The writing is on the wall in Tauranga, we have a soundtrack supplied by the likely lads from Apollo SteamTrain and Vinyl Destination, Plenty confronts the flu, looks into a place for our past, then goes good will hunting, and we meet some of the Bay’s best who are keeping it real, just like it says on the tin.
ISSUE 12
plenty.co.nz
If you needed any further evidence that the Bay is the ne plus ultra of Kiwi creativity, then meet Jah Smith and look no further than Tauranga’s Street Prints.
It’s only rock and rock, but we like it, and we’re betting we won’t be the only ones. Plenty dances round the lounge as Apollo SteamTrain bring it on.
Take the face of Plenty 08 and a talented young Rotorua designer and what do you get? Genius. Don’t take our word for it; go check it out for yourself.
Vinyl rekids, a radio station broadcasting from a high street store, a live venue, DJs doubling as baristas: ladies and gents, the one, the only, Vinyl Destination.
Toa Hunter Gatherer is on screenand in our pages - talking ethical hunting.
Taupō rodeos, deserted Waipukurau hospitals, Chernobyl; meet Jeremy Bright, photographer.
Two new Bay museums are planning on bringing our past into the present. Here’s how.
Getting behind the wheel with a great Rotorua programme to teach young drivers.
Is it a bird, is it . . . nope it’s a bird. The karearea in fact, and it needs our help.
100 years ago death stalked the Bay; 100 years later we’re still asking why.
Nothing beats honey, and the folks at Arataki have been making it – with a little help from the bees – since 1944.
Gravity less so, and we still have the scars, but that’s another story.
No, lets stick to reality, and we really wish more people would. Not because we don’t dig a flight of fantasy and a ripping yarn about a rum deal, no siree Bob, it’s just because we think the real deal in this world has been getting a very raw deal of late.
Reality used to be everywhere, from the pages of the papers to the six o’clock news and the radio. It was all we really talked about, over a beer or the back fence, and the only escape from it was the fantasy world of the big screen where impossible things happened to improbable people; then the credits rolled and we went back to life in the suburbs. Back to reality and the drama of friends, families and the neighbours. It may not have been glamorous, but wasn’t it fun?
But then something happened. Reality became a small screen format, starring (supposedly) real people who were actually (decidedly) unreal and we all chose to stay at home and watch it become (horrendously) popular and (remarkably) cringe-worthy. On our TVs, on our phones, streaming, on demand, all day, every day, it became an endless torrent of bite-sized, work-safe, click through – and let’s be honest about this –bullshit. In the survival of the fittest, oh my god Charlie Darwin, you never saw text voting on the horizon. And while Andy Warhol said that in the future we’d all be famous for 15 minutes, he never imagined the lengths some of us would go to just to get there. We blame the media, which is us, and we’d just like to say that we’re not angry with ourselves, we’re just disappointed.
But hey fellow freestylers, it’s not all death and taxes. And we aren’t crying into our beers just yet because there are still many out yonder in the Plenty who are keeping it real, and that’s what this issue is all about. Like it says on the tin – well, the cover in our case but it’s a saying and you get the point – this one is about being real. It’s about the people who make music, images, fashion, and art because they just have to, the people who come up with a business model not to make a million but to make a mark, and the people who make their mark by working under the radar to make this a better place in so many inspiring ways.
We love ‘em. We love meeting them, we love hearing their stories, and we love that they put in the hard yards for the same reason we do –because they love this place. But mostly we love telling their stories, and you can read a whole bunch of those in the pages that follow. Yes friends and neighbours, without further ado, we give you Plenty 12.
Whakapā mai
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We send our unflinching (and unpaid) writers throughout the Bay to bring you the news you can use, and once the carrier pigeons (they are paid, but it’s chicken feed) have returned bearing their dispatches, our dedicated team of pressganged in-laws work tirelessly to whip each issue into shape. Why do we do this? Because we’re passionate about truly great design, great writing and telling the stories that need to be told. And, because we love this place called Plenty.
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You don’t have to dress to impress - just be seen in good company.
WORDS ALEXANDRA PICKLES PHOTOGRAPHY SUPPLIED: YOSHI TRAVEL FILMS
What do you do when your passion gets overshadowed by the demands of everyday life? If you’re Jah Smith, then you find a new outlet for it. Jah and wife
Lovie both had a talent with the paint brush, but with the time it takes to produce art, and three girls to raise, something had to give. So instead of giving up on the passion, Jah found a way to reroute that into facilitating artists to achieve their dreams, and the focus is on street art.
I caught up with Jah (who’s currently in Melbourne) via the super-modern medium of a Facebook phone call, and once we’d established our quintessentially Kiwi two degrees of separation and that we virtually grew up across the road from each other, we got down to talking street prints, untapped potential and the challenges of bringing art out from the stuffy confines of a gallery to your daily commute downtown.
The journey begins in Mount Maunganui circa 2014 when Jah and Lovie had just come back from a big graffiti festival in Dubai. “We were really amped to try and do something similar to the festivals we’d visited around the world, but we didn’t think it would be as hard as it was,” Jah reflects. “We didn’t know what we were getting into until we were so far into it that we just had to keep on going. We contacted artists from festivals that we’d been to and said ‘We’d love you to come to New Zealand and paint at our festival’. We had our local artist, Mr G and a bunch of other artists from around the world that were keen to join us, so in 2015 we had our first Street Prints Mauāo festival in Mount Maunganui.”
But it wasn’t as simple as, ‘If you book them, they will come’. “It was really hard to pull off,” Jah recalls. “Mount Maunganui is a boutique beach village so we came up against a fair bit of resistance, and it was challenging to raise awareness. Mainstreet Mount Maunganui was hard to get on board and it wasn’t right up until the day before the festival began that we had everything in place. There were a few people in Council who were supporting us, but not as a whole.”
All the buildings used were privately owned so Jah had the task of getting the signatures of 20 owners to say they were happy to have a mural on their building. “It took some time to convince Mount Maunganui that this would be good for it, but once it happened, it spoke for itself.”
It was an intense time for Jah and Lovie, and although they pulled off an amazingly successful festival, the idea of another one went into the ‘too hard’ basket. “We weren’t going to do it again, just because of how hard it was and how much it cost, but the community spoke back and said, ‘We really want this to happen,’ and the Council said, ‘We really want you to run it again,’ which made us think, ‘Awesome, we’ll do it again.’ But then Tauranga City Council ran their own street art festival.”
I THINK THEY LOOKED AT IT DIFFERENTLY NOW. THEY SEE IT AS MURAL-BASED ART, NOT JUST GRAFFITI.Husband and wife duo, Jah and Lovie Smith Creative Directors of Street Prints
Initially this put Jah’s festival on the back burner, but knowing the positive impact the festival would have on the community, Jah was there supporting artists and getting behind the event. “Tauranga City Council is now really supportive of our next Street Prints Mauāo, and they have a whole new team that has really got behind what we’re doing. They’ve realised that they’ve got talent right here in Tauranga that they can use rather than going outside of the region.”
Ask Jah to dwell for a moment on the resistance he’s come up against from the people who have seen street art as graffiti or something that shouldn’t be there and he recognises there has been a shift. “Especially in Mount Maunganui,” he notes. “For the first Street Prints Mauāo festival we took hundreds of people on free art tours around to the different murals and the majority of those people were women aged 50 and over. I even took a 90 year old in a wheelchair with a group of ladies and I think they looked at it differently now. They see it as mural-based art, not just graffiti.”
Breaking through those perceptions has been a challenging road, but Jah now has three international festivals under his belt, with another coming up in Whangarei at the end of the year, and discussions with the Council are underway in Whakatāne to see if they can make something happen there.
So what does Jah think the community gets out of street art. “Well, it beautifies the city. People get to look at a beautiful artwork rather than a blank wall.” It’s a bit of a silly question, when the answer is so obvious, but then Jah makes us all realise what it’s really all about. “Then there’s the interaction during the festivals. Each artist that we bring in gets paired up with a youth between the age of 16 and 23, so they get to stand alongside the artist, learn from them, help them and assist them.” The youth mentoring programme that began with Street Prints Mauāo was so successful that young people are lining up to get on board. “At our first festival we had a girl called Phoebe Robinson, who now goes by the alias ‘Jeremiah’. She was 17 at the time and she walked into our gallery and she said, ‘I want to be part of this mentoring programme,’ so we paired her up with an artist from Brooklyn, New York and they ended up doing a mural together. From that point she became inspired to become a full-time artist. She’s now painted five murals in Mount Maunganui and in our second festival she was included in the line-up of artists and got to mentor another youth. Now she’s in Melbourne working in a studio called Everfresh. She’s gone from working in a café in Mount Maunganui to being a full-time artist who is now inspiring other young artists. That’s the biggest part of what we do.”
But it doesn’t stop there. Jah also facilitates free art workshops during the Street Prints festivals which are run by the visiting artists and have catered from four year olds up to 60 year olds and cover calligraphy, graffiti, painting, drawing and more. In Christchurch, an apprenticeship programme was established so budding artists were matched up with international artists and were able to sell their art alongside the latter in a gallery setting. “We always engage with a youth organisation, so in Christchurch and Tauranga, we work with the YMCA and there’s a youth space in Whangarei, because they know their youth better than anyone,” Jah points out. “We had a lot of demand for spaces and we relied on the organisations to help us to select them, but they didn’t necessarily have to be good kids. We had one guy who had been in prison, but we could see the potential and the enthusiasm, and that’s the case for a lot of the youth we work with. They’re hungry for it.”
