Heritage New Zealand Kōanga Spring 2023

Heritage

New Zealand

FOR ART’S SAKE

Protecting our public art heritage

WILD PLACES

Remembering

Katherine Mansfield

KEEPING SCORE

Heritage sheet music

SURVEY THE SCENE

Mucking in at

Invercargill’s Lennel

Kororipo Heritage Park, Te Tai Tokerau Northland

Heritage New Zealand

Kōanga / Spring 2023

Features

12 The journey home

The career of archaeologist Amber Aranui has been defined by her work in the repatriation of ancestral remains to their people

16 A creative legacy

One hundred years after her passing, Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace remains a place of inspiration

22 Sounds familiar

Sheet music belonging to the former inhabitants of historic homes sheds light on their lives – and the musical tastes of the times

30 Fulfilling aspirations

Thanks to the commitment of tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, the stories of one of the nation’s most significant historic places are starting to be told

34 A women’s place

Dedicated to women who fought for the right to vote, an Auckland historic place is a reminder of the ongoing fight for women’s voices to be heard

38 Going public

The public artworks of some of New Zealand’s most significant 20th-century artists are being documented and saved thanks to a new project

42 Mucking in

For one young family, restoring an historic place in Invercargill has meant getting their hands dirty

Explore the list

8 Community embrace

While the school at which fallen soldiers once studied as children has gone, a memorial to their sacrifices has been embraced by a new community

10 Looking lively

A landmark house in Wellington’s Thorndon has had three distinct phases in its life – and is now set for another

Journeys into the past

48 The people’s palace

Innovative social housing projects in Vienna now attract international tourists – could they one day do the same here?

54

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We are very grateful to those supporters who have recently made donations. Whilst some are kindly acknowledged below, many more have chosen to give anonymously.

Mr Paul Wilson and Ms Catriona McBride

Mary Brennan and Peter Morgan

Mrs Gaye Morton

Mr Peter and Mrs Trish Woodcock

Ms Sheryl Frew

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Faye Fleming In Memory of Neil Fleming

Mr Mark and Mrs Laurel Watson

Mrs Jennifer and Mr Peter Andrews

Mrs Gillian Clarke

Mr Philip and Mrs Anne Herbert

Mrs Frances Bird

Mr Kelvin and Mrs Sue Allen

Mrs Ellen Stewart

In Memory of Frances M Powell

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Mrs Margaret and Mr Nigel McConnochie

Heritage New Zealand

Issue 170 Kōanga • Spring 2023

ISSN 1175-9615 (Print)

ISSN 2253-5330 (Online)

Cover image:

Public art heritage: Ralph Hōtere and Mary McFarlane, ‘Rūamoko’ (1998), cnr Lambton Quay and Stout Street. Image by Mike Heydon

Editor

Caitlin Sykes, Sugar Bag Publishing

Sub-editor

Trish Heketa, Sugar Bag Publishing

Art director

Amanda Trayes, Sugar Bag Publishing

Publisher

Heritage New Zealand magazine is published quarterly by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. The magazine had a circulation of 7460 as at 30 June 2023.

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: information@heritage.org.nz

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Heritage New Zealand magazine is sent to all members of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Call 0800 802 010 to find out more.

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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

New life

Spring – a time to unfurl from winter hibernation. At our house that means the deck gets spruced up and the barbecue is scrubbed in preparation for blowing some dust off the social calendar. And I start a daily watch for the first bright-green leaves that burst from the giant oaks that stand in the park next door.

I love spring. But it’s not just the warmer and longer days that I look forward to, it’s those signs of new life that seem to bring with them a sense of optimism and opportunity.

In that spirit, we’ve introduced a couple of changes to this Spring issue. The first, appropriately, is a gardenfocused feature at the beginning of the magazine. We often receive feedback that our readers are interested in gardening and visiting gardens, and we wanted to recognise this by shining a light on a garden associated with an historic place in each issue.

As it happened, we had already planned two stories with a strong garden focus, so we were spoiled for choice in terms of imagery. In the end we went for a scene captured by award-winning photographer Rob Suisted in the garden of Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace, a Category 1 historic place in Wellington. This year marks the centenary of Katherine’s death, and 35 years since Katherine Mansfield House and Garden – the museum housed in her birthplace –opened its doors to the public.

As the museum’s Director, Cherie Jabsobson, notes in our story on page 16, Katherine loved plants and flowers, often mentioning them in her writing. The museum’s garden has been populated with plants available in her lifetime, including French heritage roses, in recognition of her time in France, where she is buried.

Gardening is also a focus in our story on Lennel. Since Will Finlayson and

Laura Thompson took ownership of the Category 1 historic place in Invercargill in late 2021, they’ve been getting stuck in to the property’s 1.2-hectare section. The couple was awarded $13,000 from the National Heritage Preservation Incentive Fund last year to help them research the original garden plantings, develop a masterplan to conserve and manage surviving garden elements, and manage the garden’s protected trees and shrubs. You can learn more about their journey so far on page 42.

The second change we’ve introduced in this issue isn’t strictly new; it’s more of a refresh. We’ve always loved highlighting people’s special relationships with historic places in our ‘My Favourite Building’ story. But in order to show the diversity of Kiwis’ connections to historic places we’re now inviting household names – from well-known musicians to actors and sporting heroes – to share their stories of historic places that hold meaning for them.

First up is Delaney Davidson (page 54). Perhaps best known as a musician who has collaborated with everyone from Marlon Williams to Tami Neilson and Troy Kingi, he’s also an accomplished visual artist. Delaney recently undertook an artist’s residency at Stoddart Cottage – a Category 1 historic place at Diamond Harbour on Banks Peninsula, which was the birthplace of Margaret Stoddart, one of New Zealand’s foremost 19th-century painters. He shares how Margaret became more of a “real person” to him through the experience “instead of some distant person from the past whose name is associated with an old house” – highlighting, I think, the power of historic places to inspire something new in us all.

Ngā mihi nui Caitlin

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ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

As a young man in the early 1970s, Dr Ross Ferguson had the run of one of Auckland’s great houses.

Ross had recently returned from overseas when he was approached by his boss at the then DSIR, who in turn had been approached by heritage architect John Stacpoole with a unique opportunity: would Ross be open to staying at neighbouring Alberton to provide live-in security while the Category 1 mansion in Mt Albert was being restored?

John Stacpoole oversaw a major restoration of Alberton, built by the Kerr Taylor family, after it had been bequeathed in 1970 to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (then the New Zealand Historic Places Trust) by the last of the Kerr Taylors’ 10 children. The work began in 1972 and Alberton’s doors were subsequently opened to the public in December 1973.

Ross, an expert on kiwifruit who still works at the neighbouring research facility these days known as Plant & Food Research, recalls many memorable incidents while living in the house. These included watching a Hitchcock movie under the ballroom’s dim lights on a stormy night as branches scratched at the windows, and a rat that would poke its head out of a hole in the wall during dinner parties.

While living at Alberton, Ross also helped with the restoration project during weekends, learning much from the heritage professionals involved.

“When I eventually got a house of my own, 10 minutes’ walk away, it was a 100-year-old house and I started collecting more antique furniture and paintings and so on. John was an inspiration.”

MEMBER AND SUPPORTER UPDATE…

Frances (Fran) Powell (nee Hansen) was a member of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga for almost 30 years. Here, one of her daughters, Sandra Page, shares recollections of her mum’s love of heritage and what motivated her to leave a bequest to the organisation on her passing last year. As told to Caitlin Sykes.

“I’d just come back and hadn’t arranged accommodation, so I moved in. They wanted someone to live in the house more to keep vandals at bay; someone to keep the lights on,” recalls Ross. He lived in the house for around two years – on his own for most of the first year until a DSIR colleague moved in for the remainder of the duration of the work.

“You could have a dinner party for 12 or 14 people quite comfortably. If you had a party in the ballroom you’d need 50 or 60 to make the place feel lived in,” says Ross. “The real crunch came when I moved out of Alberton and started looking for a flat around Mt Albert; everything looked very poky.”

Ross will speak at an event for invited guests on 8 December celebrating 50 years of Alberton being open to the public. It will also include a musical performance of Cathie Harrop’s ‘Yours Affectionately’ about the Kerr Taylor women.

Alberton was constructed in 1863-64, so this year and next will also mark 160 years since the house was built.

To celebrate this anniversary, a variety of events that will stretch from this year and through 2024 will be held. They will include a St Valentine’s event, where those married at Alberton will be invited and encouraged to attend wearing their bridal outfits; scone and tea services marking occasions such as Mother’s and Suffrage Days; and Alberton’s Vintage Market Day.

To keep up to date with the details, visit alberton.co.nz

Mum was a fourth-generation local who lived her entire life here in Arrowtown. She absolutely loved Arrowtown and the Wakatipu district and was very connected to the history of its people and buildings –like Reidhaven, Dudley’s Cottage, the BNZ building and the Chinese settlement. The house once owned by Mum’s grandmother in Arrowtown has heritage recognition and Mum was very proud to have Hansen Reserve named in honour and memory of her late father, George Hansen. She was also a big supporter of the Lakes District Museum. It was her grandmother who first came here from the Orkney Islands at age 17, so Mum knew all the family connections to different places. For example, Mum talked about how her own mum and sisters had had to walk from where they lived at Arrow Junction to Crown Terrace to go to school. Believe me, that’s some feat – six miles [9.6 kilometres], including crossing the river and climbing up to the Crown Terrace – and they did that summer and winter. At one of the bends on their route, they planted a small garden, which they tended on their way home from school. Not that long ago, daffodils still bloomed on this site – maybe they still do today.

Mum had a huge book collection, including some beautiful books on heritage buildings. She loved to share her books and knowledge and was proud that one of her grandsons studied heritage architecture at Victoria University of Wellington.

Because of Mum’s passion for the district and her love of heritage, it was important for her to acknowledge the work carried out by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and help it to continue preserving the heritage of New Zealand.

Brendon Veale Manager Supporter Development 0800 HERITAGE (0800 802 010) bveale@heritage.org.nz

BEHIND THE STORY... writer Anna Dunlop

For this issue you write about the (former) High Street School War Memorial and Gates in Dunedin and The Moorings in Wellington. What’s something you were interested to learn from these assignments?

I was fascinated by The Moorings’ incredible ballroom/games room –not just by its nautical design (I love the underwater frieze of mermaids and seaweed) but also by the social life that the room has seen in its lifetime. It hosted parties, concerts, weddings, plays, community meetings and society events during times of important political and social movement. So much history must have been made in that one room.

Your images have also featured in Heritage New Zealand magazine. What role does photography play in your life and work?

I enjoy wildlife and landscape photography and have recently been experimenting with macro photography. I like trying to find that certain composition, angle or light that makes an image exceptional. Photography also encourages me to look for the beauty in everything, no matter how mundane it may seem.

What’s a favourite heritage place for you?

I live in Central Otago and my favourite place is Oliver’s, housed in a Category 1 historic place in Clyde. It used to be Benjamin Naylor’s general store – he was a significant local figure and property

Places we visit

owner during the gold rush of the 1860s and ’70s – and the eight schist buildings now house a lodge, restaurant, café, deli, bar and brewery. A lot of original details have been retained, including the shop counter from the old store, which is now the bar. I love the cosiness of its pitched gabled roof and open fire in winter and being able to sit under the tranquil fruit trees in its orchard courtyard during Central Otago’s hot summers.

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 heritage.org.nz for details of offices and historic places around New Zealand that are cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

Takapūneke, p30

Auckland, p34

Wellington, p10

Dunedin, p8

Invercargill, p42

Diamond Harbour, p54

SOCIAL HERITAGE… with Paul Veart, Web and Digital Advisor, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga

It’s not often that cabbages inspire a social movement, but that’s (more or less) what happened in Wellington almost 50 years ago.

The cabbages in question first appeared on the corner of Willis and Manners Streets in the summer of 1978. There were 180 of them, planted to spell out the word ‘CABBAGE’. For six months the vegetables flourished in their urban home before finally being harvested.

But their influence didn’t stop there. For many, their appearance marked the beginning of what Rosslyn Noonan, former Chief Commissioner of the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, has called “a special Wellington spirit” and an attempt to make the capital a more liveable, human –and charmingly weird – place.

Duly inspired, Wellington City Council harnessed this newfound energy by employing musicians and performing artists to hold events in the capital’s parks. The first iteration was such a success that it was expanded into an annual series under the banner ‘Summer City’.

