Slightly Intrepid

A flying visit to Blenheim

2012-01-29T09:32:00.000Z

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated my final few days of liberty from the employment market before my contract recommenced by taking off for a quick two-day visit to the South Island. The main purpose of my trip to Blenheim was to take in a splendid collection of World War 1 fighters at the excellent Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre just outside of town, but there were several other sights to enjoy while in the area, and the journey to and from the South Island was also enjoyable.

I started out on a grey Wednesday morning, making my way to the Interislander terminal for the 8.25am sailing of the massive Kaitaki, formerly the Pride of Cherbourg, which has a capacity of over 1600 passengers. Given that the last time I'd crossed Cook Strait it was in the far smaller Bluebridge Santa Regina, this vessel was a whole order of magnitude greater.

Heading out of Wellington

There may have been a lively breeze blowing outside, but inside the ship there was no sensation of motion. There was a magician with balloons to detain the kids, and a bearded singer with a guitar in the bar area to detain real ale drinkers. I spent as much of the three and a half hour journey as possible on deck, admiring the views inside Wellington Harbour and along the south coast. There was a palpable shift in climate as we entered the Marlborough Sounds, with blue skies appearing and the thermometer climbing several degrees. A small pod of porpoises even flitted across the port bow, although I was too slow to grab a good photo of them. I stayed out in the sunshine and admired the lovely view as we navigated through Queen Charlotte Sound - what a sight.

The ferry Aratere, dwarfed by the magnificent Sounds

Looking back up Queen Charlotte Sound to the north

Eventually we eased into port in Picton, and I disembarked with an hour and a half to spare before my Intercity coach ride to Blenheim. I have fond memories of my first visit to Picton with friends in the mid-90s, and I can confirm that the mini-golf course and the seaplane are both still going strong. I'd also love to return with more time to revisit the remarkable remains of the Edwin Fox, which was built in 1853 and is probably the world's oldest merchant ship. I strolled up High Street in the sunshine, somewhat held back by the immensely noisy wheels on my cheap cabin bag, and secured some lunch to eat down by the waterfront.

Soon it was time to depart on the half hour coach ride into Blenheim. The Intercity dropped me at the railway station, and it was a short walk to the nearby Koanui Lodge, my accommodation for the night. I'd stumped up for a single room, which was perfectly decent. I enjoyed the fact that the Lodge was located on Main Rd, despite the fact that the thoroughfare was not actually the main road in Blenheim. Perhaps it used to be, back in the day. Now it's full of used car lots and fast-food joints with no on-street pedestrian access, and is dominated by southbound traffic heading towards Christchurch.

After dropping off my gear I walked the short distance into the centre of town to check things out. Blenheim is not replete with historic buildings, and although its CBD is perfectly pleasant it also holds little of particular interest for the casual visitor. Most people visit Blenheim for the marvellous collection of vineyards ringing the town, but I wasn't venturing out on a solo booze cruise, no matter how much I enjoy Alan Scott's riesling or a nice drop of Seresin.

It's probably worth noting that the most interesting aspect of Blenheim's history is its original name, which was actually The Beaver. The first surveyors were caught in one of the river's many floods and were required to clamber up onto their bunks 'like a lot of beavers in a dam', and the name stuck until about 1860.

The following morning I ventured out on my planned stroll to Omaka. While the Lodge apparently had cycles to borrow, I didn't want to churn through my day in Blenheim too speedily, so I decided to walk the five kilometre route to the airfield at the outskirts of town. (It's a flat, easy walk apart from the sun, and it took me about 45 minutes).

The aviation collection is located in a large modern hangar at the edge of a working airfield, and its $25 entry fee is more than good value if you're an aviation buff or just a history fan in general. The collection focuses on one- and two-man aircraft from World War One, chiefly fighters and scouts, with a healthy helping of aeronautical memorabilia thrown in. Certainly, most of the aircraft on display are replicas, but that is absolutely no reason for purists to give Omaka a miss.

The aircraft are uniformly beautiful, and the particular skill with which Weta Workshops has assisted in arranging the displays and mannequins has given the exhibits a powerful sense of realism. Last year I was fortunate to visit world-class aviation collections in Paris and Berlin, and while those museums had superb collections, the manner in which the aircraft were displayed was somewhat clinical and old-fashioned. At Omaka the aircraft are placed in context with the imagined daily life of a fighting warplane going on around them. A downed Morane-Saulnier Type BB, ditched in a muddy field, with a Ford ambulance lurching to the rescue and RFC men pulling the stricken crew from the wreckage. New Zealand's RFC air ace Keith Logan 'Grid' Caldwell perched precariously on the wing of his doomed SE5a as it skims the trenches, just before he leaps to an uncertain fate. And there's a famous centrepiece: the gleaming Fokker Dreidecker belonging to Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron, spreadeagled in the dirt, with Australian troopers carving the aircraft up for priceless souvenirs and relieving the Baron's recumbent corpse of his bespoke flying boots.

Etrich Taube (1910-15)

Morane Saulnier BB (1915-16)

Famous American ace Eddie Rickenbacker's flying suit

'Grid' Caldwell's great escape

The death of the Red Baron

There was also the chance to step aboard a piece of New Zealand aviation history outside the hangar, when museum staff opened up ZK-CPT, a vintage clamshell-doored Bristol Freighter that flew the Chathams run with Safe Air until its retirement in the 1980s. While the aircraft generated affection from its flight crews due to its power and reliability, it must have been a rather mixed attraction for passengers. The shipping-container-like interior was frequently shared with cargoes such as live sheep or unrefrigerated seafood, and the fuselage was thin and unpressurised, so the journey was both relentlessly noisy thanks to the nearby Hercules engines and choppy because the aircraft couldn't fly above inclement weather.

Bristol Freighter cargo doors

Next door to the aviation centre a smaller hangar contained the Omaka Classic Car Collection, which is also definitely worth a visit for car enthusiasts. It's considerably smaller than the excellent Southwards Car Museum in Paraparaumu north of Wellington, but contains one man's appealing collection of New Zealand road cars, many of which hold a certain charm for those of us old enough to remember the days when British cars ruled the roads. While I was slightly saddened by the lack of an Austin 1100 'Landcrab', I was also unreasonably pleased to spot such seemingly mundane treasures as a Hillman Alpine, a Wolseley 16/60, a two-tone 1963 Ford Anglia Super, and an oh-so-brown 1979 Austin Princess HL. The latter Austin helps to illustrate the changing of the guard in the motor world, because in 1979 and as late as 1982 Austin was still cranking out Princesses, while in another corner of the museum a sprightly pixie, the 1978 Honda Civic subcompact, showed how the rest of the automotive 20th century would belong to Japan.

Austin Princess

Ford Anglia

Aside from the charming slice of working, family cars, the museum also has its fair share of genuine stunners. Chief among those are a trio of legendary Jaguars: a two-seater open-topped XK120 from 1950, with its swooping curves extolling a boom years optimism distilled into car form; the reddest of red 1959 XK150s coupes, with a 3442cc double overhead cam straight six twin SU carburettor under the bonnet; and my ideal luxury car, a cream-toned 1969 E-Type with its marvellous wedge rear and shining spoked wheels.

Jaguar XK120 & XK150

Jaguar E-Type

After three and a half hours at Omaka I walked back towards Blenheim, happy with my visit to the aerodrome. With the sun rising higher and baking Marlborough and me along with it, I paused to visit the Marlborough Museum, which was en route. It was fine for a brief visit, but the collection seemed to be dominated by the history of the surrounding vineyards and the wine industry. This is fine if you're fascinated by viticulture, but less interesting to me - I was keener to learn about the century and a bit before the grapes took over the town. There was a nice section on the travails faced by early settlers on the journey out from Britain, with a mocked-up stateroom and steerage quarters to show the privations suffered on the months-long journey to New Zealand.

Most middle- and working-class passengers travelled in steerage

I then took a stroll around the adjacent Brayshaw Park, a curious 'frontier town' replica consisting of mock vintage shops, which was absolutely deserted apart from me. For those who remember it, Brayshaw had the same worthy but slightly decrepit feel that the Auckland Museum's 'Centennial Street' had when we visited it as school-children in the '80s. One for the kids, perhaps.

It was soon time to head back to Wellington - this was a short visit to Blenheim, after all. My only souvenir: a $15 box of Errol Flynn films from the ubiquitous Warehouse in town. I nearly ended up staying longer than I had anticipated though: the shuttle service I had booked had clearly forgotten about me, and I had to call to remind them that I was expected at the airport in approximately five minutes. Someone raced out to collect me amidst a flurry of apologies, and I made it to Woodbourne in plenty of time. This is hardly LAX we're talking about here, so the check-in lady wasn't the least bothered that I was slightly tardy.

The single-engine 12 seater Sounds Air Cessna Caravan trundled up to the gate soon after I arrived, and the pleasingly old-fashioned routine played out - the pilot helped the passengers off and helped to unload their bags too, before nipping into the terminal for a quick chat to the check-in lady (seemingly the only staff member on duty). Then he ducked back out to the plane to help shepherd us on board. I sat directly behind the pilot to gain the best view I could of the 25 minute journey back to Wellington. There's nothing like flying in a small aircraft to remind you how exciting flying must have felt in the early days. The modest breeze tugged the tail sideways immediately after takeover and we slewed around a bit until we reached the 4000 feet cruising altitude. Then it was directly on to Wellington, which I could see in the distance soon after takeoff - it was a perfectly clear day for flying. The Marlborough Sounds were to the left, and the light brown Wither Hills lay to the south, and once we approached the southern shore of the North Island the West Wind turbines provided a handy reference point. In no time the Cessna was on the ground once more, and having enjoyed a speedy inter-island journey and an appealing two days in the South Island I set off for the airport bus and the familiar western hills of Wellington City.

Cessna Caravan, Woodbourne

Wither Hills, south of Blenheim

Landing approach at WLG

A solution to excessive council CEO salaries

2012-01-27T09:10:00.000Z

If you've been following New Zealand news recently you will have heard the furore about the salaries of council chief executives, and the annual increases that some of them have been receiving. The loudest debate has been over the 14.4% pay rise handed to Christchurch council head Tony Maryatt in December - his salary was increased from $470,400 to $538,529, which is a gross salary of over $10,000 per week. Certainly, running the Christchurch City Council in the seemingly endless aftermath of the terrible Canterbury quakes is a challenging and no doubt stressful job, and few would begrudge the holder of that position a healthy salary. But there has been widespread disquiet over the size of the salary increase - a rise of $68,129 - at a time when many of the vital services usually offered by a city council are still offline and when the rebuilding of Christchurch has still yet to commence, many months after the fatal quakes.

TV3 quoted Maryatt in bullish mode on 5 January, arguing that he was worth the raise:

"I'm not refusing the pay offer and I'm not giving it to charity. That is on the principle that I feel I should be paid the market remuneration for the job and what is appropriate for my level of performance," he told The Press. Mr Marryatt said he expected his pay rise to cause controversy. There was a protest at council headquarters and "a barrage" of critical letters in The Press. "Any time I have a pay increase there is always negative comment because for most people what I earn is an exorbitant salary and any percentage increase on an already-large salary gets to a sizeable amount," Mr Marryatt said.However, his job was bigger than average - running a council with 3000 staff and a $1 billion-a-year budget while at the same time trying to manage recovery from the destructive September and February earthquakes, he said. "My job has grown immensely ... The benefit is for the city if they have a motivated and high-performing CEO," he said.

Perhaps Maryatt is right, and he is being paid in accordance with the importance of the position he holds and the issues he is responsible for. Perhaps his motivation levels are so fluid that if the people of Christchurch neglect to give him a 14.4% pay rise his productivity and effectiveness will sag drastically, thereby undermining the vital recovery of New Zealand's second-largest city. This is not a view I hold, but Maryatt should be able to advance his arguments and have them debated on their merits. However, the manner in which he phrased his rebuttal of criticism of the pay rise only served to exacerbate public disquiet about his remuneration. Wednesday's Waikato Times editorial pointed out that Maryatt, who came to Christchurch from the CEO's role in Hamilton, was being consistent with his previous form, but that under the present circumstances this was a grievous error of judgement:

There are echoes from Mr Marryatt's time in Hamilton, where his pay rises were always controversial. He would always staunchly take the view that he was worth the money and was only getting salary increases commensurate with other comparable chief executives. He was certainly an extremely capable chief executive. But in Christchurch, a city devastated physically and psychologically, such an argument cannot be justified. Given the circumstances, Mr Marryatt should have quite simply declined a pay rise of this magnitude.

Finally the penny dropped, and Maryatt announced earlier that he had instructed the council to cease paying him the pay rise from today. (Note that while the pay rise was backdated when it was introduced, its rejection was not backdated).

This focus on Christchurch is not to suggest that the pitchforks and blazing torches are just blazing a trail for Maryatt's castle doors. Elsewhere in the country tempers have been raised by the ever-increasing salary packages for council chiefs. In the city Maryatt left in 2007, Michael Redman also attracted controversy by resigning the Hamilton mayoralty in 2010 after three and a half years in order to take up the (more highly-paid) position of chief executive of Hamilton City Council. (There's also the small matter of the V8 race controversy, which is yet to be resolved). The Dominion Post also weighed into the debate on Wednesday with the news that the chief of the Kapiti Coast District Council, Pat Dougherty, recently received a $44,000 salary increase, taking his pay from $241,000 to $285,000.

The DomPost article also included a handy list of council chiefs from across the region and their salary increases, many of which were considerably greater than those received by average New Zealanders. And it turns out that if you want to be a council chief executive, your surest guarantee of success is the possession of a penis. Of the 20 councils who responded, 19 were run by men, as were the two councils that neglected to reply to the newspaper's queries - Hawke's Bay Regional Council, and Napier City Council - so that's 21 men out of 22.

A Kapiti councillor, defending his vote in favour of Dougherty's pay increase, cited the common justification for such rises:

Councillor Ross Church defended the pay rise, saying the council had consulted experts. "We were advised the salary should sit at $285,000, and making an arbitrary decision would not follow due process," he said.

I have no reason to doubt that a due process was followed in Kapiti, or indeed in any other local authority. The same justification was used in Christchurch to explain Tony Maryatt's salary package - sure, Mayor Bob Parker said, it may be a lot of money, but it was good value for money, and if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

This idea that council chief executives possess extraordinarily rare skill sets that should command ever-increasingly enormous salaries is a relatively recent phenomenon. Certainly, as Maryatt pointed out, the man (and generally it's a male, as we've seen) in charge of, for example, '3000 staff and a $1-billion-a-year budget', as in Christchurch, has got a lot on his plate. And specialist consultants whose job it is to advise councillors on chief executive remuneration packages are doubtless wont to cite the ever-increasing amounts paid elsewhere in New Zealand and Australia, which leads councillors to believe that the only way to attract and retain high quality chiefs is to pay them many hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. After all, if they were running the same sized organisations in the private sector they'd be being paid millions, right?

And that's where the rationale falls down, because councils are not businesses run for profit. Their business is public service, and the people who run them are public servants. The skills required to run a successful council are not rare or mystical - they are gleaned by working in the bureaucratic environment for decades, learning the ropes and gaining a practical understanding of how things actually work on the ground: what businesses need to thrive, what ratepayers need to get on with their lives, which schemes are valuable and which ones are potential white elephants. We've had generations of this sort of council leadership, and it wasn't expensive. The current focus on the ever-increasing council chief executive marketplace assumes that CEOs are irreplaceable and that their skills must be bought with bags of gold.

This reliance on a faulty market model was perfectly exemplified in the state broadcaster TVNZ, which became so fixated on the importance of retaining broadcaster Paul Holmes that his salary package skyrocketed to unfathomable and politically unsustainable levels. The Herald reported in 2009 that back in the days when newsreader Judy Bailey commanded an $800,000 salary, which brought about a public outcry, money was apparently no object:

In the Bailey era, Paul Holmes was earning around $700,000 for his 7pm Holmes show on TVNZ, while an attempt to cut Susan Wood's $450,000 salary by $100,000 resulted in her leaving the broadcaster.

A world in which Susan Wood was worth $450,000 is clearly not one I'm familiar with. What was the upshot of these huge pay packets? The state broadcaster eventually called the talent's bluff. Holmes and Bailey were set loose, and while Bailey chose to retire gracefully, Holmes was given the chance to see if his 'market value' was actually worth the amount he was being paid, and it turned out it wasn't. (He went back to his highly successful radio career and eventually returned to TVNZ, presumably on a much smaller salary).

How could a similar market correction come about in the world of council chief executives? Satirist Joe Bennett, clearly riled by the Maryatt salary ructions, offers a reality check:

People elect a mayor as a figurehead for the city. And they elect councillors to represent their views. The mayor and councillors together form a council. The council employs a town clerk, tells him what the people want done and gives him the rate money to do it with. The town clerk then employs a workforce to do it. The town clerk's job is not to be another figurehead, whose strong and sympathetic hand we can learn to love and trust. His job is to do as he's told by the councillors. Invisibly, clerically and efficiently.

What sort of individuals could we call on to fulfil this town clerk role, to undercut the increasingly moneyed class of council chiefs whose salaries spiral ever upwards? The sort of person who used to do the job, that's who. Career bureaucrats who build up a lifetime of experience in public sector management. And - crucially - we target those skills in individuals who are keen to give something back to society, in recognition of the success they have attained. The sort of person who is located to run an important Royal Commission of Inquiry - senior civil servants, retired judges, savvy military nabobs. Ex-MPs, even. But the key determinant of suitability for the roles, apart from the general aptitude for managing budgets and workforces that many people develop over their careers, should be that the people selected have already achieved financial security in their working lives, and want to top off their careers with a final distinguished act of proactive philanthropy.

This might sound like Bolshevik radicalism, but I believe there are substantial numbers of respected potential administrators who would relish the opportunity to perform an important role before they retire, to give something back to their local communities. And the icing on the cake is the change I propose to the honours system to add a useful incentive. For those individuals who complete several years of such valuable service to their communities and the nation would be almost the only people eligible for knighthoods, or the equivalent honour should knighthoods be re-abolished. I say 'almost' because there needs to be an opening for genuine national heroes to 'bag a K' too, but generally speaking people should be aware that the only way to earn a coveted place in history as a knight of the realm is to work for it, and for the people of New Zealand. Not only would this quell the disquiet sometimes expressed about the worthiness of some individuals appointed to certain honours, but it would allow councils to reduce their chief executive remuneration to a much more modest honorarium.

So what do you think? Gongs instead of half-million salaries - would it work?

Osmonds and autocracy

2012-01-20T07:31:00.001Z

David Runciman, writing in the London Review of Books about the contemporary financial crisis in Europe, has thoughtfully provided the ideal premise for my first blockbusting novel. What's not to like about the 1970s?

People who have announced that Europe’s current experiments with technocracy are a fundamental betrayal of democratic principles are being premature: it could work. But here’s the bad news: there is no guarantee that it will work. The conditions have to be right. The historical evidence suggests that democracies can be flexible only under certain circumstances. To start with, they must not be too poor. In countries where per capita GDP falls below a certain level (usually estimated at around US $7000), democratic experiments with emergency rule often end in disaster. It’s the temporary autocrats who don’t give power back. Political scientists take these thresholds very seriously. Above the line, democracies appear pretty much invulnerable, but below it, even safe-looking democracies might suddenly collapse into something worse. During the economic contraction of the mid-1970s per capita GDP in New Zealand fell perilously close to the cut-off point (it got down to about $10,000). It is hard to imagine what a military coup in 1970s New Zealand would have looked like. But it’s not impossible to imagine.