A STRONG AND .
CONNECTION
Being the studious article-writer that I am (cough cough) I’d done some research and checked out a series of short videos featuring the highlights from various Street Prints festivals. There was a strong and obvious connection to Māori culture throughout the events, so I asked Jah what drove this. “My wife and I are both Māori, so it’s important to us to keep that connection with our tangata whenua. Our festivals are centred around an aspect of Māoridom and named specific to the whenua. We have a whakatauaki for each festival, but we don’t come up with them ourselves, we talk to the local kaumatua and they give us the kaupapa behind why they have chosen it. We also talk to local kaumata about murals that will feature specific people, to make sure they are an appropriate representation. We try and give the visiting artists the whole experience as well,” Jah notes. “Our local artist, Mr G welcomed our international artists on to Motiti Island where they stayed on a marae and got the full experience.”
Feeling somewhat inadequate at this point by my lack of awe-inspiring career choices, I ask Jah where he sees this street art journey taking him in the future. “We want to create art throughout the country that signifies the place that it exists,” he prophecies. “I think the more of what we’re doing with street art festivals, the better.”
WE WANT THE ART TO MEAN SOMETHING TO THE TOWN THAT IT IS IN AND TELL A STORY.
HE AHA TE MEA NUI O TE AO / WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD? HE TĀNGATA, HE TĀNGATA, HE TĀNGATA / IT’S THE PEOPLE, IT’S THE PEOPLE, IT’S THE PEOPLE.
“Some festivals happening around the country don’t have a theme or a purpose or a connection in the same way that ours do. We want the art to mean something to the town that it is in and tell a story.” And he’s not just thinking in the whimsical as he goes on to note he’d like to see a mobile app that could take you on a tour and explain the story behind the art, “because every piece has a story to tell.”
It then becomes clear that as much as Jah wants to see new artists evolving from his festivals and programmes, he wants the existing artists to solidify their place too. “Most of the artists that go into the community to paint a mural don’t get paid, so I would like to see these artists being truly valued so they can make a living out of it. I think I’d like to see councils take a hold of it too, and turn these artworks into assets and look after them,” Jah muses. “We’re still at the beginning. Festivals are amazing, but we want to have a base where we can teach and mentor younger artists so it’s a year-round thing and not just a once-ayear scenario.
“I’d like to see artist residencies established here in New Zealand, or send them to the likes of Everfresh Studio in Melbourne so they can come back inspired and turn that passion into more art, or travel around the world to different festivals and experience all that goes with it, and then go on to become a full-time artist.
We draw our call to a close and I thank Jah for the contribution he’s making to our local community. Because it’s not just a contribution to the arts, or youth development, or Māori culture, or place making – it’s visionary. And it’s visionaries who change the world… one wall at a time.
WORDS
And there the story could have ended, but it didn’t. Fast-forward to 2018 and McCarthy and his band Apollo SteamTrain have mined those notebooks for some kick ass rock songs that seem as familiar as they do fresh. Which is just as it should be; rock and roll is endlessly reinventing itself with nods to its past, and Apollo SteamTrain have done just that with a consistently excellent series of singles, from the brilliantly titled belter that is ‘Brain Bell Jangler’ to the slower but no less catchy ‘The Electric Sun’. Some things take time, and Apollo SteamTrain was one of them.
TAYLOR
RUTHERFORD APOLLO STEAMTRAIN
O T N 11
R I
If there is something vaguely old school about Apollo SteamTrain’s take on rock then the story of how the band formed is also straight out of classic Rawk N’ Roll folklore. After test-driving some of his songs at Colourfield Studios in Welcome Bay, McCarthy thought they deserved to get out more and meet people, so he set about putting together a band to gig them live. After many years in the Tauranga and Bay of Plenty covers scene he had plenty of contacts, but that didn’t stop a degree of serendipity seeping in to help form the line up. Apollo SteamTrain – look we’re gonna call them AST for short, it saves on ink (not to mention RSI) – weren’t the product of an Aotearoa’s Got Talent style casting call, they stumbled across each other in the time-honoured fashion of ads on noticeboards and friends of friends.
And lets state the obvious – these guys didn’t come down in the last shower, they’ve been round the traps. Les Robinson was a part of the legendary Taranaki hard-core metal band The Nod and has supported the likes of Iron Maiden and Jimmy Barnes; he also has the rather cool claim to fame of having appeared in the opening titles of iconic Kiwi music show Radio with Pictures. Ian Clark grew up on the Isle of Wight and played guitar in various punk bands – even managing to blag a couple of gigs at New York’s famous CBGB –before seeing the light, switching to bass and moving to Tauranga in 2009. James Bos, a former member of local bands Nine Mile Stone and Tuner and whose successes include some support slots for Opshop and The Feelers, was the last to sign up, allowing Les to vacate the drum stool and concentrate on guitar.
In the best possible Ocean’s Eleven tradition, they probably all have some stories to tell, but we’re really not sure whether it’s advisable to ask.
A ROCK AND ROLL TRAJECTORY OF GUITAR HOOKS, LEAD BREAKS, SING-ALONG ANTHEMS AND ATTITUDE; THE STUFF OF SWEATY SATURDAY NIGHTS AND
SONGS THAT BECOME SOUNDTRACKS TO THE BITS OF OUR LIVES
RAW, REAL, ONE TAKE, BUT EVEN IN THIS STRIPPED DOWN SETTING, IT’S CLEAR THERE’S SOME GENUINE SONG WRITING AND MUSICIANSHIP GOING ON.
Fortunately, all was not lost. Two new venues - Vinyl Destination (see elsewhere in this issue) and Totara Street (see elsewhere in the next issue) – opened their doors at the perfect time, helping to reinvigorate live music in Tauranga. For everything from high school start-up three-pieces to nationally touring name bands, check their schedules – or better still just go hog-wild and rock up and see some live music from a band you’ve never heard of. “We’re in a better place in Tauranga now thanks to places like Totara Street and Vinyl Destination,” says McCarthy. “They’ve made this a place to come to for live music, and they kind of compliment each other in many ways. Everybody is still struggling, but the fear of the scene dying completely has definitely gone. And people are coming back to guitar music, so it’s a nice time for us to be doing what we do.”
There was also a degree of serendipity in the timing of AST’s formation. Tauranga, like pretty much every other town and city in New Zealand, had been home to a vibrant music scene, but stricter liquor laws and the changing digital landscape put paid to that. People just weren’t going out as much, and for a while it seemed that we may have actually missed the day the music died because we were all home watching telly. Oh well, we could always catch the highlights on demand. “For a while there,” McCarthy says, “Tauranga suffered quite badly on the original music scene. It had always done well for covers entertainment but then a few bands broke up and a couple of venues closed, and it seemed things were really kinda dire in regards to original music, at least in regards to rock.”
And just what is AST doing? To find out Plenty meets three-quarters of the band – James is AWOL with his commitments to his day job –for a chinwag and to listen in on a short semi-acoustic run through of a couple of songs, including their new single Superstition. And to do it we clutter up the carpet at Vinyl Destination; thanks for the space, thanks for the coffee, and to the lady who was trying to quietly read the paper in there on a Sunday morning, we’re very sorry.
No sound check, no lengthy discussion of what goes where, it’s just a single clap to sync sound and vision (and to give Ian the opportunity for an STD joke) and they’re off. Raw, real, one take, but even in this stripped down setting, it’s clear there’s some genuine song writing and musicianship going on. All joking aside, these guys are serious. Which brings us nicely to the upcoming album.
“We wanted to make the songs the best we could,” McCarthy says. “Once they’re out there, they’re out there till you’re in a box, so we didn’t want to rush through the production process, and that led to recording with Greg Haver at Round Head Studios.” Haver is producer of Manic Street Preachers amongst others, and Round Head is basically Neil Finn’s house, so we weren’t kidding about this being serious. “That took the band up to a new level, so we sat back and worked on our videos and built up a catalogue of tracks. It costs a lot of money obviously, and we’ve all pooled money to get this far, but we’ve ended up with just what we wanted. Greg Haver is a great guy to work with, endless coffees, endless stories, and he really pushed us. I think Les played drums for three hours straight to get one track right. But it’s been worth it.”
“Now we’re taking it one step at a time. We’ve been told that we’ll just know when is the right time to get the album out, and it is starting to feel right, so probably this side of Christmas. But we’re focusing on live work to build our local audience and have some remixing, so who knows. And we’re writing together now, so it’s going to be a busy summer one way or the other.”
It’s going to be a great summer. AST will be coming to a big, loud room near you in the not too distant future, so go along, get sweaty, and see what all the fuss is about.
ROCK AND ROLL IS ENDLESSLY REINVENTING ITSELF
WITH NODS TO ITS PAST, AND APOLLO STEAMTRAIN HAVE DONE JUST THAT WITH A CONSISTENTLY EXCELLENT SERIES OF SINGLES
We first met Kawerau’s aspiring model Akeylah Wade when she was hand-picked by former New Zealand’s Next Top Model Danielle Hayes, also from Kawerau, to be her model for Plenty 08. We always knew we’d be seeing more of her and we were right, because she is now wearing garments created by new-to-the scene fashion designer Taongahuia Maxwell, and New Zeland Fashion Week is taking note.