If you’ve ever lived in Wellington, there’s a good chance you’ve attended a Summer City performance – you may even have been involved with one. While the Wellington Botanic Garden Soundshell is the hub, performances have taken place throughout the city, including in Cuba Mall, Willis Street, Wellington Zoo and many suburban locations. In the past few years, Wellington City Archives has been uploading photos of Summer City events taken in the 1980s and ’90s. As well as highlighting Wellingtonians’ ever-changing fashions, the collection shows the importance of public spaces for the capital’s transformation into an inspiring place to live.

We recently featured some of the photos on our Facebook page – and it wasn’t easy to choose our favourites. It’s worth visiting the Archives Online website to have a look yourself. Find out more at archivesonline.wcc.govt.nz

Ngā Taonga i tēnei marama, Heritage this month – subscribe now

Keep up to date with heritage happenings with our free e-newsletter Ngā Taonga i tēnei marama, Heritage this month. Visit heritage.org.nz to subscribe

IMAGERY: ALL IMAGES ARE FROM THE WELLINGTON CITY ARCHIVES ‘CITY PHOTOGRAPHER’ COLLECTION, 1984. (CC-BY.)

Wild places

Katherine Mansfield loved gardens, and often wrote about plants, so it seems fitting that a bust of the groundbreaking writer sits under a magnolia tree in the back garden of her birthplace.

The bust – by artist Anthony Stones, who created sculptures of many New Zealand literary giants – serves as a memorial to Oroya Day, the founding president of the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society, and her husband Melvin Day, who was also a key early supporter of the society. Established to buy the house in 1987, the society subsequently restored the Category 1 historic place before opening it to the public the following year.

Katherine died in France in 1923, aged just 34. You can read more about what’s been happening at her birthplace to mark this centenary, and the 35 years since Katherine Mansfield House and Garden opened to the public, from page 16.

“And you walked there – you planted hope. And now I cannot imagine myself without it.”

WORDS: ANNA DUNLOP / IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON

embrace

of modern living that is likely to become more common in the decades to come.

The memorial, a Category 2 historic place, was built in 1926 to honour the primary school’s former pupils and teachers who had died in World War I. The arch was constructed by monumental mason HS Bingham & Co, while the wrought-iron gates and the fence that surrounded the school site were built by notable ironfounder J & W Faulkner & Sons.

On the corner of Dunedin’s High and Alva Streets, old meets new in a striking way: the city’s High Street School War Memorial and Gates, an important symbol of New Zealand’s history, stands proudly in front of the Toiora High Street Cohousing Project – Dunedin’s first cohousing scheme and an innovative style

The arch uprights feature two leaded marble tablets inscribed with 56 names (Otago and Southland lost many young men involved in front-line fighting at Gallipoli, Messines and Passchendaele). An inscription on the arch itself reads ‘The Empire’s Call 1914–1918’.

According to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga listing information, the memorial was erected as an emblem of loss, sacrifice and nationhood, and its historical significance lies in it being “both uniquely local and an intrinsic part of a national story”.

While the school at which fallen soldiers once studied as children has gone, a memorial to their sacrifices lives on

Community

It is unique in its use of Oamaru stone thought to have been salvaged from deconstructed New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition buildings, local because it was commissioned by local individuals and specifically honours those connected to High Street School, and part of a national collective of more than 500 public memorials to soldiers of the Great War.

The location of the memorial is also significant: it replaced the school’s main gates, making it accessible to grieving relatives and the public and also providing a daily reminder to pupils of the sacrifices of former students. Many of the children who passed under the memorial arch would later lose their lives in World War II; in 1950 a third marble tablet was added to honour them.

High Street School closed in 2011, but in 2013 a heritage covenant was placed on the war memorial, as well as the school’s gates and parts of its fence, to ensure their preservation. When the site was chosen as the location for Toiora, Tim Ross, Director

of architectural practice Architype, was aware of its significance to the community.

“We saw the memorial arch, gates and fence as immensely important and something that provided a sense of heritage and history to the site,” he says.

The Toiora project, which officially opened in 2021, consists of 21 energy-efficient passive townhouses (the first in New Zealand), along with a range of shared facilities – some of which are housed in a converted High Street School building – including living and dining spaces, guest rooms, meeting rooms, workshops, a laundry, a sauna and green spaces.

Tim, who co-founded the project and lives in one of the townhouses he designed, says the cohousing community put a huge amount of work into restoring the memorial, while also carefully modifying the fence and adding new gates to allow people to access their homes.

“I worked closely with local metalworker Frank Scurr, who had extensive knowledge of the different types of steel and cast-iron and how to work with them. Through him, I got an excellent idea of the history of the fence and how it was made.”

The school gates and fence panels were sent offsite to be sandblasted (to remove the peeling lead paint) and repainted with epoxy enamel before being reinstated by the cohousing group.

“The residents at Toiora worked very hard to get the fence finished.”

Toiora also engaged Dunedin stonemason Marcus Wainwright to clean the arch and treat it for mould, and replace some of the lead lettering that had been damaged or lost over time.

Sarah Gallagher, Area Manager Otago Southland for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, says that despite the loss of the primary school, the new cohousing development is a welcome addition to the neighbourhood.

“We have retained an important record of the school site through restoring the decorative fencing and war memorial, which are very significant to the wider community. At the same time, this new community is growing up within that space and providing a multigenerational facility. People had to buy in to the cohousing concept, so they invested in developing and being part of this new way of living, while being reminded of the school’s ties to the past.”

Due to the design of the project, the memorial gates no longer serve as the main entrance to the site, but the cohousing group came together to ensure they were repurposed in a meaningful way.

“We’ve created a peace garden directly behind the war memorial and adjacent fence, and once it has grown it will frame the structure beautifully,” says Tim.

“It’s a common space that everyone in the Toiora community can enjoy, and it also gives the gates and memorial arch a continued sense of purpose.”

heritage.org.nz/list-details/9645/ HighStreetSchool(Former)WarMemorialGates

Looking lively

as Sydney) Swan, one of Wellington’s most notable architects, who built it in 1905 as a home for himself, his wife and their four children.

It was constructed as a two-storey house, but John made various additions over the years, including a third storey to act as an architectural studio in 1906, a spectacular double-height billiard room in 1926, and a conservatory in 1930.

The interior features beautiful timberwork, plush dados, tiled fireplaces and stencilled paper frieze cornices. The materials were the best of their types for the time and paint a picture of the life of a wealthy Wellington family in the early 1900s. They are also indicative of the taste of one of the leading architects of the period.

It was full circle for conservation architect and recently retired Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Board member Chris Cochran when he received a commission to write a conservation plan for The Moorings, a Category 1 historic place on Glenbervie Terrace in Thorndon, Wellington.

“I’m actually a small part of the history of the building,” he says.

Chris is referring to the summer of 1964 when he and a group of 15 fellow students from Victoria University of Wellington painted the house for the new owners – Martin (Johnny) and Betty Leniston – in return for free board and the use of their 17-seater Chevrolet bus (family transport for the Lenistons, who had 11, soon to be 12, children).

“We had some incredible summer holidays in that bus,” Chris recalls. “Since then I’ve always had a fondness for The Moorings, and getting the commission was a lovely coincidence.”

The large nine-bedroom Edwardian house, which dominates the skyline of the area, has been owned by the Leniston family for more than 60 years. It first belonged to John Sidney (also sometimes seen

John had a passion for the sea that was apparent not only in the name of the house but also in its design: nautical flourishes in the architecture (including an underwater frieze of mermaids and seaweed); a flagpole posted on the balcony outside the master bedroom, which John would use to signal ships in the harbour; and porthole windows and a ship’s wheel in the billiard room.

At the time of his death John possessed a collection of around 700 nautical images – photographs, paintings and lithographs (one of the largest collections in the world) – that were hung around the house. Most of the collection has since been dispersed, although a few items are still on display in the house today.

While The Moorings is important from an architectural perspective, Chris says that it’s the social life of the place that is particularly significant.

“It’s had three distinct phases and they are all interesting: first as the residence of the Swan family, then as a boarding house of varying fortunes, and then as the family home of the Lenistons.”

The Swans left The Moorings in 1936 and the boarding house it became for the next 30 years was typical of those in the 1940s and ’50s. John’s

A landmark house in Wellington’s Thorndon has had three distinct phases in its life – and it’s now set for another

WORDS: ANNA DUNLOP

architectural studio was divided into four rooms, and it’s thought that up to 20 people lived in the building, sharing just one kitchen and bathroom.

During World War II several US officers were billeted in The Moorings; they left behind a grenade, which was found by one of the Leniston boys in the late 1960s when he ran over it with a lawn mower. Thankfully it didn’t explode, and it was subsequently taken away and disposed of by police.

Throughout its three decades as a boarding house, the building was badly neglected and fell into a state of disrepair; this was in keeping with the Thorndon neighbourhood, which had become very rundown (partly due to the threat of the proposed urban motorway) and was seen as ripe for redevelopment.

In fact, the Leniston family had only been living in The Moorings for six months when the Ministry of Works began demolishing nearby houses to make space for an off-ramp for the motorway. For a time, The Moorings was under threat, but Johnny Leniston resisted attempts by the Ministry to buy the house for demolition – something for which Chris is thankful.

“The Moorings is hugely important within the Thorndon conservation area. If it had been demolished we would have lost the single most significant building in the neighbourhood,” he says.

The Lenistons’ eldest daughter Margaret was 11 years old when her family moved into The Moorings in 1965, and says that from the beginning the house was full of life.

“My parents had this philosophy of having an open home,” she says, adding that on occasion they would welcome in members of the community who had nowhere else to go.

“The house has also seen the most amazing parties, events, fringe festivals and concerts. My mother once had to bribe me with a pair of coloured stockings to go to a school ball because I just didn’t want to leave the house; it provided this unique social environment.”

Tim Leniston agrees. As the youngest of the 12 siblings, he was born while the family was living at The Moorings. He says it was a special place in which to grow up.

“The 1970s was an optimistic time – there was a lot of social movement and a lot of change,” he says.

“I remember political discussions, talk about feminism and the beginnings of ecological politics, and plenty of debate. It was an extremely wideranging childhood in which I was exposed to many more influences than I would have had growing up in a nuclear family household.”

John Swan’s billiard room – known by the Lenistons as the ballroom or games room – played host to these famous parties and events, including meetings of the Thorndon Society and other community groups. It is one of Chris’s favourite features.

“It’s one of the most remarkable domestic spaces in Wellington and has been well used by so many people over such a long time,” he says.

Another standout feature for him is the timberwork.

“The timber finishing is very high-quality work of the period [early 1900s] and is still unpainted and in its original state. There are heart native timbers and burr timber panelling – they are beautiful.”

Tim, who currently lives in the house with his brother Patrick, their families, some distant relatives and several others, says that since The Moorings has been in the Leniston family it has functioned as a mix of family home and flatshare, and this communal living style has worked well. However, the family has recently decided to put the house on the market.

“It’s time to let the house have another phase,” he says. “I’d like to see it preserved well so it has another 100 years of life.”

As for Margaret, she only wants one thing: “I just want to see it loved.”

heritage.org.nz/list-details/1437/TheMoorings

Thehomejourney

WORDS: JACQUI GIBSON / IMAGERY: ROB SUISTED

The career of archaeologist Amber Aranui has been defined by her work in the repatriation of ancestral remains to their people

Dr Amber Aranui admits she often felt anger in her early days of working as a repatriation researcher for Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. “I’m an emotional person,” she explains, laughing now as we sit across from each other in a quiet meeting room. “And what I read in the archives in those first few years often made me really angry.”

Amber, who is of Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Pākehā descent, joined through the Te Papa Karanga Aotearoa Repatriation Programme as a researcher in 2008. The role followed a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and religious studies, a master’s in archaeology and a couple of years of hands-on field work and report writing for the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai and OPUS International Consultants.

From day one, she loved working at New Zealand’s national museum in Wellington. Hours were spent trying to find and bring home kōiwi tupuna and toi moko tightly held in overseas museums, private collections and institutions.

“I first encountered kōiwi as a master’s student working under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Irwin – the father of maritime navigational archaeological theory –in the Eastern Bay of Plenty,” says Amber, who grew up in Wellington’s Hutt Valley.

“Excavations of a wetland site known as Kōhika gave me the chance to study fibre materials used by Māori back in the 1700s, as well as two ancestors reburied there in

the years following a massive flood event and abandonment of the village. It was an incredible experience. Working with iwi and learning the tikanga and protocols involved in interacting with the remains of their tūpuna felt very meaningful.”