My rough working title is The Teachings of Chairman Rob, or perhaps The Napoleon of Hatfield's Beach if the former wasn't sufficiently obvious. Clearly, this has all the hallmarks of literary gold, and it would also provide the opportunity to exercise my fondness for descriptions of shoddily-made British cars of the 1970s with muddy brown paint jobs. Now all I have to do is learn how to write really, really well.

The greater part of Raetihi is intact

2012-01-10T13:30:00.000Z

Old County Offices in Raetihi, 1922

On the drive back south to Wellington last week I paused for a break at tiny Raetihi, north of Wanganui on State Highway 4. I've driven the road to Wanganui a few times, mainly when I've been driven to distraction by the boredom of State Highway 1, but I don't think I've ever pulled into Raetihi to take a look. It's a sleepy little place, with a big wide main street suitable for driving cattle down, and a batch of heritage buildings that show it used to be quite an up-and-coming place.

Raetihi's commendably detailed Wikipedia entry records that the town was once the largest settlement in the King Country, with a massive population of 'almost 4500' in 1900. This figure seems too high, what with Te Ara listing the entire population of the King Country as 5475 in 1901, but it still gives an idea of how bustling the place used to be.

Whatever its population, Raetihi boasts a decent collection of period buildings from its heyday. Here are a few of the historic buildings remaining in Seddon St, Raetihi's main thoroughfare:

Old Bank of New Zealand building, with hitching post outside

County Offices detail

Now a cafe

Garage, next to The Royal

The Royal Cinema, 1915

But we shouldn't pretend Raetihi used to be a major metropolis. These two images from 1914 and 1916 respectively show the broad expanse of Seddon St unsullied by throngs of shoppers. In the earlier picture only one motorcar is visible, while in the 1916 shot the only sign of life is a flock of sheep idling in the middle of the road. Still, it's nice to see the hitching post outside the BNZ has survived all these years, even if it mustn't get much use in the 21st century.

Raetihi, c.1914, by Frederick George Radcliffe

Raetihi, 1916, by Frederick George Radcliffe

Diana and Jeremy Pope's North Island travel guide records the following history of Raetihi:

Raetihi was founded in 1892 in a densely bushed area. The Whanganui River as far as Pipiriki was then the district's principal means of access and wagoners found the town site to be the nearest area of level ground as a stopping point. Disaster struck in 1918 when fire devastated vast areas of native forestlands in so great a blaze that as far away as Wellington the smoke forced schools to close. Nine sawmills, over 150 houses and and least three people perished [...] It was years before the district could recover and a long time before logging and milling could be reorganised.
- D. & J. Pope, Mobil NZ Travel Guide: North Island, 9th edn., 1996, p.186.

The great forest fire of March 1918 was reported at length in Wellington's Evening Post of Thursday 21 March 1918 under the headline The Great Blaze, and noted that Raetihi itself was in better condition than had been feared at first:

First reports rather over-estimated the effect of the fire. The greater part of Raetihi is intact. When the townspeople hurried away from Raetihi they did not know how the town would suffer. Business places and dwellings at either end were totally destroyed, likewise houses all round the place; but the centre of the town, including a great number of business premises, still stand, damaged merely by the cyclone. It is miraculous how they escaped the fire, for sparks fell in heaps everywhere. It is certain that the country has suffered more than the towns, the brunt of the disaster falling on sawmillers and settlers.

It appears that rain falling on the Tuesday afternoon and night in March 1918 saved towns like Raetihi and Ohakune from much greater damage. But the longer-term impact was more significant, with the local economy taking years to get back on its feet. Raetihi was also hit by the decline of timber stocks as easily accessible wood was exhausted, the closure of the town's branch railway connection in 1968, and the decline in rural industry in the 1970s and 80s. Now the town earns a living from passing travellers on the State Highway, and from ski tourism in the winter.

Photo credits for Alexander Turnbull Library images:
(1) Looking down one of the streets in Raetihi. Radcliffe, Frederick George, 1863-1923 : New Zealand post card negatives. Ref: 1/2-005995-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

(2) Seddon Street, Raetihi. Radcliffe, Frederick George, 1863-1923 : New Zealand post card negatives. Ref: 1/2-005994-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

Whilst I write, a perfect hurricane blows

2012-01-08T21:31:00.000Z

From the diary of British businessman James Brogden (1832-1907), detailing his early impressions of Wellington during his visit to the capital in November 1871:

The houses are all built of wood on account of the earthquakes. One earthquake shook the houses so much that the large chandelier in the Govt. House swung about so much that it hit the ceiling breaking it down on each side. The Harbour some miles in extent was raised 3 feet at once. Several large vents in the earth like the bed of a small river are still remaining. The Great Earthquake occurred in 1854 , - and it is said there is one due now! I cannot give you an idea of the winds. They are something terrible. Whilst I write, a perfect hurricane blows and the wind sweeps over the hills on to the water in the bay, carrying clouds of spray along in a way I dare say you have scarcely seen. When it is fine, showers of dust and pebbles are driven along the beach, which make it quite distressing to be out. But when a still clear day appears, I assure you the view is fine, and about equal to the views in Morecambe Bay looking towards Windermere and the Lakes.

Brogden was in Wellington to negotiate his family firm's contracts with the Government to build railways in New Zealand. The Brogden Contracts, as they were called, were highly controversial and much debated in the House and in newspaper letters columns; they would eventually involve the construction of six new railway lines in New Zealand. By 24 November 1871 the contracts had finally been signed for the Wellington to Masterton railway, with construction to begin in December; in fact, work on the first section of the line through the Hutt Valley did not commence until August 1872. The building work for the entire line was tricky, encompassing the rocky harbour shores and the steep Rimutaka Ranges. It would be nine years before the line finally opened all the way to Masterton.

Hutt / Wairarapa Line opening dates (via Wikipedia)

Wellington to:

Lower Hutt April 1874

Upper Hutt February 1876

Kaitoke January 1878

Featherston October 1878

Carterton July 1880

Masterton November 1880

How to come a cropper

2012-01-07T22:35:00.000Z

Wellington's Mark Gillespie collides with team-mate Rory Hamilton-Brown

Wellington played Canterbury on Friday at the Basin Reserve in a Twenty20 match, and while the game seemed even at the innings break, with Canterbury scoring 151/8 and Wellington's Andy McKay and Jeetan Patel each snaring three wickets for fewer than 20 runs. However, Wellington chased poorly, with only James Franklin and extras reaching double digits, and Canterbury dismissed their opponents for a meagre total of 90, thereby earning a 61-run victory.

Probably the most notable event of the game occurred during the 10th over of Canterbury's innings, when the South Islanders were racing to a high score at more than eight runs per over with only one wicket down. The 22-year-old Canterbury opener George Worker hit a low ball to midwicket, and two Wellington fielders, bowler Mark Gillespie and English import Rory Hamilton-Brown, dove for the catch. Hamilton-Brown, the Surrey captain who was playing his first match for Wellington, took the catch to end Worker's dangerous innings at 45 from 29 balls, but the ensuing collision with Gillespie saw both fielders incapacitated and the match halted while both received medical attention. Hamilton-Brown was worst off from the encounter, heavily gashing his right leg. But after receiving 12 stitches in his calf and a dose of painkillers he bravely returned to open the batting for Wellington.

Hamilton-Brown nurses his injured right calf

Wellington captain Grant Elliott calls for medical assistance

The Dominion Post's Mark Geenty reported that 'Gillespie was nursing a sore neck, and should also have received a thick ear from his coach. It was always Hamilton-Brown's catch and Gillespie's reckless dive could have resulted in broken limbs'. All in all it wasn't a good day for Gillespie, who played 46 matches for New Zealand from 2006 to 2009: later in Canterbury's innings he beamed the Canterbury captain Peter Fulton, and he finished with unsightly bowling figures of 4-0-42-1. Perhaps the scoreboard gnomes had this in mind when they left up the following incriminating letters, halfway through removing Luke Woodcock's surname:

A bit harsh on Gillespie, perhaps?

The 24-year-old Hamilton-Brown should be one to watch in future, and it's good that Wellington has formed a relationship with him early in his career. In Friday's paper he was quoted as saying, 'I like that pressure of going away from where you're comfortable in a county side, into a new side where you've got to prove yourself again. I can't wait to get out there'. Every cricket bio makes a point of mentioning that in 2009 Hamilton-Brown was appointed as Surrey's captain, thereby becoming the county's youngest captain for 138 years. He also led the county back into the top division in English cricket.

Surrey is a hugely influential team - London's 'other' team besides Middlesex - and for a young cricketer to be given charge of such a high-stakes outfit is a real vote of confidence in Hamilton-Brown's ability. His 2011 record for the county is relatively solid. In 16 first-class county matches in 2011 he scored 1039 runs at an average of 37.1 - just the one century in 30 innings though. In 13 List A (one-day) matches he scored a more modest 372 runs at 28.6, but at a commendable strike rate of 120. And in 15 T20 matches for the county he managed a somewhat disappointing 232 runs at an average of 17.8 and a strike rate of 129. Hopefully he'll score plenty more runs for Wellington this summer.

Other scenes from the match:

Gillespie bowls from the northern end

Andy McKay bowls from the scoreboard end

Kids flock for free mini cricket bats

A young fan on the ground at half time

Racing clouds on a traditional Basin cricket day

My best and worst films of 2011

2012-01-02T00:57:00.000Z

My movie-going has been rather disjointed this year, so this year’s film round-up is a slightly ramshackle list. I started the year in London without a job, and ended it back in the workforce in New Zealand, and this meant that for at least half the year I missed out on new releases. I certainly wasn’t going to stump up for London first-run movie tickets at their astronomical prices! Since relocating to New Zealand I’ve enjoyed the Film Festival (always the highlight of the winter months) and since I picked up full-time work in August, I’ve also been able to take in a wider range of movies at the cinema.

I’ve decided this time around to limit my list to current films only, mainly because I saw (and loved) The Social Network in 2011, but that’s unquestionably a 2010 production. To have that film as one of my top three 2011 titles seems a bit odd, so I’m restricting myself to just 2011 films in these lists - or, to be precise, I'm aiming to do so - apologies if I've made any errors with the dates. This means I have to omit some superb films that I saw in 2011 that were produced in 2010, such as the gripping Of Gods and Men, and a clutch of quality non-fiction films like Armadillo, Inside Job, Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D, Senna and Tabloid. On the plus side it also means that I dodge the potential for being snarky about Sofia Coppola’s aimless Somewhere and the decent but massively over-hyped Black Swan.

So here’s my rundown of my top 10 films of 2011 in reverse order, with the usual caveats that if you like a film and it’s not on the list, it’s probably just that I just haven’t seen it. I’ve also included a trio of three disappointing films, and I consider myself lucky that I didn’t notch up enough stinkers for a full list of five like last year!

My best films of 2011

10. Hanna (dir. Joe Wright)
At the outset Hanna appears to be the same old indestructible killing machine fantasy, but once the near-albino wunderkind rejoins society from her Arctic isolation and comes into contact with electricity, music and (gulp!) boys, how will she adapt? Saoirse Ronan is as strong as ever in the lead role, and Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett and an amusing Tom Hollander all essay truly atrocious accents that add to the daft whirl of excitement. With a driving Chemical Brothers soundtrack scoring its heart-pounding and smartly-shot chase and fight scenes, and the welcome addition of the scene-stealing Jessica Barden who lit up the English farce Tamara Drewe, Hanna is a fine confection - this decade's Run Lola Run, even.

9. Midnight in Paris (dir. Woody Allen)
Sure, Midnight in Paris is in some regards a self-indulgent travelogue, but if you suspend your disbelief at the touristy clichés and the occasionally workmanlike dialogue then there's plenty to enjoy here. There's so many memorable luminaries in Allen's fantasy Paris and most of the performances are so smartly executed that it's hard not to find something to admire, whether it's Alison Pill's firecracker Zelda Fitzgerald, Adrien Brody's quixotic, finger-waving Salvador Dali or Kathy Bates' matronly Gertrude Stein. Certainly the large number of characters that Allen has thrown into the mix means that the flashback scenes tend to feel a little crowded, and in modern Paris there's little for Rachel McAdams to work with as Owen Wilson's unsympathetic and bitchy fiancé. Just don't take it too seriously and you'll emerge having had a surprisingly good time. But please Woody - next time no accordion music, okay?

8. 13 Assassins / Jûsan-nin no shikaku (dir. Takeshi Miike)
There are a few tastes of Japanese director Takeshi Miike's panache for visceral gore at the start of his samurai epic, 13 Assassins. Evidence of monumental cruelty, the grisly deaths of captives, plus a couple of unflinching ritual suicides all serve to underline the rather obvious point that the Caligula-esque lord who is the target of the film's assassination plot deserves everything thrown at him by the titular heroes and is a Thoroughly Bad Egg. After that initial burst of ultra-violence, 13 Assassins is much less unsettling and quickly becomes engrossing, as the hugely outnumbered but plucky team assembles and plans its raid against stupendous odds. There are refreshing touches of gruff samurai humour along the way, and the climactic ambush at a deserted mountain village is an extended masterclass of action filmmaking, with jaw-dropping battle scenes and a fittingly thrilling conclusion.

7. Page One: Inside the New York Times (dir. Andrew Rossi)
Print media junkies will enjoy this rare chance to peek behind the scenes at the venerable New York Times. The documentary offers an intriguing glimpse at the practicalities of responding to the major stories of the day, and in particular the Wikileaks-related material that dominated the headlines when the film was being made. The plight of traditional print media in an era of rapidly declining advertising revenue and burgeoning competition from online rivals with lower cost structures is a predominant theme, and it's by no means certain if the NYT can survive, even if its demise would be a tragedy for serious news reporting. Ultimately, Page One doesn't provide any answers to this looming problem. Rather, it offers up a snapshot view of the business of modern news-gathering, perhaps as it nears the end of its lifetime. The film certainly shines when telling the story of its gravel-voiced narrator, the formerly hard-living David Carr, who is awash with pithy quotes. If he was given a trilby and a Remington manual typewriter he'd fit right into any of the newsroom scenes in His Girl Friday.

6. Mysteries of Lisbon / Mistérios de Lisboa (dir. Raoul Ruiz)
It's rare to find a film these days that justifies an intermission, but this four and a half hour Portuguese historical epic certainly does. It tells a myriad of intertwined stories of 19th century Portuguese life amongst the nobility, with detours in place and time to Venice and revolutionary France. Sticklers might find the emphasis on patient story-telling and gradual reveals frustrating, but personally I relished the chance for the various characters' stories to stretch out and breathe; indeed it became something of a running joke for characters to utter lines like "let me tell you my story right from the beginning". Replete with multiple identities, honour-staked duels, unknown legacies, wronged noblewomen, grand masked balls, vengeful suitors, quixotic adventurers, villainous pirates and dozens and dozens of cast members, Mysteries of Lisbon sprawls most enjoyably on the big screen, and rewards viewers who appreciate cinema on the grand scale. My only complaint pertained to the slightly melodramatic score, which occasionally swelled to intrusive proportions.

5. The Trip (dir. Michael Winterbottom)
Michael Winterbottom’s odd-couple road movie features British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reprising their chummy rivalry from 2005’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story, only this time the story is built around improvised scenes. Originally appearing as a well-received 6-part BBC series, the film has been edited from the TV broadcast for cinematic release. Each man plays a fictionalised version of himself, and the dynamic is surprisingly effective: Coogan as an insecure, impatiently ambitious would-be ‘serious movie star’, and Brydon as the contented family man, happy with his lower station in the comedy food chain. Roped in to replace Coogan’s (fictional) American girlfriend on a restaurant-reviewing tour of the north of England for the Observer Food Magazine, Brydon spurs Coogan’s competitive urges with his caricatures, leading to a series of entertaining mealtime impersonation jousts - Michael Caine and Woody Allen being two particular highlights. As Coogan struggles to land a major role and pines for his distant girlfriend, the viewer is treated to a finely-observed comedy of two spotlight-seeking middle-aged entertainers forced to spend a week in the close quarters, and to the sweeping vistas of the northern scenery, which Winterbottom’s camera shows off to magnificent effect.

4. Bridesmaids (dir. Paul Feig)
The ridiculous notion that women can't be funny on the big screen has hopefully been banished by this refreshing comedy. The chemistry between the female cast-members in Bridesmaids is clear, and much of the material is highly entertaining. The charming Kristen Wiig has been due a major hit for ages, and the success of Bridesmaids - a defiantly female-focused film that is a hit with both genders - is a testament to the consistently-overlooked talents of female comedians and writers. Perhaps this will kick-start a bandwagon of new films to counteract the heavy male-dominated imbalance of recent years (decades!). Only complaint: 124 minutes for a knockabout comedy? Editing please!

3. Bill Cunningham New York (dir. Richard Press)
I challenge anyone watching Bill Cunningham New York to come away from this film with any less than unalloyed respect and admiration for the profound joy and pleasure this genial octogenarian takes from his life's great passion: [photographing beautiful clothes on interesting people. His monkish asceticism is legendary, and the camera crew takes you inside his minuscule bathroom-less and kitchen-less studio flat (in Carnegie Hall, no less!) which is full to the brim with filing cabinets containing his life's work and precious little else. He is not even slightly interested in the trappings of celebrity, has never owned a TV and takes pride in rejecting monetary reward whenever it is offered. The sight of wizened Bill cycling between glittering Manhattan parties in his high-vis vest or in the front row at Paris Fashion Week, snapping away whilst wearing his $20 street sweepers' raincoat, is a breath of fresh air in this most artificial and contrived of environments. Here is a man who is universally admired both for his consummate skilfulness at depicting the beauty and foibles of the mercurial world of fashion and the characters who wear it, and for his remarkably humble and sunny disposition. It is a privilege to spend 84 minutes in his company through the medium of this simple but hugely effective documentary.

2. Submarine (dir. Richard Ayoade)
This utterly charming novel adaptation by first time director Richard Ayoade (who plays the socially challenged Moss in The IT Crowd sitcom) absolutely nails the misfit awkwardness of teenage romance in a hilarious and refreshingly unsentimental black comedy. The casting is perfect, with the young duo winningly portraying teen weirdos experimenting with A Proper Relationship (preferably with no hugging), and the comedic foils of the grown-up actors lavishing every scene with wry humour. Sally Hawkins is as sparky as ever as Oliver's uptight mum; Noah Taylor gives an quality portrayal of his hollowed-out, nerdy dad; and Paddy Considine is laugh-out-loud funny as the spiky-mulleted new age mystic who threatens to break up the family by stealing Oliver's mum away. Oliver's school friends are also reliably entertaining, offering consistently awful personal advice to the sensitive, clueless youth. With its grimy, handheld shots of a grey-skied Welsh industrial town and its deft soundtrack by Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, and with too many brilliant moments of bleak comedy to count, Submarine is without a doubt a modern classic.

1. TT3D: Closer To The Edge (dir. Richard De Aragues)
The Isle of Man TT motorbike races have killed 237 people since they began in 1907. Each year they wound and sometimes kill more and more riders. Yet the ones who survive are ever eager to pick themselves back up, get their wounds stitched, bones re-set and spines bolted into place, and get out racing again on the most dangerous roads in motorbike racing. It's a form of collective insanity demonstrated time and again in the interviews that form a large part of TT3D: these are people, mainly men but a few women too, absolutely in the thrall of this ultimate motorcycling challenge. In a sensible world, the TT would be banned. But luckily, the people who participate and the fans who love the sport are not sensible people. You can see it in their eyes and the repeated tales of being cruelly injured one year and being back racing the next.