Confused? You shouldn’t be – it’s as clear as the Rotorua mud Danielle once spent time rolling in as part of her Next Top Model journey – the same mud that sits only a few hundred metres from Taongahuia’s creative space.
Last year, while photographing Danielle for our Plenty cover, we learned Danielle had once studied photography. So instead of asking her to model the next time round, we asked her to shoot a model – figuratively speaking of course (we only shoot writers). She also set out to find a hair stylist and make-up artist for the shoot, and asking for volunteers to fill the three positions through her public Facebook account saw her swamped with responses.
That model was the aforementioend Akeylah Wade who had messaged Danielle asking for tips on how to get started in the world of modelling. The Year 12 Tarawera High School student jumped at the chance when Danielle mentioned she had a shoot she required a model for, and the rest is history, or - more accurately - it will be herstory.
Since then the youngster has appeared on the catwalk of Rotorua’s Huia Fashion Show as well as the Global Indigenous Runway as part of Virgin Australia Fashion Festival 2018 in Melbourne. Akeylah was singled out from more than 500 applicants from around the world who put their names forward to model at the Festival, so this is no mean feat. In both appearances Akeylah wore garments created by Rotorua designer Taongahuia Maxwell who, like Akeylah, is enjoying national and international success, after only baby steps within the fashion industry.
WORDS KATEE SHANKS PHOTOGRAPHY JANNIE DEE
She will be showcasing her designs at New Zealand Fashion Week at the end of August after being named as one of three runners-up in the emerging designer’s category at Miromoda, the Indigenous Māori Fashion Apparel Board’s annual competition. As well as co-owning Iti Gifts – Toa Māori in Rotorua, a store Taongahuia says provides the opportunity to retail her creativity, she also has a degree in Māori Art and is studying toward a degree in creative technology, majoring in fashion and textiles, through Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology.
Taongahuia laughs when she hears people refer to her as a newcomer to the fashion scene, simply because she’s been handcrafting and making clothes since she was a child. “But I’m learning that making clothes and fashion aren’t necessarily the same thing,” she says.
Miromoda was not Taongahuia’s first show; that was Rotorua’s Oho Fashion Show in 2017, and the second Huia – a Māori Fashion Show – in October of the same year. Huia, the brainchild of Taongahuia, was organised to bring together the creative businesses of Rotorua’s Hinemoa Street for a community event.
MARLENA WEARING A “SNEEK PEEK” GARMENT FOR MIROMODA / NZFW. AKEYLAH IN POU-HINE CROP JACKET AND CROP PANTS SET.
Akeylah also modeleld at Huia, and as part of the show attended modelling sessions in Rotorua organised by Miss Aotearoa 2012 – 2013 Marlena Martin, and accompanied Taongahuia to the Global Indigenous Runway 2018 at the Melbourne Fashion Festival in March.
“We had a great time in Melbourne, I respect both Marlena and Akeylah for who they are and what they do,” Taongahuia says, and she admits she submitted a collection for Miromoda last year but says she can see now it was not what would be deemed fashion.
“My collection was a hand-dyed, handprinted silk collection that was all about Atua Wahine, my handcarved prints all told different stories and on reflection were more about the creative process as a designer. After that I needed to go and find out what a fashion collection was so enrolled at Te Ohomai.”
This year, she says, she obviously hit the brief. “Being included in New Zealand Fashion Week is exciting, it’s also scary. It is also a great opportunity to showcase what I do to the rest of the country under my newly created brand name Kahu Huia. Ultimately my goal is to see people wearing my clothes. Fashion provides a platform where I can share my culture in an uplifting and positive way. Although each of my custom design prints has a meaning, inspired from my Māori culture and natural environment, I want my clothes to be for everybody. Some of my prints are vibrant and in-yourface, while others are more subtle.”
“Fashion provides a platform where I can share my culture in an uplifting and positive way.”
2018 has been a busy year for the up-andcoming model, and the up-and-coming designer as well. Akeylah ties her modelling in with school work while Taongahuia maintains her fulltime studies with her shop and her design.
“There’s been a lot of early mornings and very late nights,” Taongahuia says, “but when you work within a field you are passionate about, that’s what inspires you to keep going.” And something tells us both these young professionals are going to keep going for a long time yet.
“Each of my custom design prints has a meaning, inspired from my Māori culture and natural environment, I want my clothes to be for everybody. Some of my prints are vibrant and in-your-face, while others are more subtle.”
Video did not kill the radio star, the radio star is doing just fine thank you very much, but a couple of Tauranga tearaways are in the process of ripping up the radio rulebook and reinventing it. Plenty tuned in, turned on and, um, popped over to hear all about it.
Grant Hislop and Rawiri McKinney are not your typical media types. No thousand dollar designer eyewear, oversized smart phones glued to their ears, or glib radio voices here folks. Instead, to all appearances they look just like two kiwi blokes on their days off. We’ve arranged to meet in the Vinyl Destination record store, and when we arrive we mistake McKinney for just that, albeit a Kiwi bloke on his day off buying a coffee. It’s only when he slips into the DJ booth and starts, well, DJing, that we realize he’s actually not just a customer. “That happens a bit,” he says with a smile. “It’s not a bad thing.”
McKinney’s background is in education, all the way from teaching to departmental level, but music has been his passion since his childhood in Hamilton where he attended school with Hislop.
But before we can start to find out more, he interviews Plenty – live on air, on the radio station that lives in the record store. And that is a good thing, because across town his partner in crime Grant Hislop is listening in and has just remembered what he was supposed to be doing today: ten minutes later – no mean feat in Tauranga traffic – he’s joined us on the couch.
Hislop himself comes with a bit of history in the biz. He’s worked at more than 25 stations in his time, he founded The Rock, Coastline FM, and KiwiFM, co-founded Radioworks, and has worked at stations across the country, including programming stints at ZM and Hauraki, as well as managing the likes of Kiwi bands like Goodshirt and Opshop. So yes, he has a bit of history in the biz.
And it is that very business that the duo’s latest venture is turning on its head. The Station 105.4 FM is radio Jim, but not as we know it, and the first thing that strikes you is its physical form. While most stations broadcast from hermetically sealed studios up high in anonymous buildings, The Station, as Plenty found out on arrival, lives in Vinyl Destination on Devonport Road in Tauranga.
Walking into The Station is both a step back in time and a glimpse of the future. The walls are a collage of album and magazine covers and band and tour posters, including a floor to ceiling reprint of an iconic 90s Rip It Up cover. Record bins – yes record bins! – run down one side of the room for the vinyl junky in us all, there is the aforementioned coffee counter with barista station down the other, and nestled next to the counter is the DJ booth. There is also a stage (because every good record store/radio station/café needs a stage), and someone has nicked the furniture from a student flat and turned the centre of the room into a lounge/drop in centre. You tend to need a lot of /s when you enter the world of The Station. It’s a bit chaotic, things are hybrids and kind of hard to explain, but it’s also totally brilliant. It harks back to the anarchic roots of radio and points towards a future where radio has chosen to live amongst us once again.
While most stations broadcast from hermetically sealed studios up high in anonymous buildings, The Station, as Plenty found out on arrival, lives in Vinyl Destination on Devonport Road in Tauranga.
“The Station gives us a chance to connect,” says McKinney, “having a physical presence – and one that is literally just off the street – is not usually possible in radio. It’s probably not even advisable when you think about it! But we like to get to know our listeners a bit, and they can get to know us. The desk (that’s the DJ-ing/music playing bit for you non-DJ types) is on wheels with a 30 metre cable, so we could actually take it out into the street and broadcast from the footpath. But we might wait for the weather to warm up.”
Until summer comes there is still plenty going on inside. In addition to the ridiculously silly thrill of watching someone juggle live radio DJing with making the perfect flat white (let’s see you do it matey), there is a regular stream of acts filling the stage. “We thought there was a real lack of a space for live music in a smaller setting,” says McKinney, “and certainly the response we’ve had has proven that was something of an underestimation! There’s nothing like getting your music in front of people to help an act gel, and it’s also great to come out and see new bands in a venue like this. It has a bit of the 60s coffee house thing going on and that is pretty rare these days.” Recent months have seen everything from high school bands to up and coming local acts dipping their toes in the live scene, as well as established performers who love the intimate vibe of the space and the laid back approach of the crew who run it. There may not be a green room, but they do bloody good coffee.
The walls are a collage of album and magazine covers and band and tour posters, including a floor to ceiling reprint of an iconic 90s Rip it Up cover.
If The Station in the flesh is good, then what they are doing on the airwaves is even better.
If The Station in the flesh is good, then what they are doing on the airwaves is even better. For a start, a whopping (and we don’t use that word lightly friends) 30% of the playlist is music made here in Aotearoa. “Ever since I started in radio, that has been the goal,” Hislop says. “I’m a music person who got into radio, while most people in the radio industry are radio people first and foremost. And that’s OK. For most commercial stations music is important, but it’s not their main reason for being, they’re more interested in building a ‘demographic’.” And despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that he’s spent 30 years in radio, Hislop doesn’t believe in demographics. “When you see the kind of people who come into the store and hear about what they are listening to and see what they are buying, you realize demographics only exist in a very, very broad sense. So instead of looking at that stuff, The Station is all about introducing people to great music, and lots of great Kiwi music.”
It’s easy to forget that in 1995 just 1.6% of music on our radios was made in New Zealand – despite the fact that we had a thriving music scene complete with a wildly popular pub touring circuit. “Getting Kiwi music played on air has been a long struggle for a lot of people,” Hislop says. “And it’s nice to see that a lot of the things we set out to do back in the day, the things we said would work, are now a reality.”
