CURIOS

CHRIS SZEKELY

DESCRIPTION Five pistons, a valve and a connecting rod, handcast as parts of a motorbike engine, 1950–70

MAKER / ARTIST Burt Munro (1899–1978)

REFERENCE Curios-047001/007 The pistons were made by Munro for his racing Indian and Velocette motorcycles. They were hand cast using sand from local beaches in a variety of receptacles, including tin cans, and then finished using a file and a lathe.

Curio: an object of fascination, sometimes unusual, perhaps unexpected. Alongside papers and photographs, paintings and books, the Turnbull has a sprinkling of curios, each with a story to tell.

Number one, a spark plug. Following the very first flight across Raukawa Moana Cook Strait on 25 August 1920, the triumphant pilot, Captain Euan Dickson (1892–1980), removed the plug from his Avro biplane and presented it to the newly opened Turnbull Library a month later, on 30 September 1920. Dickson, a First World War flying ace, also piloted the first flight to Aoraki Mount Cook in July 1920. A souvenir programme listed the names of the passengers: there were six in total, including the lucky two who flew on the Aoraki leg.

Next, some pistons—three of them plus a rod and a valve, all linked to an Indian motorcycle owned by Burt

DESCRIPTION Spark plug from 110 hp Le Rhone engine powering Avro bi-plane, c. 1920

MAKER / ARTIST Maker unknown

REFERENCE Donated by Captain Euan Dickson (Curios028-002_017)

DESCRIPTION Rock responsible for puncturing tyre of 40 hp Darracq motor vehicle, 1906

MAKER / ARTIST Collected by Rodolph Lysaght Wigley

REFERENCE MS-Group-2402: MS-Papers-11944-4 _011 Two of the more unusual items in the Turnbull collections link to the pioneering transport past of Aotearoa New Zealand. The spark plug came from the first plane to fly across Cook Strait, while the rock punctured a tyre on the very first motor vehicle to drive to Aoraki Mount Cook.

Munro (1899–1978). Munro was a motorbike racer from Invercargill who set several New Zealand speed records from the late 1930s, before going on to break world records at the Bonneville speed races in Utah during the 1960s. His Bonneville exploits were brought to the big screen in the 2005 film The World’s Fastest Indian, with Oscar winner Sir Anthony Hopkins playing the lead role.

There are no punctured tyres in the Turnbull collections. However, nestled among the papers of Rodolph Lysaght Wigley (1881–1946) is the rock responsible for puncturing a tyre on a 40 horsepower Darracq motor vehicle on the first car journey to Aoraki Mount Cook, in 1906. The car belonged to Wigley, who had just founded the Mount Cook Motor Car Service, transporting mail and passengers in the region. Undeterred by the flat tyre, he persevered, and in 1912 relaunched the business as the Mount Cook Motor Company Ltd. By 1930, it was the largest tour operator in New Zealand.

Mechanical parts and stone chips are not typical of the Turnbull collections. Neither is the writer Katherine Mansfield’s hair, composer Douglas Lilburn’s piano, or a knife and fork purported to have come from the table of explorer Captain James Cook. Yet these and other surprising pieces easily cohabit in the library, inviting attention, curiosity and, sometimes, intrigue.