But in her new role she was shocked to encounter blatant disrespect for ancestral remains and the indigenous communities they represented.

“It was right there in black and white in so much of the archival material I read through.”

Letters penned by Frederick Meinertzhagen, for example, showed that the Hawke’s Bay farmer had deliberately gone behind the backs of local Waimarama iwi to steal kōiwi for the British Museum following his emigration to New Zealand in 1866. Kōiwi were eventually returned to Waimarama in 2013 through the Te Papa repatriation programme.

A separate letter from the 1890s, written by the then director of the Australian Museum, lamented the end of Aboriginal hunting for the purpose of supplying human specimens to institutions such as New Zealand’s Colonial Museum.

“The things I read disgusted me,” recalls Amber. “I just couldn’t believe it. I felt like the average person had no idea what had gone on in our museums and public institutions. Eventually, I realised I couldn’t change the past. I could only help make things right by bringing kōiwi home and sending them back to their people.”

Amber says the archival material gave her grim insights into why thousands of Māori remains came to be traded, stolen and dispersed around the globe, particularly during the late 19th century.

“Darwinism was at its peak. Natural history hobbyists like Meinertzhagen and institutions like museums were excited to get their hands on the body parts of indigenous people for their collections, and oftentimes didn’t question how those human remains had come into their possession.

“The goal was to collect and study them to prove Darwin’s theory of human evolution, in which Europeans considered themselves the most evolved species and believed all others were savages.”

Centuries later, the justification for holding on to ancestral remains continues to favour Western ideas over indigenous ones in some places, says Amber.

The domestic repatriation of more than 66 Rangitāne o Wairau ancestors from Canterbury Museum and Te Papa to Wairau Bar in 2016 is a case in point.

“Yes, those remains were essentially the holy grail of New Zealand archaeology; evidence of our first people. But I think it took three or four generations of fighting by the same family to get those ancestors returned and reburied.

“Their request was finally honoured as part of their Treaty settlement. Even so, Canterbury Museum still chose to defend its right to dig up those remains for future scientific study. At Te Papa, we said we want no such right; they’re 100 percent yours.”

Amber, now a Curator Mātauranga Māori at Te Papa, says the 13 years she spent in the repatriation team have come to define her career. In 2013, while in the team, she joined the Australian National University’s Return, Reconcile, Renew project to network with other repatriation experts around the world and co-author academic texts on repatriation.

Project members hope to launch an international research centre aimed at further helping indigenous communities to repatriate ancestral remains.

“I realised I couldn’t change the past. I could only help make things right by bringing kōiwi home and sending them back to their people”

It’s an exciting milestone, says Amber, who continues to be involved in the project and frequently lectures about New Zealand’s repatriation work at home and overseas.

In 2014 Amber worked alongside Makere Rika-Heke, Director Kaiwhakahaere Tautiaki Wāhi Taonga at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga , and Gerard O’Regan, Tūhura Otago Museum’s Curator Māori and Pouhere Kaupapa Māori, to set up the New Zealand Archaeology Association’s Kaihura Māori Advisory Group, to focus, in part, on strengthening the profession’s understanding of repatriation.

Te Ara Taonga, an inter-agency group that includes Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and was set up to help iwi access taonga held by government agencies, followed.

In 2018 Amber completed a PhD in Māori Studies at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington, publishing a thesis on the repatriation of Māori and Moriori remains and the ethical issues associated with the scientific study and treatment of the dead.

As a board member of Museums Aotearoa for the past two years, she has helped to develop a repatriation policy for New Zealand museums and set up the New Zealand Repatriation Research Network for museum staff working in repatriation research.

In February Amber was called on to help to recover and rebury kōiwi washed out of an urupā in Omahu by Cyclone Gabrielle. Makere Rika-Heke was also there.

“Amber’s made a huge contribution to the repatriation field in New Zealand and internationally,” says Makere.

“In a hands-on way – like we saw in Hawke’s Bay recently – and, just as importantly, she’s challenged the archaeology, heritage and museology communities to consider the ethics of storing and managing kōiwi more deeply than we have before. She’s brought the voice of iwi to the fore and, in doing so, is helping many of us to confront the past.”

Amber says she had no idea what she wanted to do as a kid growing up or even during her first few years at university as a young mum of two. It was the Māori Studies paper by Professor Peter Adds called ‘The Peopling of Polynesia’ that set her on the path to archaeology.

“I realised archaeology would help me learn about myself and the history of Aotearoa through my own eyes.”

Right now, she’s putting her knowledge and skills to use by helping her aunty, Rose Mohi, to track down ancestral taonga and bring them home to Heretaunga. For decades Rose has searched the world for more than 60 carved wharenui panels commissioned by her great-grandfather, the late Ngāti Kahungunu rangatira and politician Karaitiana Takamoana.

“We think we’ve found them all,” says Amber. “So we’re now in the final stages of writing up reports and making our case to the 15 or so museums in New Zealand and overseas that have them in their care.”

There are museums that will be open to returning the taonga, believes Amber, while others will likely say no.

“What I’ve learned in this game is that things take time; no doesn’t mean no. It just means not right now.”

To hear more from Amber, listen to episode four of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga podcast Aotearoa Unearthed.

kōiwi tupuna: ancestral remains rangatira: chief

taonga: treasures

tikanga: cultural protocol

toi moko: preserved tattooed heads

tūpuna: ancestors

urupā: cemetery

wharenui: meeting house

WORDS: SARAH CATHERALL / IMAGERY: ROB SUISTED

One hundred years after the passing of Katherine Mansfield, her birthplace remains a place of pilgrimage and inspiration for admirers of the influential author

A CREATIVE LEGACY

Entering the home in which Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand’s most internationally renowned writer, was born and spent her first four years is like stepping back into the late 19th century. Her parents, Harold and Annie Beauchamp, were a fashionable, middle-class colonial couple who followed the design movements of the time and would have decorated their first house accordingly.

For 35 years, Katherine Mansfield House and Garden has welcomed visitors and served as a memorial to the writer. In 2019 the house – a Category 1 historic place – was closed for maintenance work and an extensive interior refresh. This work helped to ensure its future preservation and better convey a sense of what it was like when Katherine and her family lived there.

This is a big year for the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society – the charity that runs the house museum – and for Katherine Mansfield fans around the globe as they celebrate 100 years of her creative legacy and commemorate the centenary of her death.

On her birthday, 14 October, entry to her birthplace will be free and the house shop will sell the Katherine Mansfield NZ Post centenary stamps the Society helped to create in recognition of her work, her life and her legacy. Each stamp includes a quote, a photo of Katherine and a watermarked item of significance in her life. The centenary is likely to bring in even more visitors keen to see the house in which the writer was born. In Avon, France, a global conference organised by the international Katherine Mansfield Society will be held on the day before her birthday.

Katherine Mansfield House and Garden Director Cherie Jacobson is a huge admirer of the writer’s work, particularly the way she wrote about characters who were generally overlooked at the time, such as women and children.

“The centenary of Katherine Mansfield’s death is an important opportunity to recognise and celebrate her creative legacy. One hundred years on, her works are still in print – they’ve been translated into more than 25 languages – and her life and writing continue to inspire people in all sorts of ways.

“In my role I get to see that every day – in visitors to the house who tell me how strongly they’ve connected with Katherine’s letters and journals, and in writers, musicians, artists and choreographers who have created new work inspired by her. It’s a pretty extraordinary legacy that shows no sign of fading.’’

Katherine was born in the house on Tinakori Road, Wellington, in 1888 and lived there with her parents and older sisters Vera and Charlotte, and her younger sisters Gwen (who died in the house aged three months) and Jeanne, along with her maternal grandmother and two aunts.

It is easy to imagine Katherine playing with wooden toys in the children’s upstairs nursery, and running up and down the original staircase with the bamboo-shaped balusters, or sitting quietly in the apple-green drawing room while her parents entertained visitors.

In 2019 colonial furniture expert Dr William Cottrell was commissioned to source furniture and objects that were in vogue in the late 19th century, so the house also offers a glimpse of what life would have been like for a middle-class colonial family at the time.

“The centenary of Katherine Mansfield’s death is an important opportunity to recognise and celebrate her creative legacy … her life and writing continue to inspire people in all sorts of ways”

For the Beauchamps, the Italianate totara weatherboard villa house was their first step on the social ladder. Harold was a clerk at a general merchant store at the time, and they would later move to three larger houses around Wellington when he became a partner in the firm and later the Chair of the Bank of New Zealand.

There are no known photos of the house’s interior during the Beauchamps’ time there, so Cherie describes the house as “an educated imagining’’. The family wanted to present themselves as fashionable, modern and confident about the future and are likely to have expressed these ideals in their home.

They moved into a larger home in Karori when Katherine was four and the Tinakori Road house was leased to other families. (Plunket founder Truby King and his wife lived in the house when they first moved to Wellington.) In the 1940s the house was converted into two flats, and that was how it was when it came up for sale in 1987 and a group of passionate Wellingtonians set out to buy and renovate it, then run it as a house museum.

Led by art historian Oroya Day, then a Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Board member, they formed the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society

to buy, preserve and restore the house. Oroya and her husband, artist Melvin Day, raised a mortgage to get the project off the ground, and obtained further grants from the then Department of Tourism and Publicity, the Stout Trust and others.

When the house was bought by the Society in 1987, Cherie says, they undertook a major renovation. It was returned to its original layout, and plasterboard was removed from the walls and ceilings to expose the original rimu. Five archaeological investigations found fragments of china and glassware.

Behind the skirting boards, fragments of original wallpaper, different in each room, were revealed, and Wellington artist Rachel Macfarlane designed reproduction wallpaper based on those designs. The Society put out a call for people to help furnish the house and it was opened to the public in 1988, on the anniversary of Katherine’s birth.

In its 2019 refresh, William overhauled the colour scheme, lighting and furniture. Part of his mission was to shake off the idea that Victorian homes were dark and dull. He points out that homes of that era were often alive with colour, with bright furnishings, wallpaper and paintwork, right through to objects scattered throughout.

2. Objects on display in the scullery include a reproduction of Mrs. Maclurcan’s CookeryBook, a popular 19th-century publication, with recipes such as ‘Stewed Sheep’s Head and Brain Sauce’.

3. The house number in Tinakori Road changed from 11 to 25 in the early 1900s.

1. Cherie Jacobson, Director of Katherine Mansfield House and Garden, with some of the objects found during archaeological investigations at the property.

1. & 2. The drawing room and dining room reflect Victorians’ love of patterns and colour.

3. A selection of cards sold at the house are tucked away in a corridor that looks into the entrance hall and drawing room. 4. The small shop features items by local makers and beautiful editions of Katherine’s work.

Houses of that time are generally remembered in black-and-white photographs, so historians must rely on archaeological investigations and their imaginations. In the formal rooms, William arranged for the repainting in authentic heritage colours of all the stripped doors, skirtings, fireplaces and tongueand-groove and bead wall linings.

Each room was themed to emphasise individual character. The drawing room was painted a feminine apple-green, while the underlit dining room was painted a cobalt-blue to add dramatic colour and complement its heavy, dark furniture.

The door mouldings and panels are shown in three contrasting colours, typical of 19th-century paint themes, to create a sense of unity between rooms and further introduce character.

“Victorians liked colour as much as we do,” says William, “and there would have been a mix of painted and varnished wood at the time.’’

William also sourced furniture and objects to showcase the era and design movements of the time. Where possible, he found and bought New Zealandmade furniture.

By the late 1800s, many New Zealand homes had pianos and music rang out as families entertained themselves and their guests. Katherine and her sisters all had music lessons – Katherine played the cello and wanted to play professionally – and the Beauchamp family were praised in the society pages of local journals.

Cherie explains that the back rooms of the house – the kitchen, servery and scullery – were the engine rooms, in which food was prepared and clothes were washed. The Beauchamps were lucky enough to have a servant.

The original kitchen bench and the coal range remain, while pots and pans hanging on a rack hail from the era, and crockery resembles that found during the archaeological investigations. The investigations also provided clues to what the Beauchamp family ate: roasts of mutton, soups made from beef bones, and the occasional meal of rock oysters. Meat dishes were served with spicy sauces. Puddings (sometimes two) were important parts of a dinner, along with a cheese dish. Adults drank tea, beer, wine and spirits in moderate quantities.

Katherine loved plants and flowers, often mentioning them in her writing. In 1988 the Society began planting the garden with plants available in her lifetime, including French heritage roses – a nod to her time in France, where she is buried, says Cherie.

