our nation’s heritage and help preserve our history for future generations.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? Contact Brendon Veale for further details.
Tours for 2021/2022
South Canterbury Spring Tour
CHRISTCHURCH - MID & SOUTH CANTERBURY
Governors Bay - Timaru - Waimate - Geraldine - Mesopotamia -Rakaia Gorge Monday 22nd - 27th November 2021 - SOLD OUT - Taking bookings for 2022
Lake Tekapo - Lake Wanaka - Lake Hawea - Clyde - Queenstown Monday 25th April to 1st of May 2022 membership@heritage.org.nz
Autumn Southern Colour Tour
CHRISTCHURCH – CENTRAL OTAGO & THE SOUTHERN LAKES
For further information of any of the above tours please contact –Rachel Harper, HOMESTEAD TOURS 80 Main North Rd, Geraldine 7930, New Zealand. Tel: Mob: Email: 64 3 693 9366,027 292 4480,info@homesteadtours.co.nz Website: www.homesteadtours.co.nz
0800 802 010 • bveale@heritage.org.nz • PO Box 2629, Wellington, 6140 www.heritage.org.nz
