Issue 165 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
NZ$9.95 incl. GST
NGĀ MIHI O MATARIKI, TE TAU HOU MĀORI! A magnificent Matariki celebration MOVING ON Is a relocated heritage building still the real deal? WEST LIFE Exploring West Auckland’s arts heritage
Walking the TALK Voicing our Pacific urban history
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 i
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NGĀ KŌRERO O ROTO • CONTENTS
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 Features
Explore the list
12 City tales
8 Reaching out
Research, fascinating characters and historic places intersect on Dr David Murray’s blog, Built in Dunedin
A century on, St George’s Anglican Church is staying relevant in the Thames community
16 The central story
Despite being razed by fire, Paradise, near Lake Wakatipu, retains its significant heritage values
A tour of Auckland’s K’ Road connects the city’s Pacific urban history to the story of Aotearoa
22 A Matariki hākari Recognising mahinga kai and Matariki with a special event at Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House
16
10 Revisiting Paradise
Journeys into the past
ōō
ō
44 West life Exploring three heritage properties keeping alive West Auckland’s reputation as a home for art lovers
30 Way finders A new approach to archaeological study is helping to foster talent and bring together Māori and archaeological knowledge in a unique way
48 Camera ready
34 A moving experience
As demand for filming locations increases in the streaming age, what are the challenges and opportunities for historic sites?
Shorn of its original context, is a relocated heritage building still the genuine article?
Columns
38 Towering treasures
3 Editorial
How a tight-knit group of locals is keeping Waihi’s rich goldmining heritage alive
4 Noticeboard
ōfi
52 Books How past experiences have profoundly shaped the present
54 Our heritage, my vision For Millie Burton, inspiration comes from helping people connect with heritage in unexpected ways
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ōfi Hōtoke • Winter 2022 1
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HE WHAKAARO NĀ TE ĒTITA • EDITORIAL Issue 165 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
NZ$9.95 incl. GST
NGĀ MIHI O MATARIKI, TE TAU HOU MĀORI! A magnificent Matariki celebration MOVING ON Is a relocated heritage building still the real deal? WEST LIFE Exploring West Auckland’s arts heritage
Walking
the TALK
Ngā mihi o Matariki, te tau hou Māori!
Voicing our Pacific urban history
Heritage Issue 165 Hōtoke • Winter 2022 ISSN 1175-9615 (Print) ISSN 2253-5330 (Online) Cover image: Walking the talk by Amanda Trayes
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 8272 as at 30 September 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 Publishing. 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 heritage.org.nz.
Happy Matariki! On Friday 24 June we’ll have weaver Tui Falwasser (Ngāi Tūāhuriri). A huge our first Matariki holiday – the first public thank you to the many Heritage New Zealand holiday recognising te ao Māori, and one that’s Pouhere Taonga staff who also supported this uniquely New Zealand. kaupapa, including the team in the Southern When discussing how we might recognise Region Office and at Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Matariki 2022 in the magazine, Ellen Andersen, Sheppard House. And Ellen, for her great idea! Director Kaiwhakahaere Tautiaki Taonga for Ultimately, we hope this story will inspire Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, had you when creating your own Matariki plans an idea: could we ask Nigel Harris, Pouārahi – you could try out the plum duff recipe on in the Ōtautahi Christchurch office of page 27 as part of your own hākari! Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Creating and taking part in experiences that to prepare a Matariki hākari, served at celebrate our heritage have been tricky during Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate the Covid-19 pandemic. Sheppard House, to feature I first saw the Pua on our pages? brothers’ Pasifika Urban Nigel (Ngāi Tūāhuriri) is Street History (PUSH) tour hākari: feast one of those renaissance on the programme for the kaitiakitanga: men who makes you wonder Auckland Heritage Festival, guardianship what you’ve been doing with which was sadly cancelled kaupapa: project, your life. As well as being a in 2021. initiative or principle passionate and experienced However, Heritage New heritage professional, he Zealand magazine art mahinga kai: food and resource gathering has worked in Antarctica, director Amanda Trayes and work/site and as a professional polo I were lucky enough to take manaakitanga: respectful player, a chef and a culinary the tour early this year with care, hospitality arts teacher. the brothers, Sofi Ulugia-Pua Not only did he agree to and the Revd Mua Stricksonmaramataka: Māori lunar calendar the idea of preparing the Pua, plus their sister Vaitulu feast, but he also immediately Pua; we have captured the te ao Māori: the Māori ran with it to make it happen. experience on pages 16–21. world view As Nigel pointed out I learned so much walking Pouārahi: Māori at the beginning of our the streets of inner-city Heritage Advisor discussion about the Auckland with Sofi, Mua and whakawhanaungatanga: story, communicating Vaitulu on the tour, which kinship, sense of the importance of the weaves their personal stories connection maramataka and mahinga kai associated with central-city whanaunga: relations would be central to telling locations seamlessly into a the story of this Matariki wider Pacific urban history feast. Showing how the occasion engenders and that of Aotearoa. the important values of manaakitanga, And taking the tour also reminded me of kaitiakitanga and whakawhanaungatanga the power of personal connection when would also be key. sharing stories – how much easier it can be As he says in the story, captured by writer to connect with experiences and ideas when Helen Brown and photographer Kirsty you’re in a place with the people involved. Middleton on pages 22–27, such a celebration At the outset of the tour Sofi told us: is really about “the gathering, the storytelling, “We hope this experience leaves you with the memories – making those intimate a sense of hope and a better understanding exchanges and connections over the years. of our community and of us.” The eating is just the icing on the cake”. I’d like to assure him, it did. I’d like to acknowledge Nigel’s incredible efforts to bring this idea to life, alongside his Hei konā mai whanaunga, including mahinga kai expert Caitlin Sykes Makarini Rūpene (Ngāi Tūahuriri) and expert Editor RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 3
PAPA PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD
Letters to the editor EXPLORE THE LIST KŌPIKOTANGA • DOMESTIC TRAVEL Snapshot
Top tips
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.
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.
In 2020 Waiuta was given Tohu Whenua status (Tohu Whenua is a visitor programme connecting New Zealanders with unique heritage sites).
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.
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.
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
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.
Don’t miss the on-site interpretation panels with information and stunning photos (circa 1910–35) by Czech immigrant minerphotographer Joseph Divis.
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.
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.
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.
WORDS: ANN WARNOCK • IMAGERY: CLAUDIA BABIRAT
What to take A good map of the area/ Waiuta site, which is available from i-SITE centres in Greymouth and Reefton.
Research 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/.
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.
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The two pieces about Waiuta in the summer issue of Heritage New Zealand magazine [issue 163] brought back memories of a holiday I had there in January 1953, when I was 14. My mother liked to take an annual get-away-from-it-all summer break, but my father didn't, so there were five of us on that holiday: my mother (the well-known children's writer Elsie Locke), myself, my younger brother Keith (later a Green MP), our sister Maire (now better known as Maire Leadbeater), and our new arrival Alison, then seven months old. Later that year, Mum self-published a booklet of poems called The Time of the Child, dedicated “to Alison and all others born June 1952”. It seems likely that most or all of it was written during our stay in Waiuta. My parents knew a character called Jim Andrews who ran a candy floss stall at fairs and A&P shows up and down the country (he features, candy floss and all, in a photo by Ans Westra). He had bought a house in Waiuta for £100; that seems to have been the going rate after the mine closed. But he hadn't ever been there himself – I doubt he ever went – so he offered it to Mum for a free holiday so she could check it out for him.
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At that time it was a true ghost town, with rows of empty houses standing along empty streets. There was a handful of residents, mostly ex-miners who had never left town. But they still had a liquor licence at the workingmen's club, so most of them would congregate there in the afternoons and evenings. We never went there ourselves. Our nearest neighbour was a Māori ex-miner called Dick Davis. He kept a cow, so we got our milk from him, but he didn't drink it himself; he used only condensed milk (remember that?). He kept the cow to feed his cats, who numbered more than a dozen. Other residents had left them with him as they left town. There was also a North American living there, whose house was visibly padlocked and shuttered (nobody else bothered). He told Mum he was in hiding from “them” – those people who were out to get him. The other inhabitant I remember was at work sluicing and panning the sands around the Snowy River battery, retrieving gold that had fallen through the cracks. He was probably doing quite well, but my mother told me I mustn't ask. He told us he also had a mica claim somewhere in the
mountains and would carry sheets out on his back like panes of glass; it was used in toasters. My brother Keith remembers him putting condensed milk in his tea too, so I guess that’s what they did back then. I doubt many of them had fridges, even when the mine was open. Keith also remembers a visit to a sawmill, and Maire remembered a mobile shop coming once a week with basic supplies. It was a wonderful place for a holiday. Lots of empty spaces to play in, with tracks leading to hidden places, and bush to scramble through. When we were out walking, Mum carried Ali on her back, wrapped in a blanket in what she called a pīkau. Ali fell out once as we were crossing a water race, but I was able to catch her before she hit the ground. But my most vivid memory is of a scramble on my own down a steep and beautifully sculpted stream bed, from near the Prohibition Shaft down to the road below. Twenty years later I was able to do it again with my own teenaged children, though it was much overgrown. Don Locke Wellington Martin Sliva’s excellent and evocative photo ‘Touching base’ (Heritage New Zealand magazine, Issue 163) deserves some additional text. The image reeks of a bygone enterprise with a story to tell, yet there
is nothing in Issue 163 that amplifies this. It is certainly a ‘Best shot’ – but it leaves the reader looking for more. Firstly, somewhere it needs to be stated that the land, sand, and water area is a fully recorded and registered archaeological site, duly notified in the New Zealand Gazette (No 32) 2014 as required by the Historic Places Act 1993. An extensive and defined area, both above and below the water line, is involved. As such, this site became a New Zealand first. The declaration provides an important level of protection to all surviving items. A bronze plaque constitutes the on-site notification. It is placed on an old drop-hammer stand in the adjacent workshop area. Secondly, an intrigued reader would appreciate a clue as to where to find more information. The process of registering the site involved full land and underwater surveys. Detailed reports on land and marine features were prepared by the then New Zealand Historic Places Trust and Subsurface Ltd. These reports also acknowledge other published material, including my own publications assembled over the past 40 years. The Rakiura Museum [Te Puka o Te Waka] on Stewart Island knows it all – and has most. It is the place to go. Jim Watt Havelock North
EXPLORE TINO WHAKAAHUA THE LIST • BEST SHOTS
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
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Heritage New Zealand
BEHIND THE STORY WITH LYDIA MONIN You're a regular writer for Heritage New Zealand magazine – formerly from your home base in Dublin, then from Waiheke Island, and now from Dublin again. What's the connection to Ireland? I’ve straddled both hemispheres since 1997, when I met my Welsh husband at the University of Oxford’s international journalism fellowship programme. Not long afterwards we moved to Dublin to work on a television documentary co-production for Irish, Welsh and Scottish broadcasters – and we decided to stay. This was the Celtic Tiger era and Dublin was an incredibly vibrant city, with a thriving television and film industry. Waiheke Island will always be something of a spiritual home, however. I grew up in Palmerston North but had extended family on the island, so plenty of school holidays were spent there. We’ve returned to Waiheke many times over the past couple of decades.
Places we visit Auckland, p16
Thames, p8
West Auckland, p44
Wellington, p54
For this issue you write about the risks and rewards of filming in historic locations (page 48). Can you tell us a little more about your own time in the screen industry? In the early 2000s my husband and I produced and directed several television documentary series on the history of landmines, war crimes and genocide for the international market. We’ve been immersed in history ever since, making documentaries and writing books and articles. I’m always looking for stories that straddle both hemispheres – for example, I recently co-wrote a drama-documentary about a New Zealander who joined the notorious Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence. What's a heritage place in Dublin that you love, and why? Pembroke Road, with its iconic strip of Georgian terraced houses, will always be a favourite place. Over the years we’ve lived in four Georgian apartments on this boulevard, enjoying the elegant, classical architecture and also the slightly weird experience of living in a building that has been inhabited by so many generations throughout Ireland’s turbulent history. We’re currently based in Monkstown, away from the city centre. But there’s a medieval castle at the end of the road, so that’s not too bad!
Waihi, p38
Christchurch, p22
Dunedin, p12
Paradise, p10
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.