The clear star of the film is the rebellious larrikin Guy Martin, with his Wolverine muttonchops and rakish charm: he talks non-stop and most of what he utters is complete tosh, but the camera loves him and so do the crowds, who will him on to the winning title he has thus far never claimed. He tinkers with his bike incessantly, sleeps rough in his van re-watching old race videos searching for a lost fraction of a second, and foolishly flouts track regulations out of sheer petulance. Every second he's on screen is a small joy. The other riders are equally fixated to the point of obsession: a veteran champion in his golden Winnebago trying for one last trophy, a quietly-spoken local Manx tryer hoping to delight his hometown fans, and the compulsive Steve Davis-like figure of a would-be champion, pumping iron in his gym in case it gives him the slightest edge.

I've never ridden on a motorbike, and perhaps I never will. It looks pretty dangerous to me. But being in the company of people insane enough to race these machines and run the very real risk of falling off them at 170mph going around a tight corner hemmed in by drystone walls? That's a rare pleasure. TT3D is a must-see documentary for anyone who appreciates an exciting story peppered with tremendous imagery and fascinating, yet somewhat mental, characters.

For a longer review, see here.

My three worst films of 2011

3. The Adjustment Bureau (dir. George Nolfi)
Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are both relatively likeable in this modern-day fantasy from writer-turned-director George Nolfi, in which a mysterious agency deploys equally mysterious powers to subvert everyday lives in keeping with its shadowy master plan for the universe. But the script, despite being lifted in the traditional fashion from a Philip K Dick short story, is so wafer-thin that the resulting film is a real disappointment, with a farcical ending and a laughable plot device ('we need to wear our hats before we can teleport through doors, you know') that bears all the hallmarks of a screenwriter failing to think of a good excuse to include cool 1940s-style headwear in his movie. The only highlight for me was Emily Blunt's impressive modern ballet moves in one scene - she clearly cuts a fine leg.

2. Cowboys & Aliens (dir. Jon Favreau)
When I say that aspects of Jon Favreau's adaptation of the graphic novel Cowboys & Aliens strains credibility in key respects, don't assume that I'm talking about the fact that it's a Western with creepy space aliens as the villains. In fact, I'm fine with that. Rather, it's the simple implausibility of many of the turning points of the film that frustrate, and particularly so given that this isn't as bad a film as some reviwers have made out. Sure, it's far too long and this stretches the viewer's patience - an overblown two hour flick when an 80 minute actioner would have suited. It has a decent cast, including Harrison Ford getting to play more or less his actual age for once, plus Daniel Craig's cowboy, who is suitably rugged, taciturn and generally baffled by proceedings. The problems lie in some arbitrary plot points that fail to make sense and the reliance on big-budget explosions instead of decent dialogue that rises above the level of hoary old cliches. And did anyone else notice that the nasty aliens in the Spielberg-produced Cowboys & Aliens look rather a lot like the nasty alien in the Spielberg-produced Super 8? Perhaps a more knowing, tongue-in-cheek approach that recognised the cartoonish nature of the source material would have generated a more appealing mix, as would a stronger focus on Sam Rockwell's weedy Doc character - an odd couple pairing of Rockwell and Craig would have been much more interesting. At least the widescreen scenery's pretty, and the effects and sound are both top-notch.

1. Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier)
Lars von Trier's Melancholia deserves plaudits for the talent that produced its striking visuals. The opening slow-motion apocalyptic premonitions are beautiful and powerful, and the closing shots of the looming, implacable world of Melancholia as it bears down on Earth are hauntingly effective. The film benefits from some decent performances too, particularly from Charlotte Gainsbourg as the anxious Claire; Kirsten Dunst is also perfectly acceptable as the depressive Justine, bowed down with ennui and gripped by visions of the end of the world. However, the film's two chapters - the tortuously long wedding scene in which everything goes horribly wrong, and the build-up to the world's close encounter with the onrushing rogue planet Melancholia - both overstay their welcome and should have been subject to heavy editing to cut down over-long scenes. None of the adult characters is particularly likeable so it is hard to summon any sympathy for their plight or even, at some points, tolerate their presence on screen. And while it doubtless seems like nit-picking, it can hardly have escaped viewers' attention that while Justine and Claire's parents are English, one daughter appears to have grown up French and the other is American. No matter, it is a trifling complaint compared to the major fault of the aimlessly pretentious Melancholia - this is a topic worthy of a short film stretched out to a tedious 137 minutes, with little to enjoy apart from the technical aspects of its visuals. Death by massive glaring metaphor? No thanks, Lars.

See also:
Blog: My best and worst films of 2010
Blog: Watching the 2011 Oscars

Milford Track 2005

2011-12-27T01:21:00.002Z

In November 2005 I joined three Australian friends to walk the famous Milford Track in Fiordland. It was a great experience, and I recently rediscovered this trip report that I wrote at the time and enjoyed reliving the adventure. So in the spirit of a 'summer repeats' show, I've reproduced it below, with photos added. Please do check for updated details if you're planning to go yourselves - this was six years ago, after all.

Arthur River crossing

FourGo Over Mackinnon Pass

Or,

Walkingthe Milford Track

Ethan Tucker

27 November 2005

14November (Wellington – Te Anau)

After beingadvised to catch and eat keas on my Fiordland excursion by a chatty Maorishuttle driver[1], I flew downto Christchurch, then transferred to an ATR-72 for the next flight intoQueenstown. My pack was laden withsnack bars and noodles for the walk, plus a coveted ingot of Cadbury’s Fruit& Nut to keep us going. The journeyinto Queenstown takes passengers barrelling through the Kawarau Gorge, buzzingbelow the valley peaks and providing a great view of both the twisting river belowand the Remarkables to the south.

Taking careto avoid the family of ducks in the carpark, another shuttle whisked me intothe bustling touristy overload of central Queenstown. I didn’t have to stay long though, because a Tracknet van soon carried meon southwards towards Te Anau. Onboardwere a cheery young local driver chap, a quiet newcomer who turned out to be anew driver joining the company, and a middle-aged lady from Te Anau who wasjust returning from a month in the mountains of Nepal. Passing the home of the Kingston Flyer, we paused to changedrivers at Five Rivers, then turned westwards on Highway 94 to Te Anau via thesleepy hamlet of Mossburn, whose major source of revenue is its speed camera.

Tom met meat the drop-off point in the rented Daewoo, and we drove to meet Liz and fellowQueensland mate Alison at a nearby lakeview pub for a quick drink before afrankly enormous dinner at a local Italian restaurant, followed by an earlynight at the hostel.

15November (Te Anau – Clinton Hut)

After amorning spent eating as much as possible and buying as much food as we could stuffinto our packs, we adjourned to Bev’sto hire some gear for Liz and Alison. While we were there, an American couple returned from their tramp, extollingthe wonders of the Milford Track. Weexchanged a heavy pineapple that I had brought down from Wellington for a packof nuts and raisins that they had taken along but not delved into. Along with sturdy packs and stylish waterproofs,Bev decked the girls out with swish walkingpoles, which made them look far more puissant than stick-less Tom and me. What with Liz and Alison’s red and yellowfleeces, and Tom and my blue coats, a passing child might have confused us witha waterproof version of The Wiggles.

Anothershuttle-bus collected us from the Te Anau DoCcentre to deliver us 20km north along the lakeshore to the jetty at Te AnauDowns. The quixotic driver was heard tomutter at one point ‘I need to get gas’, at which point he turned the busaround and drove it in a circuit through the outskirts of Te Anau, only toreturn to Highway 94 and continue on northwards. This did not inspire confidence, but the bus made it withoutsputtering into inaction.

Thecatamaran trip to the northernmost point of the lake took about an hour, andthe grey-skied chill encouraged us to stay inside the cabin and size up ourfellow walkers. Half were independenttrampers like us, who would be staying at the DoC huts and carrying all theirown food on their backs. The otherswere MilfordTrack Guided Walkers, who we quickly dubbed ‘the richies’. Guided walkers pay about five times as muchas independent trampers, which allows them to stay in a fair approximation ofluxury. As we set off from the start ofthe track, our packs heavy with supplies, we passed their first accommodationspot, Glade House. As we strode by,pitchers of orange juice sat on bedside tables awaiting their pampered guests,and a guide explained to a well-groomed customer that each suite contained anensuite bathroom. Now that’s roughingit!

Clinton Hut

ClintonHut, our destination for the night, was only about 4km up the track. It was a short stroll along the calm lowerreaches of the Clinton River, over a gently swinging suspension bridge andthrough peaceful rainforest laden with ferns and moss. Here and there a few trees sprouted strangeprotuberances – the remains of a decades-old telephone line that used toconnect the huts before radio sets were installed. The hut compound itself was smartly laid out, with a cookhouseand two bunkrooms set around a wooden boardwalk with covered walkways to provideshelter from the Fiordland rain. Each bunkroom housed 10 bunk-beds (20sleepers per room). With no electricityin the DoC huts aside from a few solar-powered low-wattage lightbulbs in thecommon room, cooking is by gas, and there’s no hot water for washing. Everyone ladles on insect-repellent, becausethe air is thick with persistent nagging sandflies that cannot be deterred by amere wave of the hand.[2]

After apre-dinner wander along the stony banks of the Clinton River, we braved theflies to sit outside the huts, where we chatted to young Tara, the DoC rangerin sole charge of the 40-strong hut contingent. Not long out of school, Tara spoke with the traditional Southlandburr while waving a stuffed stoat that had foolishly wandered into a nearby trapand had been immortalised as a pest totem. Up close, its bristly whiskers and curling lip revealing pointy incisorsresembled a peevish and far less dapper Basil Brush.

Stumblingaround by torchlight in pitch-dark bunkrooms, we retired for the night, eagerlyawaiting our first full day of tramping on the following day. For a while the only noise was a puzzlingwaspish drone in the distance. It turnsout to be the massed ranks of trampers’ battery-operated toothbrushes. All the comforts of home, if only you can bebothered to carry them. As thetemperature dropped and the skies opened, the hut’s plastic roof drummed to theconstant beat of pounding rain until early morning, drowning out the snores ofour bunkmates and eventually lulling us to sleep.

16November (Clinton Hut – Mintaro Hut)

We set outon the next leg of the track at 8.15am on a mild grey-sky morning. Occasionally bright bursts of mountainsunshine would break through to illuminate the foliage and enliven the flowingriver. For the first two kilometres,the Clinton had turned from a glass-like clarity to a dirty brown overnight,probably because of a heavy landslide on the uninhabited North Branch of theriver during the heavy rain.

We passedthe lofty Hirere Falls on our left, tumbling down from the valley heights overnear-vertical moss-clad cliffs. A tinyrobin perched precariously on a vertical branch to examine us as we passed,completely unafraid. As the valleyopened out we paused for photographs and admired the grand vista, then took aside-trip to Hidden Lake to observe its alpine wetland environs from avegetation-protecting boardwalk. Aroundmid-morning we also happened upon a family of alpine ducks busily paddlingaround a sheltered lagoon.

Detouringto the valley walls, we enjoyed the crisp air around little Prairie Lake, with ahigh waterfall churning and replenishing its waters. Shortly after returning to the track, we entered theavalanche-prone area of the valley, where DoC signs warned trampers not todally in case of rockfalls. Scatteredmoss-free boulders testified that avalanches were common. Tom and I, leading the pack, were luckyenough to see two snow avalanches high above, the noise of which resoundedacross the valley, reminding us of the warning signs’ accuracy.

Around 1pmwe stopped for lunch near Bus Stop Shelter, a doorless bare tin shack. Its dank interior didn’t impress, so weadjourned to the stony riverbanks for our lunch. We were soon joined by a persistent kea that makes the hut hishome. He eagerly hunted around thefringes of our peripheral vision, hoping for a discarded scrap of food, or achance to make off with an unguarded bread roll. Some keas have been known to hook their beaks through unattendedbackpack zippers to gain access to the morsels within, but this one kept arespectful distance from the girls’ hiking sticks, experience having affordedhim rare avian wisdom.

Four Germantrampers, a.k.a. Das Lads, strodepast purposefully, hoping to reach the hut before everyone else. They approached track attire somewhatdifferently to the rest of us, it must be said. They showed they were reallyserious about burning through the kilometres by carrying two walking poles,one for each hand. Presumably they eachalso carried a six-pack of beer (!), because they often relished a can in thehuts at night. At least 20 percent oftheir packs must have been occupied by hair products, as one lad regularlysported a Yahoo Serious-stylequiff. Another did the whole trackwearing denim jeans.[3]

Setting offagain, we tramped through profuse forests with branches drooping under theweight of bulky moss jackets. Lightsmatterings of rain cooled the air as we crested a series of rises that led usto our second night’s stop, Mintaro Hut, a walk of some 16.5km from ClintonHut. Unlike Clinton, Mintaro Hutaccommodates its trampers in a single building. We found ourselves beds in the roomy attic bunk-space, thenambled downstairs to sit by the fire.

Mintaro Hut

As thehut’s rainwater tank bubbled over, full to the brim, the perky ranger girlwarned us not to leave our boots on the ground outside the hut: keas lovenothing more than to sharpen their beaks on leather, and many a tramper hasemerged to find a stylish pair of boots shredded in the morning. Rows of boot-pegs high on the walls werefitted with metal over-screens to prevent keas landing on them and attackingthe invaders’ footwear.

To pass thetime before dinner I strolled to visit little Lake Mintaro, its banks gentlymerging into the grass and its surface dappled with raindrops. A black shag, interrupted in its task ofhunting small fish, flapped away through the drizzle, flying towards thelooming Mackinnon Pass that jutted high above the Hut just to the north. As I walked back to the huts the rain set infor the night, turning to snow on the peaks in the small hours.

17November (Mintaro Hut – Dumpling Hut)

The hardestday of the track, and not only because our repose was rent asunder by grievouscommon-room snoring bouts. A steep 500mclimb from the valley floor up over Mackinnon Pass was followed by a longdrawn-out 900m descent over the other side down Roaring Burn and the ArthurRiver valley. The ranger (who hadillustrated the magnitude of the descent by repeating the word ‘down’ fifteentimes in a row) warned all trampers to dress warmly for the Pass, where thealpine air is forced over flinty rocks and mountain tarns. Fortuitously, the Pass was clear with onlytiny scatterings of snow – frequently the crossing is overcast andview-less. We headed out onto the trackagain and were soon picking our way up the steep switchback inclines.

Havingeaten several meals from our supplies, the load we had to carry had lessened,but it was still hard work to trudge up the path’s heavy stones. As we made progress the rainforest coverebbed away, exposing us to the cutting breeze, but the exercise protected usfrom chill. Pretty white mountainbuttercups clung to the trackside, spreading slick round leaves to catch thedrizzle. I was surprised to find theclimb easier than I had feared. In theend, I put it down to the mystical life-giving powers of that traditional NewZealand tonic, Raro.

Two hoursafter leaving the hut we arrived at the Pass, and savoured the glorious viewsdown both the Clinton and the Arthur valleys. A stone cairn with a cross, erected in 1912, provides a memorial forQuintin Mackinnon (1853-92), the Scottish explorer who was the first guide onthe track. A family of keas prowled theskies, hoping for an unattended packed lunch while trampers have their picturetaken in front of the precipice known (for obvious reasons) as ‘12 SecondDrop’. Tom went patrolling for photos,but hurried back when one of the birds tried to sneak into his pack, despiteLiz clapping her hands to shoo it. Perhapsthe persistent kea thought it was a round of applause for its impressiveburglary attempt. ‘Thank you, thank you– and now, for my encore…’

At 12-Second Drop

Keas on the Mackinnon Memorial

Breakinginto the precious supply of chocolate to provide a burst of energy, we pressedon across the Pass, pausing for photos at the highest point (1164m). Flecks of snow drifted through the air andsettled in the tussock while the wan cloud-dodging sun shone down on us. An annoyingly perky Guided Walk guide in ared fleece legged it past us, to make sure she got to the Pass Hut in time toclean its famous lavatory, lest the richies have to use a smelly longdrop(!). The toilet in question is known(in a rather twee way) as ‘the loo with the view’, because its Perspex windowcommands a brilliant vista of the whole Clinton Valley.

Edging leftaround Mt Balloon (1853m), I filled my bottle from an ice-cold waterfall thatgushed down the stony side of the mountain and across the track to the valleybelow, and we eased down towards Roaring Burn. Maori travellers called this choppy stream Te Horo-o-Nuku (Nuku’sAvalanche), and DoC signs warn of similar dangers today, with trampers urgednot to stop on the track. The JervoisGlacier on Mt Elliott above regularly disgorges rock and snow avalanches that litterthe track with a jumble of boulders and scree.

Theavalanche zone safely negotiated, we set out upon what turned out to be thehardest portion of the track – the long series of declining switchbacks downthe north side of Roaring Burn. Thetrack is well-maintained but the large rocks require careful concentration andreal effort to successfully navigate, particularly given the light coating ofrain that had slickened the surface. Aswe descended, the path returned into bush cover and twisted past a series ofgrand waterfalls, pounding their way through the hardy stone valley.

Emergingahead of the girls at the Guided Walk ‘hut’[4],Tom and I chatted to a worried-looking middle-aged American chap, who wasfretting over the loan of his expensive walking pole to one of a pair ofEnglish girls on the track (Nadine and Debs from Southampton). One had broken her rented pole and wasfinding the Roaring Burn descent particularly challenging, so he kindly lenther one of his. But he had forgotten toask her name, and now his powers of description seemed to have deserted him. It was hard to keep a straight face when thebest adjective he could come up to describe her was ‘heavy-set’ (because shewas in no way heavy-set at all; in fact, if anyone could have been described asheavy-set it would have been the aforementioned Generous Benefactor).

Liz and Alison emerged from the track, and as we all rested on the grass and ate somelunch (somewhat worse for wear) the sandflies swarmed and fought for stationaryskin space. Shedding our packs for anhour or so, Tom, Liz and I took a side-trail for an hour to see the grandspectacle of SutherlandFalls, which at 580m high are the highest in New Zealand and the 6^th-highestin the world. The weight of watersmashing down its massive leaps left the air around its lake saturated withspray.

Sutherland Falls

Returningdown to pick up our packs we came across a pale Debs, who had previously beendetermined to see the falls but was now swooning from a lack of bloodsugar. Extending a measure of guardedsympathy, we offered her some of our chocolate to perk her up, and told her thefalls were only a short level stroll away. Later we found she’d not even made it to the falls (which were really about200m away), and had even required another cadged sugar dose to trudge back to thehuts. Poor lamb. We pictured a DoC helicopter flyingoverhead, winching down a barley sugar to save Debs from death’s door.

Setting offdown the trail once more, it was with a great sense of relief that we finallyarrived at Dumpling Hut, our home for the night. We had travelled 14km and taken a rather long time about it. Once the packs were removed we found it hardto move fast enough to evade the sandfly packs, particularly as our achingcalves imparted a geriatric gait.