And there is more on the horizon. The next phase of The Station’s development is to include a video stream of the music being broadcast, kind of like what MTV used to be like before it jumped the shark, and then later this year will come the welcome return of the Kiwi icon Rip it Up. For many years it was the bible for all things music in NZ, and Rip it Up’s arrival in small towns across the county was eagerly anticipated by fans hungry for info in the pre-internet Jurassic period. Like many a print publication it stumbled in the digital era, but now Hislop has plans to revive the title he bought back in 2013. “It’s a bit of a moving feast at the moment,” he says, “and we’re still looking at whether it will be a weekly or a monthly or what the frequency will be, but there will probably be a listings and possibly ticketing part to it, and definitely a print version. Watch this space.”
Watch this space indeed, and you would be well advised to keep an ear tuned to The Station 105.4 as well.
Walking into The Station is both a step back in time and a glimpse of the future.
Station harks back to the anarchic roots of radio and points towards a future where radio has chosen to live amongst us once again.
With 155km of walking, tramping and mountain bike tracks, 51 endangered species and 1000-year-old trees, the Whirinaki te Pua-a-Tāne Conservation Park offers an outdoor playground for all.
A 1.5-hour drive (about 90 kilometres) from Whakatāne or Rotorua leads you to an untouched natural wonderland, offering experiences for the ultimate adventurer or a day of exploring with the family. Take a stroll on one of the many short walk trails or choose to extend your journey on a multiday trail, accommodated by a number of huts and camping sites.
The Whirinaki Te Pua-a-Tāne mountain bike trail is perfect for beginner and intermediate mountain bikers, with a 16 kilometre (2-4 hour) loop. For the more experienced, the Moerangi trail is considered a ‘must do’ among biking enthusiasts, climbing 1000 metres and offering sensational rewards.
Standing amongst the great forests of the world, Whirinaki te Pua-a-Tāne is a site of significant unspoiled nature. Immerse yourself amongst ancient kahikatea, tōtara, matai, rimu, miro and tawa trees or spot the endangered Whio (Blue Duck), one of the many rare birds who call Whirinaki home.
Fly-fishing enthusiasts are also rewarded with some of the clearest fast-flowing rivers in New Zealand.
Plan your adventure now at whakatane.com
WHIRINAKI TE PUA-A-TĀNE CONSERVATION PARK: The starting point for many walks and most popular entrance is at the River Rd carpark, just past Minginui Village.
Approximately 1.5-hours’ drive (about 90 kilometres) southwest of Whakatāne and southeast of Rotorua.
“If we ignore our role as kaitiaki through empathy of each individual creature that has unbalanced our environment then in the full circle something else suffers. Be open to new knowledge; hunt in good will.”
At 10 years old, most of us would be into riding a bike, maybe a bit of sport. You know, head out and do the frosty morning bit for Saturday morning footy.
For Owen Boynton, a.k.a. Toa Hunter Gatherer, 10-years old was when he made his first longbow.
“I literally found a piece of wood and started shaping it” he says. “Made my first one when I was 10 and that was the beginning really.”
Many of us may have heard of the show Toa Hunter Gatherer on Māori Television, now into its third series. Owen also has a massive amount of support on social media channels, branded hunting wear and other endorsements. But who is this guy? If you’ve watched the series, you may be quite familiar with his background, but there is more to this Toa than meets the eye.
Owen calls the valley Waimana home in the Bay of Plenty, although he was born further south. Te Urewera the ancestral home of the Tūhoe people is a place he holds close to his heart and where his passion for bush clad mountain ranges began. He now lives on the East Coast after moving around a lot in his childhood, to a few different spots including Wellington. His father was born in the Matahi Valley in the Waimana area and as described by Owen, “His heart never really left that valley.”
His mother was, again by Owen’s description, “a city girl”, with moving to the country style of living in Waimana no doubt being a hard transition. Owen took after his Dad, in the respect that it was clear where his preference was and where he was most comfortable. “I knew in my heart I wanted to be in the bush.’
The initial bow construction at just 10 years old was the foundation of many more custom bows to be made in his rustic workshop. They are all things of beauty, some with intricate designs carved into them, but they are as much functional as they are pieces of art. One is particularly significant, as it was created for New Zealand SAS hero Willie Apiata VC. Owen won a competition to accompany Willie and ex-All Black and television personality Mark Ellis into the bush, to hunt and experience some rugged terrain in a new ute. At the conclusion of the hunt, in a moment of reflection and thanks, Owen gifted the bow to Willie.
Word got around about this bow maker and environmentally-minded bushman and the rest, as they say, is history. Toa Hunter Gatherer isn’t just another hunting show, however. Owen is strongly committed and connected to the environment, with a special focus on more than just the adventure.
“Many people hunt and miss the amazing intricate messages from the environment along the way” he says, and so he hunts and spends time in the bush with a different outlook to most. Traditionally, Māori believe there is a deep kinship between humans and the natural world. This connection is expressed through kaitiakitanga – a way of managing the environment. This kaitiakitanga or guardianship is central to who he is, as well as his father, uncles and other whānau before him. It is a role he doesn’t take lightly, whether it is in the protection or restoration of the environment he spends so much time in or hunting the animals within it.
“As with all animals, we too take from our natural world. Within the realms of kaitiakitanga, we have a responsibility to keep a balance. We can all hunt, but at what cost? Are we contributing to better our environment or just selffulfilment? I find myself observing many hunters I come across and often ask “Do you know your environment? The fauna and plants that our quarry depend on?” he says.
He explains all animals – including humans – make an impact on the area they live in. Species introduced to New Zealand: possums, ferrets and the like impact the forests they dwell in, as well as other species they interact with.
“If something consumes, something suffers. I am frequently asked how I feel trapping innocent animals. Personally I care for every animal I kill, although there is always a genuine reason for the action. Basically if we ignore our role as kaitiaki through empathy of each individual creature that has unbalanced our environment then in the full circle something else suffers. Be open to new knowledge; hunt in good will.”
As viewers see the episodes online or on screen, they will see each time an animal has passed, it isn’t the photo opportunity many hunters take. Owen performs a karakia or prayer, such is the connection and respect he has as a kaitiaki. And learning more about the areas we all spend time in helps us learn the impact we all have and highlights the balance we need to uphold.
This approach has proven to be a hit with viewers of the programme on Māori television with series three currently in the works.
Traditional techniques are in abundance on the show, whether fishing with a bow, diving and bushcraft to name but a few. And making various forms of tea using plants from the bush is a real point of difference compared to other shows!
Traditional techniques are in abundance on the show, whether fishing with a bow, diving and bushcraft to name but a few. And making various forms of tea using plants from the bush is a real point of difference compared to other shows! He has also started getting people ready for the great outdoors and tramping with exercises, survival basics and being prepared, with videos of this all featuring on the Māori Television website.
One very strong characteristic binds his approach together: whānau. In a recent clip, he travels to a small town and gives away some meat to the elders there. The balance is shared amongst whānau and elders, and it illustrates the heart of the hunter that is Owen Boynton. Despite the success of a third series, the YouTube channel, the huge following on Facebook and signature range of apparel, he is still a laid back man with a heart for family.
So when the phrase ‘good will hunting’ comes to mind, we might be thinking about the famous movie from a few years back about academic genius an d so forth. But this is a different kind of genius. And a much more balanced one.
Great food, excellent coffee, and the best sweet treats in the Bay. We also have plenty of gluten free options, and we do catering.
Café Coco
Open Monday - Saturday
10 Richardson St, Whakatane P. 07 308 8337
“All animals – including humans – make an impact on the area they live in.”
Thought-provoking, larger than life, inspiring, unique - the work of Taupō photographer Jeremy Bright could be called all these things. And it’s fair to say that Jeremy Bright himself could be called these as well. But then, after 28 years as a documentary photographer, he’s probably been called a lot of things.
BORN AND RAISED in Essex in the United Kingdom –and he’s quick to point out that he means the real Essex, not the London overspill – Bright’s journey to New Zealand has been a long and circuitous one. He retains, however, a fine mastery of colloquialisms that he still attributes – blames – on his Essex upbringing. Let’s just say Jeremy is pretty much a PG Contains Strong Language kinda guy. But trust me, you wouldn’t want it any other way.
“I came quite late to photography, not seriously till I was 30. It was my brother who got me into it,” he says. “He was mad about motorbikes going down to Brands Hatch weekly to shoot black and white. He’d disappear into his blacked out bedroom with an enlarger and miraculously these photographs would appear. I found that incredible. But becoming a professional photographer was not on the cards for a school leaver in Essex back then.”
IN THE AGE of Instagram and Facebook, when everyone over the age of eight seems to have a camera built into the means to publish their images, Bright and his work represent something of a reminder of how powerful photography once was. His landscapes go far beyond the usual weekend sunsets, and his portraiture offers stark, unforgiving glimpses into the eyes of others. But it is his ongoing documentary work that is most compelling. Beautiful, engaging and often confronting, it is also proof that documentary photography never really went away, it just retired to its study with a brandy while the world clogged up the internet with holiday snaps.
Instead, Bright did what all good small town boys in that green and pleasant land do and settled down to a career in agriculture. It wasn’t to be his ultimate calling, but it got him to New Zealand as a student.