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 5
PAPA PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD SUPPORTER SPOTLIGHT
What’s your connection to Antrim House? William: From August 1967 I stayed at Antrim for around 11 months when it was a public service boys’ hostel. In those days, public servants were a reasonably mobile group because one of the ways you got promoted was to transfer to another job, one grade up sort of thing. I’m pretty sure you had to be under 21 to stay there, and I was well under that – aged 19. I started my public service career in 1965 in Napier with the Ministry of Works. I was ambitious, so I applied for a job in Wellington, was successful and got the transfer. Staying in the hostel was a means of transition; it gave you somewhere to stay when you came to the big city and then later, when you moved into your first flat, it was usually with three or four of the people you met at the hostel. What was hostel life like? I met and made some very good friends there. I went on
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Have you had an opportunity to visit Antrim since? I’ve been back a couple of times. On one occasion it was to attend a seminar on maritime heritage around Wellington, and by that time it was in its current ownership. The seminar was held in what used to be our lounge, which is the big room on the left as you walk through the main front doors. Sometimes when you go into an old building years later, you think ‘Where am I?’ because the internal partitions have been moved and the layout changed. But when I went back to Antrim, although it’s a bit more spruced up, it was very nostalgic because I could still see all the old rooms as I remembered them. 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
SOCIAL HERITAGE
... WITH BEC COLLIE Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Marketing Advisor
Property spotlight: Old St Paul’s Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga proudly cares for more than 40 of Aotearoa New Zealand’s heritage places. With so much heritage news to share, some of the most significant of these places have their own Facebook and Instagram channels. Old St Paul’s (OSP) in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington posts some particularly creative and interesting stories on its Facebook page. Located on the former Pipitea Pā, the Gothic Revival church has held a special place in the hearts of Wellingtonians for generations, and these stories highlight what makes it beloved in its community. For example, the Category 1 historic place frequently hosts live music events; a recent post noted Wellington dream-pop band French for Rabbits was due to perform live at OSP as part of an album release tour. You’ll also find news about everything from film nights to goings-on in the belfry and the mystery behind a carved wooden head hidden from view. In our uncertain times, property-specific social media channels can also be helpful sources of the latest visitor information to ensure a hassle-free experience if you’re planning a visit. If you haven’t visited OSP, make sure to pop in the next time you’re in Wellington, or follow it on social media for updates, events and sneak peeks of all the happenings at this famous property. You can find Old St Paul’s on Facebook at Facebook.com/oldstpauls
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 heritage.org.nz (‘News & events’ section) or email membership@heritage.org.nz to be included in the email list.
Heritage New Zealand
IMAGERY: GRANT SHEEHAN
Antrim House, the central Wellington head office of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, has a place in the heart of Wellington resident and heritage supporter William Pitt, who recalls the Category 1 historic place in another incarnation.
to be best man at the wedding of one guy, I was a groomsman for another two, and only a few years ago I was MC at the 50th wedding anniversary of one of those friends. It was like a boarding house with just as many rules. Our room was one of the smaller ones and there were four of us in it. It felt like staying in a rather faded old stately home. I don’t think we were so conscious of its history in those days; it was just a beautiful big old house. When the weather was good the verandahs upstairs were brilliant for sunbathing. You weren’t allowed alcohol, so you’d sit up on the balcony and have a quiet beer without letting the staff see what you were doing. But the food was appalling – absolutely terrible. I lost a lot of weight.
IMAGE: MARCEL TROMP IMAGE: SUPPLIED
KEMP HOUSE TURNS 200 Here’s a fun fact about New Zealand’s oldest building: the four missionary carpenters who built Kemp House shared the same name: William. The timber mission house was completed in 1822 for the Revd John Butler of the Church Missionary Society, which had established the mission station in 1819 under the protection of rangatira (chief) Hongi Hika. Sited adjacent to Kororipo Pā, it is nationally significant as one of the first places at which Māori and Europeans lived side by side. But as the Category 1 historic place turns 200 this year, it’s some of the lesser-known stories of those associated with the
house, sited in the Kororipo Heritage Park in Kerikeri, that will be shared. “The big story of Kemp House is well known; the significant role it played in the very early days of our national story has been well documented by various historians,” notes Liz Bigwood, Property Lead for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Kerikeri Mission Station. “But it’s the stories of the lesser-known characters, like the carpenters and the Māori sawyers who literally built the house, that we want to bring to the foreground. “At the time of its construction, Kemp House was the most
ambitious building built by Europeans in New Zealand, and it remained so for a number of years. Some of the finishing of the timbers in Kemp House speaks to the skills of the carpenters – the mantelpieces with their hand-tooled mouldings, the newel post at the base of the stairs that is beautifully finished – the house is not a ‘slap-up job’.” In recognition of the 200th birthday of Kemp House, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga is producing a podcast series to share more of the fascinating stories of people associated with the mission house. Kemp House will also be increasing its social media presence and a range of souvenirs is being produced.
Among the latter will be products such as notebooks featuring prints based on Kemp House textiles, such as a Kemp family work bag that features a tui, and a quilt displaying a huia and pōhutukawa flowers. Tea towels bearing an image of the iconic lamp that the Kemp family kept constantly lit in their front window are also being produced. Fittingly, heritage lovers will even be able to buy their own set of five commemorative carpenters’ pencils, each bearing a different name: William Bean, William Fairburn, William Hall, William Puckey and Wiremu, to represent the many Māori sawyers who contributed to the build. visitheritage.co.nz/visit/ northland/kerikeri-missionstation/visit RETURN TO CONTENTS
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PAPA PĀNUI TE TŪHURATIA • NOTICEBOARD RĀRANGI • EXPLORE THE LIST
Reaching out St George’s Anglican Church may be 150 years old, but its parishioners are determined to find new ways to keep the landmark location relevant to the Thames community WORDS: N I CO L A M ART I N • I MAGE RY: A MA NDA T RAYE S
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Pop your head in the door of St George’s Anglican Church on McKay Street in Thames on any day of the week and you may not always find the traditional church service underway. Instead, you might see locals Steve Darwall or Paul Jennings climbing along scaffolding or up ladders within the church’s cavernous walls. The Revd Brendon Wilkinson, who joined the parish in 2017, might be there lending a hand alongside other congregation members. With hammers, chisels and paintbrushes in hand, the group is dedicated to maintaining the Category 1 historic place. The church celebrated 150 years in January, and while Revd Wilkinson is credited with transforming its relevance to the community, Paul, Steve and many other parishioners have connections to the building spanning multiple generations. “My great-great-grandfather installed the windows in the apse and worked on the steeple. I’m the fifth of seven generations of our extended family to walk through these doors,” says Paul. Steve says the church building is part of him. “My family has always been involved. My dad was baptised here, and my grandmother attended church here from when she arrived in New Zealand from Australia in 1910,” he says. The original St George’s was built in 1868, but the rapid influx of people during the Coromandel goldrush meant a new church was needed. The Gothic Revival-style building that cuts an imposing figure with its towering spire was built in 1871. Back then the church held three services a day: an early service at 8am, a family service at 11am, and an evensong at 7pm, with up to 900 people attending each one. Today attendance is much reduced and the total congregation numbers around 80. Services are held on Thursdays at 10am and Sundays at 9.30am, and Paul says the church has had to evolve to
Heritage New Zealand
remain connected to its wider community. “It certainly is a challenge we’ve faced. Our congregation has become smaller, and we are getting older, but we are finding there is such a need within the community. A lot of our work now is outreach and helping to fill the socioeconomic gap,” he says. “Revd Brendon has been key to making the church relevant for our community. People don’t really know how much work goes on, but he is doing a phenomenal amount of work.” Revd Wilkinson chairs the local Homeless Working Group and is Chaplain for both the local Police and Thames Hospital. He also helps at the Supported Life Style Hauraki Trust, an organisation designed to aid people with disabilities, and works with a youth group connected to Thames High School. In four years, he has also helped 42 families through their grief after loved ones have taken their own lives. “The need in our area just keeps growing. It really is at epidemic level and the church is our vehicle to help address some of it. It’s so much more than just a building,” says Paul. Along with the work done by Revd Wilkinson, a core group of women prepares large amounts of food on Sundays and Mondays, making dinners for people in need. “At times we have fed up to 142 people, both on the church premises and by delivering food to those who are unable to come to the church hall. We provided around 500 food parcels in the local community for Christmas Day,” says Paul. “Our church is a genuine sanctuary for families struggling to survive in the current economic and social climate.” The event held to mark 150 years of the church was a paredback affair due to Covid-19 restrictions, but it too gave glimpses into how the church was evolving. The celebratory service on Waitangi Day, 6 February, was
livestreamed so anyone from the wider community could attend, including the Bishop of Auckland in the Anglican Church, the Right Revd Ross Bay. Streamed services can now also be found on the church’s Facebook page, and Paul says it’s another way they are trying to keep the church relevant for the community. Revd Wilkinson and retired New Zealand Anglican bishop, the Right Revd Bruce Gilberd, were welcomed to the celebratory service with Scottish piping and a karanga (welcome chant), and the introductory parts of the service were conducted in te reo Māori (Revd Wilkinson is a fluent speaker of te reo Māori). “While it has a predominantly elderly congregation, the church has certainly moved away from being ‘exclusive’ to being a more inclusive place for all, including seeing te reo Māori beginning to be integrated into all our services,” says Paul. With its grand pointed archways, steeply pitched roof and intricate stained-glass windows, the building is both a blessing and a challenge, says Paul.
“Let’s just say there’s plenty of prayers that go on. It’s all kauri timber and we do face monumental challenges in maintaining it, but it is such an important part of our community and its history.” Alongside general maintenance, the church has been earmarked for more serious structural maintenance, including earthquake strengthening when funding allows. Robin Byron, Senior Conservation Architect for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, says heritage buildings face challenges at the best of times, but for churches it can be more onerous as the work required often falls on the shoulders of only a few people. “Even if we do not regularly attend church, we expect these familiar landmark buildings to continue to be a part of our communities and play their role in some of the most significant occasions in our lives,” says Robin. And this is why Steve, Paul and others continue to dedicate hours to maintaining St George’s. “It’s a beautiful building and it’s always been here, and we
LOCATION Thames is Hauraki-Coromandel's largest town and is situated 115km southeast of Auckland.
don’t want to see it deteriorate,” says Steve, a semi-retired builder whose most recent job was working on the window frames. “It’s fiddly work. I’d say we spent 40 to 50 hours on each window, chiselling away at the rotten pieces and machining new pieces to fit. You don’t want to replace stuff that you don’t need to, to keep the context of what’s been built. It’s definitely a labour of love.”
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Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 9
PAPA PĀNUI TE TŪHURATIA • NOTICEBOARD RĀRANGI • EXPLORE THE LIST
Miller House (centre) with the remains of Paradise House – its chimney stacks – in the foreground.
Revisiting Paradise
WORDS: MATT PHILP
Despite being struck by a devastating fire in 2014, Paradise retains its significant heritage values Paradise is a place on Earth. Specifically, it’s at the top of Lake Wakatipu, where in the mid-1880s William Mason, New Zealand’s first architect, commissioned the building of a summer house. Although isolated and modest in scale, the home inhabited a setting so majestic – at the edge of beech forest wilderness among the mountains – that when the Masons began taking in guests, Paradise was quickly established on the nascent 19th-century tourist circuit as an exceptional destination, worthy of the odyssey involved in reaching it. Over time, as the original guesthouse (named Eden Grove
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by Mason, and later known as Paradise House) was expanded and new accommodation added, Paradise became a place to which visitors returned year after year, through generations. In 2008 its significance was recognised with a Category 1 listing. Then, six years ago, lightning struck Paradise, sparking a fire that engulfed the guesthouse. An adjacent building, Miller House, was restored after suffering smoke and water damage and reopened for guests, but Eden Grove was razed to the ground. A handful of original flagstones and the lower portion of the chimneys are now all that remains.
Pink House
Heritage New Zealand
The barn
LOCATION
IMAGERY: SARAH GALLAGHER AND ANDREW WINTER, HERITAGE NEW ZEALAND POUHERE TAONGA
Paradise lies on the eastern side of the Dart River at the head of Lake Wakatipu, close to the settlement of Glenorchy.
But what about Paradise’s Category 1 listing? Did that also go up in smoke? Sarah Gallagher, Dunedinbased Heritage Assessment Advisor for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, reviewed Paradise’s heritage values after the fire. She visited in 2019, arriving via Glenorchy on a quiet afternoon, and was captivated. “There’s something about beech forest that’s just magical. It was still, with dappled light, and because of the predator control they’re doing on the property, there are a lot of birds. At one point, we saw five white-tail deer burst out of the bush,” she says. It was that raw beauty and proximity to wilderness that drew early tourists. Many were wealthy overseas visitors, health and pleasure seekers looking for ever more distant and remote resorts. Paradise, which became part of a circuit that included Te Aroha Mineral Springs, Rotorua, Hanmer Springs and Aoraki Mt Cook, certainly fitted the bill when it came to isolation. Guests took a train to Kingston, then a steamer to Glenorchy, followed by a buggy ride to the top of the lake. In her report, Sarah describes the last chapter of the journey: “The trip through the landscape,
narrated by the buggy driver, led tourists into a kind of mythical place; passing through Heaven’s Gate and over the River Jordan into Paradise. The descriptions and language set the scene for their experiences at Paradise House.” The original homestead had been built by Queenstown carpenter Frederick Finch, a talented amateur photographer whose work is in a number of collections including Te Papa and the Hocken Collections. By 1890, capacity had been extended to 60 guests with the addition of the Miller House wing, and that was followed over subsequent decades by another single-storeyed accommodation annexe, three cottages and a trio of ‘Bushveldt’ cabins in a clearing in the beech forest. The heritage listing also includes gardens, a barn and stable, and a schoolhouse where the children of local scheelite miners were educated. (Scheelite is a tungsten mineral that can be refined to produce tungsten carbide, a tough, durable compound that was in high demand for World War I munitions use.) None of the buildings were particularly fancy – ‘rustic charm’ probably best describes the accommodation experience.