Native shrubs and trees flourish in the back garden, while each autumn a medlar tree produces fruit that a volunteer turns into a delicious jelly sold in the small shop. Volunteers also grow seedlings that are sold at annual fundraising garden sales.

It’s the site’s tranquility and calm and its sense of walking back in time that have inspired Cadence Chung since she first visited the house in her early teens. The 19-year-old Victoria University of

Wellington music student won Katherine Mansfield House and Garden’s annual secondary school short story competition in 2021, and on the anniversary of Katherine’s death this year she read a poem at an event at Katherine Mansfield Memorial Park in Thorndon.

“I enjoy history and historical houses. I first visited the house when I was about 13, when I started loving her work, and was amazed by its rich history and the way it was presented around her life,’’ says Cadence.

“I’m a big fan of Katherine Mansfield. Her work is so modern, and I relate to her as a writer, a musician and a woman.’’

Centenary events

2023 marks 100 years since the death of Katherine Mansfield from tuberculosis in France. A website (km23.co.nz) has been created to promote the range of events being held around the country throughout the year, as well as ideas for DIY activities, such as whipping up an orange soufflé from a recipe Katherine herself copied in a notebook and hosting a dress-up party in honour of the fashion-loving writer. n

1. Volunteer Ruth Page plays at Alberton underneath a portrait of Sophia Kerr Taylor (1847-1930), who played the same piano 100 years earlier.

2. The second piano at Alberton.

WORDS: GARETH SHUTE / IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON

SOUNDS FAMILIAR

Sheet music belonging to the former inhabitants of historic homes sheds light on their lives – and the musical tastes of the times

Pianos take pride of place in many historic homes, embodying a time when former residents would gather around them to sing, or watch the best pianist in the house perform.

In larger homes there could even be more than one; Auckland’s Alberton, for example, has one in its ballroom and another in the drawing room (although the instrument in the latter is not playable).

But it is the sheet music these residents owned that perhaps provides more of an insight into the role that music played in their lives. These tunes, after all, can still be played, and their scores offer clues to how they were obtained and used.

Many properties cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga have their own collections of sheet music, including the three historic Auckland homes of Alberton, Highwic and Ewelme.

Dr Elizabeth Nichol, who catalogued the collections at the three properties – having

written her PhD on New Zealand sheet music from 1850 to 1913 and drawing on knowledge from her years as a librarian –saw many reminders of the central role that pianos played in the lives of early European immigrants, such as the Lush family, who lived at Ewelme.

“There is a comment in [Revd] Vicesimus Lush’s diary in 1852, saying how excited he was that the piano had arrived and would soon be in their house,” she says.

“You can also see that music was important for the Kerr Taylors, who lived at Alberton, because they had sheet music that they had brought with them from England, which is clear from the dates or places of purchase printed on the volumes.”

In those days the only way to listen to music at home was when it was performed, so pianos played the role of the modern stereo. The central city felt more distant in an era when most people travelled by foot, so local halls held regular events that drew on the talents of those in the neighbourhood. It was only by practising with sheet music

at home that budding musicians could become involved, Elizabeth explains.

“There were lots of benefit concerts and concerts organised by amateur clubs and associations, and the Kerr Taylor daughters performed in some of those. There are also vocal scores in the [Kerr Taylor] collection from when the girls sang in the local St Luke’s choir and the Auckland Diocesan Choral Association festivals.

“The Lush’s piano in their home at Ewelme was also used by members of the family who played the organ at the church. This is reflected in pieces of church music and music for the harmonium.”

The Ewelme collection also contains some violin music, as Revd Lush’s granddaughter studied it in London, returning to teach it in the 1920s and ’30s. Sheet music was largely imported from overseas, although local publishers, such as the Dunedin firm Beggs, began producing works from the 1860s.

In the Highwic collection, there are two locally printed copies of ‘Long It Is, Love,

Since We Parted’ by Australian composer and performer David Cope, which was released to coincide with his 1870-80s tours (they are the only copies of this edition known to exist, according to Elizabeth). The Ewelme collection holds the earliest New Zealand-printed piece (1862) that Elizabeth could find: ‘Fairy Bells: Polka Mazurka’ was clearly a personal copy since it had ‘BH [Blanche Hawkins] Lush’ written in pencil at the top.

Some scores in the Alberton collection were torn from magazines, such as The Lady’s Companion and The New Zealand Graphic and Ladies’ Journal , and from newspapers (usually from the ‘Ladies’ pages). Elizabeth found that she could tell which songs the families liked the most because the pages had been repaired (with brown paper tape, for example) or still showed fingermarks on the corners.

In order to keep their collections in good shape, families sometimes arranged for bookbinders to combine loose sheets into single, bound volumes.

1. The second piano in the drawing room/music room at Alberton. 2. Dr Elizabeth Nichol catalogued the sheet music collections at Auckland’s Alberton, Highwic and Ewelme Cottage historic homes. 3. The sheet music was often bound into volumes to protect it.

There are few New Zealand compositions in the sheet music collections in the three houses, but they provide some fascinating links to the wider history of local music; for example, there are some early pieces by internationally successful New ZealandAustralian composer Alfred Hill.

In other cases, more tangential threads tying the past to the present can be found. There is a composition (‘The Countess Waltz’) by child prodigy pianist Clarice Brabazon, which was published in The New Zealand Graphic in 1903. Clarice later married renowned singer Horace Stebbing, who was the uncle of Eldred Stebbing –the founder of Stebbing Recording Studio, which is still operating on Auckland’s Jervois Road.

Local compositions were often written for specific purposes, Elizabeth explains.

“A piece might be written for a particular occasion, so a publisher could put it in the shop window and hope to sell a few in that short period of time, for example if the Governor-General was visiting, or as a way to support our troops fighting in the Boer War.”

1. The piano in the ballroom at Alberton. 2. Sheet music could sometimes have beautiful cover images, since these were the equivalent of modern-day LP covers. 3. ‘The Silver-Lake Varsoviana’ is one of many pieces of dance music in the collection (a varsoviana is a slow dance similar to a mazurka). 4. This piece was written more than 150 years ago by Samuel Lover (1797-1868).

Compositions might also be written to raise the profile of the composers, such as when music retailer and teacher WH Webbe wrote a piece named after his daughter Madoleine (also a teacher at his music school). A copy of this piece is still at Alberton.

The existence of these collections begs the question: could this same music be played once more in these historic homes? The locations have certainly been used by musicians in more recent times. Highwic’s interior has been used for music videos such as Troy Kingi’s ‘First Take Strut’, and its grounds have hosted a garden party featuring a harpist, cellist and roving carol singer.

There has even been a performance by string quartet The Whistledowns, featuring a selection of modern songs rewritten in an historical style from the TV show Bridgerton Alberton has seen similar small ensembles play, and has also hosted music video shoots, such as for ‘You’ by Hollie Smith, featuring the NZSO.

The question also played a part in a recent internship undertaken at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, which investigated how the sheet music might be used to plan a concert. Tessa Dalgety-Evans, then a University of Otago student (and now working as a learning facilitator at the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa), undertook the research, with her background as a musician (cellist) also helping.

“The music I was seeing at Alberton was classical and popular salon music from the early 1900s or even late 1800s,” says Tessa.

“For example, there was ‘Ta-ra-ra-Boomde-ay’, which was used in the kids’ TV show Barney in the early 2000s but harks back to that salon era. It would be great to do a new arrangement of a piece like that, or even some of the very early jazz in the collections, which could possibly allow improvisation.”

Tessa acknowledges that some of the light romantic songs popular in the 1800s might sound treacly to modern ears. However, she made a playlist of those recordings she could find, and she believes a good arranger could update them for a modern audience. She also began transcribing sheet music in the collection onto digital software (MuseScore) to make it more accessible.

Tessa did find a small number of songs that would now be inappropriate to play. For example, some are written in a mock-AfricanAmerican vernacular that would be culturally offensive to modern listeners.

Nonetheless, she believes there is plenty of worthwhile material to underpin a

stripped-back performance in the style of NPR Music’s ‘Tiny Desk Concerts’. This suggestion is echoed by Elizabeth, who has heard of ‘living museums’ where performers were hired to play in historic homes, even if just practising a piece as the original inhabitants would have done. (She notes, however, that the concept sometimes confused visitors, who were reluctant to enter and disturb the musicians.) Elizabeth agrees that the collections hold some hidden gems that could be brought back to life if treated in the right way.

“It is really hard to get in the right headspace to listen to some of this light music from 150 years ago. It is a pity they’re all tarred with the same brush. Some of them don’t show much originality or musical skill; however, others are quite lovely, and it is a bit sad that those ones are lost to modern listeners.”

To hear more from Elizabeth, view our video story here: youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga

WORDS AND IMAGERY: SHELLIE EVANS

High art

The Waimate silos, completed in 1921, stand 36 metres tall and can hold nearly 3000 tonnes of grain. The four silos are still in use, despite little local demand now for grain storage.

Transport Waimate boss Barry Sadler came up with ‘The Silo Project’ idea, commissioning Waimate artist Bill Scott to paint local heroes onto the silos in 2018.

Seen here is Eric Batchelor (born in Waimate in 1920), who was twice awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal –the only New Zealand soldier in World War II to achieve this. He died in 2010 and was buried in the local cemetery with full military honours, including a 21-gun salute.

Also pictured is Dr Margaret Cruickshank, who in 1897 was the second New Zealand woman to graduate as a medical doctor (from the University of Otago) and the first to become a registered doctor. She spent most of her career in Waimate, where she was the only doctor during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, to which she herself ultimately succumbed.

Pictured on the silos’ other sides are former Prime Minister Norman Kirk walking hand-in-hand with Moana Priest at a Waitangi Day celebration, and the figures of two well-respected local men: Michael Studholme and Ngāi Tahu leader Te Huruhuru.

Technical data

• Camera: Nikon D7500

• Lens: 18mm • Aperture: f/10

• ISO: 200 • Exposure: 1/250

Fulfilling aspirations

Takapūneke is one of the nation’s most significant historic places. Thanks to the combined commitment for almost half a century of many people – both tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti – its stories are starting to be told

Pou-tū-te-Raki-o-Te-Maiharanui commands a spectacular view across Akaroa Harbour. The striking pou takes in features of the cultural landscape such as Tūhiraki, the famed kō of Rākaihautū on the ridgeline to the west, and the distinctive, teardrop-shaped Ōnawe Pā peninsula to the north.

Standing more than eight metres tall, it was carved by Ngāi Tahu tohunga whakairo Fayne Robinson and rises from the centre of a takarangi pathway that draws visitors inward, in ever-decreasing circles. The curvilinear route is punctuated with tohu etched into the ground that invite you to pause and reflect. Harakeke. Rope. A musket. A map. A quill. Each tohu alludes to a specific story associated with Takapūneke, ‘the Waitangi of Te Waipounamu’.

Takapūneke sits quietly in the landscape, but in the 1820s this small, sheltered bay just south of the present-day Akaroa township was home to a bustling kāinga from which Ngāi Tahu upoko ariki Te Maiharanui conducted a lucrative trade in harakeke.

WORDS: HELEN BROWN

This enterprise and Ngāi Tahu life in the bay ended abruptly and devastatingly in November 1830, when a Ngāti Toa war party led by Te Rauparaha was secreted into the harbour beneath the decks of the British mercantile brig Elizabeth, captained by John Stewart.

Lured aboard under the guise of trade, Te Maiharanui was captured and killed in revenge for Ngāti Toa losses at Kaiapoi pā two years earlier. The war party razed the kāinga and brutally killed or enslaved many Ngāi Tahu people, thus rendering the bay tapu.

The Ngāi Tahu survivors retreated and eventually re-established themselves elsewhere, including at Ōnuku, the next bay to the south. Within a few years, the site of the onceflourishing trading kāinga was taken over by colonial settlers for farming.

The business arrangement struck between Captain Stewart and Te Rauparaha, and the toll it inflicted on Ngāi Tahu, has been documented as one of the most infamous events in Aotearoa New Zealand history. It was also an important impetus for the formal British intervention in New Zealand that followed.

As a direct result of British concern about the complicity of a British sea captain in the Takapūneke massacre, James Busby was sent to the Bay of Islands as British Resident in 1833, and by 1839 Britain had decided to annex New Zealand. Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed the following year at locations around the country, including at Ōnuku, where Ngāi Tahu rangatira Iwikau and Tikao signed on 30 May 1840.