“My first recollection of Kiwis is at Dunedin Airport, when I was picked up by my host family - a rough as guts sheep cocky. My first job the very next day was being handed a knife and a request to slaughter three sheep for dog tucker! I suffered nine months in his company, and it was obvious right from the beginning that we really did not get on! Nine months later I was back in the UK working as an arborist.”
But Aotearoa hadn’t seen the last of Jeremy Bright, because a Kiwi connection much stronger than a South Island sheep station showed up in the form of New Zealander and future wife Marion. “I found her very exotic and a complete breath of fresh air. She had a real ‘can do’ attitude to life and through her I got my travel bug.” Fast forward through several years of amateur photography – which Jeremy admits in hindsight was “98% absolute shite! I just didn’t know what I was doing, but the intent was there” – and he’s at Auckland’s Whitecliffe Institute (now the Whitecliffe College of Art and Design) majoring in photography.
“I knew what I wanted to do, which was to be a photographer. And I knew that I could spend ten years in the wilderness learning the craft or I could spend two years knocking ten years into two. I studied under Jenner Zimmerman, a German documentary photographer, who was a really big influence on me. Him and I really clicked and even after all these year we keep in touch. He was very much from the Cartier Bresson street style, ‘photograph it as you find it’ stable, and that’s something that I took on board and developed ever since.”
Bright’s work on assignment for the likes of Marie Claire Magazine has seen him travel extensively, but it is the commitment to his personal projects that sets him apart from most photographers. “I’ve got projects I’ve been working on for 20 or 25 years now,” he says. “And as long as I have the energy I’ll probably keep some of them going for another 20. It is not unusual for me to set off from home at 3am to drive for hours to photograph an abandoned building or to camp on a remote beach for a couple of days waiting for the weather.”
ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE
BUILDINGS is the abandoned Waipukarau hospital, which he first came across while travelling through the Wairarapa about a decade ago. “In those days there was no eight foot fence to get over as there is now. It immediately captured my imagination as I had been looking for an iconic abandoned building project ever since I had come to New Zealand. There are scarce few of them about, but there she was, battle scarred and weary, a testament to a bygone era of prosperity, the epitome of hope and succour. The new hospital had been built and this old girl had been left to rot away. But, surprisingly, the building had morphed into a new role. The grounds and gardens had reverted back to nature – no more the well-manicured lawns, the weedless tennis court and the pristine swimming pool – now rampant colonies of overgrowth, algae and seedling trees had invaded. Inside there was evidence of vandalism and vagrancy, the walls populated with graffiti and gang icons, smashed windows and broken partitions – cigarette butts and beer bottles adorned some rooms, others had mattresses and discarded clothing. So what’s the attraction? Well it is complex and difficult to rationalise. It’s a mixture of the excitement of what and who I might find; going back again and again to discover the new changes. After a while there’s a bit of kinship, an attachment and even ownership of this process. The more buildings I photograph, the more familiar and relaxing I find the whole experience.”
Another frequently visited topic for Bright is the Kiwi rodeo scene, which is something that came about purely by accident. “I had been culturing a relationship with the local rodeo for a number of years, photographing from the sidelines. I requested and was granted access into the back side of rodeo, the part that the public does not see to document from close up.
“As documenters, professional photographers don’t judge; that’s not our mandate. Our mandate is to demystify and tell stories and let everyone else make the judgement.”Waipukarau Hospital series 2009. Above: Abandoned machinery in corridor.
Culturally New Zealand rodeo is iconic, embedded in certain families, going back generations. It is full of mana, bravery, bravado and ceremony. This I already knew and expected, and indeed saw and witnessed first hand, but what was surprising was the delightful sub-culture. Whilst all the adults were busy, the boys, or rather I should call them ‘Cow Boys’, were also there, busy emulating their heroes, their fathers and their older brothers. It was like a microcosm of the bigger event. I spent three consecutive years following the boys as they grew to young men and real cowboys. Rodeo is now under pressure to conform to rigorous changes in animal welfare – I wonder how long it will survive.”
“But what is real and what is not real has become even more blurred in this age of fake news and alternative facts, and I think this is where still photography has great power and great responsibility. And as a documentary photographer I am not trying to give an opinion, what I’m trying to do is show the world for what it is. I have a professional responsibility to the innate moral truth, to act as a guide, but to remain beholden to the visual facts – and that means using my skill to show not just the subject or content but also the nuance. As documenters, professional photographers don’t judge; that’s not our mandate. Our mandate is to demystify and tell stories and let everyone else make the judgement.”
If the trigger for Bright’s interest in photography came from his brother, it was the influence of his father that led him to seek challenging subject matter. “My father joined the Royal Armoured Corps in 1942 and went to Normandy shortly after D-Day, and though he never talked about it I now realise that the reason I do what I do is to fulfil my own ‘great game’. People today are so horribly undefined, immersed in the quagmire of social conformity and hamstrung by convention and the struggle to survive. The drive I have photographically gives me the reason to have experiences that define me. For me it’s always been about the life experience - where I get to dream up weird and wonderful excuses to get myself into questionable situations.”
“What is real and what is not real has become even more blurred in this age of fake news and alternative facts, and I think this is where still photography has great power and great responsibility.”
ONE OF THE MORE remarkably questionable situations Jeremy Bright has got himself into was Chernobyl in the Ukraine last year. If you’re too young to remember the 1986 nuclear accident that came close to blighting half of Europe, this was the stuff of nightmares. A cloud of radioactive material drifted across borders, hundreds died in courageous and largely futile attempts to avert further disaster, and a city of 60,000 people became a ghost town overnight. It remains like that to this day; a deadly, dormant time capsule.
Before and after view of main square in Pripyat city. Before the accident Pripyat was the epitome of Soviet modern living.
“I’ve always had a preoccupation with the darker side of life, with decay and how –when everything has gone – what is left? And Chernobyl has always held a fascination for me, so while on a personal holiday through Eastern Europe I grabbed the opportunity for a visit with both hands.”
What followed was a saga of mysterious tour guides and dodgy border guards that ultimately led to Bright driving through the first of several checkpoints that surround the deserted town of Pripyat that sits beside the ruined reactor of Chernobyl. “It’s a very odd and unsettling place in many ways. The only remaining statue of Lenin is in Chernobyl town, because all the others have been taken down, but of course in that town everything just stopped, literally. One of my favourite images is of a calendar on a wall with all the days ticked off until . . . that day.
“Like the hospital at Waipukarau, the wider exclusion zone around reactor No.4 is seeing a resurgence of life. Being in it is definitely like stepping back in time to that single catastrophic day. After all this time, it has a strange, ghostly feel. Of the 60,000 inhabitants of Pripyat there is very little left of their personal belongings –that was all cleansed after the event. You know that they existed but there is very little evidence. And, there is this strange quietness enveloping the whole place, like a conspiracy that nobody wants to mention. 32 years on from the disaster there is still a feel of fear, hope and loss. This massive time capsule has an overwhelming sense of foreboding to the sheer size of the consequence that man unleashed there.”
Chernobyl and Me, a mini speaking tour by Jeremy Bright, will be popping up around the Bay in the coming months, so if you’d like to get a bit closer to that strange quietness without risking radiation and border guards, then this is your chance.
“This massive time capsule has an overwhelming sense of foreboding to the sheer size of the consequence that man unleashed there.”
“As a documentary photographer I am not trying to give an opinion, what I’m trying to do is show the world for what it is. I have a professional responsibility to the innate moral truth, to act as a guide, but to remain beholden to the visual facts”Pripyat City in northern Ukraine looking to New Safe Confinement Building covering Reactor No.4
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It’s been said that the trouble with history is that it’s stuck in the past, but two new museums in the Bay are dragging it into the present. Plenty sent our man in Te Puke, Bob Sacamano, to find out all about it and to see if he could get through an article about new museums without a Back to the Future reference.
New Zealanders have always had a troubled relationship with our history. We’ve always been more comfortable learning about the Tudors than Te Kooti, much of our national identity is built on the mythologizing of something that largely didn’t exist, and the holy historical grail of Gallipoli is the only part of our past that the majority of us feel comfortable embracing.
Similarly, the Bay of Plenty has been the scene of arguably some of the most interesting and important history recorded in New Zealand, for Māori and Pākehā alike, and yet we still vaguely feel that everything happened somewhere else. Waitangi, Wellington, Canterbury, Crete even. And to many of us our history resides somewhere else too, in Te Papa, in the capital, where important stuff lives, as opposed to out here in the regions where history actually happened.
And this is why it’s nice to note that the Bay is now home to two – count ‘em TWO! – new places for our past.
The Bay of Plenty has been the scene of arguably some of the most interesting and important history recorded in New Zealand, for Māori and Pākehā alike.
he small but perfectly formed Western Bay Museum opened in 2016 in what was formerly the Katikati Fire Station and it has gone from strength to strength ever since. “Western Bay Museum was established after receiving partial funding from Western Bay District Council,” says Museum Manager Paula Gaelic. “Since then it’s been championed by many funding organisations, partners and sponsors – basically we collaborate and engage with every organisation and institution possible because we have bold ambitions about the development of a 21st century museum, and that requires huge input, commitment, skill and time from all involved.”