Guests came for the remoteness and the mountain views, and to explore wild places. Located in a valley between Pikirakatahi Mt Earnslaw and Ari Mt Alfred, Paradise was handy to the braided river valleys of the Rees and the Dart, and to a network of trails that included a route through the mountains to the head of Lake Te Anau, where adventurers could lodge at Glade House (built in 1896). The Aitkens family, who took on Paradise in 1890 and ran it until 1943, offered guided wilderness expeditions, and there were opportunities for guests to fish, hunt and ride horses. Many returned again and again, drawn as much by the homely atmosphere created by David and Jeannie Aitkens as the spectacular landscape. “Visitors came to Paradise with expectations in mind, shaped by word of mouth, by family experience, by guidebooks, by their own memories, and left shaped by both the people and the place they encountered,” writes Sarah, who notes that Paradise also functioned as a social hub for the surrounding community and was used for decades as a base for teaching outdoor education by the
University of Otago and the University of South Australia. Sarah came away from her visit convinced that Paradise’s heritage values had survived the loss of Eden Grove. Her formal assessment cites the place’s aesthetic, historical and social significance: “It provides an outstanding insight into the development of tourism in a remote location in 19th- and early-20th-century New Zealand.” The fact that the current owner, the Paradise Trust, has received an $80,000 Otago Community Trust grant to help restore the historic barn is evidence, as quoted in the heritage assessment, “of the value of the history and purpose of the place as integral to the tourism industry”. And there’s something else in play. The review of Paradise’s heritage values necessarily involved formal criteria that had to be met, boxes to be ticked. But consideration was also given to something more intangible. Sarah talks about the atmosphere of the property, its broader aesthetic values, and the way that the ruins of Eden Grove are incorporated with the wider setting. She is pleased she made a site visit. “You need to smell the smells, see the light and feel the place.” Fire may have consumed a building, but Paradise is not lost. heritage.org.nz/the-list/ details/7766 RETURN TO CONTENTS
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Hōtoke • Winter 2022 11
WHAKAAHUA • PROFILE
CITY TALES WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
Having already scaled the winding staircase that led to the choir loft high in one of the towers of Dunedin’s Category 1-listed St Joseph’s Cathedral, David Murray made a call to push higher still. His search of the loft for a mass composed by Raffaello Squarise – the Italian musician and composer who lived in Dunedin from 1889 until his retirement in the 1930s, and who was the subject of David’s PhD research – had come up empty-handed. So, undeterred, David headed up a ladder and through a trap door to where the cathedral’s choirmaster had signalled more music could possibly be found. Squarise had begun writing the mass during a stint as choirmaster at the cathedral in the 1890s. He’d completed the mass when he returned to work at the church some 20 years later as a conductor; however, at the time of David’s search in the higher reaches of the cathedral, no one had performed the work for the best part of a century. “On the way up, I nearly rang the bells by mistake. But
then, at the top of the tower, underneath all the pigeon dung, was the original handwritten score for the mass,” recalls David. “It was amazing.” It’s a tale in which research, fascinating characters and an historic place intersect – a nexus that more generally characterises David’s work, and which was recently honoured by Dunedin’s heritage community. Late last year the Hocken Collections archivist received the Bluestone Award from the Southern Heritage Trust during the Ōtepoti Dunedin Heritage Festival, in recognition of his advocacy work to promote and protect the city’s built heritage. The Hocken Collections are diverse and extensive, particularly relating to the Otago region; they span everything from the literary and personal papers of Janet Frame to records from firms such as the Union Steam Ship Company and recorded music relating to the ‘Dunedin sound’. David has worked in the Hocken’s archive section since 2005, at times dealing with
substantial holdings of major built heritage significance. These include the records of Dalziel Architects, for example, and those of Salmond Anderson Architects, with the latter recognised by UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand as items of recorded heritage that have national significance. “With archives, preservation is one part of the job,” explains David, “but access is the other big side of it. You’re wanting to push all of that archival information out there so people can actually find it and use it, because it’s no use if it’s just hidden away.” While he’s become the Hocken’s ‘go-to guy’ for answers to building-related questions, he’s also extended that reach through sharing stories online of the city’s built heritage. In 2011 he co-founded the Upright! Exploring Dunedin’s Built Heritage Facebook page with Kari Wilson-Allan, and the following year he started the Built in Dunedin blog, in which each post takes a dive into the
history and stories related to a heritage building. “The blog evolved from wanting to share these stories in a more long-form way. I thought I’d just dribble a few posts out and see if it got going; it now has about 600 email subscribers and has averaged 40,000 to 60,000 page views a year, every year since 2013.” With his mother being a piano teacher, David grew up with music. Prior to undertaking his PhD on Squarise, he completed a music performance degree at the University of Otago, and since 1998 has played in the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, primarily as principal or co-principal cellist. Built heritage has also been a passion from an early age – in part inspired by this publication. “As a child I’d visit my aunt in Wellington; she still lives in this beautiful, early-’70s Erwin Winkler-designed house, and in the spare room there was always a pile of mid-1980s copies of Heritage New Zealand magazine. I still remember particular covers,” he recalls.
Mining a seam in which archival materials, fascinating characters and heritage buildings merge provides rich material for the stories Dr David Murray shares in his blog, Built in Dunedin 12 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
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PAPA PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD WHAKAAHUA • PROFILE
“With built heritage history you can draw on a really wide range of subject matter. Sometimes it can be bottom up – learning about workers in a factory – and other times top down – exploring a grand home and its wealthy owner”
David recalls, as a young child growing up in Kirwee, Canterbury, outings with a friend’s family to places such as the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Christchurch; as a teenager in Nelson his sixth-form statistics project involved dating the façades of the buildings on the city’s main street. David was born in Dunedin, and when he returned to live in the city to attend the University of Otago, he immediately immersed himself in the city’s built heritage. “One of the first things I do when I go to a new place is learn about its buildings. “Amongst other writings, I recall reading Lois Galer’s wonderful series of books on the houses and homes of
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Dunedin, which have this mix of architectural and social history. It’s the merging of those two things that I really enjoy.” While he admits there are many areas of history, such as music, he could have explored through his blog, it’s the deep well of stories related to built heritage that steered its direction. “With built heritage history you can draw on a really wide range of subject matter. Sometimes it can be bottom up – learning about workers in a factory – and other times top down – exploring a grand home and its wealthy owner. “And along the way you can delve into other areas, like popular culture.” David acknowledges the many sources he’s drawn on while
creating the blog, such as Papers Past and other National Library of New Zealand resources, Dunedin City Council’s archives, Toitū Otago Settlers Museum and, of course, the Hocken Collections. Readers love the imagery that runs alongside the posts, he notes, and particularly the more quirky and surprising stories relating to places – “the stories where you think, ‘Gosh, I’d never think that would have happened at that time and place’.” Balancing work, a young family, music and his other passions (including being a trustee of the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust of New Zealand) can be difficult, and David admits that these days he can’t spend as much time on the blog. But he currently has a
couple of posts up his sleeve and continues to be motivated by a desire to help protect the city’s architectural treasures. “People in Dunedin really do value the city’s built heritage, but there’s always a risk of the incremental destruction of some really quality buildings. For example, there’s very little suburban or Modernist heritage recognised on the district plan,” he notes. “The value of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so if you end up with just a few isolated heritage showpieces – the grand ones you see on the postcards – the city would certainly lose a lot of the character that people cherish.” builtindunedin.com
Heritage New Zealand
First Church of Otago, Dunedin heritage.org.nz/the-list/details/60 The buildings I’m drawn to are the ones that are artistically appealing, home to some amazing stories, and with which I also feel a personal connection. For those reasons – and while it might seem a fairly obvious choice – First Church is a favourite building for me. It’s an incredible building – a world-class piece of architecture that we’re lucky to have in Dunedin – but also my grandparents were married there in 1920, and later my aunt, so there’s a family connection too. I’ve probably had more to do with Knox Church. A lot of music happens at Knox Church, so I’ve often played there, and to be honest its interior is better than First Church’s. They’re both Lawson churches [designed by architect Robert Lawson], but Knox is later, and Lawson obviously learned a lot in the intervening years about the functioning of that sort of building – particularly the embracing gallery, which makes for a more intimate overall space. So maybe my favourite building is Knox Church on the inside and First Church, with that incredible Gothic spire, on the outside. n RETURN TO CONTENTS
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Hōtoke • Winter 2022 15
TE WĀHI • PLACE
THE central STORY WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGERY: AMANDA TRAYES
A tour of Auckland’s K’ Road with the Pua brothers weaves together tales of family and faith, tragedy and triumph, activism and social justice – all the while connecting the city’s Pacific urban history to the story of Aotearoa “Growing up, I would hear everybody else’s stories, except ours,” says Sofi Ulugia-Pua. “I thought, ‘When am I going to hear my story?’” It’s a painful reflection, but one that also served as a powerful motivator for the creator and founder of the Pasifika Urban Street History (PUSH) project. For almost 20 years, as part of the project, the urban historian, storyteller and poet has been running tours with his older brother, the Revd Mua Strickson-Pua, around central Auckland that give voice to the area’s Pacific urban history. The Pua brothers grew up in Grey Lynn, two of the six children of Vaitulu and Sofi Pua, who came to New Zealand from Samoa and met in Auckland in the 1950s. The tours weave their personal stories associated with central city locations seamlessly into a wider Pacific urban history and that of Aotearoa: the post-World War II urban migration waves, the establishment of Pasifika churches, the rise of the
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Polynesian Panthers, and the Dawn Raids and the formal apology for them decades later. Called ‘Savali Le Talanoa’, or ‘Walk The Talk’, the tours initially began with Sofi and Mua talking with tour participants as they took in sites of significance around Karangahape Road (known as K’ Road), Ponsonby and Grey Lynn. In more recent years, their sister Vaitulu Pua has joined occasionally, as she does on the day Heritage New Zealand magazine takes the tour. The tours have expanded over time to incorporate music, poetry and dance, sometimes performed live by family members and other artists (Sofi’s daughter is a Siva dancer, for example, and Mua’s son Feleti was a member of hip-hop/R&B group Nesian Mystik). “Traditionally our stories are told through music,” explains Sofi, “and we also wanted to celebrate artists and how they tell our stories.” It’s a bright, warm morning when we meet Sofi and Mua at Pigeon Park, at the corner of K’ Road and
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TE WĀHI • PLACE
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1
Symonds Street Cemetery.
2 Revd Mua Strickson-Pua at
the intersection of K’ Road and Queen Street. 3 Auckland Baptist Taberna-
cle. 4 St Kevins Arcade.
tikanga: cultural protocol waiata: song
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Symonds Street, where they kick off the tour with a warm welcome. “This is an opportunity to tell our stories, honour our old people, and honour your people,” Mua tells us. “We hope this experience leaves you with a sense of hope and a better understanding of our community and of us,” echoes Sofi, before sharing the tour’s opening waiata – Maisey Rika singing the national anthem in te reo Māori and English, recorded in 2019 at the National Remembrance Service in Christchurch to honour the victims of the 15 March mosque attacks. Sofi and Mua highlight sites with layers of significance, not only over time but to a diversity of people, and our first stop exemplifies their approach. A trained social worker who continues to work with former gang members, Mua leads us into the Symonds Street Cemetery and under Grafton Bridge (both the cemetery and the bridge are Category 1 historic places), where many homeless people gather over summer. When we emerge on the bridge’s opposite side, we pause at the grave of William Hobson. “There’s such an irony to this site,” notes Mua, “that here you have New Zealand’s first governor, who signed the Treaty of Waitangi, and just over there we’re
reminded of the continuing social cost to our society of those who didn’t make the transition. We’re standing in this one place, in the presence of our ancestors, yet there are many different stories.” Referencing the bridge above, they acknowledge it as a key pathway for the ‘mamas’ of their parents’ generation, who would walk en masse along K’ Road and across the bridge to work as cleaners at Auckland City Hospital. “They were on low wages, so they walked everywhere to save the money for their children,” says Mua, before the voice of Pauly Fuemana of music group OMC punctuates the scene, capturing the sincerity of the hope embodied by new arrivals to Aotearoa.
And my father used to say And we came to this land of plenty And we came to this land of hope And we came to this land of good times And we came to this land of love – OMC, ‘LAND OF PLENTY’ (EXCERPT)
Heritage New Zealand
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Social activism is a strong thread drawn through the brothers’ lives, and back at Pigeon Park Sofi highlights it as a meeting place for weekly protests in 1981 against the Springbok Tour, which he joined aged 15. “It was an eye-opener that sport could split a nation. We had family and church members who were part of the Police and it was really hard to turn up to protests when they were right in the front lines opposite us.” At the top of Queen Street, our next stop is the Category 1 Auckland Baptist Tabernacle, where Mua shares a story of their friend, musician and activist Tigilau Ness. This was Tigi’s childhood church, he explains, until the church could no longer afford the buses that ferried the congregation’s working-class children to and from Ponsonby. Walking through the throngs on K’ Road and St Kevins Arcade, we stop at the Myers Park historic area, where the brothers reflect on the alternate realities they were exposed to growing up. “In the ’70s, K’ Road was our multicultural hub. On Thursday nights all the families were here shopping at George Courts and Rendells, and at the fruit shops for coconuts and taro,” recalls Sofi. However, Mua recalls a time in 1980 when he was a young social worker appointed to work with the King Cobras, and a 13-year-old girl known as Cookie was raped and murdered in Myers Park. Mua subsequently accompanied a busload of young gang members to the tangi in Northland, and he recalls guiding the young men through the tikanga of the tangi – a heartbreaking process recounted in his poem ‘Tangi’.