The hut’sranger, Venerable Ross, was a beanpole fellow of about 60, who had been workingthe DoC huts for 12 years. Hiselongated legs stretched forth from sturdy no-nonsense workshorts, and werepunctuated by prominent mountaineers’ knees. A sensible sort, he frowned mildly at the unknown galoot who had starteda fire in the hut’s pot-belly stove despite the mild evening temperature, whichquickly transformed the cookhouse into a Finnish-style sauna. Almost as good as a hot shower, Isuppose. The cheery Germans in the cornerenjoyed themselves by crushing beer-cans underfoot. We gave some spare noodles to the English girls, so Tom had to gowithout seconds. Such is the price ofChristian generosity.

Before longwe collapsed into our sleeping bags for the night. So ended a day of hard work and splendid sights.

18November (Dumpling Hut – Milford Sound)

The lastday’s tramp was 18km downhill on mostly level track to Sandfly Point. Wary of being left behind by the ferry, Liz& Alison got up at dawn’s light and set off at 7.15am to get a goodhead-start. Tom and I breakfasted oncereal and powdered milk, and set off around 45 minutes later. The day had turned out fine and still, withsunshine peeping through the bush canopy and illuminating the valley floor, andtendrils of mist caressing the mountain peaks. We passed a massive landslip that had obliterated the track, in whichthe hillside had disgorged a slew of loose stones a hundred metres wide tosweep down to the Arthur River. Apparentlythis section of the track has plenty of avalanche paths, with names like Cobyand Bossy, after former track packhorses.

We crossedthe Arthur on a bouncing suspension bridge, and stopped to marvel at theglacial stillness of the water’s surface, its mirror-like surface perfectly reflectingthe clouds and sky above. Shortlyafterwards we rested at the beautiful Mackay Falls, which tumbled over stoneslush with dark moss, and squeezed into nearby Bell Rock – despite its narrowentrance, two people can stand up inside it (as long as you don’t imagine wetasare in there with you). We ambledeasily alongside the 900 year-old Lake Ada, which was formed when a largerockslide blocked off the river. Laterwe joined up with Liz and Alison, and heard that they had offered more foodto the English girls (bless ‘em). Apparently on receiving a mandarin from Liz, Nadine had held it out to apassing German and exclaimed, ‘look, fresh foooood!’ Well, yes.

Soon enoughwe emerged from the track, footsore but elated to have finally reached the endof our journey, the aptly-named Sandfly Point. A stone cairn marks the end of the track, 53.5km from Lake Te Anau, andsome weary travellers have anointed it with the trophies of their success bytying their tramping boots to it. Wetook a celebratory picture in front of it. As the ferry arrived to take us overthe Sound to Milford and much-anticipated hot showers, we also took acommemorative picture of the well-travelled 750g pack of nuts and raisins, whichhad loitered in my pack but not been eaten. It had now done the Milford Track twice as many times as we had.

They Came To Sandfly Point

19November (Milford Sound – Queenstown)

Hotshowers! Cooked food! Extremely slow internet connections! Ah, the glorious trappings of modernsociety. Refreshed by a good night’ssleep in comfortable beds at the Milford Lodge, we walked2km along the Milford Road to the dock, where we boarded the Milford Monarch[5]for a morning cruise on the Sound (which was includedin our track package, along with the transfers to and from Te Anau). Just to prove that life was perfect, thecruise included hot croissants, orange juice, fruit and cereal, which wefeasted on as the catamaran cruised out. The 9am cruise is obviously the one to go on, because there were onlyabout half a dozen other people on the vessel.

Enjoyingthe ice-scarred majesty of the gigantic fiord, which is big enough toaccommodate the largest cruise ships when they pass by, we watched from theopen top deck as the local inhabitants went about their business. Penguins hunted fish near the surface, andgambolled at the sea-shore, sporting their striking yellow eyebrows to goodeffect, while in another spot nimble seals lolled on rocks or waited near thebase of cascading waterfalls, hoping to spy a tasty fish or two.

Invigoratedby the scenery, we bid farewell to Milford and boarded our coach back to TeAnau via the Homer Tunnel. As we passedback into the real world, the springtime fields of Southland sported massedranks of multicoloured lupins and gorse, dazzling the eye. Collecting the rental car, we sped up toQueenstown for the night, arriving in time for a drink on the waterfront and atasty meal in an Indian restaurant.

20November (Queenstown – Wellington)

There’s afirst time for everything, and in Queenstown it was my first try of McDonalds’pancakes for breakfast. They turned outquite likeable; almost like real food in fact. Seeking a good view, we took the town’s gondola up to the viewingplatforms, and took in the vistas of the sprawling town and Lake Wakatipu.

As theothers were travelling on to the West Coast, they kindly dropped me at Wanakaairfield for my flight back home. Wetook the scenic route through the Cardrona Valley, driving past the famous bra fence en route.

Bidding myglacier-seeking Australian chums farewell, I took an extremely bumpy Beech 1900flight back to Christchurch – the sort in which you try to brace your feetagainst the bulkhead or nearby passengers. This was followed by a lurching 737 trip back into Wellington,accompanied only by a long-serving backpack full of dirty clothes and a keensense of achievement and good fortune at having witnessed the manifold wondersof the beautiful Milford Track.

[1] A bitchewy, I would’ve thought.

[2] In fact,the sandflies seem to take a hand-wave as less of a signal to go away, and moreof a signal that you’re presenting your hand to be bitten.

[3] At whichprovocation ‘serious trampers’ (i.e. not us) would probably mutter darkly undertheir breaths and plan their next walk in Antarctica, ‘to avoid the tourists’.

[4] Whichresembled a posh 2-storeyed ski lodge in the middle of the wilderness. With an airstrip.

[5] Yes,everything here has ‘Milford’ in the title.

The provenance of cider

2011-12-19T21:58:00.000Z

The other weekend I was walking down Tory Street heading towards Courtenay Place when I saw the following billboard advertisement for Bulmer's Original Cider:

In case you can't see the tag-line at the bottom right, it reads: 'Unashamedly English Cider'.

'Aha,' I thought. 'Here's my chance to be a smart-arse'. Because in my hazy memory I was fairly sure that Bulmer's was an Irish company, and that the New Zealand advertising agency APN was engaging in a woeful act of misrepresentation from which I could possibly wangle a mention on The News Quiz or in the Guardian.

Unfortunately it isn't quite as simple as that, and ultimately it just goes to show that you should always check your facts. Rather than misrepresenting the provenance of Bulmer's, the hokey graphic is actually correct - the name is English rather than Irish. There is an Irish angle to the story though, and it relates to the well-known cider brand Magner's, the rather pricey Irish cider that's served over ice on hot summer days in Britain.

H.P. Bulmer was founded by Percy Bulmer in Hereford in 1887. The company was successful and grew, and by the early part of the 20th century it was attempting to broaden its market by targeting the more genteel drinker:

Bulmers attempted to secure a high class market for their products. 'Champagne is ruinous in price; Bulmer's cider is the solution', the firm announced and in 1911 received the Royal Warrant as Purveyors of Cider to George V.
- Walter Minchington, 'Competition and cooperation: The British Cider Industry since 1880', in Hans Pohl (ed.), Competition and cooperation of enterprises on national and international markets, 1997, p.128.

Ireland joins the story in 1935, when Tipperary man William Magner bought an orchard and established the Magner's cider factory in Clonmel. The established Bulmer's firm bought half the factory in 1937 and enlarged the operation, and after the war in 1946 it purchased the remaining half of Magner's share in the company, and dropped the Magner's name in favour of its own. By this stage Bulmer's had become a well-known brand, and one which marketed its products aggressively:

From the late 1940s sales were maintained by a growth of press advertising and, once commercial television had begun, by advertising there too. The Beverley sisters singing 'Bring out the Bulmers cider' was a landmark in this campaign. This advertising aimed successfully to replace the stereotype of the bucolic peasant as the typical cider-drinker. While some beer advertising tended to advertise beer as a man's drink, most cider advertising suggested that cider could be drunk in mixed company and an element of sex (or unisex) was added to cider sales. As marketing developed, a macho element was added in 1960 with a Bulmers brand, for example, being marketed under the name Strongbow.
- Minchington, p.131

The success in these marketing campaigns, and later ones too, can be seen in the rise and rise of cider consumption in the UK, particularly in the past 50 years. For 95 years from 1870 to 1965 the UK consumed a fairly consistent figure of about 20 million gallons of cider per year. But then the market took off: in the five years to 1970 the market grew by half (to 31.4 million gallons); in the next 15 years to 1985 consumption more than doubled (64.3m), and by 2005 it had more than doubled again (136.4m). By 2010 the UK was consuming ten times as much cider as it was in 1965*. Cider is big business.

Source: WalterMinchington, 'Competition and cooperation: The British Cider Industry since1880', in Hans Pohl (ed.), Competitionand cooperation of enterprises on national and international markets, 1997; and Cider UK.

In 2003 Bulmer's was sold to a brewing chain, and by 2008 the venture had been bought by mega-brewers Heineken. The Irish company that produces Magner's is owned by the Irish drinks company C&C Group; the Magner's cider brand was introduced in 1999 because C&C lacked the rights to the Bulmers cider name outside the Republic of Ireland. However, the two ciders are the same product. Confusing!

My introduction to cider drinking came when I first moved to London in 1997. Traditionally regarded as an unfashionable student drink, cider was perfect for me because I don't drink beer, but when others were drinking pints it was easier to be drinking something served at the same volume for 'pacing' purposes. And as an added plus, the red English ciders tend to look like beer in a dark pub interior. When I returned to New Zealand in 1999 cider had yet to take off, but in recent years the market has expanded and you can even obtain Bulmer's and Magner's here now.

I guess I'll just have to refrain from criticising the Bulmer's billboard in Tory Street for historical inaccuracy. Perhaps I'll just have to change tack and lambaste it for misleading cultural stereotypes - after all, the use of the word 'frightfully' suggests it's a drink for poshos, which is traditionally not the case at all - apart from George V, that is.

Hot summer's day in London + a Magner's by the Thames = nice

Kaka acrobatics

2011-12-17T08:13:00.000Z

On Tuesday last week, not long after I arrived home from work, I was distracted by the sound of squawking outside my window. This is not so unusual in my neighbourhood - I live up near the Wildlife Sanctuary so there are plenty of native birds flitting around. One particularly noisy set of local inhabitants are the kaka, who swoop around the valley, screeching as they flit from tree to tree, chasing each other and generally larking about. The noise was quite close by, and when I went out on the deck to see for myself I spotted one of the aforementioned native parrots was messing around on the telephone lines to the house next door, about 10 metres away.

I was initially worried, because at first it looked like the parrot had somehow gotten its claw stuck on the phone line. It was sliding up and down the line, leaning out and grabbing the adjacent phone line with its beak, and flipping under to hang downwards on one claw before fluttering back to a vertical position. After a while it became obvious that the kaka wasn't trapped - it was just messing about. It was playing circus high-wire, occasionally balancing with its claws on one wire and its beak on the other, doing loops whilst holding on with one claw, and dangling upside down and waving its tail-feathers around. It seemed to be having a grand old time.

See also:

Video: Bandits of the Beech Forest (Documentary, 1996)

Misty morning at the Wind Turbine

2011-12-15T22:21:00.000Z

From a walk this morning, around 9 o'clock. I wonder who forgot their crutches at the visitor centre? Perhaps the bracing hill-top elements cured their ills.

9504 days

2011-12-12T05:13:00.001Z

The last time New Zealand beat Australia in a test match on their home soil:

The date was Wednesday, 4 December 1985
Richard Hadlee took 11 wickets in a low-scoring match
It was 26 years and eight days ago
(Which is 9504 days in total)
The government of each country was led by Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and David Lange
The lunar phase was waning gibbous (apparently)
The no.1 song in the UK pop charts was Wham! with I'm Your Man
And five of today's victorious NZ team had yet to be born (Guptill, Williamson, Bracewell, Southee and Boult).

This 2nd test in Hobart has been a brilliant seesawing competition, with all the hallmarks of a great test match. Each team rallied from seemingly fatal blows and no-one ever seemed to dominate. It was also doubly exciting because the New Zealand team had suffered an abject loss in the first test in Brisbane, and had even lost its former captain Daniel Vettori to injury on the morning of the match.

The New Zealand batting woes seemed to continue in the first innings - sent in to bat by the Australian captain Michael Clarke, they quickly succumbed to poor stroke-play and crafty bowling, slumping to 83/6 at lunch and then all out before tea for a miserable 150 in 45.5 overs. But then Australia experienced the same batting jitters, and the four-pronged New Zealand seam attack savoured a rare opportunity to put the usually dominant Australian attack to the sword. From 12/1 at the start of Day 2, Australia plummeted to an astonishing 81/7 at lunch, and were dismissed for a mere 136 in 51 overs, with bowler Peter Siddle's battling 36 preserving some remnants of the Baggy Greens' modesty and preventing a previously unthinkable sub-100 score against New Zealand. New Zealand ground out a painful 226 in their 2nd innnings, setting Australia a target of 241, and for a time they seemed to make it look simple - opening the 4th day with 169 to get, 10 wickets in hand and two days to get the required runs. Surely they would make easy work of it?

But, astonishingly, the New Zealand bowlers managed to knock the top off the Australian batting lineup in the first session. Martin and Boult accounted for a wicket apiece, but young Doug Bracewell was the main instigator, removing the hugely dangerous Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and Michael Hussey in the space of two overs, with Clarke and Hussey departing for ducks. The score as the players went for their meals was 173/5, but with David Warner established at the crease and the solid batting of wicket-keeper Brad Haddin to back him up, Australia still fancied themselves the favourites to win the two-match series 2-0.

Yet following the lunch break New Zealand moved back into contention with a brutal spell of controlled bowling aggression. The 55th and 56th overs saw four Australian wickets fall, with Warner's batting partners operating on a conveyor belt to and from the batting crease. First Tim Southee had Haddin and Siddle caught, and then Doug Bracewell returned in the next over to dismiss Pattinson and Starc. Surely victory was just around the corner?

Australia certainly wouldn't give up without a fight, and the number 11 batsman, the spinner Nathan Lyon, provided a solid defence. The centurion opener Warner and Lyon put on a sterling last-wicket stand, scoring freely for eight overs, edging Australia closer and closer to a stunning victory in the face of adversity. New Zealand was thwarted by the review system, with two umpire decisions reversed and Australian batsmen preserved. It seemed as if it would take a miracle to dismiss the last pair. And yet, with a mere eight runs to get, Doug Bracewell slipped a wicked low delivery through Nathan Lyons' defences, leaving his stumps a shattered mess on the pitch. He had sealed a historic test match win in Australia. In a mere 82 balls following the lunch break, Australia was reduced from a position of dominance to defeat by some inspired and historic bowling. New Zealand had finally triumphed in a test match in Australia after 18 failed attempts and 26 years.

---

Now let's pull back from wild euphoric abandon get all New Zealand-y. While this is a remarkable achievement, and the New Zealand team deserves to drink Hobart's bars dry tonight, we shouldn't pretend that this is a legendary Australian team, or that this victory erases the many weaknesses that plague the New Zealand test team. Brendon McCullum and Jesse Ryder still struggle to adapt to the long game and often throw away their wickets carelessly. Our bowlers regularly break down and there's no strong successor to Daniel Vettori in the spin department. And all too often our bowling attack struggles to dismiss quality opponents twice to win a match.

Remember, in the last five years New Zealand has played 36 matches but only won eight of them. And of those eight test victories, four have been against Bangladesh and one against Zimbabwe. So in the last five years New Zealand's only victories against quality test opponents have been against England in 2008, Pakistan in 2009 and this win against Australia. And it's worth noting that none of those three test victories resulted in a series win for New Zealand: England went on from its first test loss in Hamilton to beat New Zealand 2-1, Pakistan drew 1-all in a 3-match series after losing their first test in Dunedin, and Australia has just drawn 1-all in the two-test mini-series. While this victory is a bracing glimpse of what is possible if the national side becomes more consistent and competitive, New Zealand will have to drastically improve its game if the team is to be taken seriously by quality opponents.

And as for Australia, David Warner and Nathan Lyon should take heart. Neither should be ashamed of their last-wicket attempt, which came so close to victory. Lyon, in particular, should not be held responsible for failing to preserve his wicket. Rather, Australian fans should look to the top order, which (Warner aside) failed to adapt to the pitch and the swing it offered. One thing that is certain: while New Zealand test victories in Australia are rare and fleeting - this is only the third ever! - the one effect they have is concentrating the minds of the Australian cricket community and particularly its leaders. Because if Australia is losing to New Zealand at home, there's definitely major problems in the Australian side.

Now apart from sorting out its test team, Cricket Australia also needs to sort out the ridiculous situation of ceding the man of the match decision to an Australian viewers' poll, which saw Warner given the title despite Doug Bracewell's brilliant match figures of 60/9. No-one can deny that Warner carrying his bat and bringing his team to the brink of victory was an excellent innings, particularly in light of the doubts that some have expressed about his suitability for the test openers' slot. But to award the man of the match prize to a home player when a touring team has pulled off a remarkable victory just looks a little churlish. Hopefully something can be done in time for the next Australian home series against India, which is shaping up to be an exciting measure of how much pressure can be brought to bear on the once-great Australian side.

See also:
Audio: Ian Chappell - A low point for Australia (6:16)
Video: Victory highlights (2:46)

Pajama Club

2011-12-03T22:03:00.001Z

Neil Finn / Photo by Catherine P.

San Francisco Bath House
Cuba St, Wellington
3 December 2011

Neil and Sharon Finn's new home-studio project Pajama Club has taken on a life of its own, with live performances around the world and TV appearances to boost their profile. It's not like Neil Finn needs the exposure, of course - his rock pedigree and status as one of the elder statesmen of songwriting is long established. But the music world is often wary when veteran performers decide to get their spouses involved in the business - just mention the word Yoko and any band will instantly understand. (Or, for that matter, Coco).

But it's fortunate that the familial jamming that over time has given birth to the musical career of Liam Finn and his younger brother Elroy has also now included their mother Sharon. While the injection of Sharon's bass playing and soothing vocals into the mix has added a new dynamic to Neil's music, it has also been accompanied by a strong performance in the song-writing department, with perhaps the best collection of Finn material since Neil's solo album Try Whistling This in 1998.

Touring the self-titled Pajama Club album, Neil and Sharon have been joined by multi-instrumentalist SJD (Sean James Donnelly, who wears a Badly Drawn Boy beanie and, it should probably be mentioned, is not the same person as the Sean James Donnelly who was convicted of manslaughter in March) and drummer Alana Skyring, formerly of Brisbane band The Grates, who bears a slight resemblance to Kristen Schaal and attacks her kit with a ladylike glee.

I have to admit that I hadn't actually heard the Pajama Club album when I attended the gig last night with long-standing Finn devotee Catherine, although I bought the CD today now I've heard it performed live. The album's early-80s electric groove echoes both the strutting funk of Split Enz's Dirty Creature and the art-rock of Talking Heads, and while it still permits Neil to issue his fine vocals and seemingly effortless guitar outros, Pajama Club is a pleasing stylistic side-step for the Finn brand.

My favourite audio highlight of the gig was the booming chords of Suffer Never from the 1995 Finn album, in medley with the pulsing, droning crescendo of Gary Numan's Cars. Later, in an entertaining impromptu gesture a chap in the front row of the audience was invited to play keyboard effects - well, he was wearing a Kraftwerk t-shirt after all! And the taut yelping chorus of These Are Conditions impressed too: it's a classy number both on the album and live.