The soon to be opened Whakatāne Museum and Research Centre is a bigger and even bolder beast. It all began in 2009 with a two-stage Arts and Culture Project initiated by Whakatāne District Council, with the first stage –Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi — the Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre – opening in 2012 as a combined main library and museum exhibitions venue. Though it was a conversion of an existing building rather than a purpose built facility, Te Kōputu (as the locals call it) was nevertheless an award-winning creation and one that has proved hugely popular with its community. In addition to showcasing the district’s history there are constantly changing exhibitions of local and national artists, and it’s also home to the prestigious Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Award.
Stage Two of the Arts and Culture Project has seen the redevelopment of the old Whakatāne Museum in Boon Street, which dates from the 1970s. After major renovations this building will house the Museum’s extensive collections in a climate controlled environment, provide research services and access to the Museum’s resources and have a working space for staff.
As Curator Collections Paula Karkkainen says, getting to this point has been a long and involved process, constantly building on the work of those that came before. “This is not just about the twostage Arts and Culture Project,” she says, “it’s a continuation of work that began with passionate local historians in the 1930s, that was picked up again in the 1950s by the Whakatāne and District Historical Society, and culminated in the building of the original Museum. As the collections grew and our communities’ expectations grew, it became clear that we needed a much larger facility, and one that could better enable the different functions than those expected of a museum in the 70s. Even the additions that were made to the original building several years ago were not bringing it up to speed.”
The answer has been an extensive renovation of the old structure to increase its footprint and expand its capabilities. “The old Museum had essentially lost the ability to give our communities access to the collections,” Karkkainen says, “and the beauty of the new building is that our communities can once again interact with the taonga we have here.
“Maintaining our heritage is vitally important to us, but just as important is making it available to the people to whom it has meaning.”
That may be in the form of family groups, special interest groups like weavers or genealogists, or people doing personal research. It puts us back on track with the ambitions of the Museum’s founders, particularly Jack London who worked tirelessly towards creating a regional museum - a “living thing” - a space centred on local history where the community could engage fully with its own treasures and heirlooms. Maintaining our heritage is vitally important to us, but just as important is making it available to the people to whom it has meaning. The biggest question now is. . . how can we be more relevant to you?”
Community engagement has also been a key driver for the Western Bay Museum. “One of the main things we wanted the Museum to do was teach people about our heritage,” says Paula Gaelic. “From school groups getting to see what history actually looks like outside of a
book to groups of seniors taking a walk down memory lane, we try to provide programmes that have something to offer to as broad a range of people as possible. Refurbishing the old fire station was a major undertaking, but now we are concentrating on getting people through our doors and telling our stories.”
Telling our stories. This is a phrase you will hear a lot when you start talking museums, but it’s not as simple as you think. “The shape of what museums currently are is shifting,” says Whakatāne Museum Exhibitions Coordinator Victoria Sinclair, “and the future of these institutions is also changing. We are not just about preserving the past, but also capturing the present, collecting the stories of now and curating them for the future. And for us, it’s also about asking the community how they want to engage with the Museum.”
Whakatāne Museum Director Eric Holowacz agrees that the days of cultural institutions dictating how people use their facilities are gone. He and his team are on a mission to transform the museum platform, collections and venues to engage with the community, provoke ongoing dialogue, and influence new artistic activity not just at home but further afield.
We are not just about preserving the past, but also capturing the present, collecting the stories of now and curating them for the future.The new Western Bay Museum in Katikati.
“In the digital age, we have to think about meaningful engagement in a world of small screens, social media, and the flood of the internet,” says Holowacz. “Museums can’t just be passive repositories of the past. We now have to find something different, something unique, and foster ideas through participation and engagement that set us apart and raises us above the background noise.”
In Whakatāne, the latest means of rising above the background noise is the Museum’s initiative to establish New Zealand’s first Volcanic Artist Residency. Sinclair, who is coordinating the programme, is now working with dozens of creative people from all over the world who are planning to spend time exploring the district’s landscapes, heritage, and collections. Each will be provided with temporary housing, access to the museum, visits to local sites and marae, and a day-long journey to Whakaari (White Island) with a geologist guide.
“We’ve already seen an amazing response from artists in New Zealand, Australia, and abroad who now have their sights set on the Bay of Plenty,” Sinclair says, “and we can’t wait to find out what these creative people do with this opportunity and their experiences in our community.”
So, our history isn’t stuck in the past after all. In fact, judging from what is going on in Katikati and Whakatāne, it’s in pretty good hands.
Prizewinning New Zealand Landscape Paintings from the Kelliher Art Competition 1956-1977
22 September — 28 November A Kelliher Art Trust Touring Exhibition 2018 — 2019
Rodger Harrison (1931-) Tokaanu, Taupo 1965
Oil on board
Courtesy of the artist and the Kelliher Art Trust [1965 Kelliher Art Competition, 3rd Prize]
Te Koputu a Te Whanga a ToiWhakatane Library and Exhibition Centre whakatanemuseum.org.nz
Top: Victoria Sinclair of the Whakatāne Museum & Arts.
Above: Fleur MacRae and Victoria Sinclair with some of the Whakatāne Museum Collection.
Being taught to drive by your parents is a Kiwi institution. It’s like having a 21st, holidays at the beach, and lying about your age at the pub. It’s probably also why some of us are such poor drivers – not because our parents weren’t great behind the wheel, it’s just that, well, who listened to their parents in those days? They had no dress sense and their taste in music was incomprehensible, so why on earth would anyone trust their judgement when it came to acceptable speed, threshold braking and the complexities of the give-way rule. Nope, our 16-year-old selves knew better.
WORDS BOB SACAMANO PHOTOGRAPHY TRISTAN THOMSON
And with the costs of paid driving lessons on the rise, many people just resigned themselves to the hair-raising experience and quality-time bonding of bunny hopping the family car around deserted suburban backstreets.
So much for the history lesson, here’s the good news. Rotorua Lakes Council’s Driver Directions programme is here to take away the pain (and yelling) of turning our young drivers into good drivers by giving them professional coaching in a safe but fun environment so that they can get some real experience of what it’s like to be on the road. Driver Directions was initially a joint Taupō and Rotorua programme, but has now been relaunched under the auspices of Rotorua Lakes Council in cooperation with the New Zealand Police, St John Ambulance, and Rotary, and Rotorua Ford and Mazda have come to the party by sponsoring a vehicle.
The premise is simple: during the one-day course young drivers and their parents work their way through a variety of safe driving exercises on the Rotorua Kart Sport track in Mamaku. But it’s not just about driving instructors with clipboards, there are also classes in using new technologies like assisted parking and car maintenance. “It’s all about exposing young drivers to real world conditions in a safe environment,” says Jodie Lawson of Rotorua Lakes Council. “So we do that on the track where it’s OK to make mistakes and we can talk people through how to react and what to watch out for. Often these are things that the parents have already covered, but when the instructor is on board the kids take it a bit more seriously. And the parents usually pick up a thing or two as well, so when everyone is learning together there is more of a “we’re in this together” feeling. What we’re doing is teaching people to not only drive better but understand that courtesy has a real place on our roads and being a good citizen means being a good driver.”
St John are on hand to talk to the young drivers and their parents about what to do if they encounter an accident scene (slow down, but please no rubber-necking and – seriously – you do not need to record this on your phone!) and the basics of first aid, but also to show them what to do when you have an ambulance coming up behind on a priority job requiring lights and sirens. Mike France is a St John paramedic and says the kids get a lot of practical knowledge out of the course, but the parents learn a lot too. “It’s great involving the parents, it changes the whole dynamic,” he says, “and I really think the programme is so good it should be compulsory. If we can save one life then it’s worth it – and we’d literally rather have the ambulance here, at the top of the cliff, than at the bottom.”
Coming from a St John paramedic, that has a certain resonance, and it is echoed by Constable Mark Hannah of the Bay of Plenty Central Traffic Alcohol Group who are also part of the programme: “When these young people are going into the stage of their lives when they are most at risk as drivers, it’s important that we give them the tools to become better behind the wheel, and the Driver Directions programme does exactly that.”
Also lending a hand are the Rotary clubs of Rotorua, who have been involved with Driver Directions since it’s inception seven years ago. The Rotarians run classes in reversing and basic car maintenance, as well as manning the obligatory sausage sizzle.
“It’s a programme that just works! Parents and the young ones get a lot out of it and we’re really proud to be a part of it.”
Ray Oakley, Rotorua West Rotary
“Rotary was running its own driver programme, but that was classroom based, and this is just such great opportunity for young people to gain some practical driving experience in a controlled environment,” says Ray Oakley of Rotorua West Rotary. “And it’s a programme that just works! Parents and the young ones get a lot out of it and we’re really proud to be a part of it.”
“Its been a great experience to see so many stakeholders in our community step up and make sure this programme has a solid future,” says Jodie Lawson. “And the feedback we’ve had from everyone – from the students to their parents and the volunteers – has been fantastic. So far we’ve mostly engaged people through social media and school programmes, and we’re already looking forward to our next programme in the next school holidays.”
If you want to be a part of that next programme, you can find Driver Directions on Facebook or call 07 348 4199 for info.
“If we can save one life then it’s worth it – and we’d literally rather have the ambulance here, at the top of the cliff, than at the bottom.”
Mike France, St John Paramedic
WORDS MATT MORTIMER PHOTOGRAPHY SUPPLIED
WHEN THE WORD ‘falcon’ comes to mind, for most of us in the Bay it conjures up images of the iconic Aussie-built muscle cars of yesteryear. Or for the more sporting among us, perhaps the unfortunate colloquial term given by footy commentators when a player gets a rugby ball to the head from a wayward pass or kick?