Heritage New Zealand
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Ask those young people What it means to be at the bottom Of bargain bin New Zealand, Where ethnic working-class People are consumed, Assimilated and even integrated We know because we live the reality Of your lies, New Zealand – REVD MUA STRICKSON-PUA, ‘TANGI’ (EXCERPT)
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TE WĀHI • PLACE
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2
being offered in English, prompted the establishment in 1948 of the Pua family’s church, the Pacific Islanders’ Presbyterian Church (PIPC) in Newton. PIPC Newton is still Vaitulu’s church, and standing on its steps she describes it as a place in New Zealand society where Pacific people feel fully welcome. “Our parents’ generation left everything to come here, but what they did bring with them was a sense of faith,” she explains. “This was the mother of the Pacific churches, and we were raised within its walls.” She recalls the times of the services held in different languages, the hundreds of children who lined Edinburgh Street for Sunday school, and the culture of leadership the church fostered.
1
Myers Park historic area.
2 Maota Samoa/
Samoa House. 3 The Whakaako Kia Whaka-
ora/Educate to Liberate mural was completed last year in recognition of the Polynesian Panthers’ 50th anniversary. 4 The VAANA peace mural. 5 Revd Mua Strickson-Pua,
Vaitulu Pua and Sofi Ulugia-Pua on the steps of PIPC Newton. .
The presence of Sofi and Mua’s parents, and particularly their father Sofi, a prominent member of the Samoan community, looms large over the tour and we hear more of his story on Beresford Street at Maota Samoa/Samoa House. Opened in 1978 as a space for the Samoan community and the Samoan Embassy, it was the first formal Samoan meeting house to be built outside Samoa. As Samoan Advisory Council chair, Sofi was a driving force in its creation. Sofi was a teacher in Samoa, but when his qualifications weren’t recognised in New Zealand, he took up a Post Office job. However, his public stance against the Dawn Raids (he’s pictured with then prime minister Robert Muldoon at the Auckland Town Hall in debate on the issue), persistently stymied his promotion, notes Sofi (Jnr). Across the road, Mua points to the Beresford Street Congregational Church, today known as Hopetoun Alpha (and listed as St James’ Presbyterian Church, a Category 1 historic place). He tells how a schism in that church in the 1940s, because services were only
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“Although it could be seen as a very traditional church, it was very innovative around youth,” she says. “In the islands, you would usually become a church elder in your forties or fifties, but my friend and I became elders here at 21. We used to joke that if you can survive in PIPC Newton, you can survive anywhere, and those experiences haven’t left us. If we look back at that first generation, the majority went on to various leadership roles.” The church has also been immortalised on screen. A pivotal early scene in the hit movie Sione’s Wedding was shot on its steps; Mua, who served as spiritual and cultural advisor on the film and its sequel, features in the scene. One of the last stops on the tour, near the intersection of Karangahape and Ponsonby Roads, is a more recent addition to the neighbourhood: the Whakaako Kia Whakaora/Educate to Liberate mural (pictured on pages 16–17), unveiled last year in recognition of the Polynesian Panthers’ 50th anniversary. “The Polynesian Panthers – they were the senior kids of our Sunday school,” explains Sofi. “They were the first to go off to university and start challenging our leaders and our church. And they were family friends; I remember them protecting us as we walked along Ponsonby Road from the people who used to come into the area to chase and beat up kids.” Also significant in 2021 was the formal apology for the Dawn Raids. When it was officially delivered at the Category 1 Auckland Town Hall, four generations of the Pua family were there to hear it. After the Kingites song ‘Polynesian Panthers’ has echoed across the carpark beneath the mural, the tour winds to a close across the road at the site of another series of artworks – the iconic VAANA peace mural. It’s here that Mua reflects on the evolution of the PUSH project to this point and the power of personal storytelling to create universal connections. “PUSH began as a means of honouring our parents, but then we realised it was allowing others to tell their stories and healing to take place,” he says. “It begins with your story, but then it becomes our history.”
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PAPATAPUWAE NGĀ PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD O NGĀ TŪPUNA • MĀORI HERITAGE
A Matariki hākari Mahinga kai, the maramataka and Matariki all draw together for a special event at Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House WORDS: HELEN BROWN • IMAGERY: KIRSTY MIDDLETON
The return of the lone star Puaka or the Matariki constellation to our pre-dawn winter skies has traditionally been regarded by Māori as a signifier of the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the new year. It is a time for wānanga and whanaungatanga, for coming together to share stories, pass on knowledge, remember those who have passed away, and plan for the year ahead. It is also a time to share and enjoy the bounty of a full pātaka. So this year, as Aotearoa New Zealand marks Matariki as a public holiday for the first time, Nigel Harris (Ngāi Tūāhuriri), Pouārahi for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, decided to combine his professional heritage interests with his culinary
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skills and a lifetime of experience as a food gatherer to showcase and host a traditional hākari for whānau and colleagues at Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Fittingly, Te Whare Waiutuutu is named for a stream flowing through the property, which is part of an interconnected network of waterways that flow into the Ōtakaro Avon River towards the Ihutai Avon estuary and were highly treasured by Ngāi Tahu as a mahinga kai area. A pā kid, Nigel was born and raised at Tuahiwi, where he developed a passion for food when he was just a pēpi. As the youngest in the whānau, he was often left at home with his Taua Beck (Elizabeth Mataputaputa Harris (née Rūpene)) when his father (Ray Harris), a gun shearer and horse trainer, travelled away for work. When Taua Beck baked a batch of scones or her renowned plum duff, it was young Nigel’s job to bring in the wood and coal for the coal range, and mix the butter and flour or
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PAPATAPUWAE NGĀ PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD O NGĀ TŪPUNA • MĀORI HERITAGE
Learn more about the Matariki Hākari in our video: youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga
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“At its heart it’s about whanaungatanga or family ties. It’s about manaakitanga, looking after our guests, and it’s about kaitiakitanga, ensuring that we look after our natural resources”
1
Nigel Harris preparing vegetables for the hākari.
2 Makarini Rūpene hanging
tuna to dry in the whata. 3 Huia Pacey hard at work in
the kitchen. 4 Tui Falwasser with samples
of her weaving. 5 Nigel cleaning a tuna fillet.
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add the baking powder, carefully measuring quantities according to her instructions. “That was the catalyst that really got me initiated into food,” says Nigel, who went on to become a professional chef and teacher of the culinary arts. Sitting around the coal range late into the evening with all the aunties popping in to play euchre and talking whakapapa, and working alongside his uncles in the cookhouse at the back of the marae, he also learned that food was about much more than just eating. “It’s the gathering, the storytelling, the memories – making those intimate exchanges and connections over the years. The eating is just the icing on the cake.”
In preparing his Matariki feast, Nigel called upon his whanaunga, including mahinga kai expert Makarini Rūpene (Ngāi Tūāhuriri) and expert weaver Tui Falwasser (Ngāi Tūāhuriri), who also hail from the small rural settlement of Tuahiwi, just north of Kaiapoi, which is home to the Ngāi Tūāhuriri hapū of Ngāi Tahu. The fertile soils of Tuahiwi once sustained extensive māra kai that supplied the nearby stronghold of Kaiapoi Pā, which was established by the first Ngāi Tahu tipuna when they settled Te Waipounamu, the South Island, in the early 18th century. Later, Tuahiwi was incorporated into Kaiapoi Native Reserve 873, which had been set aside as part of the infamous Canterbury land purchase of 1848 that had had devastating consequences for Ngāi Tahu, including the loss of ownership and access to many of their traditional mahinga kai. Ngāi Tahu food gatherers have battled to maintain and reclaim those rights ever since. But despite overwhelming impediments, the production and procurement of customary kai has remained central to Ngāi Tahu identity. “I grew up around mahinga kai. I’ve always cooked and always done kai mahi,” says Nigel. “As kids, our toys were slug guns, knives, fishing rods and eel spears. Our time was spent down the Cam River
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[Ruataniwhā] and other waterways – gathering kai, getting watercress, putting in traps for waikōura, and whitebaiting with our whanaunga.” Tui agrees: “Every day there was something related to mahinga kai.” Makarini recalls that one of his earliest memories is of visiting his Great-Uncle Mars (Te Marino Marsden Rūpene) at Tuahiwi and “watching the eels being smoked, as a little kid”. Makarini remains a committed food gatherer and regularly feeds his whānau and friends from a pātaka brimming with Ngāi Tahu delicacies such as pāua, tītī, tuna, īnanga and kōura. Indeed, when we talk, he is pressed for time as he has 50 tuna hanging on his whata waiting to be smoked. When he is not gathering, he works as a Cultural Land Management Advisor, encouraging landowners to protect the mahinga kai values on their properties. He also plays a pivotal role as a Tangata Tiaki (customary fisheries guardian). In that capacity, he issued permits for some of the kaimoana that was gathered for the feast. The three cousins did not grow up observing Matariki, but their whānau were (and are) driven by the maramataka – the Māori lunar calendar. The tides, the phases of the moon, and the seasons were an ingrained and essential part of the rhythm of life. “You wouldn’t go eeling on the full moon, you’d go on the dark moon,” says Nigel. “On the flip side, you’d get pāua on the full moon because of the lower tide.” In the appropriate seasons they collected cockles, netted flounders and herrings, gathered pāua and mussels, and speared eels at night or bobbed for them over the stopbank, making lures (known as ‘hui’) with a bit of rotten meat on a stick and some binder twine. Says Nigel: “The eel would latch on, and you’d whip it out!” Many whānau also continue, as they have for generations, to make the annual trek to Wairewa (Lake Forsyth) during the tuna heke, digging drains in the shingle to catch the eels as they migrate out to sea. Those with ancestral birding rights, including Makarini, travel south each autumn to the remote Tītī Islands that surround Rakiura Stewart Island to harvest tītī. Such specialist foods are taonga and unobtainable in supermarkets, so Nigel’s carefully curated Matariki feast is a rare treat. On the verandah of Te Whare Waiutuutu, overlooking the manicured gardens and a huge Peasgood Nonsuch apple tree laden with autumnal fruit, Tui lays out the banquet table with a long harakeke table runner dyed in the colours of the rainbow. “Mahi toi and mahinga kai fit together,” she says as she dresses the dining tables. “They’re both about materials and gathering and utilising what you’ve got in your own backyard.” High-quality harakeke grows in abundance at Tuahiwi, and the table decorations Tui arranges are mostly made from it. These taonga include ipu pāua (a pāua shell nestled inside a kono), harakeke strips, which have been prepared for weaving into a pākē, a tiny kete and a special tāhei made from muka and kiwi feathers. The impressive centrepiece, a poi kawe, carries a special story. This large round woven bag is inspired by
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Hōtoke • Winter 2022 25
PAPATAPUWAE NGĀ PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD O NGĀ TŪPUNA • MĀORI HERITAGE hākari: feast hapū: sub-tribe harakeke: Phormium tenax, New Zealand flax hue: gourd īnanga: whitebait ipu: container, bowl kai: food kaimoana: seafood karakia: prayer kete: basket koha: gift kono: small food basket kōura: crayfish mahi: work mahinga kai: food and resource gathering work/site mahi toi: Māori art manuhiri: guests māra kai: food cultivations maramataka: the Māori lunar calendar motu: country, island muka: prepared flax fibre pā: village pākē: rain cape pātaka: food storehouse pāua: abalone pēpi: baby Pouārahi: Māori Heritage Advisor pounamu: New Zealand greenstone ringawera: kitchenhand tāhei: necklace taonga: treasures Taua: Ngāi Tahu term for grandmother 1
A Matariki hākari – the laden banquet table.
tikanga: custom, lore tipuna: ancestors
2 Tuna slices.
tītī: sooty shearwater, muttonbird
3 Tuna heads.
tuaki: cockles
4 Colonial goose.
tuna: eel tuna heke: eel migration wānanga: learning, school waikōura: freshwater crayfish whakapapa: genealogy whānau: family whanaunga: relations
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whanaungatanga: kinship whata: storage platform
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the design of a unique taonga that was found in a cave at Kura Tāwhiti in the 1980s and is believed to be at least 500 years old. Poi kawe were used to transport food and resources such as birds and pounamu, so it is a fitting focal point for a feast that celebrates mahinga kai. Inside the poi kawe, Tui displays a small collection of hue she has traded with another weaver from Taumutu, who grew them. Such trade, or reciprocal food and resource exchange, is known as ‘kaihaukai’ and is integral to the tikanga of mahinga kai. Back in the kitchen, Nigel and ringawera Huia Pacey (Kāi Tahu, Tūwharetoa) are cooking up a storm. Huia, who is Programme Coordinator Pou Horanuku Ancestral Landscapes at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, has minced the pāua that the team gathered earlier in the week from Waipara on the North Canterbury coastline. Combined with cream and finely diced onion that has been sweated off in butter, the resultant ‘creamed pāua’ is a staple on marae menus around the motu. Fresh herbs from the garden and an onion balsamic dressing add the finishing touches to a roasted vegetable salad of kūmara, carrots and potatoes. Nigel slices succulent chunks of smoked and fresh tuna, piling them high on serving plates – the eels were caught at Wairewa earlier in the week and ‘koha’d’ by Tuahiwi food gatherer and legendary hāngī-master Grenville Pitama (Ngāi Tūāhuriri). Grenville also provided ‘freshies’, or fresh tītī, from Pohowaitai, off the southwestern coast of Rakiura. The stuffed birds are still roasting in the oven. Makarini artfully arranges tuna heads on a cake stand and plates his kōura salad. He caught the kōura at Koukourarata on Banks Peninsula at the weekend, and the salad is an old family recipe. Nigel steams a pot full of green-lipped mussels from Waipara and mixes a tomato salsa through them just ahead of serving on a bed of watercress. Other dishes we carry through to the table include īnanga contributed by Natalie Leary (Ngāi Tūāhuriri) of the Kaiapoi Food Forest, karengo (a seaweed closely related to Japanese nori), sausages made from wild venison from Tāwera (Mount Oxford), a seafood salad, tuaki and pipi gathered from the mudflats of Te Riu-o-Te-Aika-Kawa (Brooklands Lagoon), and the wonderfully named marae favourite ‘colonial goose’. Nigel’s version of this dish uses schnitzel layered with bacon, spinach leaves and stuffing, which is rolled, baked, sliced into medallions and served smothered in gravy. As the manuhiri gather, Makarini talks about his experiences birding on Pohowaitai, and Nigel shares his insights into mahinga kai and the values it engenders. “At its heart it’s about whanaungatanga or family ties. It’s about manaakitanga, looking after our guests, and it’s about kaitiakitanga, ensuring that we look after our natural resources,” he concludes. After karakia and a quick run-through of the menu, everyone sits down to feast. Plates are filled and refilled multiple times before Auntie Raelyn’s spectacular plum duff, based on her mother Taua Beck’s original recipe, is served with blueberry coulis and cream.