Three months later a symbolic flag-raising and court sitting took place at Takapūneke on the northern point overlooking the Tāhunatōrea reef. This event, intended to subdue French intentions to lay claim to Akaroa, was the first

effective demonstration of British sovereignty in Te Waipounamu. Captain Stanley of the British sloop Britomart hoisted the flag and delivered a speech that was translated into te reo Māori for the assembled Ngāi Tahu community by James Robinson-Clough, a ‘Pākeha Māori’ and partner of Puai from Akaroa. This was the culmination of a decade-long chain of events connecting Takapūneke to te Tiriti.

The flag-raising site was later named Green’s Point after the first Pākeha who managed a farm there. A monument was erected on the point in 1898 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s reign and to proclaim the significance of the site in the history of the assertion of British sovereignty over Aotearoa New Zealand. George Robinson (the son of James Robinson-Clough and Puai) cut a fine figure, wearing a kahu huruhuru and riding a magnificent white horse, as he led a procession of 1000 people from the jetty at Akaroa to the monument for its unveiling. There, cloaked in the Union Jack, the freshly engraved stone obelisk was described in the Lyttelton Times in 1898 as “a striking symbol of British sovereignty”.

A generation later, George’s son Tom Robinson played the role of his grandfather in a re-enactment of the original flag-raising during the official National South Island Centennial Commemorations at Akaroa in 1940. Ngāi Tahu took the opportunity during the formal speech-making to urge the Crown to uphold its Treaty obligations.

When Pou-tū-te-Raki-o-Te-Maiharanui was unveiled at dawn on a crystal-clear Matariki morning in June last year, it presented a bold counterpoint to the now somewhat diminished ‘Britomart Monument’ down the hill. Twenty years had passed since Takapūneke had been listed by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga as a wāhi tapu area – the first site in mainland

1. Pou-tū-te-Raki-o-Te-Maiharanui on the day of its unveiling at Takapūneke during Matariki celebrations on 24 June 2022. Image: Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, courtesy of Ōnuku Rūnanga

Te Waipounamu to be afforded this status. At the time of its 2002 listing, nothing tangible in the bay’s rural aspect conveyed any sense of the site’s history or cultural significance to the Ngāi Tahu hapū of Ngāi Tārewa and Ngāti Irakehu, who are represented by Ōnuku Rūnanga. The stories of Takapūneke were still buried deep in the whenua. Dedicated efforts to protect and preserve Takapūneke had been underway for almost a decade, but another 19 years would pass before the last parcel of land was granted historic reserve status.

Today the entire bay is owned by Christchurch City Council and a large proportion of that is managed as a historic reserve by the Takapūneke Reserve CoGovernance Group, which comprises equal numbers of Ōnuku Rūnanga and council representatives, and an independent chair. It’s an outcome that’s testament to the advocacy and commitment of many people, both tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti, working together for almost half a century.

Ōnuku whānau carried the mamae of the atrocities that occurred at Takapūneke in relative silence for generations. They had no say in what occurred on private land that they no longer owned. Ngāi Tahu children were told not to go there because it was an urupā.

Writer Helen Brown shares her connections to Takapūneke

I first learned the story of Takapūneke in 2004 when I interviewed Waitai Tikao for Christchurch City Libraries’ place-based Ngāi Tahu histories project, Tī Kouka Whenua. It was one of my first forays into oral history, and the poignancy of the story had an unforgettable impact. So too did Waitai’s quiet determination that Takapūneke would be protected for future generations. Audio clips from that interview can still be accessed online.

In 2009, as Pouārahi for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, I presented evidence at a Christchurch City Council hearing in support of a proposal to classify the Green’s Point land at Takapūneke as an historic reserve. The following year I worked closely with Ōnuku Rūnanga and the Akaroa Civic Trust on an award-winning exhibition Ngā Roimata o Takapūneke at the Akaroa Museum, which coincided with the formal blessing and acknowledgement of Takapūneke as an historic reserve.

I was a member of the steering group and a co-author of the Takapūneke Conservation Report 2012, which continues to guide and inform activities at Takapūneke, including the development of the Takapūneke Reserve Management Plan 2018. It has been a privilege to work with and for my Ngāi Tahu relations on the protection of Takapūneke over the past two decades.

“We are equal partners who bring different strengths to the table, and we also agree that the mana whenua values and storytelling take precedence”

In the 1960s and ’70s insult was added to injury when the local council purchased land in the bay to establish first a sewage treatment plant and then a rubbish dump. Damage to archaeological sites and the threat of subdivision in the 1990s further added to the mamae but also provoked Ōnuku whānau and their supporters, including the Akaroa Civic Trust, to act.

Victoria Andrews first learned about Takapūneke in 1997. A new New Zealander, she had relocated permanently from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Akaroa in 1995. As a museum professional who had worked with multicultural and indigenous communities, she had a low tolerance for inequality and inequity.

“One day I was out at the Britomart Monument and I looked at the land that was going to be subdivided and I just thought, ‘That’s not right. It’s morally and ethically unacceptable; it’s a cemetery and it shouldn’t be built on’. That’s when the Akaroa Civic Trust decided to oppose the subdivision point blank.”

Over the ensuing years, Victoria and others in the trust worked alongside Ōnuku kaumātua, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga staff, historians, community members, councillors and MPs to campaign for the protection of Takapūneke. Among the influential supporters were historians Harry Evison, John Wilson and Dame Anne Salmond, Prime Minister Helen Clark, MPs Dame Tariana Turia, Chris Carter, Ruth Dyson and Rod Donald, and Mayor Bob Parker. Eventually, in 2009, the large land parcel that had been destined for subdivision was integrated with the historic reserve, paving the way for the mana and mauri of Takapūneke to be restored.

Rik Tainui, Chair of Ōnuku Rūnanga, describes himself as a “Johnny come lately” to the Takapūneke kaupapa, but he has played a crucial role in recent years in negotiations with the council, funders and the local community. (In 2022 the rūnanga received a civic award for its contribution to the community through its work on Takapūneke.)

For Rik, the completion of Pou-tū-te-Raki-oTe-Maiharanui is the realisation of the vision of his late brother Pere Tainui and the broader aspirations of Ōnuku kaumātua, including the late Waitai Tikao and the late Revd Maurice Gray.

“My brother Pere and others made us all conscious of what could be possible at Takapūneke. It was my job to help secure the resources to make it happen.”

hapū: sub-tribe

kahu huruhuru: feather cloak

kāinga: village

kaumātua: elders

kaupapa: project, initiative or principle

kō: digging stick

mamae: pain, injury

mana: authority, power, prestige

mana whenua: those with tribal authority over land or territory

manuhiri: visitors

mauri: vital essence, life force

pou: post, pillar, support pou whenua: post markers of ownership

rangatira: chiefs

rūnanga: tribal council takarangi: intersecting doublespiral pattern, signifying creation tangata tiriti: non-Māori, person/people of te Tiriti/the Treaty tangata whenua: descendant of indigenous person/ people of the area; local Māori descendant tapu: sacred spiritual restrictions tohu: symbols tohunga whakairo: master carver upoko ariki: the head spiritual and temporal chief (ariki) of the iwi

urupā: cemetery, burial ground

waharoa: main entranceway to a pā wāhi tapu: site of sacred significance whenua: land

Pou-tū-te-Raki-o-Te-Maiharanui is the first stage in an ambitious development that will see multiple pou whenua, takarangi, waharoa, palisade fencing, seating, planting and interpretations installed across the Takapūneke site in the next six years. Rik emphasises the importance of sticking to this timeframe; he wants to see it completed in his lifetime.

The Takapūneke Reserve Co-Governance Group is overseeing the work. Chaired by Banks Peninsula stalwart and community leader Pam Richardson, the group is invested in attaining the best outcomes for Takapūneke and Ōnuku whānau. Russel Wedge has represented the council on the group since its inception in 2013.

“Our role as council staff is to ensure we meet the council’s regulatory obligations to the Minister of Conservation, the Reserves Act [1977] and the District Plan and to acknowledge that the land and the values associated with it are significant to mana whenua. We are equal partners who bring different strengths to the table, and we also agree that the mana whenua values and storytelling take precedence in the development of the reserve.”

Landscape architect and Ōnuku whānau member Debbie Tikao agrees that the group has worked in the true spirit of te Tiriti partnership. When the Reserve Management Plan was being prepared, she says, “We held the pen, writing several of the sections and helping to craft a lot of the objectives and policies. It was a great co-design, co-authoring process”.

Debbie also acknowledges the significant role played by the ‘Uncles’ (Waitai, Pere and Maurice) in developing an overarching vision for Takapūneke.

“They wanted the story of Takapūneke to be told, and for Takapūneke to become a place of wānanga/learning.”

The co-governance group is poised to begin work on an application to the Minister of Conservation to achieve the longstanding goal of elevating Takapūneke to National Reserve status under the Reserves Act.

It was an ambition that was first voiced by historian and friend of Ngāi Tahu the late Harry Evison in a speech he delivered at the foot of the Britomart Monument in 2001.

“We’re fulfilling the aspirations of our people who championed Takapūneke before us,” says Rik. “We just need to ensure we reach for new aspirations that we in turn can pass on, so we can continue to increase our footprint.”

2. Ōnuku whānau and manuhiri at the official unveiling of Pou-tū-te-Raki-o-Te-Maiharanui during Matariki celebrations on 24 June 2022. Image: Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, courtesy of Ōnuku Rūnanga

A WOMEN’S

“I’ve been a fighter for justice my whole life,” begins a conversation with artist Jan Morrison. “There were massive issues, particularly in the ’70s and ’80s –human rights, women’s rights, save the planet – so from my late teenage years I was on marches, wearing the t-shirts, drawing illustrations for Greenpeace.”

So in the early 1990s, when she heard a call for proposals for projects celebrating the centenary of New Zealand women winning the fight for the vote, it was natural for her to put in a bid.

“I couldn’t pass it up. It was just so exciting. I really, really wanted to get it, but I never thought for a minute I would. And they accepted my proposal.”

The proposal was for a tile mural, which today sits between central Auckland’s High and Kitchener Streets. It depicts people and imagery associated with the suffrage campaigns that ultimately led, on 19 September 1893, to New Zealand becoming

the first self-governing country in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

The artwork was unveiled in the space known as Khartoum Place on 20 September 1993, with the lower part of the space renamed in 2016 as Te Hā o Hine Place (a name gifted by Ngāti Whātua that can be interpreted to mean ‘pay heed to the dignity of women’). And almost 30 years on, the Auckland Women’s Suffrage Memorial was last year recognised as a Category 1 historic place.

Funded by the Suffrage Centennial Year Trust and Auckland City Council, the mural was created collaboratively by Jan and artist Claudia Pond Eyley specifically for its site, where it travels across several façades of a fountain and a stairway that runs between the two streets.

While Jan didn’t know Claudia personally at the time, she was familiar with her work as a prominent feminist artist and,

Dedicated to women who fought for the right to vote, an Auckland historic place is a reminder of the ongoing fight for women’s voices to be heard

WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES / IMAGERY: MARCEL TROMP

sensing their artistic styles were also compatible, asked her to join the project. “I admired her enormously,” says Jan.

For her part, Claudia recalls being excited by the project and its large scale. Adding to the excitement was a personal connection to Amey Daldy, one of the suffragists ultimately depicted in the artwork. President of the Auckland Women’s Franchise League in 1893 (and later of the National Council of Women of New Zealand), Amey was a leading figure in the local and national suffrage campaigns. She was the second wife of William Daldy, who was the business partner of Claudia’s great-great-grandfather.

And there is a further family connection in another panel of the mural, Claudia says. It features a group of women on

bicycles – a crucial mode of transport for campaigners as they gathered signatures to petition parliament – who bear the faces of Claudia’s great-grandmother and her friends and cousins. A central aspect to the mural is its depiction of the ‘monster petition’ that suffragist Kate Sheppard famously pasted together and rolled around a broom handle before it was submitted to the House of Representatives in 1893. The mural also prominently depicts the iconic white camellias that suffragists presented to their supporters, and elements such as the now-extinct huia representing the past, and woven harakeke representing the weaving together of Māori and Pākehā cultures.

1. & 2. The huge suffrage petition, which contained the signatures of more than 25,000 women and was presented to parliament in 1893, is a central and unifying motif in the mural. 3. The lower part of the space in which the mural sits was renamed Te Hā o Hine Place in 2016.

Comprising 2000 tiles, the mural was under construction right up until its unveiling by then Governor-General Dame Catherine Tizard (further panels were later added).