Aside from a rumbling V8 supercar or a projectile to the noggin, there is also the original bird from which these previous examples obtained their moniker. And to Debbie Stewart and the team at Wingspan in Rotorua, the word is all about raptors or birds of prey, and particularly the New Zealand falcon or kārearea. These guys love a pine forest habitat, having evolved in a largely forested landscape, and have developed a unique body shape that optimises their ability to hunt in this environment. There are 38 species of falcons worldwide and our unique one here in godzone is one of only four forest falcons globally.
These birds were once plentiful here and Māori warriors conside red that wearing a kārearea feather was a symbol of a fierce and aggress ive combatant, as this was how they saw this bird in their environment. Incidentally, it’s also been said the kārearea’s mate the morepork is where the pūkana or fiery eyes in Māori waiata and haka origina ted from.
DEBBIE HAS PLIED HER TRADE for almost 40-years, and in that time she has seen many falcons land on the gloved hands of young people. “We’ve seen over 70,000 children hold a falcon on the gauntlet and looking it in the eye,” she says. “It’s an amazing sight.” And it’s apparent she won’t get sick of this any time soon, her enthusiasm for our birds of prey earning her the title of a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2013.
It’s not all fun and games however. Being part of New Zealand’s unique natural heritage, falcons are a taonga species to tangata whenua but the kārearea has a population of less than 10,000 here in New Zealand, which sounds a lot, but it isn’t. Let’s put it this way: by comparison, our national bird and icon the kiwi, which we are constantly being urged to protect and respect, boasts over 60,000 in number.
Kārearea are brought into the centre for a variety of reasons, with electrocution from power lines high on the list, but unfortunately the number one threat to their existence isn’t the national grid. It’s idiots.
“People deliberately shooting them is our number one cause of injury,” Debbie says. “So captive management and rehabilitation keep us busy all the time. Sadly, in the wild around 75 percent of them don’t survive their first year of existence, and this certainly doesn’t help.”
Injured birds that are unable to be released, but healthy enough to be kept in captivity are incorporated into their captive breeding programme. The centre has a skilled team of ‘falcon breeders’ who are working to re-establish locally extinct populations and bringing numbers up in lower areas by releasing captive reared falcons into the wild.
Māori warriors considered that wearing a kārearea feather was a symbol of a fierce and aggressive combatant.
IT DOESN’T STOP with the bird that graces our $20 note however (and we can hear you rifling through your wallets to check). It also extends to other feathered-friends such as the morepork, the swamp harrier or the cheeky Australian barn owl, who is flying over here and taking up residence in Northland. You can’t blame them, Northland is nice, but this is where we could throw down against our cousins across the ditch, accuse them of something or bring up refugee’s (ouch), but it’s fair to say these guys are more than welcome at Wingspan.
It’s also been said the kārearea’s mate the morepork is where the pūkana or fiery eyes in Māori waiata and haka originated from.Barn owl Debbie Stewart (left) and Noel Hyde (right) with Ruud Kleinpaste host of the Animal Planet series ‘Buggin’ with Ruud’.
The thought of swimming might give you goosebumps now, but summer’s just around the corner, so talk to us about putting a Superior Pool in your backyard now.
THE CENTRE IS closed to the public currently, with plans for a new facility underway, which is a challenge in itself to get off the ground for a trust, an NGO with no government or local funding, that relies entirely on crowdfunding just to operate at all. The new centre will house more than the birds of prey however, as there will be spaces for conservation, education and research, all important arms of the business.
So it’s actually really simple. Leave these birds alone. You might see them around a lot more than kiwi (those are nocturnal remember) but they are in no way as numerous as you think.
And also think about helping the good folks at Wingspan save our endangered New Zealand species. They’re educating the next generation all about these birds and keeping the respected culture (Māori and International), and the art of falconry alive and well, so support the team by getting on over to their website and buying the book The Hunters, or donate via their give a little page.
That’s definitely worth dropping the coffees for a bit. And it doesn’t take a ball to the head to figure that out.
WORDS BOB SACAMANO PHOTOGRAPHY SUPPLIED
Aristotle called it the nectar of the gods, and while we’d never disagree with the great thinker (though his 10 volume The History of Animals was a little long winded; just saying) we have to point out that if he thought the honey of 300 BC was special, then he should wrap his laughing gear around some of the nectar we make in the New Zealand in 2018.
Little old Kiwiland is producing some of the purest, bestest and most flavoursome honey in the world, and the Bay of Plenty is home to arguably the busiest and most discerning bees in the land. To find out more Plenty caught up with Chris McNaull of Arataki Bee Products to get the skinny on the good stuff.
For most of us, all we really care about is that liquid gold we put on our toast in the morning, but as the honey world has grown, so has the selection of varieties on offer. It can all be a bit confusing, so to help us tell our manuka from our multiflora, here is Plenty’s great big (well, small actually) guide to honey (with more than a little help from Chris at Arataki).
An earthy, rich honey gathered from the New Zealand honeysuckle flower; popular in the kitchen for things like marinades thanks to it’s smoky, sweet flavour.
Quite a strong honey, often likened to molasses or toffee, Kamahi has a distinct aroma that is not everyone’s cup of tea but its flavour is divine; it goes well on a cheese board.
The rock star of the honey world, Manuka is famous for its UMF properties but don’t overlook it for it’s classic, rich flavour that works well with pretty much everything.
You can’t tell the bees exactly where to go and multi-flora is nature’s way of blending the best of many varieties; the richness of manuka works well with the milder pasture and bush flavours.
Pale gold, with a mildly sweet and delicately floral flavour this is NZ’s most popular honey; great as a sugar replacement or for in the kitchen, on porridge or on just about anything.
Sweet and with a hint of butterscotch, many people can’t believe Tawari is just honey. Chefs love to drizzle it on pretty much everything, and once you’ve tried it you probably will too!
You either love or hate the chewiness of comb honey, but this is still one of the best options for your cheese board. It is growing in popularity again in New Zealand and sells very well overseas. Definitely worth another look if your prejudices date back to your picky childhood eating days.
Arataki may not have been around since Aristotle’s time, but they’ve been in the business and family owned since 1944, so they are one of New Zealand’s oldest commercial producers and certainly know a thing or too about honey. They currently produce and package around a thousand tonnes each year, with 70-80% of that being sold domestically and the balance going to export. In the autumn they raise and export around 30-35,000 live queen bees to Canada each year and in spring through early summer Arataki runs an extensive pollination programme that transports hives to eastern Bay kiwifruit and avocado orchards (bees on a plane, bees on trucks – there’s a movie in there somewhere). And if all that isn’t enough they are also a major producer of propolis.
Arataki’s honey and propolis is still 100% New Zealand made, just like in 1944, but while their honey hasn’t changed the industry itself certainly has. “Just over ten years ago there were 400,000 hives in operation in New Zealand,” says Chris McNaull, “and now there are around 900,000. The industry here has almost doubled in a decade, largely driven by Manuka honey and also partly because in New Zealand we don’t import honey, so what comes out of NZ is guaranteed to be pure NZ product; that is a big selling point.
Blasts from the past: Scenes from Arataki early days, complete with active volcano
They currently produce and package around a thousand tonnes each year, with 70-80% of that being sold domestically and the balance going to export.
But the industry has also changed as well as expanded. Arataki started out in Hawkes Bay before setting up a base in Rotorua, and we now have hives from the Coromandel to Gore helping us produce not just honey, but beeswax for commercial use, propolis and pollen, and to provide pollination services and live bees for export, so it’s certainly a changing field now.”
Oh, and just remember that it takes one honeybee a lifetime to produce 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey, so show some respect,
Great casual dining atmosphere, awesome cocktails and perfect for large groups or parties
“The industry here has almost doubled in a decade, largely driven by Manuka honey and also partly because in New Zealand we don’t import honey, so what comes out of NZ is guaranteed to be pure NZ product; that is
A CENTURY AGO DEATH STALKED THE BAY OF PLENTY AND THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE, AND THE RESULT WAS OUR WORST NATURAL DISASTER EVER.
SO WHY DOESN’T ANYONE REMEMBER IT?
IN NOVEMBER Kiwis everywhere will mark one hundred years since the end of the 1914-18 war, the Great War, the War to End all Wars, and the war that gave birth to the ANZAC legend. But few of us know that while November 1918 saw the end of the monstrous slaughter in Europe, it also marked the beginning of a nightmare right here on our own shores, one that in just two short weeks would claim more than three times the number of Kiwis who died in the entire nine months of the Gallipoli campaign.
From Kaitaia to Invercargill, 9,000 people – young and old, but mostly fit and healthy – died from what would become popularly known as the Spanish Influenza, or to give it its correct (though admittedly less snappy) title the 1918 H1N1 Virus Pandemic. It struck with alarming speed, and it literally decimated some towns, but it also saw communities pull together like never before in lamp-lit sick rooms and isolated homesteads across the country. And the Bay of Plenty was not immune.