Plum Duff
(after Taua Beck) v v v v v v v
2 cups sugar 3 cups hot water 6 cups self-raising flour 1 cup soft butter 2 teaspoons mixed spice 500g dried fruit pinch salt
Put one cup of sugar into a pot and cook until golden brown. Add the hot water and mix and heat until it forms a sticky, toffee-like consistency, reheating later to dissolve the caramel if necessary. Leave the mixture to cool. Sift the flour and rub the butter through until it is fully ingrained in the flour, then add the mixed spice and a pinch of salt. Add one cup of sugar and 500 grams of dried fruit. Make a hollow in the dry flour mix and add the cooled caramel. Combine well to form a wet, cake-mix consistency. Place the mixture into a pre-prepared wet calico cloth that has been dusted with flour. When the pudding mixture is in the cloth, bring the sides of the cloth together, leaving space for the pudding to rise. Tie off tightly with string. Bring a large pot of water to the boil with a saucer at the bottom (to keep the pudding off the bottom of the pot), then lower the pudding bag into the pot and cook for one and a half to two hours. Remove the pudding from the pot, place on a plate and untie the calico. Serve with custard, cream or ice cream. n RETURN TO CONTENTS
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Hōtoke • Winter 2022 27
PAPA WHAKAAHUA TINO PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD • BEST SHOTS
IMAGE: CLARE TOIA-BAILEY
Lock it in Only two years after it was constructed, Arrowtown’s gaol was reported to have been “built so badly that prisoners can easily escape therefrom”. Surprisingly, then, it was still occasionally in use until 1987 to house unruly revellers overnight during the Christmas season. While you can no longer ‘do time’ at the Category 1 historic place, the restored former prison is open to visitors; it remains a popular tourist attraction in Arrowtown, the Central Otago town that is recognised as a Tohu Whenua – one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s best heritage experiences. tohuwhenua.nz/otago/arrowtown TECHNICAL DATA • Camera: Nikon D800 • Exposure: 1/500, f4 @24mm
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Hōtoke • Winter 2022 29
PAPA TE MĀTAI PĀNUI WHAIPARA • NOTICEBOARD TANGATA • ARCHAEOLOGY
Way finders
WORDS: JACQUI GIBSON • IMAGERY: SARAH HORN
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Heritage New Zealand
A new approach to archaeological study is helping to foster talent in the field and bring together Māori and archaeological knowledge in a unique way
T
aking part in an archaeological project five years ago has opened up a new career path for Kairākau Lands Trust trustees Stella August and Wikitoria (Wiki) Moore. In 2017 the pair took part in a community-based project, Omaio ki Tua, to learn new ways to understand and protect wāhi tapu at Kairākau in Hawke’s Bay. Omaio ki Tua was a partnership between the University of Otago’s Southern Pacific Archaeological Research (SPAR) unit, Pukehou Marae, Kahurānaki Marae and the Kairākau Lands Trust, which oversees 1500 hectares of Māori land in Hawke’s Bay. Funded by the Department of Conservation, Omaio ki Tua aimed to help protect and conserve early Māori heritage in the Ngāti Kahungunu rohe. Participants took part in workshops to recognise, record and monitor archaeological and heritage sites and developed a plan for managing and protecting sites on ancestral land. Wāhi tapu and kōiwi tangata were at risk of loss caused, in part, by extreme weather and increasing coastal erosion. Project lead Professor Richard Walter, also head of the University of Otago’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, warned about the degradation of coastal archaeological sites in Hawke’s Bay in an Autumn 2018 article by Naomi Arnold in Heritage New Zealand magazine. “We’re losing a lot of archaeological sites very rapidly,” he said, noting that the sites at risk of loss ranged from very early settlements to major fortifications and pā sites and old pastoral and whaling sites. The project had a significant influence on Stella and Wiki. Stella explains: “We hadn’t been involved in an actual dig before – and it was wonderful spending time with talented people like Richard and his team. We also learned more about the history of our land.
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“It filled gaps in our knowledge and gave us insights into how archaeology demonstrates we have a history at Kairākau. It shows our people lived, worked and breathed there.” Wiki says the project also gave them insights into the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Act 2014 and further introduced them to the collaborative nature of archaeological field work. “The project was about supporting our community to manage sites on our land and exercise our role as kaitiaki,” she says. “It opened my eyes to how a professional archaeologist could partner with tangata whenua. I could see how you could offer your technical skills to a shared project but still be guided by them.” Last year Stella and Wiki enrolled in the University of Otago’s new Master of Archaeological Practice, prompted by Hawke’s Bay archaeologist and mentor Dr Elizabeth Pishief. As Kairākau Lands Trust trustees for more than a decade, the pair had developed a relationship with Elizabeth, seeking her advice on heritage protection at Kairākau and discussing the possibility of studying archaeology in the future. “I immediately saw their potential,” says Elizabeth, principal consultant at Hawke’s Bay Heritage Services, who has a PhD in heritage studies. “I started out in the 1960s and have pretty much had the archaeology of Hawke’s Bay to myself ever since. It’s a huge responsibility. Of course, it’s one I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, but it’s time for archaeological practice in this region to be mana whenua led – and who better to do that but Stella and Wiki?” The University of Otago’s new programme, says Elizabeth, is ideal for people like Stella and Wiki. Both had studied before, experienced archaeology first-hand and used it to enhance their connections to ancestral land, she says.
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PAPA TE MĀTAI PĀNUI WHAIPARA • NOTICEBOARD TANGATA • ARCHAEOLOGY
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“Most people come to archaeology because they’re drawn to the field. For us, the connection has come through our growing knowledge of our whenua and our ancestors
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Launched in 2021, the master’s programme is an applied, professional qualification that aims to help graduates into the field of archaeological heritage management. Students can study full-time or part-time and on campus or by distance. They can take between 12 months and four years to complete the programme. Professor Richard Walter and Dr Karen Greig, a specialist in archaeology and heritage management, led the design of the programme, which features three core papers, two elective papers, a research dissertation and an internship. Richard and Karen hoped its flexible design and focus on practical archaeology would attract students from different walks of life and cultural backgrounds. Karen explains: “It’s so exciting to have people like Stella and Wiki taking part in the programme. They bring a different set of values and ways to think about heritage. They’re able to bring together Māori and archaeological knowledge in a new way. “In saying that, we do already have some exceptional Māori archaeologists in New Zealand. But they’re few and far between. We need more – especially in regions like Hawke’s Bay and especially given the increasing loss of Māori heritage resulting from development and climate change.” Of the 10 students enrolled in the programme’s first cohort, five have either Māori or Pacific heritage, says Karen. “Our goal is to prepare graduates for careers in the New Zealand and Pacific heritage sectors using the tools, approaches and skills of archaeology. We’ve had a lot of people in the heritage sector asking for a flexible, online programme like this. We’re interested to watch where our students go.”
Heritage New Zealand
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Kairākau Lands Trust trustees Wiki Moore (left) and Stella August.
2 Wiki and Stella sitting on
either side of Hawke’s Bay archaeologist and mentor Elizabeth Pishief. 3 Wiki and Stella will team
up with Elizabeth as heritage consultants when the sisters graduate from the University of Otago’s new Master of Archaeological Practice.
Already, says Karen, Stella’s and Wiki’s course work is breaking new ground. For example, in Wiki’s first semester, she wrote a research paper exploring the need to develop tikanga that accounts for and respects archaeologists who are menstruating while working at Māori sites. Stella, meanwhile, argued for a region-wide heritage plan for Hawke’s Bay. “There’s been a lot of research work carried out over the past 150 years, starting with the early fossicking of Māori artefacts and, most recently, five separate scientific excavations,” she says. “In my paper I asked the question: ‘With such a long history of interest in Māori settlement and occupation in Hawke’s Bay, why don’t we know more?’.” The answer, she found, lay in fragmented and inaccessible information, as well as a lack of Māori representation in the archaeological work itself. “In many cases, information is locked away in private collections and museums or buried in organisational reports that can be really hard to access. Sometimes it hasn’t been documented at all. “When you can find it, it commonly lacks an indigenous perspective.” In her paper, Stella argued for a review, synthesis and analysis of all forms of archaeological data in Hawke’s Bay, followed by a process of identifying gaps before any new work was prioritised.
Partnerships with hapū and iwi, she noted, were critical to ensuring that Māori knowledge, oral traditions and areas of cultural significance, and the aspirations of mana whenua, were properly recognised. Supporting Māori communities to learn about and conserve special heritage sites is what Stella and Wiki hope to do when they graduate and become qualified archaeologists. Wiki explains: “Most people come to archaeology because they’re drawn to the field. For us, the connection has come through our growing knowledge of our whenua and our ancestors who were there before us. That’s why this mahi matters to us. That’s why it feels like this is the path we were meant to be on. “Everything we learn, everything new we discover, it reinforces the connection we have with our land. We want others to have that connection too.” Right now, however, Stella and Wiki’s goal is to simply finish their studies. After that, they are keen to take up Elizabeth’s offer to join her and daughter Kate Hooper as heritage consultants at Elizabeth’s firm in Napier. “It’ll be wonderful to have them on my team,” says Elizabeth. “It’ll be even better to hand over to them completely one day. Archaeology has been slow to adapt to new ways of looking at the world and take on new knowledge. I’m confident Stella and Wiki will help change that.”
hāpu: sub-tribe kaitiaki: guardians kōiwi tangata: human remains mahi: work mana whenua: those with tribal authority over land or territory by virtue of possession and/or occupation rohe: area tangata whenua: people of the land tikanga: cultural protocol wāhi tapu: spiritual places whenua: land
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Hōtoke • Winter 2022 33
PAPA TE WĀHI PĀNUI • PLACE • NOTICEBOARD
34 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
Heritage New Zealand
E P X E
WORDS: MATT PHILP
Shorn of its original context, is a relocated heritage building still the genuine article? Māngungu Mission is what you might call a boomerang building. The simple Georgian structure, hub of the Wesleyan mission in Northland from 1838, radiates a sense of permanence and place. But it has clocked up some serious mileage, shipped by barge to Onehunga in 1855 to serve as a parsonage, shifted on well-greased skids further up Grey Street in 1921, then trucked in four sections and reassembled in its original setting at Hokianga in the 1970s. The building’s nomadism is not unique among our built heritage. The former Aratapu Public Library (1874) shifted five times, doing the rounds of Dargaville before settling in Harding Park. Wellington’s Star Boating Club building (1886), built on skids as a hedge against harbour reclamation, has had three homes. Kaiapoi’s little Edwardian band rotunda has been as ambulatory as any brass brand, and Lawrence’s Poon Fah Joss House has done a Māngungu-like full circle, relocating from the Central Otago town’s 19th-century Chinese mining camp to Maryport Street, where it was repurposed as a crib,
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 35
IMAGE: MARCEL TROMP
G N I V O A M RIENCE
then back to the camp in 2016. There are many more instances of heritage buildings and other structures that have been relocated just the once. “There’s a tradition in New Zealand – you could almost consider it a heritage tradition – of moving buildings around,” says Robin Byron, Senior Conservation Architect for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Relocation, whether it be within a site or off site, may become even more frequent with urban and suburban intensification and ongoing housing supply pressures, not to mention the possibility that climate change may imperil some of our more tenuously sited heritage buildings. But under what circumstances is moving a heritage structure viable? And what becomes of its heritage values after a change of address? As a rule, heritage practice is guided by the principles of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS): relocation is an absolute last resort. A structure’s setting is seen as an integral part of its heritage significance, and moving is only an option when all other means of protection are exhausted. Retaining a place on its site is the ideal, but in some circumstances, in order to ensure the ongoing survival of places, structures need to be relocated – made easier in the case of our timber buildings as they are comparatively easy to shift. The ICOMOS New Zealand Charter allows relocation to be a legitimate part of the conservation process in those rare circumstances when a site has reached a point of severely diminished associated value, or when relocation is the only way to save a structure. If relocation is to occur, a new location should provide a setting compatible with the cultural heritage values of the structure.
PAPA TE WĀHI PĀNUI • PLACE • NOTICEBOARD
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Wellington’s Star Boating Club building has had three homes. IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK. COM
2 The Martha Mine No 5
Pumphouse, known as the Cornish Pumphouse. IMAGE: ROB SUISTED 3 Stancombe Cottage,
Auckland.