As Claudia noted in her diary on the day: “The New Zealand Air Force hung a huge cargo parachute across Khartoum Place and was organised with knots to drop upon the cutting of the ceremonial ribbon. The city council sent along the water fountain keeper to fill and set the fountains in motion while I rushed around wiping off the marker pen numbers on the tiles.”

Her entry went on to detail how, following an address at the Auckland Town Hall by then president of Ireland Mary Robinson, a Navy band led a procession of 300 women, many in period dress, down Queen Street to the site of the mural. There was a pōwhiri and speeches, and after the mural was revealed “the crowd cheered, everyone hugged and kissed”.

The celebrations, however, did not last and in a case of life imitating art, the mural’s own history has been characterised by fight.

As noted in its Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga listing report, the memorial has come under threat due to redevelopment a number of times since 2005, with the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) and other prominent campaigners leading a decade-long fight to save it. Their cause received significant public support and ultimately led to the site being given the highest available protection in the Auckland Unitary Plan in 2015.

Following a nomination by NCWNZ’s Auckland branch more than a decade earlier, the memorial was entered on the New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero as a Category 1 historic place in October 2022.

Jan has consistently fought efforts to remove and re-site the mural – as have Claudia and many others.

Joy Williams is immediate past-president of NCWNZ’s Auckland branch. She also acknowledges the efforts of longtime member Margaret Wilson, who led NCWNZ’s campaign to protect the memorial alongside former branch president Michelle Wright, as well as former Auckland councillor Cathy

Casey, and many others, for ultimately gaining such protection and recognition for the site. (Cathy Casey and historian Megan Hutchison have now written a book on the memorial.)

NCWNZ was formed in 1896 as many suffragists continued to push for further women’s rights reform beyond suffrage and into the 20th century; what the memorial represents still holds deep significance for the group’s members, says Joy.

During her three years as president, Joy oversaw the suffrage commemorations held by NCW Auckland each September at the memorial, which she describes as a place where like-minded women and their supporters can meet.

The event features the student winner of NCW Auckland’s annual speech competition, alongside other speakers, creating

THE WOMEN FEATURED ON THE AUCKLAND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MEMORIAL

Lizzie

A president of the Auckland Women’s Franchise League (AWFL) who was later instrumental in forming the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) and was its president in 1898.

Inaugural president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

A journalist and elected AWFL member who was among the suffragists who presented the 1893 petition to the House of Representatives.

Annie

The British Empire’s first female mayor, elected as mayor of Onehunga Borough in November 1893 – the first election in which women voted.

A founding member and president of WCTU (1891-97) and a founding member of NCWNZ.

Amey Daldy (1829-1920)

Anne Ward (1825-96)

Rattray (1855-1931)

Elizabeth Yates (1849-1918)

Schnackenberg (1835-1905)

SOURCE: NEW ZEALAND HERITAGE LIST/RĀRANGI KŌRERO – REPORT FOR A HISTORIC PLACE, AUCKLAND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MEMORIAL, AUCKLAND (LIST NO. 9567, CATEGORY 1)

“a space for young women to express themselves”, she says. This year’s speech competition entries will be inspired by the Nelson Mandela quote: “Overcoming poverty is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice”. A whanaunga of suffragist Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia (Te Rarawa), whose name features on the memorial, will be a guest speaker as the artwork turns 30 years old.

Alexandra Foster, a heritage assessment advisor in the Auckland office of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, carried out research for the memorial’s Category 1 listing. There’s no ‘minimum age’ for a place to be entered on the List, she notes, but it must meet certain thresholds related to its significance.

As with the Kate Sheppard National Memorial in Christchurch, the Auckland memorial was created for the suffrage centenary in

Ada Wells (1863-1933)

1993, when the achievement of women winning the right to vote was nationally commemorated for the first time.

“It took 100 years for us to publicly create spaces that recognised that achievement, and how those spaces were created really reflects how strong that community was and is,” Alexandra says.

“The subsequent efforts of the community surrounding the Auckland memorial to preserve this place – and the wider support they received – show how important this place is to the people who use it regularly, as well as the wider community that has embraced it.

“Personally, I was a child in the ’90s when the memorial was created, and I’ve never known it not to be there and always enjoyed walking through it. So I really appreciated the opportunity to research and learn about the entire history of the place for the listing assessment, and uncovering the extent of its importance, especially as it became clear how valued the place is by its community.”

The fight to protect the memorial resonates in a wider landscape where, nationally, there are few memorials to women. In Auckland another suffrage memorial, created for a building in New Lynn, was lost after it was removed during building work and never returned.

For Joy, who was born in the year the mural was unveiled, the story of the suffragists’ struggle continues to resonate through the historic place.

“It’s important to acknowledge that women weren’t given the vote; they campaigned for it, and they fought for it. That’s why the memorial and Te Hā o Hine Place are important and it’s important that they remain protected – as a reminder of that fight.”

Two of the first seven women enrolled to vote in New Zealand.

A suffragist and first national secretary of NCWNZ.

A portion of the mural depicts a flower wreath that also includes the names of these leading suffragists: Elizabeth Caradus (1832-1912)

A working-class suffragist and a leading figure in the Auckland movement, described as a key member of WCTU and treasurer of AWFL.

A suffragist and the first woman recorded to address Te Kotahitanga Parliament, she requested not only that Māori women be given the vote but that they also be eligible to sit in the Māori parliament.

harakeke: flax huia: Heteralocha acutirostris, a now-extinct species of wattlebird

pōwhiri: welcome whanaunga: relative

Matilda Allsopp and Fanny Brown

Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia (1868-1920) (Te Rarawa)

1. The names and images of a number of prominent suffragists appear on the mural.

2. The ‘bicycle women’ panel features the faces of artist Claudia Pond Eyley’s greatgrandmother and her friends and cousins.

1. Tanya Ashken, ‘Albatross’ (1986), edge of Whairepo Lagoon. 2. Neil Dawson, ‘Ferns’ (1998), Te Ngākau Civic Square. 3. Guy Ngan, ‘Taiaha’ (1972), Reserve Bank, 2 The Terrace. 4. Guy Ngan, ‘Geometric Progression’ (1974), Michael Fowler Centre car park, Wakefield Street.

GOING PUBLIC

Many of the public artworks created by our most talented artists during the past century have since been destroyed, covered over, or simply lost. But a project is now underway to document and save New Zealand’s public art heritage

In the mid-1970s when the Beehive was built in Wellington, two artists were commissioned to create a nine-metrewide woollen wall-hanging for one of its curving walls.

Joan Calvert, a Wellington textile artist, working with friends and fellow textile artists, spent 18 months bringing to life a design by Guy Ngan, a sculptor and artist.

Called ‘Forest in the Sun’, the huge, six-panelled piece hung, bursting with colour, on the marble wall in the Beehive foyer. Reminiscent of a sun-dappled forest, the six 2.4-metre panels made up the biggest artwork on which Joan had ever worked.

When the Beehive was refurbished in 2003, however, the work was donated to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and has been out of public view for the past two decades.

Thanks to Sue Elliott and Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, who contacted and have been working with Te Papa and the Office of the Speaker, Forest in the Sun’ returned to its original home in July this year.

“The Beehive was built to be a showcase of New Zealand design at the time. ‘Forest in the Sun’ tells a real story, and it was designed specifically to hang on that wall,’’ says Sue, who along with Bronwyn is Co-director of Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand.

‘Forest in the Sun’ is one of more than 1000 20th-century public artworks that have been identified by Public Art Heritage Aotearoa New Zealand. Aided by grants from Manatū Taonga Ministry of Culture and Heritage and Massey University, its co-directors are building a register of public

artworks that were created from 1900 to 1999. The pair also intend to nominate some of the works for recognition on the New Zealand Heritage List Rārangi Kōrero.

“We hope the register will have a broad reach, appealing to tourists, art lovers and local communities alike,’’ says Bronwyn.

During the 20th century, many of New Zealand’s most talented artists turned their attention to enriching public spaces, often working with leading architects. Some of the largest and most ambitious artworks were placed in publicly accessible sites around the country.

Bronwyn, an investigative artist and researcher based at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, points out that many have now been destroyed, covered over, or simply lost. Others remain undocumented and at risk because of a lack of knowledge about their importance and cultural value. They are works of public significance because they are in spaces where anyone can see them or they are publicly owned – on show at hospitals, parks, libraries, schools, churches, malls, courts and even a McDonald’s.

Many of our most prominent artists created public art, including Rita Angus, Colin McCahon, Cliff Whiting and Michael Smithers. During the century there were also public art heroes such as the Chinese-New Zealand artist Guy Ngan (who has 38 artworks on the register), E Mervyn Taylor, James Turkington and Fred Graham (Ngāti Korokī Kahukura) – a renowned sculptor who has 10 works on the register dating from 1970.

WORDS: SARAH CATHERALL / IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON

Sue and Bronwyn are still registering artists and auditing artworks, and they expect to uncover many more. But they have criteria. Monuments and memorials typically don’t fit the bill, and for an artwork to be considered ‘public art’ it must have been made intentionally as art and have been or be located in a public space, and have been commissioned by a public body or for public good.

Bronwyn was undertaking her PhD in 2014 when she stumbled upon an E Mervyn Taylor mural, ‘Te Ika-a-Māui’, which had been commissioned by the Post Office for a telephone cable station in Auckland in 1962. Made of ceramic tiles, the artwork was in dusty boxes, and during the next four years Bronwyn set out to restore it. Replica tiles were created to fill the gaps left by 16 missing tiles, and the fully restored work was exhibited at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi in 2018 before going to its new home in Takapuna Library.

E Mervyn Taylor was one of New Zealand’s most significant artists in the 1930s to the 1960s, and during his career he created 12 murals for notable New Zealand buildings. Some have been destroyed or are presumed lost, and of the eight surviving works, three are made of ceramic tiles. Bronwyn went on a quest to find his murals and subsequently edited a book about them called Wanted (Massey University Press, 2018), which mushroomed into the bigger project to find and record all our public artworks.

Since the 1990s councils throughout New Zealand have been developing public art policies, collections and maintenance plans in order to care for their civic art treasures.

“[This work] raised an issue where there is this whole history of public artworks that have been put in public spaces for the public good, and people are wondering what has happened to them. There’s a gap,’’ says Bronwyn.

Through their research on the works of E Mervyn Taylor, Sue and Bronwyn began an informal register – a move supported by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which then partnered with the pair to contact all the local authorities to add their collections to the register. Massey University gave Sue and Bronwyn research funding to undertake road trips throughout Aotearoa to find and document more artworks.

“The purpose is to document these works, protect them and promote them so that the public become guardians of the works, and it’s also a call to action: tell us about the works from the 20th-century in your hometowns”

1. Sue Elliott (left) and Bronwyn Holloway-Smith in front of Patrick E Leeming’s ‘Flight’ (1970), Aurora Centre, 56 The Terrace.

2. Paratene Matchitt, ‘City to Sea Bridge’ (1993), between Te Ngākau Civic Square and Whairepo Lagoon.

The larger cities – Auckland, Dunedin and Wellington –have the most public artworks hailing from 1900 to 1999. But Sue and Bronwyn also visited regional areas and cities like Gisborne, Napier and Invercargill, where they found gems like Molly Macalister’s glass murals of children’s nursery rhymes at Gore Hospital.

In 1977 Colin McCahon designed colourful glass windows for MacKillop College in Rotorua (since amalgamated with Edmund Rice College to become John Paul College); the register currently has another four of his artworks.

“The purpose is to document these works, protect them and promote them so that the public become guardians of the work, and it’s also a call to action: tell us about the works from the 20th-century in your hometowns,’’ says Sue.

New Plymouth is particularly blessed with public art, thanks to artist Michael Smither, who was commissioned to paint two murals for the walls of St Joseph’s Catholic Church. He also sculpted the church’s Stations of the Cross artwork, which took three years to complete.

James Turkington (1895-1979) was a prolific mural artist who was commissioned to create murals for hair salons, cafés and motorcycle shops, along with government entities such as the Māori Land Court.

Sadly, although he created hundreds of artworks in almost every town in New Zealand, many have been destroyed or painted over. His remaining public works listed on the register include a mural at the Parnell Baths (1957), glass works at the Devonport Naval Base (1958), the ‘Wahine’ work at Wellington Museum and a mural for the Rotorua Land Court building. One that was formerly in a rugby club was recently found in a basement; it will be rescued and documented.

“Others may still exist, hidden behind walls,’’ Bronwyn says. A Roy Cowan work is hidden behind a wall in a building on Featherston Street in Wellington. In 1972 the potter and artist, of Ngāpuhi and Te Atiawa descent, was commissioned to create the large mural out of colourful ceramic tiles. However, the mural was twice covered over as part of lobby and building refurbishments in 2008 and 2017.