MOST HISTORIANS now agree that the origins of the disease that would kill 50 million people – more than double the number of those killed in the 191418 conflict – can be traced not to Spain, but the United States. In early 1918, Haskell County in Kansas witnessed a flurry of unusually severe influenza cases that seemed to strike the fit and healthy rather than the old and infirm. It is now believed that the virus ‘jumped’ from animals to humans –much like the bird flu scare of more recent history – and that part of Kansas had plenty of pigs and poultry wandering around to facilitate a jump. Whatever the source, by March the influenza had claimed 48 lives at the nearby military barracks of Camp Funston, and as troops from there went on leave or were transferred outbreaks were reported across the Midwest. Soon a thousand workers were off sick at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, with Chicago and California reporting cases in late March. By April, as American reinforcements arrived in Europe, cases were reported near the huge transit camps at Brest and Bordeaux. And suddenly Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
Once the virus made it to Europe, it ran wild in the closing, claustrophobic stages of the war. Dirty, cramped conditions, with weakened and poorly fed men moving across the continent offered the perfect breeding ground for H1N1. By May, the British army had 36,000 hospital cases, by early June the French army had over 100,000, and by July it had spread to the civilian populations not just in Europe but in the United Kingdom. At the same time, outbreaks were reported in Japan
following the return of naval units from San Diego, in India following shipping arriving from the Suez Canal, and also at the Chinese port of Shanghai. South Africa, Sydney and New Zealand saw their first cases in September.
What no one knew was that this global outbreak was a relatively benign first wave of the virus; deaths from this wave were few and far between, most sufferers recovered, and the authorities, who believed they had contained the
virus, went back to the important task of rebuilding the post-war world and returning millions of young soldiers to their homes.
Unfortunately, those soldiers carried with them more than wounds and war stories. Within a few short weeks, a different, deadlier strain of the virus suddenly appeared in both the northern and southern hemispheres and spread like wildfire. This time, many victims would not recover.
-AmericanSkipping Rhyme circa 1918
I had a little bird, Its name was Enza, I opened the window, And in-flew-enza.
ON NOVEMBER 4, the new and virulent wave of influenza claimed its first lives in New Zealand, in locations as widespread as Whangarei, Gisborne, Napier, Dunedin and Hokitika. A week later it arrived in the Bay. On 13 November fatalities occurred in Tauranga, Whakatāne and Rotorua, and Ōpōtiki would see its first death just two days later; by that time the whole country was aware that something extraordinary was happening.
On 11 November the Mayor of Tauranga, heeding a governmental warning, had ordered the closure of all ‘picture entertainments and billiard saloons,’ and on the same day ten staff of the Tauranga post office reported sick. Three days later, hotel bars in Rotorua and within five miles of the town centre were ordered to close to avoid people congregating and spreading the
disease, and as the scope of the calamity rose some areas began to enforce quarantines. The Coromandel cut itself off entirely, and in Te Urewera a Constable Andy Grant of Te Whaiti imposed a strict ban on travel into the valley; his actions probably saved dozens as no cases were to be reported in. Travellers were not really welcome at any rate, and certainly not strangers seeking lodgings. Schools and businesses closed and streets emptied as people stayed home to care for – or avoid – the sick.
Regional ‘bureaus’ were established by order of central government to organize a response, but with so much manpower still serving overseas many of these turned to volunteers to tend the
sick. One such bureau was established at Tauranga Hospital and tents were erected in the grounds to accommodate the extra nurses and volunteers who answered the call. The ‘nightsoil contractor’, a Mr A Stewart, made his own – no doubt greatly appreciated – contribution by arranging to make two collections per night instead of one, ‘without extra charge.’
But while the likes of Tauranga and Rotorua marshaled their resources, smaller outlying settlements hunkered down. Reports arrived of 21 deaths in little Matatā, over one hundred in Ōpōtiki, and even more in Whakatāne. These were huge numbers for the populations at that time, and slowly, but surely, these rural societies were shutting down.
One of the main reasons for this was that this new strain struck the fit and healthy, not
the ill and elderly, and it struck fast. In Te Puke the average age of victims was 27, with some reporting their first feelings of unease in the morning and being dead by nightfall; others battled on for days, requiring constant care from friends, family and often strangers who risked their own lives to save others.
In many cases they gave their lives to save others. In Whakatāne, Rongo Nuku, prominent rugby player and local County Councillor, tirelessly nursed the sick throughout November, only to succumb himself, one of the last influenza deaths in the district in early December. In the tiny settlement of Waimana, 30km south of Whakatāne, there were no trained doctors or nurses so local women set up an improvised hospital in the private home of a Mr Wardlaw and made do as best they could. When a medical student
Outside ‘Hospital Hall’ situated in Macmillan St, Katikati. It was the old Katikati Settlers’ Hall and was turned into a hospital in order to cope with the influx of patients during the pandemic, 1918. Ref: Bay of Plenty Deaths 1875-1920: P-Sfrom the Western Bay finally made it through to Waimana he was astounded that this ‘band of willing though untrained women’ had been treating up to 30 patients a day and had lost only one.
Katikati also had a makeshift hospital, at the Orange Hall in Macmillan Street, but it had a trained nurse in the form of one Mrs Baines. She had a sheet hung across the Hall to create ‘two wards’ and organized donations of beds and furniture to make the sick more comfortable. She saved many lives, but greatly perturbed one elderly gentleman who arrived very sick, barely conscious and without ‘nightwear’. He was put into a woman’s frilly nightgown as there were no men’s nightshirts, and when he recovered and gained consciousness his first exclamation was not one of thanks but, “What the hell is this bloody thing doing on me?”
Many people helped in other ways, pitching in to do milking or housework for families laid low by the influenza, or cooking communally and delivering meals.
Contemporary accounts are remarkable for two reasons: the fact that most of this help came as a matter of course, without the afflicted needing to ask; and the almost foolhardy disregard for personal
safety exhibited by those working within their communities. There were no antibiotics, no cures and the disease was known to be highly contagious, and yet neighbours nursed one another and sent their children to deliver baking to sickrooms. It was a very Kiwi reaction to a foreign interloper.
The national response, however, was slow and questionable, though it must be remembered that the health service was in its infancy and nothing of this scale had been seen before. An early directive warned against kissing and dancing during the outbreak, and inhalation machines dispensing a zinc sulphate mist were widely distributed; The Bay of Plenty Times urged people to visit the inhalation room at the Tauranga Town
Hall at least once a day for three days. On November 15 the same paper reported that, “A car containing Captain Macdonal and four returned soldiers reached here in search of lemons for the Soldiers Institute. Captain Macdonal informed us there were over 100 returned soldiers down with influenza. Their search was successful, several cases were collected (and) handed over . . . from local gardens.” Alas, zinc sulphate would prove to be as completely useless in combating influenza as lemons were: some of the highest death rates in all the country would occur in military camps just like the Soldiers Institute.
Worse hit though were Māori. Records of Pākehā deaths are quite complete, much less so for Māori,
but nevertheless it is estimated that their fatality rates were at least a shocking seven times higher than Pākehā. Recent research has pointed to a variety of factors, including the susceptibility of Pacific peoples to respiratory viruses, but in 1918 the authorities thought they had the culprit. On November 18 the Acting Chief Health Officer sent orders that, “All Māori tangis or gatherings in connection with deaths or burials to be prohibited, also to prohibit Māoris travelling to attend tangis by railways, steamers or other vehicles. All currently assembled at tangis are to be ordered forthwith to return to their homes.” It was a bizarre decree, fully reflecting the culture of the time and the hysteria the influenza created, and it caused bitter acrimony.
THE PANDEMIC ENDED as swiftly as it began, and just as mysteriously. Two weeks after the first deaths, the virus began to burn itself out and by early December papers were proclaiming that the pandemic was over. A nation, quite literally, breathed a sigh of relief, as the losses could never have been sustained for an extended period. It is now thought that one in three people were infected by the disease and that in the Bay of Plenty 460 people, Māori and Pākehā, died from it. These were astounding figures for the times with several communities losing more to the influenza than to the war. The anomaly of this is that while hundreds of WWI monuments exist throughout the country, there are only a handful dedicated to the pandemic. None of them are to be found in the Bay of Plenty.
To this day researchers are baffled as to why the influenza mutated so swiftly from the relatively benign first wave to the deadly second wave, and also as to why it dissipated so suddenly. These unresolved questions are genuinely worrying; H1N1 has revisited us several times since 1918 (often referred to as ‘bird flu’) and we still have no way of predicting if its next visit could turn into a pandemic like that of a century ago. Only time will tell.
THE 1918 INFLUENZA was known by a variety of names. In Japan it was called the ‘Wrestlers Disease’, in Spain the ‘Naples Soldier’, and in the Englishspeaking world the Spanish Flu. This latter name came from the fact that in most countries wartime censorship meant the pandemic was not made public, but in Spain - a neutral country - it was front page news, so most early reports were therefore derived from Spanish papers and the association stuck. Another of its names had a more gruesome origin; often the influenza led to pneumonia and chronic pneumonia victims turn blue and then a dark purple prior to death; the name The Black Flu was born.
IN OCTOBER 1918 the RMS Niagara docked in Auckland and within weeks New Zealanders were dying. The ship had been in North America and Suva and was carrying Prime Minister Bill Massey and Sir Joseph Ward when it returned to Auckland on October 12. It was initially quarantined as it had flu cases aboard, but despite this the Niagara was cleared to unload as the authorities felt these were cases of ‘simple’ influenza; they were almost certainly right as the Niagara had had no contact with the second wave, but the timing of the more deadly outbreak and the ship’s arrival in Auckland led to a widespread belief that the Prime Minister had been given special treatment and allowed to disembark despite carrying the dreaded flu. Conspiracy theories thrived just as well in 1918 as they do in 2018; Massey and the Niagara would be scapegoats for years to come, but they were almost certainly not to blame.