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“There’s a tradition in New Zealand – you could almost consider it
“Buildings are designed for the places where they were constructed. The moment you extricate them from those sites the heritage values will inevitably be diminished to some extent,” says Robin, who notes that by trucking away ‘touchstones’ from their settings you may also be undermining the historic fabric of a neighbourhood or wider context. Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga is notified when councils receive consenting applications for the relocation of places entered on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero. And at times the organisation has submitted against a relocation, says Joanna Barnes-Wylie, a Senior Heritage Assessment Advisor and former Manager Heritage Listing for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. “From our perspective, it’s a last resort when all other options to preserve or save a building at its original site have been exhausted,” she says. “Most examples I can think of were relocated in the face of a building otherwise being demolished.”
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Usually these are one-offs, but not always. The Canterbury earthquakes resulted in a flurry of relocations, including high-profile structures such as downtown Christchurch’s oldest surviving timber commercial building, Shand’s Emporium, which was shifted from Hereford Street to a new site within the CBD. And in Wellington in 2006 there was a mass relocation of Victorian and Edwardian workers’ cottages, shops and other buildings in Te Aro to make way for an inner-city bypass. The bypass went ahead despite vigorous opposition, including court action, with the then Historic Places Trust eventually giving archaeological consent that required large-scale archaeological investigations as a way of mitigating – among other things – the impacts of the relocations. Some characterised the resulting heritage precincts of relocated buildings in Te Aro as ‘toy town’, a pastiche. That’s arguable, but the criticism gets to the nub of the problem with
IMAGE: AMANDA TRAYES
relocation – that it potentially blows a hole through a heritage building’s authenticity. Shorn of its original context, carted away from familiar landmarks and neighbouring structures, is it still the genuine article? It’s a slippery question that heritage professionals chew over in other contexts – say when a heritage building is repurposed. “Authenticity is clearly a difficult concept,” writes Jenny Gregory in a 2008 article, ‘Reconsidering Relocated Buildings: ICOMOS, Authenticity and Mass Relocation’, in the International Journal of Heritage Studies. She argues that a rigidly purist approach to authenticity is flawed, and that the significance of a building “is not always linked inescapably to its setting”. Still, lines have to be drawn. In this country when a heritagelisted building moves, it triggers a reassessment of heritage values. Joanna notes that there are close to 50 entries on the List requiring reviews following relocation. “We have to undertake a review and reassess: is this place still worthy of heritage listing now it’s been taken out of its original context? In most, but not all, cases we find it still has heritage value, but there has been the odd case where we’ve taken something off the List because we feel that the effects of relocation
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– and also sometimes the changes made to that building after it has been moved – are so significant that it no longer meets the threshold for heritage listing.” She gives the example of a commercial building from urban Christchurch that was decamped to rural Canterbury and was subsequently removed from the List. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t still important. At the end of the day, that building has been saved and restored by somebody, which is a wonderful thing, but it has just lost that contact with its original context.” So when does relocation work? Robin Byron’s starting point is that either the building is at risk of destruction or its setting has become so compromised “that it starts to have little meaning in its context”. Ideally, the subsequent relocation would be short-haul – a move to another spot on the same property, or at least within cooee. She gives examples. One is the Martha Mine No 5 Pumphouse at Waihi, known as the Cornish Pumphouse, which is a Category 1 historic place. In danger of toppling into the mine, it was shifted 300 metres closer to town in 2006, a three-month exercise that involved sliding the threestorey, 1800-odd tonne structure on Teflon-coated concrete beams. “It retained a connection to the mine site – albeit at a safe distance from the pit – but had a beneficial result in that, being closer to the town, it became more visible and more part of it, and a kind of revered landmark for Waihi,” says Robin. She also instances the relocation of the listed 1870s Baverstock Cottage in Flat Bush, Auckland. An early school in the area, it had become badly neglected, and its setting on the site and at the rear of a Buddhist temple “compromised any ability to really appreciate or use it”, she says. Relocated 1.5 kilometres to a site near Flat Bush School, it has since been restored and renamed Stancombe Cottage.
“It was given an appropriate setting where it could be enjoyed by the community. If a building has to be relocated, then it’s good if it can stay within the community that it has a connection with,” says Robin. “Ideally, what you want to see is that the new context is sympathetic to the heritage values,” says Joanna, who gives the example of Old St Paul’s Schoolroom, a 19th-century Gothic timber building that when faced with demolition was relocated to Thorndon School. “While it has moved, it’s still within Thorndon and it retains that connection to the early educational history of that area in Wellington.” At times, however, relocating a historic building well away from its original setting may be the result of a choice made to avoid its demolition. Robin characterises it as the lesser of two evils, and notes among other benefits the sustainability gains. “The reuse of a building, even in another context, is often better than demolishing it and having all those materials go to landfill. It can be adapted, repurposed and continue to have a valuable life on another site. Inevitably buildings have a way over time of growing roots on new sites.” She’s not talking only of listed heritage buildings here. “There’s a whole category of character or historic buildings that may not have the depth of significance of recognised heritage places, but still have intrinsic qualities and levels of craft and materiality worth retaining. Relocating them does make sense so they can continue to have important afterlives, as it were.” A case in point is Sir Edmund Hillary’s 1950s Remuera Road home, now ensconced at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Ōtara, a school founded by its namesake, where it’s used as a leadership centre. “It continues to have an ongoing life and meaning in that new location. I’ve always thought that was a lovely result.”
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Hōtoke • Winter 2022 37
PAPA TE HAPORI PĀNUI• •COMMUNITY NOTICEBOARD
TOWERING TREASURES WORDS: DENISE IRVINE • IMAGERY: PETER DRURY
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Heritage New Zealand
Projects abound for the tight-knit group of volunteers who play a vital role in keeping Waihi’s substantial goldmining heritage alive
The stillness at Union Hill is broken by a chorus of cicadas, and the skyline is punctuated by six slim concrete towers that look as if they’ve been dropped from another planet into this serene space. Union Hill is a former goldmine on the outskirts of the Coromandel township of Waihi, and the cylindrical ferro-concrete towers are cyanide tanks built early last century for the long-gone Waihi Gold Mining Company of London. In their heyday, the tanks were the key to an innovative process of extracting gold from crushed ore in a township rich in this precious metal. Listed as a Category 1 historic place, the tanks are the only examples of their type and size of construction in the country.
Heritage New Zealand
Hear more from Waihi Heritage Vision in our video: youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga
Each tank is 16.7 metres high and 3.66 metres in diameter and soars above its bushy backdrop. They are sited a little off the beaten track from Waihi’s many goldmining heritage treasures, which include the Martha Mine Pit Rim Walkway and the adjacent Martha Mine No 5 Pumphouse, known as the Cornish Pumphouse, which is also on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero. Warwick Buckman and other stalwarts from volunteer group Waihi Heritage Vision (WHV) want to increase the visibility of Union Hill with a plan to make it more visitor friendly. “There is no signage from the road, nothing to let people know it’s here,” Warwick says. “There will be a lot of satisfaction from this work.”
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TE HAPORI • COMMUNITY
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Heritage New Zealand
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The remains of Union Hill’s once thriving gold-processing plant.
2 The Martha Mine. 3 Peter Beveridge. 4 The ‘T’ Memorial.
tūrangawaewae: a place where one has the right to stand
A former Waihi College geography teacher, Warwick chairs WHV, which aims to protect and promote Waihi’s natural and built heritage features. Union Hill is a major work in progress, and today Warwick is on site with wife Krishna Buckman, WHV’s secretary-treasurer, and members Robyn Ramsey, Peter Beveridge and Baillie Scott. The tight-knit WHV team, founded in 2007, is a classic example of Kiwi ‘can-do’: it comprises about 12 people and membership is $1. It gets funding as needed from various charitable trusts as well as OceanaGold, the global goldmining company active in Waihi and the town’s largest employer. WHV has multiple projects either completed or on the go, aimed at enhancing and protecting the
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identity of a town that many descendants of the early goldminers still call home and also supporting future economic growth through increased tourism. “There is already plenty to do and see here, and there will be more,” says Warwick. At Union Hill, he leads our party further on from the tanks to the stone remnants of Union Hill’s goldprocessing plant and a stamper battery. There are also ore-roasting kilns further up the valley, built in the late 1880s to heat gold-bearing ore and support the recovery of gold. The kilns are now shrouded in undergrowth and won’t be publicly accessible until there is a plan for managing them. OceanaGold owns the Union Hill area where the cyanide tanks and other historic workings are located,
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THE TUNNELLERS MEMORIAL Peter Beveridge feels the magic of remembrance when he stands before the memorial to the New Zealand Tunnelling Company in Waihi’s Gilmour Park. The ‘T’ Memorial, a towering metal sculpture by Waihi-based sculptor Nick Brumder, honours the New Zealand men who went to the Western Front in France during World War I to help dig, with picks and shovels, a labyrinth of tunnels and caverns used to move and hide thousands of Allied troops. The sculpture incorporates a globe, recognising that the tunnellers came from all over the world. Peter Beveridge’s grandfather, Joseph Bertie Beveridge, was a World War I tunneller, and the memorial wall at Gilmour Park has a photograph of him in rescue kit at an army mines training school in France. Joe, as grandson Peter calls him, was one of 1300 Kiwi tunnellers who took their civilian mining skills to the Western Front. There were 90 Waihi goldminers in the company. Peter says Gilmour Park has become the tūrangawaewae for the old miners and their families, and he is deeply appreciative of WHV’s efforts in developing the site, which was dedicated in January 2016.
Heritage New Zealand
The initiative was led by then WHV chair Kit Wilson and his wife Sue Baker Wilson. Peter, who moved to Waihi a few years ago, now volunteers with WHV. Peter’s grandfather was from Christchurch, and he served in both the Boer War and World War I as Henry Coventry. He’d thought a stint in borstal as a youth would have kept him out of the New Zealand Army if he’d signed up as Joe Beveridge. A letter from ‘Henry Coventry’ to the wife of a fellow World War I miner is part of the permanent – and poignant – Khaki Miners exhibition at OceanaGold’s education centre. This was also developed by WHV and salutes the tunnellers with photographs, interpretive panels, and beautiful handcrafted wreaths and poppy cloaks. The cloaks were a collaborative effort by many Waihi women, co-ordinated by Krishna Buckman, who also made the wreaths. Peter Beveridge was seven when Joe died. He remembers him as a strong, fiercely independent man. He says Waihi has done the tunnellers proud. n
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TE HAPORI • COMMUNITY
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and it has earmarked a recently retired SAG mill (a semi-autogenous grinding mill used to separate gold from ore) for the Union Hill heritage project. The big mill is in storage, awaiting the move to Union Hill. It is envisaged that visitors will enter the site through the mill and there will be interpretive panels telling the story of the area’s mining heritage, from past to present. The car park will be upgraded, a picnic area developed and entrance signs installed. Warwick has drawn the plans for this project and they are currently with OceanaGold for approval. Both parties are also working closely with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga staff on the project, which will later require consents from Hauraki District Council. Funding has yet to be finalised. Phil Salmon, Community Development Advisor for OceanaGold, says the company is pleased to work with WHV members on projects to get the best out of local heritage sites.
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“They are a constant source of feedback and we value their input. We are lucky to have such dedicated people in Waihi,” he says. “Warwick Buckman is that guy who gets out and does things. He walks the talk, as do other members.” Warwick says WHV similarly values the connection with the company. “But we don’t feel they are buying us. It is a positive relationship.” In the past three years, WHV has worked with OceanaGold and many local volunteers, including children, at Union Hill. Trees have been cleared around the cyanide tanks, creating better access and views, and there has been a big push to replant with natives. OceanaGold and its contractors have contributed funds and manpower for this stage of the project as well. Amid the sound of cicadas and the stark remains of the formerly productive plant, Warwick draws attention to the significance of our surroundings: “This was a large industrial site in the early 1900s, and the cyanide tanks were revolutionary.”
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WHV members at Gilmour Park, from left: Warwick Buckman, Robyn Ramsey, Krishna Buckman, Baillie Scott, Peter Beveridge, Florence Chambers.
2 Robyn Ramsey beside a
mural of Ada Maud Donaldson MBE. 3 The Grand Junction
refinery building. Grand Junction was the second most important mine in the Waihi area. 4 A handcrafted red poppy
cloak at the Khaki Miners exhibition in OceanaGold’s education centre. 5 WHV collaborates on the
maintenance of a weir and water race on the Ōhinemuri River.
Heritage New Zealand
PROJECTS AT A GLANCE Projects completed by WHV in recent years include the Khaki Miners exhibition in OceanaGold’s education centre, and the beautiful New Zealand Tunnelling Company memorial in Gilmour Park (see sidebar, page 41). In addition, an historic mine cart has been rebuilt by member Roger Pearce using original pieces. It can be seen from the Martha Mine Pit Rim Walkway. WHV was also part of a massive community effort to commemorate the Armistice
Day centenary in 2018, marking the end of World War I. Since then, WHV has organised an annual Anzac Day display of 2000 white crosses, gifted to it by the Fields of Remembrance Trust. These are placed each year on a grassy slope near the Cornish Pumphouse. The installation takes two weeks to complete and each of the town’s six schools sends students to help (about 50 children a day). Krishna Buckman says it is wonderful to hear children spontaneously sharing stories of their ancestors who fought overseas.