In case Finn fans were worried that Pajama Club might be too obtuse or experimental for their tastes, let me assure you that this was plain and simply just a quality rock performance. The experimental touches made for an interesting and appealing sound, but the core tunefulness and command of melodic hooks that the Finn clan are famous for are well to the fore. See them live if you can, and if you can play a bit of keyboard be sure to nab a spot in the front row!

Here's Pajama Club performing with Madeleine Sami and Ladyhawke on Later With Jools Holland, 27 September 2011:

---

Earlier, local support act The Dreamers provided a glimpse of their contemporary soul style, with some catchy songs. Opening a show is often a thankless task with few of the audience members paying attention, but the band showed real promise, particularly Conor McCabe's lead vocals. Aside from the generic band name, a stronger stage presence and a bit more effort in the wardrobe department might pay dividends - with their baggy t-shirts and lack of stage chemistry it did look like The Dreamers were playing in their garage rather than in front of 200 people.

Don't forget to vote

2011-11-25T20:58:00.001Z

Photograph: William Hall Raine, via National Library NZ on The Commons

This oft-shared photo shows massed hat-wearing crowds watching the Evening Post's results board outside the newspaper's Willis Street offices in Wellington, during the general election held in December 1931. This was the first election held since the onset of the Depression in 1929, and was brought about by the breakdown of a United-Labour coalition over disagreements on how to deal with the massive economic crisis. Electors punished the United Party of Premier George William Forbes, returning only 19 of its candidates, down from 27 in 1928. Former Premier Gordon Coates' Reform Party, which had been in opposition, became the largest party with 28 seats in the 80-member House, gaining one on its 1928 total. This meant United and Reform were able to form a majority coalition to keep the growing Labour Party out of office, with Forbes remaining as Premier despite leading the smaller government party. Harry Holland's Labour Party boosted its caucus from 19 to 24 and became the official Opposition, securing an electoral beach-head that it would eventually turn to victory in 1935. This election was also the genesis of today's National Party, when the United-Reform coalition merged into a single conservative party to counteract the growth of Labour.

The 1931 election was a first for election broadcasting in New Zealand too. Archivist David Colquhoun discusses the story behind the photo:

In Wellington, for the first time, you could stay at home and listen [to the election] on the radio. The local 2ZW station set up in the Post's results room in what proved to be a successful experiment. The Dominion had 2YA on hand. But for the politically committed, staying at home seemed a dull option, compared with the old practice of showing your colours on the street. Besides, as the new radio coverage was also boomed out from loudspeakers, and you could see the candidates live as they gave their end-of-evening speeches from the Post balcony.
- David Colquhoun, Wellingtonians from the Turnbull Library Collections, 2011.

See also another two angles by William Hall Raine of the Willis Street crowd scene: one from the north side and another from the Post's offices.

Ten years after Tony

2011-11-23T04:54:00.001Z

With Tony & Lynda, Tuscany, Easter 1999

A decade can flit past remarkably quickly when you're not paying attention. The recent release of Martin Scorsese's Living in the Material World doco has reminded us that it's nearly 10 years since George Harrison died (the anniversary is 29 November). But in more personal terms it's also been ten years today since the untimely death of my good friend Tony Gibson. Tony died in Auckland on this day ten years ago due to complications arising from his haemophilia and the bad blood scandal that infected him with hepatitis C. He was only 28.

I first met Tony in Form 1 in my class at what was then known as Manukau Intermediate (now Royal Oak Intermediate), where he would participate with vigour in our rolling, impromptu games of 'sogby' - football with a bit more added physical contact a la rugby - and the ever-popular matches of handball, with or without 'black magic'. Of course he probably shouldn't have been playing rowdy physical games, but Tony didn't let his condition stop him enjoying himself. Rather, he bore the inevitable bruises and bleeds and the ever-present hassles of constant medication with stoic fortitude.

It was clear that Tony was a gifted scholar too, with a quick wit and a talent for imaginative creative writing. He put these skills to good use at school, and I have fond memories of his panache for satire, such as his lyric 'Cruise Missiles Across the Persian Gulf' set to the tune of 'Star Trekkin'. But for us Tony was at his peak in the highly geeky and thoroughly enjoyable world of role-playing games. Tony was a great dungeon master, with a valuable knack for story-telling and the diplomatic skills necessary when hosting a disparate bunch of nerds, and we all enjoyed many quality RPG sessions with him over the years. I was delighted to hear one of Tony's friends speak at his funeral service, observing with real fondness that 'Tony killed my first character', a comment that probably generated a quiet wave of confusion amongst the 'grown-ups' present. Losing your first character is a true RPG rite of passage.

It was always a treat to visit the Gibsons' Hillsborough home and venture down the very 1970s stairs to the converted garage that was Tony's man-cave. Aside from the role-playing, there was also the fun of being exposed to Tony's precocious musical taste through his very grown-up hi-fi. I certainly have Tony to thank for being a huge influence on broadening my interest in music. Tony and his stereo opened my ears to the glories of David Bowie's back catalogue (1971's Hunky Dory is still one of my top-five albums to this day), the chaotic hodge-podge of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, and the effortless cool of soul legend Otis Redding. He didn't have quite as much luck with convincing me to like the Sex Pistols though!

In our later years at Onehunga High Tony spent much of his time with his partner and soulmate Lynda, and after leaving tertiary studies they moved together to a great little house in Avondale, which they filled with wine, comics and lovable greedy cats. Like many of us from the class of 1990, Tony had started a Politics degree at Auckland, but he decided to take another course: he ploughed his enthusiasm and know-how into a risky but ultimately triumphant project: he established Gotham Comics in a small shop at the bottom of Onehunga Mall. Now in larger premises further up the hill in the heart of Onehunga, and run by Tony's former acolyte Jeremy Bishop, Gotham is still selling comics to the fanboys and girls after more than a decade, which is more like a century in the cut-throat world of comic retail.

It's been ten years without Tony, and there's been so many events in the intervening years that we'd all have loved him to be around for. He would have loved the LOTR films, for one thing. He'd have come down to Wellington for the Bowie gig in 2004. And there's certainly been no shortage of comic-book movie conversions over the years, some good, some not so good - but we can all agree that Tony would've sized up the market and expertly assisted the new generation of enthusiasts to feed their emerging addictions for the source material... and maybe helped to direct them to other new and interesting works at the same time.

So, in memory of Tony, ten years absent today: there's still no danger that we'll forget you. Let's raise a glass to his memory!

Interview: Jeremy Bishop, Gotham Comics, 20 September 2011
HFNZ: Haemophilia Foundation of New Zealand

Excuse me, I'm having my banana

2011-11-20T08:32:00.001Z

Claude, 25 October 2011

A photograph to commemorate the occasion of my grandfather Oswald Claude Tucker's 95th birthday today. Born on 20 November 1916 and given the middle name that he would use in place of the unwieldy Oswald, Claude was named after his uncle who left to fight in the First World War five months before he was born, and who died at Passchendaele before Claude's first birthday.

Claude grew up in Ellerslie, and like many others at the time, the family had little in the way of money. He was lucky to secure an apprenticeship as a printer during the Depression due to his high marks. After the outbreak of war in 1939 Claude volunteered to serve in the Army overseas, joining the 5th Field Ambulance in 2NZEF. During the course of the war he was to visit the UK (including England during the Blitz when invasion fears saw New Zealand soldiers diverted to bolster the British defences) and the Middle East including Palestine and Syria (the latter of which I paid a return visit to in 2008, taking in the sights of Aleppo, where he was based for a time). But most of his time in the Army was spent in Egypt. He didn't talk about the business of being a field ambulance soldier and the brutal sights he must have seen as broken men were brought back from battle; instead, he preferred to hark back to the pet lion cub that he and his friends rustled up from somewhere, and the high adventure of the biplane joyride he took over the Suez Canal.

In 1943 he had another stroke of luck, as his was the first number drawn out of the hat for furlough - the chance for some long-serving soldiers to return to civilian life in New Zealand. This enabled him to resume his courtship of Gwen Phillips, my grandmother. They were married in the little stone St James' church in Mangere Bridge in September 1943, and after a few years living in a rented house in Waterview, they moved into their own home in Onehunga, where they've been ever since. They raised three children in that same ex-State house, and there they recently celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary.

While his career was in the printing industry, academic and intellectual pursuits have always been a keen interest for Claude. This spurred him to find time in his retirement to secure himself a long-cherished university education, when he worked towards his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology at the University of Auckland, graduating in 1986. In more recent years Claude has been living in a rest home where his various infirmities can be managed, but this hasn't stopped him meeting the Prime Minister, when Mr Key stopped by for a visit.

Only five years short of a century and still ticking! I'm sure most of us would be grateful for that sort of staying power. Well done, that man.

Soderbergh's Contagion

2011-11-13T08:46:00.001Z

Yesterday I caught up with Matthew to see Steven Soderbergh's film Contagion, a film that successfully mines modern jumpiness about global pandemics and the fragility of social order in testing circumstances.

Now wash your hands

There's a global media cycle that throws up a epidemic panic meme about every three years, and Contagion milks that latent paranoia for all it's worth, in a slick, highly enjoyable package. Deftly shot in muted, pneumoniacal tones and packed with a top-notch cast, Soderbergh has presented a stylish update on the 1970s disaster flick, with its The Social Network-style electro soundtrack, a bevy of exotic locales (albeit full of people coughing) and a palpable sense of looming dread as the implacable virus spreads like wildfire across a helpless world and order is replaced by supermarket-smashing, vaccine-queue-jumping chaos.

Gwyneth Paltrow must have had fun in her role, as she spends nearly all her screen time looking diabolically fluey and one of her earliest scenes involves her character's cranial autopsy. The accomplished English actors Jennifer Ehle and Kate Winslet play largely identical characters, bureaucratic scientists both, and get to spout gobbledygook about viral vectors and transmission rates, and yet they manage to avoid slowing the film down. Jude Law's prosthetic overbite clearly mark him out in American eyes as a shyster of the worst order, and for good measures he essays a broad Assange-lite Australian accent (but for the record, it's 'maths', not 'math', writer Scott Burns).

There are a few quibbles with the story, but nothing important. I can see why the writer personalised the initial infection vector, so we can dramatise the initial contacts in the Macao casino and identify with the victims, even if this is scientifically daft. While I enjoyed the hint of criticism of ludicrous homeopathy remedies, a few of the subplots are a little sketchy. It stretches belief to suggest that looters stage a home invasion and terrorise the wife of the disease control centre chief (Laurence Fishburne), but then simply let her go unharmed when they discover there's no vaccine in the house. If you've already armed yourself and broken into the house wearing masks, why not bloody kidnap her? Sheesh, you can't event get half-decent criminals these days. And while the sight of Law striding up San Francisco streets with his silly inflatable hazmat suit gaffer-taped to his cotton Dockers like some reject from Lost in Space was fairly amusing, I couldn't help but wonder why no-one knifed him to steal it.

Survivors

Contagion is a highly successful piece of entertainment, and one that succeeds despite covering well-worn territory. But minded as I was of dramatisations of global pandemics, I couldn't help wondering what modern audiences would make of the grim fictional universe portrayed so successfully in Terry Nation's 1970s TV sci-fi drama Survivors, which, like Contagion, has as its genesis a super-virus originating in China that wreaks havoc throughout the world. The difference in Nation's imagined world is that rather than the millions who die in Contagion (and that's hardly a spoiler!), billions of people die in Survivors - nearly the entire human population of the world, in fact. The virus strikes so quickly that none of the characters has a clear idea of why the disease spread or where it originated. All that they know is that the cities are unsafe (which is handy, because the BBC budget didn't stretch to deserted city streets), that the only law is the law you make for yourself, and scavenging and looting is the only way to survive until society is rebuilt. I'll write more about the original Survivors soon, once I've had the chance to get my DVDs out of storage and re-watch them. (The BBC recently broadcast two series of a modern Survivors remake. I only saw the first series, and while it was reasonably good, it felt a bit too polished for my liking).

Soderbergh

Watching Contagion also reminded me that while Steven Soderbergh is one of the directors who can be relied upon to make interesting and often highly successful films, I've actually seen very few of them. Certainly I need to remedy this, but at this stage I can honestly say that I've only seen Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Informant! and Contagion. After after his early success with SL&V a long spell of relative obscurity and little-seen films ensued in the 1990s. But his luck turned around in 2000 and for the past decade Soderbergh has earned the reputation of a highly bankable director, and one who can take a few commercial mis-steps with mid-level box-office failures and still afford to keep making small, bespoke films in between the blockbusters. Witness the amount of studio credit he must have built up after his string of successes with Erin Brockovich, the Oscar-winning Traffic and the Oceans films, and bear in mind that the earnings figures used to calculate the list below are only for US theatre takings - the global box-office figures, particularly for the highly successful Oceans films, is much higher. After all, Boxofficemojo has his current lifetime global box office takings at a whopping $873.4m:

Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989): $23.5m
Kafka (1991): -$9.9m
King of the Hill (1993): -$6.8m
Underneath (1995): -$6.0m
Gray's Anatomy (1996): -$0.3m
Schizopolis (1996): -$0.2m
Out of Sight (1998): -$10.4m
The Limey (1999): -$5.8m
Erin Brockovich (2000): $73.6m
Traffic (2000): $76.1m
Ocean's Eleven (2001): $98.4m
Full Frontal (2002): $0.5m
Solaris (2002): -$32.0m
Ocean's Twelve (2004): $15.5m
Bubble (2005): -$1.5m
The Good German (2006): -$30.7m
Ocean's Thirteen (2007): $32.2m
Che: Part One (2008): -28.3m
Che: Part Two (2008): unknown
The Girlfriend Experience (2009): -$1.0m
The Informant! (2009): $12.3m
And Everything Is Going Fine (2010): unknown
Contagion (2011): $14.6m+, currently in cinemas

The rockets' red glare

2011-11-06T08:35:00.001Z

Photos from the annual Wellington city Guy Fawkes fireworks display, launched from three barges moored near Oriental Bay. The show reportedly cost $190,000 and used three tonnes of fireworks. My vantage point was on the northern, quieter end of Queens Wharf, where I used a Manfrotto 484 tripod to shoot exposures ranging from two to five seconds in length.

In fear of the Tsar's navy

2011-11-05T00:54:00.000Z

Approach to Fort Ballance, Miramar

Fort Ballance sits atop Wellington's Miramar peninsula, and while it's currently shrouded by trees and little visited, in its heyday it served as the main naval defence for the harbour entrance. And it's older than you probably think too. Instead of being a part of the well-known World War 2 gun emplacements at Makara and Wright's Hill in Karori, or even of a World War 1 defensive network, it is actually Victorian in origin, having been built in the 1880s and come into service in 1885.

The enemy it was built to defend against was the Russian navy of Tsar Alexander III. The isolation felt by the New Zealand colonial authorities led to considerable nervousness about the ability of the stretched Royal Navy resources in the Pacific to counter any possible invaders. Russia was developing its Pacific fleet and constructing the Trans-Siberian Railroad to link its eastern territories to its heartland in eastern Europe.

There were also strained diplomatic relations and ongoing sabre-rattling with Britain over Central Asia and the approaches to the lush resources of imperial India. The Panjdeh Incident of March 1885, in which Russia seized territory in Afghanistan and killed about 600 Afghan troops, also tested the nerves of the isolated colony, because for a time it was feared the matter might lead to war. The Auckland Star of 23 March 1885 reported a telegram from London the day before, headlined 'The Threatened War: Russian Intrigue at Panjdeh', while the Otago Daily Times of 16 April 1885 contains reports from the Australian colonies, which were taking 'precautionary measures in view of a possible outbreak of war between England and Russia', including stronger controls on entries to Australian ports, the establishment of a permanent militia camp in Victoria, and a naval patrol service in the Gulf of St Vincent.

Russian naval forces never threatened New Zealand's ports, and the only naval incursions that actually reached our coastal sealanes were German raiders in both World Wars and Japanese submarines in World War 2. But Fort Ballance remained a key part of Wellington's defences until it was superseded by the more modern Fort Dorset in 1911, and it continued to serve as an auxiliary facility, acting as the capital's main ammunition depot from 1924 until 1959. Fort Ballance also provided army accommodation from 1946 until as late as 1990, although it must have been a cold and windy place for a soldier's billet.

Now the fort is a Category I-registered historic place, and serves as a reminder of the impressive works Victorian engineers undertook in fear of the Tsar's navy. It's an isolated and almost forgotten spot that has attracted plenty of graffiti, but the structures seemingly remain sturdy and will hopefully be protected for many years to come as reminders of our military history. Indeed, some are keen to restore the fort, with local historian Allan Jenkins favouring the reinstatement of the 8-inch 'disappearing gun', which he believes was buried nearby in the 1970s:

Given that the mounts are still in the gun pit and the shields are buried nearby ... it's fair to say I'm fairly excited about the prospect of the gun making a very short trip back into its original home. It was a huge thing. It was the biggest and the best at the time.

- 'Historian keen to see big gun restored', Dominion Post, 2 November 2011

Images from Fort Ballance, 16 October 2011:

Not the target market

2011-10-23T20:47:00.001+01:00

Over the past week I've been participating in a Roy Morgan TV and radio poll, filling out a booklet filled with innumerable tick-boxes to illustrate my media habits. When the polling company asked if I wanted to participate I weighed up the faff of actually setting down my media consumption in a detailed fashion against the desire to boost the few decent programmes and channels there are in New Zealand, and came down in favour of the latter.

So since last Sunday I've been keeping a careful record of everything I've listened to or watched, in half-hour allotments. This actually proved far easier than expected, because despite temporarily having access to plenty of pay TV channels through the Telstra cable connection in my current flat, I actually watch very little TV, and the radio listening I do is fairly predictable: Morning Report, a bit of Nights with Brian Crump and Kim Hill on Saturday morning, all on Radio New Zealand.

In addition to signalling my devotion to the high standards of radio broadcasting on Radio New Zealand, I was also keen to highlight my fondness for programmes on the commercial-free public service channel TVNZ7, which is threatened with closure in 2012. However, the format of the survey made it difficult to do the latter. There are dozens of channels on pay TV, and many of them aren't assigned their own individual column of tick-boxes in Roy Morgan's poll - instead, they're all lumped together under the catch-all phrase, 'Other pay TV' - which is a misnomer in TVNZ7's case, because it's not pay TV, it's free-to-air. I was able to flag my approval of TVNZ7 elsewhere in response to a query asking what channels I regularly watched and liked, but I would have preferred to make this point directly.

I should acknowledge that my viewing preferences mark me out as someone who is not likely to be hunted down and actively courted by advertisers, which is the real purpose of the Roy Morgan poll. Sure, I spend money on books, music and DVDs, but I spend a large part of what little time I do devote to consuming TV and radio locked into channels with no advertising. In pollsters' terms, I am an un-person.

Still, filling out the media diary was a worthwhile exercise, if only because it confirmed my suspicions that New Zealand TV offers little of real merit these days, or at least it offers little that interests me. In one section of the media diary the pollsters listed TV programmes organised by their channels, and asked for audience attitudes to each programme. The only options provided were:

I especially choose to watch it
I watch it only because someone in the household wishes to
I watch it if there's nothing better
I really love this programme

I'd make three observations about this particular exercise.