“This is a good example of what we need to do to raise awareness of these works and to try to protect them,” says Sue. “It’s a fabulous work, which should be seen.’’

To learn more about our public art heritage, view our video story here: youtube.com/HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga

3 & 4. Ralph Hōtere and Mary McFarlane, ‘Rūamoko’ (1998), cnr Lambton Quay and Stout Street.

5. Bronwyn and Sue with Brett Graham’s ‘Kaiwhakatere: The Navigator’ (1999), site of the former Broadcasting House, Bowen Street. AllworkspicturedareinWellington.

MUCKING IN

WORDS: GEORGIA WEAVER / IMAGERY: MIKE HEYDON

For one young family, restoring a landmark historic place in Invercargill has meant getting their hands dirty

Growing up watching his parents collect antiques and renovate old houses, Will Finlayson knew it was in his blood to honour that legacy.

One of the more prominent properties that Will’s parents owned was Lennel, a Category 1 historic place in Invercargill. As a young man, Will admired his father’s work on the grand house, which had been built in the early 1880s as the retirement home for John Turnbull Thomson, the man who surveyed the site for Invercargill in 1856.

Now that job has fallen to Will and his partner Laura Thompson, who have delved into the ambitious project to restore Lennel.

Will’s parents, Jocelyn and Denys, bought the house in 1998 for a mere $90,000 at a bank

auction, and focused largely on renovating its interior. Jocelyn envisaged passing the eightbedroom house on to subsequent generations, just as John Turnbull Thomson had done. (Following the death of John’s wife Jane, a granddaughter bought the property, and it was held in the family until 1992.)

When Jocelyn died in 2020, Denys decided it was too big for one person and sold it in November 2021 to Will and Laura, who now live there with their boys, Patrick, 6, Arthur, 3, and Forbes, 2.

Renovating a large historic property wasn’t something Laura had ever seen herself doing, although her grandfather had had a nursery and her parents both loved gardening. After their purchase, she and Will got stuck into

the property’s overgrown 1.2-hectare section (subdivided from the 159.5 hectares that John originally purchased).

“It wasn’t until I got started that I realised how much of it was in my blood,” says Laura.

“I only had what you would call a backyard gardener’s kind of knowledge, so I’ve learnt a lot in the past year.

“Our love for and connection to the property has become so strong because we are doing the work ourselves. We have to do things properly and prioritise. If we had money, we’d sink it into things we don’t need to, whereas this way we can work out what the most important things to do are.”

Will and Laura have had landscape concept plans drawn up and an assessment done of all the property’s protected trees to ensure their survival through maintenance and pruning. The trees include a copper beech planted to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and a rhododendron bank that took two arborists five days to prune and mulch.

More than 800 tonnes of green waste, invasive trees and historically felled trees have been removed. In their place, the couple have planted almost 2000 trees, shrubs and other plants, and more than 1000 bulbs to

restore the daffodil patch. They’ve also fixed broken pipes that were adding to a flooding problem that was affecting almost half a hectare of the property.

In 2017 Will’s parents had had Invercargill’s oldest macrocarpas felled because of concerns about their falling onto neighbouring houses. The timber was made into garden edging and a 640-kilogram outdoor table that seats more than 20 people.

Will and Laura have also digitised historical garden records detailing more than 600 plants in the garden that Patricia Hall-Jones, the wife of John Turnbull Thomson’s great-grandson, had inventoried, and have added what now remains in the garden to these records.

In 2022 they were awarded $13,000 from the National Heritage Preservation Incentive Fund to go towards researching the original garden plantings, developing a masterplan to conserve and manage surviving garden elements, and the practical management of protected trees and shrubs.

Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Conservation Advisor Susie Farminer says Will and Laura have produced a considerable amount of interesting and high-quality research and documentation on the original planting scheme.

1. Laura Thomson and Will Finlayson with their boys. 2. Will and Laura at Lennel. 3. Will’s father Denys previously worked on the ceilings. 4. Will cleaning up the Lennel section. 5. Laura has learnt a lot about the history of Lennel and its first owner John Turnbull Thomson.

“Through this work and the active tree management, a new appreciation of Lennel’s original garden development has emerged, alongside new insights that have come to light.

“The gardens at Lennel are an integral part of the story and the historical development of the original estate. The surviving portion of gardens owned by Will and Laura is a direct remnant of the original planting scheme laid out by the Thomson family, and as such holds as much historical significance as the house.”

Susie admits that the scale of Lennel meant it had been challenging to maintain and repair adequately through the years, and the house now requires further substantial repairs.

“This will ensure that Lennel can be securely retained and lovingly used as a home and possible community space going forward.”

Initially, the couple thought they’d have the work largely completed in two years, but they soon realised it would be more like 10. Will agrees that a lot of work lies ahead.

“Our love for and connection to the property has become so strong because we are doing the work ourselves”

JOHN TURNBULL THOMPSON

John Turnbull Thomson had surveyed many areas, including Singapore and the jungles of Penang, before he was appointed Chief Surveyor of Otago Province in 1856.

His first priority in the role was to choose a site for the proposed town of Invercargill, where his subsequent plans included making the main streets twice the width of those in other towns. He purchased several plots of land in the area, including the 159.5 hectares on which he would later build.

In 1880, following his retirement, he wound up his affairs in Wellington (where he had been Surveyor-General), moved to Invercargill and had Lennel built. The house was similar to Glororum Farmhouse in Northumbria, where he had been born, and he lived at Lennel until he died in 1884. n

With so much already having been done outside, Will and Laura are now starting to work on the exterior of the house, with replacing the slate roof being the top priority.

“Every time it rains, the roof leaks, and sometimes the water pours into the house, so we are working to remedy this,” says Will.

They’ve also started restoring the front door, porch and entranceway, are planning to reinstate the turning circle in front of the house, and will soon begin replanting the orchard that was on the section until the 1960s.

“There is still a lot of work to do on the interior, but the main living rooms were restored by Dad, so the house isn’t as urgently in need of attention as the grounds,” says Will. “We can do a lot of the work in the gardens ourselves with the kids in tow.

“When you’re actually in it, it’s pretty full on and exhausting. Jobs are so much bigger than you think. But I really wanted to give it a go for my mother. It’s a way I can feel connected with her. She just loved Lennel.”

Many others retain connections to the property, and Laura has created a Facebook page dedicated to the project as a way to document and share its history.

“I’d really like to educate people on the heritage value and Lennel’s significant place in the history of Invercargill. And I think it’s working – I’ve probably had about 100 messages from people sharing photos and stories.”

Laura has also been in touch with many of John’s descendants, who have been generous in sharing their memories of the place because of their love of Lennel, and Laura says she’s enjoyed learning more about John.

The couple have also found many items left by previous inhabitants, including a series of letters written during World War I that had fallen behind an old fireplace. They would eventually like to have all these items on display in a museum room in the house.

The couple’s children have been making the most of the outdoor space at Lennel, climbing

trees, riding their scooters on the tennis courts, and finding bugs in the vast grounds. But indoors, the unusual layout keeps the many rooms largely separated.

“If I’m cooking, I have no idea what the kids are doing. The laundry is miles away and there is only one entrance to the house as the back door is not yet functional,” says Laura.

The house’s grand rooms with their tall ceilings, however, hold a lot of history, she says.

“Old homes are so sturdy; this is solid. I love how they just took any excuse to make something beautiful. We really don’t do that in the same way now – but it does mean it’s an absolute nightmare to clean,” she laughs.

For now, the couple have not just one vision for the property but three, depending on how money and life works out.

“Ultimately, we’d love to live elsewhere and have Lennel as a heritage site. We’d love to host weddings and have heritage tours,” says Laura.

“I’d love to have a hands-on experience for kids – involving playing croquet perhaps – to help them understand what life used to be like and provide an educational experience for them in learning about their local history.

“That’s the dream – albeit an expensive one.”

1. The children love living in an old house and roaming the large grounds.

2. One of many items of memorabilia that have been found during renovations.

3. A collection of wartime letters was found behind an old fireplace.

4. Recovered pottery and ornaments on display in the dining room.

To see more of Lennel, view our video story here: youtube.com/ HeritageNewZealand PouhereTaonga

The people’s palace

WORDS: LYDIA MONIN

In Vienna, innovative social housing projects attract international tourists. Could similar projects one day do the same in New Zealand?

On our arrival in Vienna for the first time, our taxi driver recommended a lunch cruise on the Danube and visiting a selection of palaces and a social housing complex – his favourite being a curved, multicoloured extravaganza designed by an architect with a strong connection to New Zealand.

Vienna’s Hundertwasserhaus was created by painter, architect and ecologist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who believed in living in harmony with nature. It’s a red, blue, yellow, green and silver building with mosaics scattered on its walls and trees spilling out of the windows from the inside. It’s all curves and undulating surfaces, and tourists in a steady stream explore the architecture and photograph this very Viennese take on social housing. Opposite is a cluster of shops and around the corner is a café with souvenirs and an audio recording of the story of Hundertwasser’s life.

When Hundertwasser was young, his mother told him about a mysterious land on the other side of the world where people slept while he was awake and were awake while he was asleep. Hundertwasser visited New Zealand in 1973 and two years later bought a 200-hectare farm in the Kaurinui Valley in the Bay of Islands. This would be his home for much of the next three decades. He reforested the farmland, planting thousands of trees and creating canals, ponds and water-purification plants.

His signature symbol was the spiral, and in New Zealand he discovered how integral the koru, which represents the unfurling frond of the native fern, is to Māori art. He wanted his adopted country to use the koru on a secondary national flag.

“The straight line leads to the downfall of humanity,” Hundertwasser wrote. He also accused the straight line of being godless because it couldn’t be found in nature.

Richard Smart, the Hundertwasser Foundation’s New Zealand representative, wonders whether another reason for the artist despising the straight line was connected to the 69 Jewish members of his family who were killed in Nazi concentration camps.

“I can’t help imagining that these traumatic experiences affected his later thinking. The rigidity of that regime – wanting to break away from that and evoke a freer creativity and development in man.”

Richard worked as a part-time builder with Hundertwasser in the 1990s, before becoming his full-time assistant at Kaurinui. Hundertwasser was outspoken on environmental and anti-nuclear issues but reserved in private. “He was a bit of a contradiction because you’ll see in his books how he did public nude protests, which took a huge amount of courage. It really highlights how strongly he felt about the topics that he was protesting about.”

In 1993 Hundertwasser was invited to design an art gallery for Whangārei. It seemed that the project would be shelved when Hundertwasser passed away in 2000 and that his final contribution to New Zealand’s building stock would be the suitably flamboyant public toilets in Kawakawa.

But the Whangārei Mayor Stan Semenoff sent two delegates to Vienna to talk to members of the Hundertwasser Foundation, who agreed to support the art gallery project, amending it to showcase both

2 Hundertwasser’s work and Māori art. The $33.2 million Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery finally opened in 2022. The public toilets in Kawakawa that had been transformed by Hundertwasser in the late 1990s into a work of art have now been recognised as a Category 1 historic place.

Hundertwasser’s building in the heart of Vienna was completed in 1985, but the city’s proud tradition of attractive, healthy social housing goes back to the 1930s and the ‘Red Vienna’ period when the Social Democrats ruled. “Air and sunlight for our children,” politicians used to say when they opened yet another big council apartment block. Their mammoth building programme and the establishment of a network of social and cultural institutions improved conditions for the working class.

One of the best examples of buildings from that era is Karl-Marx-Hof, a short train ride from the city centre. The ‘Workers’ Versailles’ stretches more than a kilometre, making it one of the longest single residential buildings in the world. Inside are 1300 apartments, laundries, bath houses, kindergartens, a library, a doctor’s surgery, shops and a museum (housed in one of the estate’s former bath houses).

In Red Vienna, life inside the new council estates was strictly controlled; there were feared caretakers and rules to be obeyed. Anna Sturm, who moved into Karl-Marx-Hof in 1929, recalled in a 1980s interview the stress of having one day a month to do all the washing.

“I always used to have nightmares about not finishing the washing ... I used to get palpitations and stomach ache and sore throats and everything.”