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In other current projects, WHV is working alongside Habitat Enhancement Landcare Partnership Waihi (HELP Waihi), to clear rogue vegetation around a weir on the Ōhinemuri River and the water race to the former Victoria Battery, in a tranquil area once humming with mining activity. Warwick Buckman says the weir, water race and a dredging plant are major (and less well-known) goldmining features and they need maintenance and a management plan. So far the group has felled some crack willow growing on the banks of the water race, sprayed gorse and blackberry and walked the area with a DoC archaeologist
to discuss options for further work. The location is listed with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga as an historic area. WHV is also developing plaques for the township that tell local stories. Member Robyn Ramsey has recently completed one that honours Ada Maud Donaldson, the wife of a Waihi mayor, who was awarded an MBE in 1918 for her work with Red Cross and St John New Zealand. Robyn also leads heritage walking tours in the town. At the Goldfields Railway station in Waihi, member Peter Cooper is researching heritage plaques for 10 buildings. “These are precious pieces of history,” he says. n RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 43
PAPA PĀNUI • NOTICEBOARD KŌPIKOTANGA • DOMESTIC TRAVEL
WEST
life
WORDS: YVONNE VAN DONGEN
West Auckland has a strong heritage as a source of artistic inspiration and a hub for creatives. Yvonne van Dongen reports on three heritage properties that are keeping alive the area’s reputation as a home for art lovers
Wild country abounds out West Auckland way, as do some big names – such as artist Colin McCahon, wine industry pioneer Assid Corban, and author and children’s literacy pioneer Dorothy Butler. However, these three share more than the honour of being West Auckland identities: all their former homes have become destinations for art lovers and practitioners and are open to the public. Forward planning for a visit, however, is essential. Corban Estate Arts Centre (formerly the Corban Winery and Mt Lebanon Vineyards) and McCahon House are open year round, but tours must be booked, and Butler’s former home, Karekare House, is only open to visitors when an artist’s residency (offered at the house for up to three months) ends. I was lucky enough to strike one such period when my writer friend Deborah Shepard and photographer John McDermott finished their joint residency there in 2018. Karekare House was bought in 2016 by husband and wife Sarah Elsby and Donald Cheesman from Butler’s children, of whom two still live at Karekare. Since then they have given the house a new lease of life thanks to the residency programme they established with the assistance of charitable trust Eden Arts, which supports the arts in Mt Eden. Sarah is also an artist and a long-time member of Eden Arts.
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Heritage New Zealand
Sarah says it wasn’t the house, however, that was the main attraction when buying the property; it was the vast lawn: “It’s an airy space, and more intriguing and interesting because of the openness, with nothing to interrupt its expanse.” There are two dwellings on the property, both built by timber merchant Charles Murdoch and together scheduled as a Category B historic heritage place in the Auckland Unitary Plan: the 1889 Winchelsea House, also known as ‘the cottage’, and the 1900 Karekare House, also known as ‘the barracks’. The barracks was later used as a guest house by another well-known local family, the Farleys. Sarah says this explains all the small doors opening to the outside along the front of the house. At that time the house had no bathroom, just an ablution block situated where the garage is now. When Dorothy Butler bought Karekare House in 1972, it was regarded as a rural slum. The Butlers renovated both properties, including an extension to the barracks, where Butler established her study. The dining table that now sits in Karekare House was found in the wreckage of Winchelsea House and has since been restored. Winchelsea itself was named after the British home town of the Farley matriarch and is now Sarah and Donald’s part-time residence.
Heritage New Zealand
Tucked away in a bush-clad valley, the location of Karekare House surely offers inspiration for its artist residents (it also caught the eye of Jane Campion, who featured Karekare House in her 1993 film The Piano), but if that’s not enough, the tumultuous expanse of Karekare beach is less than five minutes’ walk away. The sounds of life are certainly different at the Corban Estate Arts Centre in Henderson. Every 15 minutes railway bells herald the arrival of a commuter train running alongside the centre, although Madeleine Gifford, my guide and the centre’s curator and exhibitions manager, says she no longer hears them. Lebanese migrant Assid Corban presumably also learned to tune out the bells following his arrival in 1902. In any case, he was pleased to live near a railway line, knowing it would be a godsend when it came to transporting his wine around the country. The vineyard he established was not the only one in the area at the time, but just 20 years after Assid arrived, the Corban family was the largest winemaker in the country. The three-storey cellar building, which still stands today, was built at an early stage (1903-07); to demonstrate their subsequent success the family homestead, housing the Corbans and their nine surviving children, was erected in 1923-24. The spacious home was intentionally
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Karekare House, also known as ‘the barracks’.
2 Looking from the hallway
through the front door onto the lawn at Karekare House. 3 Winchelsea House. 4 The restored dining table
now in Karekare House was originally in Winchelsea House. 5 Current artist in residence
Kalisolaite ’Uhila and Sarah Elsby, Chair of the Karekare House Charitable Trust. IMAGERY: MARCEL TROMP
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KŌPIKOTANGA • DOMESTIC TRAVEL 1
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designed to accommodate Lebanese-style, extended family living that allowed the adult children to remain there with their spouses once they were married and continue to assist with the family business. The Corbans ensured their heritage was also referenced in the decorative elements of the house, such as the stained-glass clusters of purple grapes and leaves surrounding the front door. The brick archway that once welcomed visitors is long gone, but the homestead itself stands proud and well cared for – obviously thriving in its incarnation as the centre’s gallery and reception area. It’s been 20 years since Waitākere City Council bought the site and eventually created the humming arts hub. Madeleine says to mark this anniversary, celebrations are taking place throughout 2022. Much of the complex has been recognised as a Category B historic heritage place in the Auckland Unitary Plan. (At the time of writing, an assessment was in progress for the potential entry of the homestead and wider winery complex to the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero.) Today, the ground floor of the three-storey cellar building is home to the Arts Centre’s café; wine has been stored in surviving concrete vats. The former bottling plant, which is attached to the cellar building, now houses workshop spaces. Many of the estate’s venues are also available for hire.
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Also on the property is the old St Michael’s Anglican Church, formerly sited across the road, where many Corban offspring were married. A few pear trees from orchards still remain on the grounds, as do many shelter trees planted alongside Te Wai o Panuku (Opanuku Stream) that helped protect the vineyards. Spacious is the last word that comes to mind when viewing McCahon House, situated on the road to French Bay, near Titirangi. It is salutary to remember that Titirangi only really opened up in the 1930s when the first all-weather road, Scenic Drive, was constructed. The Category 2 historic place (also recognised as a Category B historic heritage place in the Auckland Unitary Plan) was built as a weekend cottage in 1939 and bought by Colin McCahon in 1953. Here the McCahon family (Colin, Anne and four children) lived until 1960. During this time McCahon completed numerous projects at the house, such as building the deck, adding the grid windows in the living room that frame the bush, making a dish rack out of knitting needles and using one of his paintings as a sliding cupboard door. The distinctive pea-soup green interior is also of its time. These alterations were left largely untouched by the subsequent owner and the house was later acquired by the Waitākere City Council in 1999. McCahon would paint on the deck and on the floor of the lounge. He also worked in the garage (look for telltale black paint splatters on the wall).
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The homestead, Corban Estate Arts Centre.
2 Stained-glass windows at
the homestead entrance. 3 Old St Michael’s Church,
Corban Estate Arts Centre. 4 Corban Estate Arts Centre
from Great North Road. IMAGERY: SAMUEL HARTNETT 5 Works by Daphne Espiritu at
Corban Estate Arts Centre. IMAGE: RALPH BROWN 6 Artworks McCahon created
while living in Titirangi. 7 The dining area at McCahon
House. 8 The exterior of McCahon
House, showing the deck McCahon built. IMAGERY: SAMUEL HARTNETT
kaumatua: elder
Heritage New Zealand
“The children slept in an open-air bedroom,” says guide Jack Hadley. “This wasn’t uncommon at the time, and visitors to the house often share their own memories of similar experiences growing up.” While I’m trying to imagine living in this small, rustic bach, Jack leaves me to explore the space and listen to some of the 16 audio displays, supported by images, about McCahon and his work. I learn that his last full year here was one of his most significant; it was when he produced works such as the ‘Elias’ series and the Northland panels. The McCahon House Trust established a residency in 2006 for three artists a year, each for three months, funded by Creative New Zealand. Architect Pete Bossley designed the studio residence – a simple, large-windowed structure on stilts linked to the house via a wooden walkway – which was named ‘Parehuia’ by Te Kawerau a Maki kaumatua the late Eru Thompson in 2008. Pete’s design is strikingly similar to a plan McCahon himself drew for a studio. McCahon and his family spent many happy hours sailing in their dinghy out on the bay, and while much has changed since that time (the bush is denser for a start), the house – except for gentle conservation and cleverly introduced interpretation – still appears as it was on the day they left for central Auckland in 1960.
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McCahon would paint on the deck and on the floor of the lounge. He also worked in the garage (look for telltale black paint splatters on the wall)
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Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 47
PAPA PĀNUII •TE HAERENGA NOTICEBOARD AO • INTERNATIONAL
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Heritage New Zealand
WORDS: LYDIA MONIN
The use of historic places as locations for film and television productions helps transport audiences to other times and places. And in the streaming age, as content-making juggernauts vie for viewers’ attention with grand productions and hefty budgets, the demand for historic locations globally is steadily increasing It’s amazing what a mop of tousled hair, a couple of impressive sideburns and a damp shirt can do for heritage. In 1995 Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice dived into a lake at England’s historic Lyme Park – and the financial ripple effects are still being felt at the estate’s ticket office today. In the 1990s we were on the cusp of a golden age of television. Channels were multiplying and soon we’d go digital, streaming highquality programmes on demand. And the lavish period dramas kept on coming: feature-length films, binge-worthy series, the latest screen adaptations of 19thcentury classics. Historic buildings were needed as film sets and their custodians saw opportunities. “We went out there and invited film companies to come and have a look,” says Harvey Edgington, Senior Filming and Locations Manager for Britain’s National Trust, which set up a Film Office in 2003. Harvey says he’d been approached by film
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companies before but the trust, which looks after properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, needed to be proactive, not reactive. Now he deals with everything from period dramas such as Bridgerton and feature films to documentaries and photo shoots. Filming requests can’t be party political, religious or about the paranormal (ghosthunting usually requires an overnight stay). “The location manager gets the script, phones me and says, ‘This is what I’m looking for’. And it could be anything from a ballroom to a cave halfway up a mountain.” There are location fees for filming, but if a show is a hit, much greater financial rewards can follow. Pride and Prejudice is still worth £900,000 (NZ$1.76 million) a year to the National Trust property Lyme Park, says Harvey. Tim Burton’s 2010 film Alice in Wonderland was shot at Cornwall’s 18thcentury Antony House. “They went from 23,000 visitors to just
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 49
PAPA PĀNUII •TE HAERENGA NOTICEBOARD AO • INTERNATIONAL
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under 100,000 in a year because it was in the film, and it was mainly children making adults go and see it,’’ says Harvey, adding that the ‘Harry Potter effect’, in which children have become heavily invested in certain books and their subsequent movies (which feature some highprofile historic locations), has been “phenomenal”. When the chatelaine of Highclere Castle heard that her friend and Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes needed a real house for his fictional Crawleys, she hosted a get-together. “I could ask Julian Fellowes to come and stay along with other friends and that made it fun – but it’s soft marketing,” says Lady Fiona Carnarvon, 8th Countess of Carnarvon. “You’re all in it together, thinking what you can do. Good food and good wine go a long way in my view!” Lady Carnarvon’s husband is George Herbert, 8th Earl of Carnarvon; his family has lived in the castle since 1679. As Fellowes later told Lady Carnarvon when he was a guest on her podcast: “I wanted a house where a family had stayed continuously through the different periods, and the pictures and the furniture told the story of a family who hadn’t moved around, because that’s what I very much wanted Downton to be. “You can always see in a film when they’re working in something that’s been got up out of props and hired furniture – it’s not quite the same.” A former accountant, Lady Carnarvon says not even her daily costs of hosting the Downton film crew were covered, to begin with. The commercial opportunity lay in its potential as a marketing platform, from which Highclere has since launched tours, books, a blog, a
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“The location manager gets the script, phones me and says, ‘This is what I’m looking for’. And it could be anything from a
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Heritage New Zealand
podcast, an Instagram account, interviews and speaking engagements – even a Highclere Castle Gin. And the money generated has helped fund much-needed repairs. “The filming went on for years on and off – you don’t take up the baton after that. You have to think your way through it and go with it from the start. You’re running a business and you need to think in a business fashion.” Film crews bring extra equipment to protect heritage buildings from damage, like floor coverings and split tennis balls to put under the feet of camera tripods. The National Trust has rules about how many candles can be used and how many fire extinguishers and stewards are needed. Fake snow has to be a biodegradable, plant-based cellulose that can be shovelled up like real snow at the end of the day. Older substitutes like salt and foam are banned. But accidents happen. An antique was smashed on the first day of the Downton shoot – one of several mishaps. Over-confident lorry drivers have caused the odd scrape trying to squeeze through National Trust property gateposts. Covid-19 created more problems. “Do we risk cleaning that historic doorknob every time someone uses it or is it best to put clingfilm on it and keep replacing the clingfilm regularly?” says Harvey. After every shoot, conservators write him a report on what went well and what went badly. Dublin-based Andrew Gallimore has spent more than two decades directing historical documentaries at locations ranging from the pyramids of Giza to the Palace of Westminster. “We generally have far fewer people on set; however, the increase in the production values of television drama has influenced documentary filmmaking, and there’s certainly an expectation these days that we take a more cinematic approach. It creates a series of ‘trust falls’, with the producer – who’s completed the riskassessment forms – at the head of the queue depending on me not to drop him or her. Meanwhile, I have the director of photography behind me. “The temptation to strive for that new shot, that new ‘tension-packed angle’ is always there. How much better would it look if we started just a few centimetres closer to that priceless chandelier? I should say that not a single piece of crystal glass has ever been hurt in the making of any of our films!” Andrew filmed the temples of Angkor, Cambodia, in 2001 for a series on landmines. Around the same time, the temples were used in a very different shoot – as the setting for the Hollywood blockbuster Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Ta Prohm, one of the largest temples, was dubbed the ‘Tomb Raider temple’ and tourists pretending to be Croft climbed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site’s ancient ruins. “Now that’s definitely not a problem that afflicts us,” says Andrew, wryly noting that documentaries don’t spark the same fan fervour that leads to tourism opportunities for blockbuster film locations. The spirits of Hollywood and New Zealand’s greatest cobbler came together for a recent shoot in Wellington. The production company was Piki Films, co-founded by Oscar-winner Taika Waititi. The location was
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The music room at Highclere Castle is now used as a dining room. The baroque ceiling was painted by Francis Hayman in 1740.