From the lists for TV1 and TV2 programmes I could find only a single show that I could actually bear the thought of watching - the BBC's sitcom Miranda. Aside from that it was wall-to-wall pointless tat, which illustrates how irrelevant TVNZ's two main channels are to me and presumably people like me. In fact, it's been so long since I've regularly watched programmes on TV1 or TV2 that my default assumption is that if a programme features on those channels, it must be dire. Perhaps I miss out on a few good choices that slip through the pack of stinkers that make up TVNZ's schedules, but given how bad much of TVNZ's material is, it's a risk I'm happy to run.

TV3 and Four seem to have collared the handful of American programmes that I actually enjoy: animated comedies like King of the Hill, The Simpsons and Futurama, and witty live comedies like 30 Rock and Parks & Recreation. And there are a smattering of quality British programmes like the Graham Norton Show, QI and Top Gear on those channels and Prime. But the distinctive feature of the listings is the huge swathe of American programming that dominates all the free-to-air channels. Of the limited range of New Zealand-made programming, much of it is the ultra-low-budget reality schlock. Is it any wonder that young New Zealanders are growing up knowing less and less about their own country and their own stories?

Lastly, the list of four tick-boxes above contained no option for 'I'd never watch this rubbish and I would actively avoid the products and services of any advertiser associated with it'. This is so often a factor when watching commercial-laden TV in New Zealand, when even good programmes can be mangled beyond recognition by enormous quantities of braying adverts. Wouldn't you love to be able to tell TV programmers (and their associated ad company puppet-masters) when their offerings are lousy?

So clearly I'm not the ideal survey recipient, from Roy Morgan's perspective. But having completed their weekly survey, which includes a gigantic consumer poll covering a multitude of marketplaces such as travel, telecommunications, supermarket shopping, electricity, motoring and many others, I have to wonder if the consumer intelligence that Roy Morgan is selling is really worth what its customers pay for it. Because I've completed most of their rather thick booklets due to a sense of intellectual curiosity, but it was particularly time-consuming and I can't imagine most people offering up that much of their own time for no reward. (There's a prize draw for a small cash sum, but the chances of winning are low).

As an example, the most ridiculous exercise in the consumer poll booklet is a page devoted to attitudes towards supermarket chains, asking 'which, if any, of the following statements do you associate with each supermarket?' For each of the ten supermarket chains listed there are *fifty-eight* tick-boxes, making a grand total of 580 tick-boxes on one page. Statements put to the reader include 'They have spacious aisles' and 'trolleys and baskets are always available'. Needless to say, I gave this page a miss. Who actually fills that sort of nonsense out, and who makes business decisions based on the information derived from it?

'Russia grows and grows. She has become a nightmare'

2011-10-08T23:30:00.000+01:00

I've recently finished reading British historian Norman Stone's World War One: A Short History, which I can recommend as an excellent refresher for those who haven't read about the Great War, or for someone looking for a succinct yet rigorous sample of all the various historical controversies that have arisen since 1914.

WW1 was perhaps the sixth most deadly conflict in human history, with nine million combatants losing their lives. Looking back from the 21st century we now see the train of events that led to war as having a grim sense of inevitability about them. The strictures of great power alliances, growing bellicosity and a willingness both at the heads of government and amongst the wider populace to 'sort out' differences on the battlefield rather than through the muddled world of diplomacy, and the implacable influence of military mobilisation schedules meant that once tensions passed a certain threshold, war was a certainty.

It was both a certainty and in many ways a desired outcome, particularly for the German leadership from the Kaiser down. As the BBC points out:

Under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany moved from a policy of maintaining the status quo to a more aggressive stance. He decided against renewing a treaty with Russia, effectively opting for the Austrian alliance. Germany's western and eastern neighbours, France and Russia, signed an alliance in 1894 united by fear and resentment of Berlin. In 1898, Germany began to build up its navy, although this could only alarm the world's most powerful maritime nation, Britain. Recognising a major threat to her security, Britain abandoned the policy of holding aloof from entanglements with continental powers. Within ten years, Britain had concluded agreements, albeit limited, with her two major colonial rivals, France and Russia. Europe was divided into two armed camps: the Entente Powers and the Central Powers, and their populations began to see war not merely as inevitable but even welcome.

In the summer of 1914 the Germans were prepared, at the very least, to run the risk of causing a large-scale war. The crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire decided, after the assassination on 28 June, to take action against Serbia, which was suspected of being behind the murder. The German government issued the so-called 'blank cheque' on 5-6 July, offering unconditional support to the Austrians, despite the risk of war with Russia. Germany, painted into a diplomatic corner by Wilhelm's bellicosity, saw this as a way of breaking up the Entente, for France and Britain might refuse to support Russia. Moreover, a wish to unite the nation behind the government may have been a motive. So might desire to strike against Russia before it had finished rebuilding its military strength after its defeat by Japan in 1905.

Stone looks at the clamour for war from the German side, and highlights the morbid fascination with national survival that beset senior figures at the time:

After the War had been lost, nearly all of the men involved destroyed their private papers - the German Chancellor, the Austo-Hungarian foreign minister, almost the whole of the German military. We really know what happened in Berlin in 1914 only from the contents of trunks, forgotten in attics, and an extraordinary document, the diary of Kurt Riezler, who was the (Jewish) secretary of Bethmann Hollweg. In the diary there is a devastating entry for 7 July 1914. In the evening the young man sits with the grey-bearded Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg. They commune, and Riezler knows, as he listens, that he is catching the hem of fate. The key line is: 'Russia grows and grows. She has become a nightmare'. The generals, says Bethmann Hollweg, all say that there must be a war before it is too late. Now, there is a good chance that it will all work out. By 1917, Germany has no hope. Therefore, now: if the Russians go to war, better 1914 than later. But the western Powers might let Russia down, in which case the Entente will split apart, and, either way, Germany will be the winner.

- Norman Stone, World War One: A Short History, London, 2007, p.20.

That evening discussion took place during the July Crisis, slightly more than a week after Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June. Within a month of the assassination, which warmongers in the German military and political hierarchy leapt upon as a vital casus belli, Austria-Hungary had declared war on neighbouring Serbia, accusing it of being behind the assassination. Serbia was Russia's ally, and the Germans knew that defending the Serbians would bring Russia into conflict with its Austrian allies. The stage was set for the vast and bloody conflict that paralysed Europe, killed millions, and brought about the downfall of three imperial reigns.

See also:

Each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds
The Western Front

Gold has been all-in-all to us

2011-10-04T10:04:00.001+01:00

Hokitika, 1867 (Via Alexander Turnbull Library)

New Zealand author Charlotte Randall’s fifth novel, Hokitika Town, is set on the West Coast of the South Island in 1865, during the boom years of the gold rushes that brought a motley collection of colonists from all over the world to the wild and wet ribbon of habitable land that is still isolated and largely untamed to this day.

The book’s protagonist, a young Maori boy making his way in European settler society, is called by many names: Halfie, Harvey, Thumbsucker, Pipsqueak, Bedwetter and Cocoa. His narration, naive and curious but also fiercely independent and loyal, is a real treat, as Randall portrays his growing confidence with English and the ways in which he makes himself an intrinsic part of the town’s life and local dramas. Here’s Halfie, early on in the tale, discussing his place in the West Coast economic food chain as an errand-running ‘coin boy’:

The gold and the coin got some kind of joinment I not unnerstand. If you find a bit of gold, whitey give you coin, but if you already got coin, whitey give you a bit of gold. They not the same but somehow equal. Not that I ever done this swapping, but I seen it. Sometimes I get tired tryna figure it all out. I go for a sleep in the sun on the river bank. When I wake up fresh, that’s when I like to go to Hokitika town. I go down the street with all them hotels. All them young whitey girls stand in the doorways in their pantalons. They call out, ‘What yer staring at, little boy?’ and pull up their long skirts to show their pantalons. If I do what they want, let my tongue hang out, act like a dog that want a big drink, the girls laugh and throw a piece of bread. I not unnerstand what’s intresting about seeing them frilly pantalons around whitey girls ankles but I do pretty much anything for their bread.

Hokitika, which during the time in which the story is set was a booming mining service town and the second busiest port in New Zealand, is now a trifling town of around 3,000 that seldom features in national news headlines, aside from during its annual wild food festival. It’s sometimes hard to picture how quickly a thriving, if grimy and somewhat ramshackle and lawless, town sprung out of the narrow West Coast sand. It was built on the rush for gold, which saw thousands of diggers flock to the Coast from New Zealand and Australia, with ships often having to fight off insistent would-be passengers convinced that by missing out on passage to Hokitika they would be missing out on the richest early claims at the nearby Waimea, Ross and Kaniere goldfields.

A traveller journeying by sea from Nelson to Hokitika on a small sailing vessel in February 1865 at the start of the gold rush left his impressions of the town upon his arrival, quoted in a tome by the prolific popular historian J. Halket Millar:

Okitiki is at present represented by two long lines of buildings which stretch from the wharf, or rather the landing place, forming a street about 40 ft. broad. These buildings are mostly built of calico, and are occupied as stores for the sale of grog and provisions. A few of the Hotels and Bank Agencies are built of wood and iron, with some of the lower kind called shanties as mere tents. Each person is allowed for business purposes an allotment measuring 30 ft. of frontage by 70 ft. in depth […] In the place there was neither law nor order observed further than the arrangement I have mentioned about allotments. Each holder of property has to support his claim by power of his own right hand, and Lord Bounce reigns supreme […]

The sandy flat on which the township is erected is covered over with driftwood that has evidently been brought down by the Okitiki [River] on some great overflow of its bed, and there are many who declare their belief that some day Okitiki shall exist, or cease to exist, at the bottom of a great lagoon of water caused by the flooding of the river. At present there is no limit of firewood to be had where one chooses to pitch a tent […] The place seems to be well enough supplied with stores, as I counted about 40 already erected, and about a dozen more in process of erection.

- Quoted in J. Halket Millar, Westland’s Golden Sixties, Wellington, 1959

A few months later the distinguished traveller Julius Haast expressed his surprise at the speed with which Hokitika had risen up:

The principal street, half a mile long, consisted already of a large numbers of shops, hotels, banks and dwelling-houses, and appeared as a scene of almost indescribable bustle and activity. There were jewellers and watchmakers, physicians and barbers, hotels and billiard-rooms, eating and boarding-houses, and trades and professions of all description […] Carts were unloading and loading, and sheep and cattle driven to the yards; there was shouting and bell-ringing, deafening to the passers-by; criers at every corner of the principal streets which were filled with people – a scene I had never before witnessed in New Zealand.
Hundreds of diggers ‘on the spree’ and loafers were everywhere to be seen, but principally near the spit and on the wharf where work went on with feverish haste. Before arriving at Hokitika, I counted seven vessels at anchor in the roadstead, amongst them a large Melbourne steamer; whilst in the river itself, five steamers and a large number of sailing vessels were discharging their cargoes, reminding us of the life in a European port.

- Quoted in Philip Ross May, The West Coast Gold Rushes, Christchurch, 2nd ed, 1967, p.313-4

May’s comprehensive The West Coast Gold Rushes lists some Hokitika population projections at the peak of the boom years – which must be regarded as speculative due to the transient nature of much of the population at the time and the lack of effective administrative control:

Year	Month	Pop	Source
1865	Apr	2,000	W. Seed
	July	3,000 adults	Lyttelton Times, 17.07.1865
	Sept	2,500	Lyttelton Times, 29.09.1865
	Dec	2,000	S. Carkeek
1866	Feb	11-12,000	West Coast Times, 05.02.1866
	Apr	6,000	C. Fraser
	May	8-10,000	W. Wilson
	Dec?	7,000	Southern Provinces Almanac 1866

- May, 1967, p.501-2

The town boasted its own newspapers, including the West Coast Times, which published its first edition in May 1865. A Saturday edition published a few months later on 12 August displays a front page heaving with advertisements for services designed to part diggers from their hard-won gold, including the classy-sounding Mac’s Nonpareil Pie House: ‘Meals at all hours – good beds – wines, spirits, and malt liquors of the best brands’. The Times’ editorial column called for increased spending on the Coast by the Canterbury provincial government, claiming that:

From the Grey River on the North, to where the main range touches the sea on the South, and backward in a wide sweep between those two points to the snow-clad hills, the whole of the country is one vast goldfield, little prospected, comparatively speaking, but rich wherever the miner has been tempted to try his fortune. For very many years the West Canterbury goldfield will be worked with profit, if the science of the geologist and the teachings of practical experience are to be relied on.

- West Coast Times, 12 August 1865

However, this proved to be an empty boast. As the easily-accessible gold was plundered and claims ran dry the diggers largely fled to other goldfields, although some remained to work the new West Coast coal mines or fell the plentiful native timber. But the origins of the West Coast and Hokitika itself were quite distinctive, as May points out:

Among the gold rushes of the mid-nineteenth century, that to the West Coast was unique. Elsewhere pastoralists or agriculturalists had been the pioneers, and settlement had preceded a gold rush. Mission stations and cattle ranches were established in California when the ‘forty-niners burst into the Great Valley. The goldfields of New South Wales and Victoria erupted in what was already a gigantic sheepwalk; squatters had explored and occupied the range and basin country of Otago before the rush of ‘sixty-one. ‘The actual beginning of the Westland was its gold discoveries’, explained the West Coast Times: ‘Gold has been all-in-all to us’.

- May, 1967, p.476

RNZAF Red Checkers

2011-10-02T09:35:00.001+01:00

Following on from yesterday’s naval parade through the city, today featured an aerobatics display from the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Red Checkers display team. Five pilots put their New Zealand-built single-seat CT-4E Airtrainers through a challenging and presumably crowd-pleasing routine above Wellington harbour. I say ‘presumably’ because I actually observed the display from my deck up in Highbury. The Checkers did a loop around my house, so I like to think they spotted me on the deck with my camera and did a special lap just for me! The display finished with a dramatic starburst manoeuvre, which must have looked fantastic from the waterfront and from the Cook Strait ferry, which was just leaving port and had all the action going on directly overhead.

Royal New Zealand Navy 70th anniversary

2011-10-02T09:21:00.001+01:00

Yesterday the Navy had free run of the capital when it began a weekend’s celebrations commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the independent Royal New Zealand Navy. Ceremonies began with a march down through the city from Parliament to Civic Square, and then crowds of Wellingtonians descended on the 11 Navy vessels that were open to public visits. I met up with Richard to have a look at a few of the vessels, and managed to investigate the multi-role vessel HMNZS Canterbury, the offshore patrol vessel HMNZS Wellington, and the inshore patrol vessel HMNZS Hawea.
Before 1941 our maritime defences were the responsibility of the Royal Navy, although a distinctly New Zealand naval force was established as early as 1913, and from 1921 until the foundation of the RNZN the RN had a New Zealand squadron, which included the 18,500 ton battlecruiser HMS New Zealand.
Navy parade
Pictures taken from in front of the Supreme Court building opposite Bowen House at the start of Lambton Quay.

HMNZS Canterbury

HMNZS Wellington

HMNZS Hawea

A mode of conveyance

2011-09-29T09:12:00.001+01:00

In 2007 I sold my trusty Mitsubishi Mirage wagon, which was my first car, the day before I flew out to live in London. It had been a reliable vehicle, making the journey from Wellington to Auckland and back plenty of times without any incident, plus coping admirably with a week driving around the varied roads of the South Island. By the time I sold it the Mitsubishi was 17 years old, so I was prepared to take whatever I could get for it, mainly to save my family from having to sell it in my absence. As it happens, finding a willing buyer was no problem at all. I polished the bodywork, tyres and interior to within an inch of its life and took it to a small car fair in downtown Auckland. Within ten minutes of driving into the car lot I had sold it! Clearly the buyer recognised the opportunity to make a quick buck, because he would have been able to sell it on to backpackers later in the day for a profit. This didn’t bother me at all – I hadn’t paid much for it to start with back in 2000, and anything I got from its sale after seven good years of driving was a bonus as far as I was concerned.

Then in my four and a half years in England I had no need for a car. I only drove when visiting New Zealand, or on the one occasion in England and Northern Ireland when my friends Ruth and Phil and I had a rental car and I was able to get behind the wheel for a couple of days. But now I’ve returned to live in Wellington it was always part of the plan to acquire a car for shopping purposes and for weekend expeditions.

And here it is. This is the trusty wagon that has belonged to a friend’s dad since the mid-90s, and now sits in my garage. It may only have two hubcaps and they may not match each other, it may be as old as my old Mitsubishi was when I sold it, and it may only last a year or two before its retirement, but for now it’s great to be mobile again!

Lost in memories of punishing velocity

2011-09-13T11:40:00.002+01:00

The Isle of Man TT motorbike races have killed 237 people since they began in 1907. Each year they wound and sometimes kill more and more riders. Yet the ones who survive are ever eager to pick themselves back up, get their wounds stitched, bones re-set and spines bolted into place, and get out racing again on the most dangerous roads in motorbike racing.

It's a form of collective insanity demonstrated time and again in the interviews that form a large part of the documentary TT3D: Closer To The Edge, which followed the 2010 races. These are people, mainly men but a few women too, absolutely in the thrall of this ultimate motorcycling challenge. In a sensible world, the TT would be banned. But luckily, the people who participate and the fans who love the sport are not sensible people. You can see it in their eyes and the repeated tales of being cruelly injured one year and being back racing the next; in the voice of the former racer who drives the film crew around the circuit in a car - his excitement is palpable, and he even makes motorbike engine noises like a little boy, lost in his memories of punishing velocity.

The clear star of the film is the rebellious larrikin Guy Martin, with his Wolverine muttonchops and rakish charm: he talks non-stop and most of what he utters is complete tosh, but the camera loves him and so do the crowds, who will him on to the winning title he has thus far never claimed. He tinkers with his bike incessantly, sleeps rough in his van re-watching old race videos searching for a lost fraction of a second, and foolishly flouts track regulations out of sheer petulance. Every second he's on screen is a small joy. The other riders are equally fixated to the point of obsession too: a veteran champion in his golden Winnebago trying for one last trophy, a quietly-spoken local Manx tryer hoping to delight his hometown fans, and the compulsive Steve Davis-like figure of a would-be King of the Mountain, pumping iron in his gym in case it gives him the slightest edge.

The 3D camerawork is exciting, without being intrusive or overplayed - it perfectly illustrates the brutal yet somehow graceful kineticism of low-to-the-road racing. The slow-motion flight of a 1000cc superbike over one of the TT's many bumpy village roads is both exhilarating and strangely terrifying to watch, because in every feat of superhuman control there lurks the smallest possibility of terrible disaster. One wheel wobble and it's all over. (In a cruel but apt piece of irony, the race grandstand looks out onto a packed local cemetery, close at hand for those who require its services). One brief segment of only a few seconds sums up the visual power of TT3D - a swooping helicopter shot follows a pack of racers throwing themselves into the tightest of hairpin bends on a steep hillside spur, then follows them for a moment until they're lost around the next hair-raising bend.

And this is no glossed-over story, despite the rather incongruous narrative by the American actor Jared Leto. Riders are injured, and yes, some even lose their lives. The carnage is astonishing, but it's handled sensitively, and those who survive are allowed to tell their story before the truly terrifying crashes are shown to the viewers. One can only wonder at their fortitude, or perhaps at their inability to see death staring them in the face.