1. Karl-Marx-Hof. Image: stock.adobe.com

2. This Europalia 1987 stamp pictures the Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna. Image: shutterstock.com

3. The Hundertwasser Art Centre with Wairau Māori Art Gallery in Whangārei. Image: Sam Hartnett

4. The Dixon Street Flats in Wellington. Image: Mike Heydon

Today, almost every new public housing development in Vienna is subject to architectural competition, and the city council tries to attract mixed communities to avoid ghettos. More than 60 percent of the city’s population lives in some form of subsidised housing.

At one time the idea that healthy, well-designed housing shouldn’t just belong to the rich took hold in New Zealand. Richard Seddon’s Liberal government gave working-class families the chance to escape the squalid inner cities and move into bigger, healthier houses in the suburbs from 1905, but rents and travel costs proved too high and the scheme was abandoned in 1919. A couple of decades later Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage was filmed in Wellington carrying furniture into Labour’s first state house.

Gordon Wilson was the chief architect of Labour’s state housing programme. He designed thousands of single, duplex and multi-unit houses, including the Dixon Street Flats and the Berhampore Flats in Wellington, both now Category 1 historic places.

The man with a similar job to Gordon’s today is Ken Davis, the Principal Architect for state housing provider Kāinga Ora. In 1987 Ken wrote his undergraduate thesis on Gordon, titled ‘A Liberal Turn of Mind: The Architectural Work of F. Gordon Wilson 1936-1959 – A Cultural Analysis’.

“I was really interested to understand why there was such a consistent example of International Modernism at the bottom of the world,” says Ken, “and I was interested to know about the social, political and economic context that had allowed that to happen.”

New Zealand’s rich history of European immigration, he says, brought with it a different type of creativity.

Multi-unit modernist buildings were constructed with clean lines and flat roofs. But many state

houses were designed as single units, and these small bungalows were criticised – unfairly in Ken’s opinion – for looking too similar.

“They were some of the earliest forms of passive solar design because living areas were oriented to the sun, as well as early forms of standardisation and refabrication. So there was a lot of thought and innovation.”

Gordon was Government Architect in 1959 when he died suddenly, and his American widow returned to live in California with their five teenage children. Two of his sons and a granddaughter became architects, and in 2019 the family approached Ken to help establish a fellowship for New Zealand architects.

The F. Gordon Wilson Fellowship for Public Housing was recently launched to promote “creative design thinking, problem solving, and new ideas and approaches to significant unmet housing needs across Aotearoa New Zealand”.

There are currently 24,000 people on the waiting list for state housing. The government public housing plan sets out to address this, says Ken, whose role, alongside other design-focused colleagues, is to improve the design quality of public housing in New Zealand.

He says Kāinga Ora is focused on building more sustainably and economically, with a range of denser housing typologies, such as duplexes, townhouses and apartments, rather than single houses on plots of land, while making sure the new homes are close to shops, schools, parks, railway stations and bus routes.

So one day in the not-too-distant future an Auckland Airport taxi driver might recommend a lunch cruise on the Waitematā Harbour, followed by a trip up the Sky Tower and then, who knows – possibly a saunter around a new state housing development?

‘A Bloody Difficult Subject’: Ruth Ross, te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Making of History

Bain Attwood

$59.99 HB

(Auckland University Press)

Te Motunui Epa

Rachel Buchanan

$49.99 HB

(Bridget

Williams Books)

In the early 1800s, as warring tribes from the north descended on Taranaki, five carved tōtara panels were buried by Te Ātiawa hapū in a swamp near Waitara. Here, the ancestors waited, snoozing in their earth home for 150 years.

“The problem was,” writes Rachel Buchanan in her captivating account, “the epa were hōhā. It was boring down there in the dark … So our ancestors stretched their tongues, rolled their eyes and got ready to wake up.”

This extraordinary story of the Motunui epa, from their unearthing in 1971 to their many legal and illegal adventures abroad, to their homecoming in 2014, draws heavily on archival material, including newly released government records, many

of which are beautifully reproduced in the book.

The documents chart how the panels, smuggled out of the country, took centre stage in an international legal saga involving smugglers, art collectors, billionaires, lawyers, prime ministers and – not often enough –iwi, which affected the legal status of indigenous artefacts globally. There are also generous accounts of the work of “mostly Pākehā” civil servants who “busted a gut” for decades to get the epa back.

The best and most distinctive parts of the book invoke the perspectives of the ancestors themselves, trapped in the storage rooms at Sotheby’s, then in the far worse darkness of Port Franc: “Ka taka te pō. A tsunami of total darkness. Eyes shut, mouths shut, cut adrift and comatose,

our tūpuna floated far out to sea, plunged deep inside Te Wharepōuri [the house of total darkness],” writes Rachel. Then, finally, back home, “so happy to be surrounded by their mokopuna”. The final chapter, ‘Statement’, is delivered by the epa.

The book was a finalist in the illustrated nonfiction section at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and it’s clear why. The exquisite design – from cover to typeset, to image placement – vibes perfectly with the storytelling; a treasure to hold, as well as to read.

The Treaty of Waitangi as an unchanging physical document runs through almost two centuries of New Zealand’s heritage –but the interpretation of that document has been an ever-changing story. Bain Attwood’s rich account of Ruth Ross’s life and work, and of the history of scholarship around te Tiriti, shows how the views of an historian outside of the establishment came to be a pillar of the establishment, and left a lasting national legacy

Ruth was an energetic woman – a mother, historian and caregiver whose anger at what she saw as the myth of the Treaty as a Māori Magna Carta kept her immersed in researching and writing about the document for decades. A 1972 paper in the New Zealand Journal of History presented both her “major argument” (Bain’s term), that the Treaty was “hastily and inexpertly drawn up, ambiguous and contradictory in content, chaotic in its execution”, and her “minor argument” that the Māori text of the Treaty was the authoritative version; arguments ignored in her lifetime that have come to shape ours fundamentally.

Part one of the book outlines Ruth’s life and work, highlighting the personal

WORDS: ANNA KNOX

and professional influences that criss-cross her outputs. These include the years spent with her young family in a predominantly Māori community in the heart of “Treaty country”, as well as the repressive upbringing that underpins her rage against the Protestant missionaries. The crippling self-doubt that lent a defensive edge to her thinking is also evident: “I wonder why the hell I ever try to do anything but grow cabbages,” she writes.

But it’s in parts two and three that Bain’s talents as a communicator and big-picture thinker really come to the fore. His impressively succinct yet detailed survey of the history of thinking, scholarship and public discourse on the Treaty, both in New Zealand and internationally, places Ruth’s contribution in the context of this ever-changing understanding. The cognitive shift that led to a dramatic reframing of the Treaty in the 1980s and ’90s is particularly well explained, and an academic distinction between a legal account of the past and an historical one comes surprisingly alive.

There’s a quote in the book from a letter Ruth wrote to JC Beaglehole: “I know from past experience that once one gets launched on Waitangi stuff, the work involved is never-ending” – a reminder that questioning the status quo of any official history is an ongoing responsibility. Ruth understood this, and so does Bain.

Other titles of interest

Take Me With You and Take Me With You Too

Karen Wrigglesworth

$45, $48 (karenwrigglesworthwriter. com)

These self-drive guides to engineering heritage in Whanganui and Dunedin are beautifully put together, well written and packed with heritage stories about the two cities’ bridges, public buildings, monuments, and other structural landmarks and curiosities –Whanganui’s Kowhai Park playground and Virginia Lake aviary, and Dunedin’s vault lights and Norma the Town Hall organ all have entries. Interesting details and highquality images will make self-touring these heritage sites a delight. If the map key corresponded to the entries themselves, navigation would be even better.

He Tau Makuru: 50 Years of Te Matatini National Kapa Haka Festival

Multiple contributors

$70 (Huia)

A rich history of the festival as shared by those who have lived it.

Auckland: The TwentiethCentury Story

Paul Moon

$45 (Oratia)

A bold and original account of what made our biggest city of last century.

BOOK GIVEAWAY

The Fate of the Land, Ko ngā Ākinga a ngā

Rangatira: Māori

Political Struggle in the Liberal Era 1891–1912

Danny Keenan

$65 (Massey University Press)

The vital story of the resolute defence of Māori interests by rangatira such as James Carroll, Wiremu Pere, Pāora Tūhaere and Te Keepa Te

Rangihiwinui in the face of immense state power. With 60 illustrations.

The Denniston Rose (Audiobook)

Jenny Pattrick

$35 Audio download (Penguin)

A number-one bestseller, this favourite New Zealand novel captures a real 19th-century community in the bleak coal-mining settlement of Denniston (a Tohu Whenua heritage site), isolated high on a plateau above New Zealand’s West Coast. Read by Jennifer Ward-Lealand.

Shadow Worlds: A History of the Occult and Esoteric in New Zealand

Andrew Paul Wood

$55 (Massey University Press)

An accessible, entertaining and informative look at the occult, the spooky, and the mysterious in Aotearoa New Zealand since 1840. Everything from the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucianism, and the School of Radiant Living to spiritualism and witchcraft.

Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy: 40th Anniversary Edition

Lynley Dodd

$19.99 HB (Picture Puffin)

A piece of Aotearoa New Zealand heritage, this upsized hardback edition celebrates the 40th birthday of Lynley Dodd’s iconic first Hairy Maclary book.

BWB Introducing Texts: He Whakaputanga; Te Tiriti o Waitangi; The Women’s Suffrage Petition

He Tohu

$19.99 each (Bridget Williams Books)

These texts provide excellent introductions to key documents of Aotearoa New Zealand history derived from larger illustrated versions by the same publisher. With introductions by Vincent O’Malley, Claudia Orange and Barbara Brookes respectively.

Labour of Love: A Personal History of Midwifery in Aotearoa

Joan Skinner

$39.99 (Massey University Press)

Well-known midwife Joan Skinner charts the changing story of childbirth in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as the shifting social and political landscapes in which that story has taken place since the 1970s, through her own experiences. Warm, richly detailed, and sometimes shocking.

epa: carved tōtara panels

hapū: sub-tribe

hōhā: bored, fed up

mokopuna: grandchildren

rangatira: chiefs

tūpuna: ancestors

We have one copy of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy: 40th Anniversary Edition to give away. To enter the draw, send your name and address on the back of an envelope to Book Giveaways, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, PO Box 2629, Wellington 6140, before 30 September 2023. The winner of last issue’s book giveaway (Comrade: Bill Andersen – A Communist, Working-class Life) was Shirley Swallow of Whangaparāoa.

My heritage place

Perhaps best known as a musician, Lyttelton-based Delaney Davidson is also an accomplished visual artist who recently spent a month as artist-in-residence at Stoddart Cottage. A Category 1 historic place at Diamond Harbour on Banks Peninsula, the cottage was the birthplace of Margaret Stoddart, one of New Zealand’s foremost 19th-century painters

Stoddart Cottage was built in 1860, which was just 10 years before my house in Lyttelton was built, so it has a very familiar feeling. I way prefer older buildings; so many things in them are more elegant and I think they’re just nicer spaces to be in.

What I’ve learned while being here at the Stoddart Cottage artist residency is more of Margaret Stoddart’s own story. She was really trying to make a go of it as an artist, but she also had to make a living, so she did a lot of botanical pictures – very detailed and realistic – and she had a real work ethic. She worked very hard.

That story rings a bell for me because there are musicians who have money and

AS TOLD TO CAITLIN SYKES / IMAGERY: SABIN HOLLOWAY

are able to just do what they want. And then there are other people who actually have to make a living and go out and do the hard grind of weekly gigs. The hustle.

Reading those things about her, she becomes a real person to me, instead of some distant person from the past whose name is associated with an old house.

It puts the artist’s residency in context too – that there is provision being made for people to take time out of that daily grind to just explore.

While I’m here I’m predominantly working on local landscapes. I paint in the day while the light’s here, then when it gets to dusk I get in the car and drive these back roads –I’m out doing nighttime landscapes.

It’s interesting because the heritage places that resonate with me the most aren’t actually buildings; they’re rock formations and geographical features around Lyttelton Harbour like Te Tihi o Kahukura, Ōketeupoko and Te Pōhue.

And these hills around here, they have such a presence and power about them that it’s almost overwhelming. You can feel the history in these hills.

With the nighttime landscapes I’m creating, you can’t really see detail – you see presence and shapes – and I’m trying to capture the energy of that presence or the wairua of the place.

stoddartcottage.nz

wairua: spirit

100% Kiwiana.

shop.heritage.org.nz

Now open online

Unmissable heritage experiences for your next roadie this spring.

Scan the QR code to view curated itineraries of beautiful heritage sites across Auckland, Northland, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Linger a while as you step back in time this spring at these unforgettable places.

Photography by Mark Russell and Mike Heydon.

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