2 Highclere Castle’s
north library. IMAGERY: SUPPLIED 3 Visitors by the lake at
Lyme Park, Cheshire. IMAGE: NATIONALTRUST.ORG.UK 4 Lady Fiona Carnarvon and
the family’s two dogs. IMAGE: SUPPLIED 5 Filming for the 2015
BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall at the National Trust’s Montacute House in Somerset. IMAGE: NATIONALTRUST.ORG.UK
Antrim House, built in 1905 for Robert Hannah, founder of the Hannahs shoe company, and now the headquarters of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. The film was Dox, a comedy feature about two Tongan rugby fans, and Antrim’s foyer and boardroom were used for a scene in a church office. Crews have also been filming at historic Otago sites. Locations for Netflix’s feature film The Royal Treatment included Larnach Castle, Olveston Historic Home and the Victorian Heritage Precinct in Oamaru, while Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog also featured the precinct as well as the Dunedin Railway Station. The Antrim House shoot manager, Peter Tonks, says there’s always been a demand for New Zealand’s historic buildings as locations, but many have been modernised with the loss of original features and furnishings. If a location is needed for more than a week, he says, it can be better to build a set. “By the time you pay for security, get your gear in, find places for lunch and somewhere to park 50 vehicles, it’s often cheaper to film in a studio.” When today’s visitors arrive at ‘the real Downton Abbey’, are they appreciating Julian Fellowes’ imagined history, the real story of Highclere Castle, or both? “It’s all a muddle together,” says Lady Carnarvon. “A lot of people have seen Downton; some haven’t. That’s all fine and hopefully people have a lovely time going round. Our numbers can’t increase because we’ve only got one set of rooms and tours, so everybody muddles along together.” Lyme Park also offers a blend of fact and fiction. The famous ‘wet shirt’ scene, in which Colin Firth emerges dripping from the lake, was voted the most memorable British TV drama moment of all time in 2013. In reality though, Firth only appears post-swim when his clothes have dried a bit. The ‘slightly wet shirt after the swim’ scene, however, would never have caught on. RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 51
NGĀ PUKAPUKA • BOOKS
WORDS: M A RI A N NE T R E MA I N E
Shaping up Books showing how past experiences have profoundly shaped the present Books often show how the taken-for-granted present has been shaped by the past, and while the books in this column are on very different subjects, they all have this in common. Two examples reviewed in this column are The Forgotten Coast, in which Richard Shaw shows how exploring his family history exposed his forebears’ culpability in the soldiers’ onslaught on Māori living peacefully at Parihaka, and Too Much Money: How Wealth Disparities are Unbalancing Aotearoa New Zealand, in which Max Rashbrooke shows how changes in New Zealand’s recent political history have also changed this country’s thirst for equity and social justice. Similarly momentous changes are shown in The Front Line: Images of New Zealanders in the Second World War (Massey University Press, $79.99). Glyn Harper, with Susan Lemish, has
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researched sources to gather photographs showing how the ‘then’ of 1939 became the ‘now’ of the years following 1945. The experience of World War I had left New Zealanders with little enthusiasm for another war. However, the situation in 1939 made it difficult to see an alternative option. Despite decision-makers’ understanding post-World War I that “fighting a country as powerful as Germany meant years of pain, separation and suffering” as well as “appalling numbers of dead and wounded men and lasting physical and mental pain for those who survived” (page 17), the political decision to join Britain in the war was seen as necessary. At the time, “New Zealand was very much a part of the British world, and it was in New Zealand’s interests to protect it” (page 14).
The book’s photographs give the past an immediacy, showing what it must have been like for those living through World War II. The words offer a background to events, but it’s the photographs that illustrate their impacts – almost as if you were there. The comprehensive photographic portrayal of New Zealand’s involvement in the war offsets all the words that have been written about World War ll and allows you to add your own responses to what you are seeing.
Another book that clarifies history and its impacts impressively is Too Much Money: How Wealth Disparities are Unbalancing Aotearoa New Zealand by Max Rashbrooke (Bridget Williams Books, $39.99). Max explains the cultural changes brought about by having a lot of money in the hands of relatively few New Zealanders – a change that has taken place only in recent decades as successive government policies have led to the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer. Max writes with clarity and an ability to analyse the events and decisions that have led to the unbalancing of wealth. It’s a book with considerable explanatory power. Despite
having lived through these events and knowing superficially at the time what was happening, prior to reading Max’s analysis it had always been difficult for me to understand why.
Similarly, a book explaining change by highlighting contributions others have made to improving our way of life is Nine Lives: New Zealand Writers on Notable New Zealanders (Upstart Press, $31). Each of the nine chapters has been written by an author who is well informed about the notable person’s achievements. This approach helps the reader think about notable New Zealanders individually, which in turn helps them to absorb the events that shaped each person and understand their motivations and goals. One of the nine, for example, is Margaret Sparrow, who has worked courageously over the years towards abortion law reform. Writer and bookshop coowner Catherine Robertson wrote the chapter on Sparrow. She herself had an abortion performed by Sparrow and gives an insight into the momentum and trajectory of Sparrow’s life by quoting her own words from her book Abortion Then and Now: New Zealand Abortion Stories from 1940 to 1980.
Heritage New Zealand
GIVEAWAY We have one copy of Agency of Hope: The Story of the Auckland City Mission 1920–2020 to give away.
In it, Sparrow describes 1956 as “an eventful year” when, “in chronological order, I was married, was nearly killed in a car crash, graduated BSc, had my first job as a research assistant, turned 21, got pregnant, and had an abortion” (page 10).
Women are also the subject of Lana Lopesi’s book of essays, Bloody Woman (Bridget Williams Books, $39.99). Lana looks at women from the perspective of the others in society, who may find them difficult to understand and irritating because they seem so unpredictable. ‘Bloody’ expresses that sense of frustration, as well as alluding to the fact that they have monthly periods during their fertile years. Lana also celebrates the power of women in negotiating complex situations where they have to meet the expectations of different cultures, such as Samoan and New Zealand. The book’s subject matter is complex and challenging, and Lana’s courage and determination in tackling it are impressive.
Each person who writes a book faces specific challenges. For Steve Holmes, an obvious one was fitting all the cars and drivers he admired into
his first book. The solution? A second volume: Historic New Zealand Racing Cars 2 (Bateman Books, $45). From its first few sentences it’s obvious the book is written by a man who loves cars and admires the commitment that designers and drivers have to their vehicles. Each chapter describes the features of a car and its performance history. The details of the relationship each driver has had with their car are intriguing and the stories of the ways drivers have become involved with their cars and their challenges and successes along the way are absorbing, no matter how much (or how little) you know about racing cars. This is a great present for any car-racing fanatic, and a safer and less expensive way to gain insights into what can be an allconsuming and expensive sport.
Just as absorbing is The Forgotten Coast by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press, $35). Richard discovered a great deal about his family history when he began writing this book. He realised that the land his family had lived on was at Parihaka, where Māori had been living peacefully, growing crops and raising their families when in 1881 they were forcibly removed from their homes.
A Massey University professor of politics, Richard realised he needed to be selective when embarking on writing a family history, so he centred on his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. In doing so, he addresses the issue of choosing to shelter in a “comfortable ignorance” of parts of our history, in his case relating to feelings of guilt about the harm his ancestors may have caused Māori in his home town of New Plymouth. He writes: “It took establishing that my great-grandfather was there on the day [the sacking of Parihaka] for me to directly confront that comfortable ignorance” (page 46). Reading about the path he took to face up to and travel beyond it is an enlightening experience and makes you wonder how often similar events have been part of other families’ histories.
Another book capable of rousing confronting emotions is Agency of Hope: The Story of the Auckland City Mission 1920–2020 by Peter Lineham (Massey University Press, $49.99). Peter outlines that there was a good deal of colonial poverty in early New Zealand, yet no one person or institution wished to take responsibility for the poor.
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 March 2022. The winner of last issue’s book giveaway (A Bunk for the Night: A Guide to New Zealand’s Best Backcountry Huts) was Lesley McIntosh,
Against this background, he shows how the Auckland City Mission came to be, struggling to remain financially viable and balance pastoral and social work. Peter’s work is another example of why looking at current institutions and ways of living should not lead us to see the present as a mirror of the past; instead it is more like a staircase, rising from ‘then’ to ‘now’. Books are chosen for review in Heritage New Zealand magazine at the discretion of the Books Editor. Due to the volume of books received, we cannot guarantee the timing of any reviews that appear and we are unable to return any copies submitted for review. Ngā mihi. RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 53
PAPA Ō TĀTOU PĀNUI WĀHI • NOTICEBOARD INGOA-NUI, TAKU KITENGA • OUR HERITAGE, MY VISION
INTERVIEW: JACQUI GIBSON • IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON
Staying in step Finding new ways to engage with heritage is crucial to keeping it relevant, says Millie Burton
54 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
Heritage New Zealand
Making a dance ribbon and twirling it to music probably isn’t what you’d expect to do at the Te Papa exhibition Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist | He Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa. But it makes sense to me; I grew up ballet dancing. And we know that music and dance were great sources of inspiration to Rita Angus. She wrote about her gift of ‘colour hearing’ or seeing colour through music and translating sounds into colour. I’ve just finished a Master of Museum and Heritage Practice at Victoria University of Wellington. During my final internship, I designed a public workshop for the Rita Angus exhibition called ‘A union of the senses’. Over three hours, kids constructed a colourful dance ribbon and used it to dance to music. It was great fun. Bringing New Zealand heritage to life and helping people connect with it in unexpected ways really inspires me – and the Te Papa staff are wonderful at doing that. I love how they break down barriers, invite you in and give you that feeling of wanting to come back for more. Wellingtonians are lucky; we have many large heritage institutions. But our heritage is revealed in small ways too: in street names like Tory Street – a reference to the ship that began the colonial settlement of the city. One of my favourite heritage places is Katherine Mansfield House & Garden. I volunteered there for two years. I learned so much from director Cherie Jacobson about how to tell stories that bring people from the past to life. I didn’t know much about Katherine to start with, but now I think of her as a radical LGBTQI+ icon and a gifted writer.
Hear more from Millie Burton on our video: youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga
I’ve also learned a lot from Wellington Heritage Week, an annual festival run by just six volunteers. Last year fellow student Brittany Jacobsen and I each contributed 120 hours of volunteer time to the festival. We designed a tour of the former Dunlop tyre factory in Upper Hutt, now Brewtown, as a way to engage a new audience: craft beer drinkers! We ran the festival’s social media pages and wrote a five-year plan to help the festival grow. To me, heritage needs to be inclusive to stay relevant. We can’t keep returning to the same stories that celebrate the same people. It’s got to be a living thing for everyone.
Millie Burton (Ngāti Kahungunu) grew up in Tauranga and moved in 2018 to Wellington, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in history, media studies and philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington. In March she finished a year-long Master of Museum and Heritage Practice, as well as an internship in the Public Programming Team at Te Papa. She was this year’s recipient of the Cliff Whiting Memorial Scholarship Award, set up to provide financial support for students studying full-time for master’s degrees. RETURN TO CONTENTS
Heritage New Zealand
Hōtoke • Winter 2022 55
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Tours for 2022/2023
South Canterbury Spring Tour
CHRISTCHURCH - MID & SOUTH CANTERBURY Governor's Bay - Timaru - Waimate - Geraldine - Mesopotamia -Rakaia Gorge Monday 21st - Saturday 26th November 2022
Autumn Southern Colour Tour CHRISTCHURCH – CENTRAL OTAGO & THE SOUTHERN LAKES
Lake Tekapo - Lake Wanaka - Lake Hawea - Clyde - Queenstown Monday 17th April to Sunday 23rd April 2023 For further information of any of the above tours please contact – Rachel Harper, HOMESTEAD TOURS 80 Main North Rd, Geraldine 7930, New Zealand. Tel: 64 3 693 9366, Mob: 027 292 4480, Email: info@homesteadtours.co.nz
Website: www.homesteadtours.co.nz
56 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
Heritage New Zealand
100% Kiwiana. shop.heritage.org.nz Now open online
Larnach Castle - Otago