I've never ridden on a motorbike, and perhaps I never will. It looks pretty dangerous to me. But being in the cinematic company of people insane enough to race these machines and run the very real risk of falling off them at 170mph on an uneven road, going around a tight corner hemmed in by drystone walls? That's a rare pleasure. TT3D is a must-see documentary for anyone who appreciates an exciting story peppered with tremendous imagery and fascinating, yet somewhat mental, characters.

TT 2010 summary (spoilers, naturally - don't read until you've watched the film!)

TT3D trailer:

Auckland's new old art gallery

2011-09-07T11:30:00.002+01:00

The new wing, Auckland Art Gallery

On Saturday I ventured into downtown Auckland on the train from Onehunga to pay a visit to the refurbished Auckland Art Gallery after its three year closure. While a small part of me resents the loss of the fountain in the exterior courtyard that so fascinated me as a child, the extra space and the $120m new extension to the Victorian building is undoubtedly impressive. It was also pleasing to see so many Aucklanders visiting the gallery on its first day - possibly the busiest day in the gallery's history?

The new spaces are strikingly modern and upmarket, but the interior contrast between new and old is not jarring. From the outside the shift from stonemasonry to ultra-modern might be problematic, but realistically there isn't much of a vantage point to view the whole structure, because the building stretches along the narrow Kitchener Street.

The original gallery building

Three new art installations impressed me on my first visit: Choi Jeong Hwa's Flower Chandelier and Red, and Jeppe Hein's Long Modified Bench Auckland. These definitely have the potential to become attractions in their own right, and it's only a pity that a delightful work like Flower Chandelier will only be on display in the gallery for a year. I expect its constantly inflating and deflating petals will need patching up after a full year of display.

'Flower Chandelier'

'Red'

'Long Modified Bench Auckland'

Exterior roof detail

As for the conventional art collections, the building displays a surprisingly impressive range of overseas and New Zealand material. Julian and Josie Robertson's magnanimous Promised Gift collection, which includes a sumptuous range of Picassos and other greats, will form the backbone of the expanding overseas collection and enable the gallery to attract a superior range of visiting exhibitions in future. But there's also an eye-opening range of European art that rivals many of the smaller galleries of Europe, including a splendid village scene by Brueghel and plenty of Raphael engravings. Sure, there's also a pretentious conceptual art space upstairs too, but it's not excessive.

The refurbished Art Gallery will boost Auckland's status as a city that respects culture, and will act as a popular tourist attraction too. I will definitely be paying another visit to its collections the next time I'm up in Auckland, because there's still plenty more to see. It's heartening to think that Auckland finally has an art gallery that can be considered world class.

World Press Photo 2011

2011-08-31T10:44:00.000+01:00

On Sunday I attended the World Press Photo 2011 exhibition at the Academy Galleries on Queen's Wharf. For a $5 entry fee happy photography devotees were able to sample some of the best photo reportage from around the world in the past year.

The winning entry was South African photographer Jodie Bieber's portrait of Afghan teenager Bibi Aisha, who was cruelly disfigured when she fled an abusive husband in an arranged marriage - her nose and ears were sliced off. Despite this, she seems confident having her picture taken. The exhibition notes that Bibi later went to the US for free reconstructive surgery, which is a relief, but it makes you wonder how many other women suffer such cruelty and don't receive the same aid. (She also appeared on the cover of Time magazine).

The subject matter of World Press Photo exhibitions is typically broad but often bleak in outlook - ours is, after all, a world of great riches juxtaposed with great suffering and inequality. There are often images that shock and challenge exhibition audiences, like the famous pictures of the unfortunate victims of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center. Death always features in some form, and viewing it can often be difficult. But that's a small price to pay for those of us who live sheltered, relatively privileged existences, to remind us that most of the world has it much tougher than we do.

My top five images from the exhibition avoid the jarring shocks in favour of gentler fare. Well, mostly. I'll err on the side of caution and not include the images themselves, for copyright reasons.

5. Gustavo Cuevas - Matador Gored

And I probably would've excluded this action shot from the traditional Spanish 'sport' of bullfighting anyway, in which the bull's horn pierces matador Julio Aparicio's chin and emerges from his mouth! Grisly, certainly, but the man made a full recovery. The same probably can't be said for the bull.

4. Joost van den Broek - Sailors

My friends and I saw a gang of Russian naval cadets swarming over the steps of a cathedral in Helsinki a couple of years ago, and while they were dressed identically to this fellow, they lacked the pale, translucent symmetry of this clear-eyed youth.

3. Vincent Yu - Kim & Kim

From a North Korean official event, this shot of the decrepit dictator Kim Jong-il staring mournfully at his portly son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-un, is a great mini-drama.

2. Corentin Fohlen - The Red Shirts' Last Stand

Bearing the hallmarks of a classic revolutionary Soviet poster, this striking image of a Thai anti-government protester drawing his slingshot back to fire benefits from strong diagonals in the sling and the roof line of the building behind. Classic reportage photography.

1. Thomas Peschak - Cape Gannet

Plainly an arresting image, Peschak's picture of a determined Cape Gannet looming to fill the entire frame succeeds because the viewer is instantly transported to the scene (and feels like cowering from the impending photographer / avian collision) but also ponders just how Peschak managed to secure such a clear, focused image of a bird flying at speed directly towards the camera lens.

The World Press Photo 2011 exhibition runs at the Academy Galleries until Tuesday 6 September.

The oldest building in New Zealand

2011-08-29T11:46:00.000+01:00

The Mission House at Kerikeri

On my most recent visit to the north of the North Island in 2009 my father and I stayed in the Bay of Islands, which enabled us to revisit many of the historic sites in the area. One of my favourites was the Mission House at Kerikeri, pictured above. The last time I'd been to the Bay of Islands was when I was a teenager, and I didn't know much of the history of the region, and while I can remember being impressed with the Georgian solidity of the neighbouring Stone Store (1832-36), I didn't notice at the time that the unassuming white-painted timber dwelling next door was actually even older.

This building, the Mission House, was built in 1821 and 1822 for Rev John Gare Butler by the Church Missionary Society. The location was endorsed by Rev Samuel Marsden, who is reputed to have held the first Christian ceremony on New Zealand soil some years earlier. In August 1819 Marsden wrote in his diary about the site that he'd chosen for the Mission House:

On the whole the survey we had taken were perfectly satisfied that a more suitable situation cannot be found in any of the adjacent districts of the Bay of Islands. There is a fine fall of water close to the place where we intend the new town to stand for a corn mill, saw mill or any other purpose, without the risk of expense of making a dam, which is a valuable consideration. At Kiddee Kiddee [Kerikeri] any amount of grain, etc., may be grown that the settlement may want for years to come, either for victualling the native children in the schools or Europeans belonging to the missions.

Butler wrote to his colleague Rev Josiah Pratt a few months later in November 1819, after spending three months in the Bay of Islands, outlining his enthusiasm for the area and its potential for missionary work:

I have made it my business, as far as I have been able, to visit all the inhabitants around the Bay of Islands, and have everywhere been received with the greatest kindness imaginable; and the natives are everywhere begging and praying for Europeans to come and live among them, and their solicitations are beyond anything you can conceive. The prospects are indeed glorious, and I am fully persuaded that New Zealand is ripe for all the instruction and improvement that a Christian world is able to bestow.

But while the initial expectations of the CMS churchmen were high, the Mission House did not remain a centre of religious endeavour. At around the time of the construction of the Stone Store the Mission House became the home of the CMS blacksmith, James Kemp, and his wife Charlotte. The mission ended in 1848 and the Kemps remained as storekeepers and operated a kauri gum trading business, and the house remained in the Kemp family until it was passed to the NZ Historic Places Trust in 1974.

The Mission House, also known as the Kemp House, has been considerably modified from its original small dimensions, with additional rooms added including a separate kitchen. You can gain a good insight into its rustic simplicity in these panorama views: lots of rough-hewn timber is on display. But its basic amenities cannot obscure the fact that the house is particularly significant for New Zealand architecture as a whole. Architect Jeremy Salmond summed up his view of the house's importance in 2007:

The mission house is remarkable, simply because it still exists. It is no less remarkable because it represents, in its architectural character and form, the epitome of domestic colonial building in this country. While its precedents were British by virtue of the backgrounds and frames of reference of its creators and builders, the mission house immediately became an exemplar for early settler housing in New Zealand. In this sense, it is an extension of a long tradition of design and construction throughout the United Kingdom, with local variation according to materials and trade practice, which contributed to that country's picturesque rural character. This tradition continued in New Zealand, adapted to the material most readily available - timber - and to the climactic demands of this country. That the work was carried out by both missionary carpenters and Maori sawyers is also a commentary on the process of European settlement in New Zealand. The quality of construction is regarded as being significantly better than other buildings erected for members of the mission, and may partly explain why it is still standing.

- Jeremy Salmond, 'The Mission House, Kerikeri: An Architectural Appreciation', in Judith Binney (ed.), Te Kerikeri 1770-1850: The Meeting Pool, Wellington, 2007.

Entry to the Mission House is by guided tour only.

Oldest buildings around the world:

Australia: Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, 1793
South Africa: Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town, 1666-79
Canada: Maison des Jesuits-de-Sillery / Maison Puiseaux, Quebec City, 1637

A sunny day over Taranaki

2011-08-27T05:46:00.000+01:00

Highlights of an Auckland to Wellington Air New Zealand flight last Saturday 20 August, which passed over a sunny and clear-skied winter landscape in Taranaki.

New Plymouth

Taranaki

Telecom still doesn’t get it

2011-08-18T23:18:00.001+01:00

Thankfully the foolish and ill-thought-out Telecom / Saatchi “Abstain for the Game” rugby world cup advertising campaign has been ditched after just one day of maximum coverage before its intended launch. Clips of the advert, featuring former All Blacks captain Sean Fitzpatrick intoning his lines in a stilted drone whilst driving a dodgem car shaped like a pink fist (subtle…), appeared as the lead item on both TV1 and TV3’s post-news magazine programmes this week, and were heavily discussed in most other media forums. It became the lead story of the day, such was its valuable blend of corporate incompetence and car-crash television. Clearly this big splash was part of the orchestrated launch plan for the campaign, and it achieved the desired blanket coverage immediately. This exposure was a given, knowing the editorial priorities of commercial news producers, who will leap on just about anything with a sexual angle.

But the immediate and overwhelmingly negative media and public reaction was a surprise to Telecom and its ad gurus, who were operating in their own little bubble of hype. Sure, fellow advertising industry representatives are hardly impartial when judging a competitor’s work, but they had a point when they observed that “Abstain for the Game” was a lousy idea from the beginning. (Media reporter John Drinnan wonders if it’s a similar campaign to that pitched to Toohey’s beer in Australia but rejected by that more sensible company). Corporate apologists for the campaign adopted the line that “it’s only a bit of fun”. This would make more sense if the snippets of advertising broadcast on TV1 and TV3 actually depicted anything amusing or entertaining. Instead, it looked like a standard example of an ad firm trying to generate hype for a “so bad it’s good” viral campaign, like Air New Zealand’s almost equally ill-judged “Rico” campaign that is so loathed by the airline’s proud staff. And seriously: a Trojan horse as a sly reference to American, i.e. not sold in New Zealand, condoms? Had they been re-watching Porkies?

There’s only so much nonsense rugby fans will put up with willingly. The problem surrounding an attempt to manipulate the public and the media into promoting a company’s branded campaign to support a national rugby team is that the All Blacks require no such hype to perform well. It is telling that no current All Blacks player or management member would be seen within a mile of the campaign – they recognised a dog when they saw it. This was all about branding Telecom as a nationalistic supporter of the All Blacks, one of the country’s strongest marketing brands (and sometimes a quite good rugby side too). But there is already more than enough hype around the All Blacks, thanks to the NZRFU’s unstinting keenness for media exposure and its attempts to cement commercial rugby as New Zealand’s profit-generating state religion.

Telecom is by its very nature a conservative firm, rooted in its history as a state provider and in recent decades the orchestrator of a largely monolithic pseudo-monopoly in key aspects of the telecommunications market. As such it struggles with its public profile, seeking to appear as cutting edge but hamstrung by its revenue base as a fixed-line provider and its legal obligation to provide Kiwishare free local calling. Telecom is the big company New Zealanders love to complain about, in part because they used to own it and its performance as a private enterprise has failed to live up to expectations. Which in part explains the negative reaction to the Abstain advertising teasers. New Zealanders have no difficulty supporting the All Blacks. Rugby fans buy the replica gear (although not if it’s ridiculously expensive), shell out surprisingly large sums to watch the games on TV on the Sky pay-TV monopoly, and generally dominate tea-room conversations up and down the country. Even rugby agnostics will know many a rugby fan, and acknowledge how important the game is to them. The point of all that is: New Zealanders don’t need a faux-clever ad company and a faceless corporate giant telling them how to support their national side. They’re quite happy doing that (and, presumably, doing “it”) the way they’ve always done it. And preferably with the bare minimum of pointless and, more importantly, un-Kiwi hype.

In dumping the campaign Telecom have made the right decision: things could only get worse if they persisted with the advertising. But the statement by Telecom’s head of retail Allan Gourdie indicated that the company still hasn’t made the right connections. Gourdie said ‘We caused offence to some people and for that we apologise’. That completely misses the point. No-one in their right mind could seriously be offended by such a feeble attempt at humour. It wasn’t crude or objectionable due to its sexual content, although I did see the point when some parents quibbled that they didn’t like having to explain to their children what abstinence was. (There are far worse things on pre-watershed TV than the word abstinence, I would’ve thought – Mark Sainsbury’s moustache and Duncan Garner’s personality, for example). The reason people complained so uniformly about the campaign was because it was just a really moronic idea, which by implication sheds light on Telecom and Saatchi’s low opinion of New Zealanders and their sense of humour. Sure, it’s hard to make innovative ads for rugby audiences, because it’s supposedly a notoriously conservative bunch, and this probably explains some of the more Neanderthal offerings in the past. But making good advertisements is an ad firm’s job, and approving good advertisements is a successful business board’s job, both of which probably attract very healthy salaries.

In one small way I feel relieved. Cancelling the ads before they run is the best possible outcome for Sean Fitzpatrick. He seems like a nice guy, but in this campaign he appeared completely out of his depth in a would-be comedic role. So now the campaign’s been cancelled after just one day of hype he gets the best of both worlds: the bare minimum of lingering shame for the association with the advert, which will die down quickly as it’s eclipsed by the world cup; and, even better, he gets to keep the money!

RNZ TV

2011-08-07T12:24:00.000+01:00

Friday's reports that Radio New Zealand might be used as the basis of a low-cost public service broadcasting television once TVNZ7's funding expires in 2012 will have been of particular interest to proponents of public service broadcasting in New Zealand. On one hand, it seems to make perfect sense to build a public service provider from the one vestige of such broadcasting remaining in the country: RNZ consistently broadcasts intelligent niche programmes that would be unlikely to survive on commercial broadcasters. Indeed, when the Government was initially considering the future of TVNZ7, a proposal to merge TVNZ7 with Radio New Zealand National and Concert to build a one-stop public service network was put forward. When this approach was not supported, and when funding for TVNZ7 was axed, things looked particularly dire for the future of non-commercial programming in New Zealand.

This new proposal, while still seemingly at the very early stages of development, holds a certain promise. Ideally the rebirth of a mass audience public service television network should have started in TVNZ's free-to-air channels, but the importance of the dividend return and the chase for ever-larger advertising slot fees has meant that TV1 and TV2 have concentrated solely on delivering audiences to advertisers, rather than the cultural and intellectual wellbeing of New Zealanders. But if TVNZ7 is not to be the ongoing bastion of public service television, then certainly a system fostered by the Radio New Zealand model of high journalistic standards and broadcasting programmes based on their merit, not necessarily on their mass appeal, is one to be investigated.

There are dangers in the practicalities. Radio New Zealand is a small but important national treasure; it knits together disparate communities in a way that commercial channels are unable to. It supports excellent in-depth journalism. Its interviews are of a consistently high quality. And it acts as a country-wide radio 'journal of record' in a nation with a long history of national broadcasting. But RNZ's long-term funding squeeze has for many years placed the organisation in the position of operating on a shoestring budget. It's particularly hard to retain good staff when they're lowly paid in the highly competitive media environment.

In addition, adding television to RNZ's remit may run the risk of spreading the resources of the organisation too thinly: it's not simply a case of making a TV show with radio personnel and simply broadcasting the audio aspect of the programme on the radio. The worst-case scenario of a badly-managed model would see the baby thrown out of the bathwater - a hybrid organisation that does neither television nor radio well. And one wonders what the employees of TVNZ7 make of this proposal - certainly, its $15m annual budget does seem quite steep, but it has many programmes that would fit right into the remit of a RNZ-based station. Will the best of TVNZ7's local programmes end up on RNZ-TV, or will everyone have to start from scratch?

But I am cautiously optimistic that some good may come of this proposal. At least it acknowledges the value of a dedicated public service organisation in an almost wholly commercialised environment in which the New Zealand national identity is seldom reflected.

Film Festival 2011 roundup

2011-07-30T23:05:00.004+01:00

It’s been a truncated film festival for me this year. Due to financial constraints and the challenges of flitting between Auckland and Wellington, I’ve only managed to see a handful of films. But it’s been a real treat to see most of them at the mighty Civic in Queen Street. I only visited this venerable institution infrequently when I was a child, but it made a strong impression on me then, as it still must do to young people today. The pair of golden lions flanking the stage, with their red unblinking eyes; the Queen’s box, so tantalisingly close to the performance space; and the brilliant artistry of the starry-skied ceiling, which dims to a rich, deep blue as the film begins and ripples with lights to simulate passing night clouds, scudding over the Oriental splendour of the onion-domed towers. The Civic must surely be one of the world’s great vintage cinemas. To think only a few decades ago the vandals of the Auckland property development class were desperate to raze it and erect some glaring new monstrosity in its place!

~~Five~~ ~~Six~~ Seven films – not many, but they were good ones.

Mysteries of Lisbon (trailer)
It's rare to find a film these days that justifies an intermission, but this four and a half hour Portuguese historical epic certainly does. It tells a myriad of intertwined stories of 19th century Portuguese life amongst the nobility, with detours in place and time to Venice and revolutionary France. Sticklers might find the emphasis on patient story-telling and gradual reveals frustrating, but personally I relished the chance for the various characters' stories to stretch out and breathe; indeed it became something of a running joke for characters to utter lines like "let me tell you my story right from the beginning". Replete with multiple identities, honour-staked duels, unknown legacies, wronged noblewomen, vengeful suitors, quixotic adventurers and dozens of cast members, Mysteries of Lisbon sprawls most enjoyably on the big screen, and rewards viewers who appreciate cinema on the grand scale. My only complaint pertained to the slightly melodramatic score, which occasionally swelled to intrusive proportions.

13 Assassins (trailer)
There are a few tastes of Takeshi Miike's panache for visceral gore at the start of his samurai epic, 13 Assassins. Evidence of monumental cruelty, the grisly deaths of captives, plus a couple of unflinching ritual suicides all serve to underline the rather obvious point that the Caligula-esque lord who is the target of the film's assassination plot thoroughly deserves everything thrown at him by the titular heroes. After that initial burst of ultra-violence the film is much less unsettling and quickly becomes engrossing, as the hugely outnumbered but plucky team assembles and plans its raid. There are refreshing touches of gruff samurai humour along the way, and the climactic ambush at a deserted mountain village is an extended masterclass of action filmmaking, with jaw-dropping battle scenes and a fittingly thrilling conclusion.

Submarine (trailer)
This utterly charming novel adaptation by first time director Richard Ayoade (who plays the socially challenged Moss in The IT Crowd sitcom) absolutely nails the misfit awkwardness of teenage romance in a hilarious and refreshingly unsentimental black comedy. The casting is perfect, with the young duo winningly portraying teen weirdos experimenting with A Proper Relationship (preferably with no hugging), and the comedic foils of the grown-up actors lavishing every scene with wry humour. Sally Hawkins is as sparky as ever as Oliver's uptight mum; Noah Taylor gives an quality portrayal of his hollowed-out, nerdy dad; and Paddy Considine is laugh-out-loud funny as the spiky-mulleted new age mystic who threatens to break up the family by stealing Oliver's mum away. Oliver's school friends are also reliably entertaining, offering consistently awful personal advice to the sensitive, clueless youth. With its grimy, handheld shots of a grey-skied Welsh industrial town and its deft soundtrack by Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, and with too many brilliant moments of bleak comedy to count, Submarine is without a doubt my film of 2011 to date.

The Mill and The Cross (trailer)
This Polish film is something of a curiosity, adding as it does to the increasing number of films about famous paintings. (I recently saw Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching, with Martin Freeman as Rembrandt). In this case, it takes the viewer into the Flemish master Pieter Brueghel the Elder's 'The Way to Calvary', a crucifixion scene in a fantasy landscape populated by a multitude of contemporary Flemings and their then Spanish overlords. The real joy in the film lies in the simple recreation of everyday life of the various characters in the grand painting. The awe-inspiring wooden workings of the mill, a crowd of rambunctious and misbehaving children, stubborn farmyard animals, and peasants courting and fighting - all this is expertly realised. There's a decent cast too - Rutger Hauer is suitable contemplative as Brueghel, while Michael York and Charlotte Rampling appear as Brueghel's noble patron and a mother of a religious martyr, respectively. But given that the theme of the painting and of the film is the unflinching depiction of the effects of religious intolerance - in this case, that of the Catholic Spanish for their subject Flemings - The Mill & The Cross is hardly light viewing. A grim tone sets in as heretics are persecuted, and one wonders how well it went down in the director's native Poland, where Catholicism is still strong. Still, the one magic moment in which Brueghel raises his hand and the entire crowd scene halts, including the mighty sails of the mill, is an impressive compensation for viewing implacable inhumanity in the name of religious uniformity. Special mention must also go to the New Zealand cloudscapes, which were listed in the end credits. What, Poland doesn't have clouds that are suitably dramatic?

Page One: Inside the New York Times (trailer)
Print media junkies will enjoy the chance to peek behind the scenes at the venerable New York Times. The documentary offers an intriguing glimpse at the practicalities of responding to the major stories of the day, and in particular the Wikileaks-related material that dominated the headlines when the film was being made. The plight of traditional print media in an era of rapidly declining advertising revenue and burgeoning competition from online rivals with lower cost structures is a predominant theme, and it's by no means certain if the NYT can survive, even if its demise would be a tragedy for serious news reporting. Ultimately, Page One doesn't provide any answers to this looming problem. Rather, it offers up a snapshot view of the business of modern news-gathering, perhaps as it nears the end of its lifetime. The film certainly shines when telling the story of its gravel-voiced narrator, the formerly hard-living David Carr, who is awash with pithy quotes and if given a trilby and a Remington manual typewriter would fit right into any of the newsroom scenes in His Girl Friday.

How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster? (trailer)
This film is a love story to one man's vision of architecture, and while I agree that Sir Norman Foster has produced brilliant and innovative buildings that will stand the test of time, surely a depiction of a career of such stature could have benefited from at least a few critical voices. He failed to win a few tenders - why? Has he made any duds in his long career? Is he a good employer? These are the sorts of questions a film like this should ask, to avoid being labelled a hagiography. And ultimately viewers don't learn an awful lot from the Foster interviews peppering the film, aside from the fact that he's very creative, very driven and seemingly rather nice. But despite this, it's still a fascinating film, and it's at its very best when gliding, swooping and tracking through Foster's dream buildings that adorn some of the world's greatest cities, because these are indisputably impressive works of art.

Le Havre (trailer)
The story of the down-on-his-luck shoe-shine man, his hospitalised wife, and the runaway West African migrant boy is certainly charming, and the community spirit that sees the working-class locals rally around to help the boy evade capture by the police is appealing. A whimsical French fantasy from Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, Le Havre is boosted by moments of playful humour, such as a lovely scene in which a dastardly police inspector surveys a suspicious bar-room whilst brandishing a freshly-bought pineapple. However, many of the scenes are rather implausible and the staging is occasionally stilted and unnaturalistic.

Campbell Island and the transit of Venus

2011-07-24T23:07:00.003+01:00

Perseverance Harbour from coast watchers' cave, Campbell Island, 1955 or 1956. Photo: Philip George Poppleton, via National Library / Alexander Turnbull Library.

The transit of Venus

On a cloudy early summer’s day in December 1874 a major scientific expedition to the sub-Antarctic waters of the South Pacific ended in ignominious failure. The lengthy preparations, the cost of mounting the expedition, months of sailing time to the sub-Antarctic seas, and the expectations of the expedition crew were all dashed by the intransigence of the notorious Campbell Island weather. Ian S. Kerr, in his comprehensive 1976 survey, Campbell Island: A history, explains just how much effort was put in to ensure everything was ‘just right’ for the observation of the transit of Venus, in a preliminary visit by the French naval vessel, the Vire:

The rest of September [1874] was occupied in unloading the Vire, building the camp, and even a stone jetty some 20 metres out into the bay. The buildings, including most of the housings for the scientific equipment, were prefabricated, and consisted of the main living quarters, 12 m by 5 m; kitchen, 3 m by 2 m; workshop and forge; darkroom; a small storeroom and housings for the transit telescopes, magnetic equipment, chronometers and tide gauge. There was even a pigsty and sheep-pen. Unfortunately some of the equipment had been damaged in transit but the technicians were able to repair most of it. [p.39]

The transit of Venus was worth all that effort, because accurate measurements of the hugely rare event allowed mathematicians to calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The 1874 transit was also important because of the long interval since the last occurrence. Venusian transits, in which the planet crosses the face of the Sun and is visible from parts of the Earth’s surface, are according to Wikipedia, ‘among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years’. The 1874 transit was the next step in a process of scientific discovery that had been closely identified with James Cook’s first South Pacific journey in 1769, when he observed the transit from Hawaii. By the time of the next transit in December 1882 the distances involved could be confidently stated; by the time the next one finally rolled around in 2004 the event was more of a historical curiosity than a scientific imperative.

German author Judith Schalansky sets the scene on Campbell Island on the day of the transit:

On 8 December 1874 the sky clouds over; that night the weather is unsettled and it is misty. There is a 60 per cent likelihood of being able to view the start of the transit of Venus here, and a 30 per cent chance of seeing the end: so Captain Jacquemart calculated when he spent nearly the whole of the previous December on the island. Based on his findings, the Academie des Sciences decided to send an expedition here to view the transit. Sponsored by the government, the expensively equipped party leaves Marseille on 21 June, led by Anatole Bouquet de la Grye of the naval Hydrographic Office. When Campbell Island finally appears out of the mist on 9 September, the men's first impression is of a sad place: a barren, treeless land with a plateau of straggly yellow bushes in the north and oddly shaped peaks in the south; the fjord of Perseverance Harbour in the middle. On the morning of 9 December, the wind blows from the north-west, bringing scattered showers until ten o'clock. The sky remains a solid grey until the warmth of the sun lightens the mist a little and its white disc finally appears behind the thick veil. Five minutes before Venus is to make its transit, the wind dies down. Bouquet de la Grye peeps through the eyepiece of the telescope at noon and cheers when he sees a dark patch at the edge of the sun: faint and jagged. It is Venus. Then a great cloud hides this rare event for more than a quarter of an hour. When it is gone, Venus is already covering half the sun. The outline of the planet is now quite distinct, entirely free of refraction of light or a halo. But this moment of clarity lasts no more than twenty seconds. Then it is all over. Banks of fog roll in, making it impossible to see the sun again. When it clears hours later, Venus has long since disappeared into the sky.

-Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands ('Fifty Islands I have not visited and never will'), Hamburg, 2009 (English translation 2010).

Half a year from departure to the day of the transit: half a year and many francs wasted, and still a long journey home ahead of the vessel and its disappointed crew.

Undoubtedly dejected, Captain Jacquemart and his shipmates in the Vire returned with the scientific party to the port of Dunedin to recuperate and resupply before their journey back to their home port in New Caledonia. The Otago Daily Times of 31 December 1874, the day after the ship arrived in port, relates the tale:

The FRWSS Vire, Captain Jacquemart, has returned once more to her old quarters, and brings with her the observation party that had been established at Campbell Island, to watch the transit of Venus. We were sorry to hear that, as was the case nearly throughout New Zealand, the weather at Campbell Island on the memorable 9th was decidedly hostile to the observers. At the early part of the day the sun shone fitfully, but as noon approached he became obscured by clouds and thick mist, and during the remainder of the day shewed but once, and that for a few seconds only, just as Venus had crossed the edge of his disc inwards. One distance was then taken, but of the remainder of the transit nothing was seen. The Vire remained at Campbell Island until the 27th, then left with the intention of calling at the Auckland Islands, but strong N.W. weather coming on, the idea was abandoned, and she made straight for this port and arrived yesterday morning. She will remain here until after the New Year a week or so.

Despite the disappointment, Ian Kerr believed that the Vire expedition did make a valuable contribution to better understanding of Campbell Island itself:

The time at Campbell was not wasted however, for the expedition, as we have seen, was well equipped to carry out general scientific work. M. Filhol published a comprehensive account of his studies which, he said, were directed to finding alliances between New Zealand and Campbell Island fauna to suggest the greater extent of New Zealand in former times. His final conclusion seems to have been that Campbell Island had never been connected to a continental mass […]

[In] Filhol’s account we find an interesting description of his first impressions and experiences on landing. The low vegetation covering the ground was at first delightfully soft to the feet. Moss yellowed all the old branches of the scrub and twined round the young shoots. It seemed, to start with, that one could stride over the ground with ease, but soon one was hindered by the network of stems and roots, then moss clung to the boots, and, after a few paces, one had to sit down and rest. Even sitting down soon became uncomfortable because, in spite of the steepness of the slope, the vegetation held a great quantity of water.

The drawings and illustrations in Filhol’s report included a map of Campbell Island which resulted from a survey by the naval officers. This chart has been the basis of all subsequent British Admiralty charts of the island. [p.40-1]

Campbell Island

The 112 square kilometres of Campbell Island are a bleak and remote afterthought of New Zealand’s territorial claims. At 52 degrees 32 minutes South it is 500 kilometres to the south of Stewart Island. At the same latitude in the northern hemisphere lie the temperate European cities of Amsterdam and Berlin, but Campbell Island’s climate is drastically different: it is assailed by constant rain, seldom sees the sun and is regularly lashed by foul winds unimpeded by any land mass. The island was unpopulated and unvisited before its discovery in January 1810 by the Sydney sealer Frederick Hasselborough – obviously a sensible captain in at least some respects, because his was a summertime visit. The island was named in honour of Campbell & Co., the Sydney owners of the vessel Hasselborough sailed in, and the island’s largest inlet, the 5 kilometre-long fissure in the former volcanic cone, is named Perseverance Harbour in honour of the brig.

The discovery coincided with the uncontrolled exploitation inflicted on New Zealand seal colonies by European sealers, which by about 1810 were severely depleted. Sealers swiftly moved on to hunt remaining colonies in the far south, basing themselves on Campbell Island and the similarly isolated and bleak Macquarie Island, to harvest skins for wealthy markets.

Hasselborough’s discovery of Campbell Island also marked out the island as a dangerous place. For generations in early New Zealand drowning was known as ‘the New Zealand death’ – it was so prevalent – and Campbell was no different. In November 1810 Hasselborough and two others including a woman said to be of Norfolk Island origin, Elizabeth Farr, drowned when a small boat capsized in the harbour. The captain was said to be encumbered when he entered the bitterly cold water, which proved to be deadly:

The weather being somewhat cold, Mr Hasselbourgh had very heavily cloathed himself, and wore a thick Flushing boat cloak, together with a pair of strong high water-boots, the weight of which must have baffled every personal exertion when necessary to his preservation. [Sydney Gazette, 12 January 1811, quoted in Kerr, p.13]

Aside from scientific expeditions, sealing and whaling off and on during the 19th century, from 1896 until 1931 Campbell Island was a rather marginal sheep station, which often struggled to break even. During World War II the island housed a coast-watching and meteorological station. While no German or Japanese vessels were sighted during the war, the weather station proved particularly useful, and was later augmented by a wide range of scientific equipment, including apparatus to experiment with the ionosphere. One noteworthy event at the station was in January 1965, at the height of the Cold War, when Perseverance Harbour was visited by the Soviet ‘marine research ship’ Gnevny. The station personnel, still presumably all male, were particularly enchanted by the presence of the wife of the ship’s chief scientist, Dr Solyanik; Svetlana Solyanik was particularly beautiful and a former Russian movie star. In later years it became clear that the Soviet Union’s interest in the deep southern waters was far from scientific: rather, Soviet ships were pillaging many thousands of whales every year in complete disregard for international conservation agreements. Researchers Phil Clapham and Yulia Ivashchenko note in a Marine Fisheries Review paper that ‘the Soviet Union had been plundering the world’s whale populations with abandon since 1947. By the time that the illegal catches finally ended in 1973, the Soviets had killed probably over 200,000 more whales than they had officially reported’.

The manned weather station remained open until 1995, when it was replaced by an automatic station. The island is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and is now only visited sporadically by research and conservation teams.

See also:

50 Degrees South – Videos: Weather report 10.12.10 / Storm 18.01.11

The wave on the shore, and the sun on the height

2011-07-20T00:45:00.007+01:00

Exploring Mull, Iona and Oban in the west of Scotland

Last month I was lucky enough to spend the best part of a week exploring the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, with friends. Fiona, who until recently lived in Edinburgh, was already planning to travel to Mull with her friend Hilary, and they both kindly invited me along for the trip, knowing that I was very keen to explore another part of Scotland and see the isles once more. My only other trip to the area was in 1997, when I relished the beautiful scenery on the Isle of Skye for two fantastic days. I was looking forward to a new Scottish adventure, particularly as we were staying in the much-admired fishing town of Tobermory, and because it would be possible to pay a visit to the historic sites on little Iona, an island with a rich heritage located just off the western coast of Mull.

Day 0:

The first logistical issue was how to get up to Edinburgh to join the others. Flying and the train were both rather pricey, and since speed wasn’t a particular concern I opted for a coach journey instead. This turned out to be something of a master stroke – the Megabus ticket for a nine and a half hour coach journey from London Victoria to Edinburgh was a mere £5.50 on an advance booking fare. It wasn’t the most scenic of voyages (the train has more pleasant views, if you’re heading that way yourself), and the two rest breaks were at the traditionally dispiriting and institutional British motorway services depots at Watford Gap and Scotch Corner. But I had my iPod and a book to read, and at that ticket price I was very pleased.

The only concern, apart from the strange fondness of Scottish planners for single-lane highways with no overtaking bays to pass the seemingly endless queues of slow-moving lorries, was the invariably unpredictable Scottish weather. On the journey north the skies were grey and the temperature dial hovered around 12 degrees. Would this be a Scottish summer holiday trip without the all-important sunshine?

Day 1:

George Square, Glasgow

After catching up with Fiona and meeting travelling companion Hilary for the first time, we had a leisurely start to our journey. We made our way to Edinburgh Waverley station in the heart of the city for the first step of the journey: one of the multitude of trains that ferries passengers between the rival cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. I had a brief ten minute window before our next train to explore George Square next to Glasgow Queen Street station, and made a point of fitting in a Gregg’s cheese and onion pasty from a nearby shop (just like Marilyn Manson). Sure, it’s not authentic Glasgow cuisine like a deep-fried Mars bar or a Munchy Box, but it was certainly deliciously bad for me and it was one of the British culinary treats I was soon to leave behind.

Kilchurn Castle

The two-coach service along the West Highland line to Oban soon departed Glasgow and made its way north out of the city through the grey tower-block suburbs. The journey was to take over three hours, and during the northward run it ran beside chilly grey lochs, huge forestry reserves, and jagged granite peaks, punctuated with stops at increasingly smaller intermediate stations with grand names like Garelochhead, Crianlarich and Falls of Cruachan. Fiona perused her novel while Hilary and I scanned each side of the track for suitable photo opportunities. Every now and then a bird of prey swooped past the train, on the lookout for stray rabbits or mice in the fields. The scenic highlight of the journey was probably the ruins of Kilchurn Castle at the head of Loch Awe, which the West Highland line takes a broad circuit around, affording an impressive view of its crumbling battlements and gaping, glassless windows.

By the time we rolled into the pretty port of Oban, located on a sheltered portion of the Firth of Lorn, the gloomy grey clouds had been dispelled in favour of shining blue skies. We lugged our bags around the crescent harbour to our respective hostels. I had booked afterwards so was staying separately in Corran House, a tidy, worthwhile waterfront ex-B&B by the look of it. Then we met up to get our bearings.

Oban waterfront

After exploring the waterfront we continued northwards along the coast a short way to climb up to the ruins of Dunollie Castle, which sit in ivy-covered splendour on a headland guarding the harbour. Indeed, such was the growth of the vines over the castle keep, it seemed that the vegetation was probably doing a great deal of work to hold the stonework upright.

Dunollie Castle

As the daylight ebbed away we returned to the centre of Oban and hiked up the steep hill overlooking the town to the prominent McCaig’s Tower, a concrete Victorian folly in the form of the Colosseum which was originally intended to serve as a family memorial. Now it’s a grand memento of an eccentric local benefactor, with superb views over the whole town.

McCaig's Tower, Oban

We rounded off our day with a slap-up meal that Enid Blyton would probably have envied (unless it was too working class): golden haddock and chips from the Oban Fish & Chip Shop on George Street, which has received glowing praise from celebrity chef Rick Stein (they quote him as saying it’s the best fish and chips he’s ever had). I have to admit, as we sat at the harbour’s edge and enjoyed our meals while the low-lying sun crept closer to the placid, milky water, in a lifetime with a fairly large amount of fish and chip consumption I struggled to find an example to top Oban’s finest takeaways.

Day 2:

Duart Castle, on the approach to Mull

We spent the morning loafing about in Oban and stocking up on a few supplies for the trip out to the island. We also paid a visit to the charming little Oban Museum, which was packed with local detail and some interesting background on the town’s role as a seaplane base during World War II. At around midday we departed on the ferry, heading westwards into the grey, flat sea, with Mull our final destination. The fine sight of Duart Castle loomed into view on the port bow (more on which later) and we edged into the pier at the tiny settlement of Craignure, the gateway to the island. We were finally ready to explore Mull.

Oh the Island of Mull is an isle of delight
With the wave on the shore, and the sun on the height
With the breeze on the hills and the blast on the Bens
And the old green woods, and the old grassy glens
- ‘The Island of Mull’, Dugald Macphail

The bus to our final destination, Tobermory, was awaiting the ferry, and we soon set off on the hour-long dash across the northern arm of the island. The journey took in plenty of rolling Hebridean farmland, passing derelict fishing boats stacked and leaning on the shore, and the tumbled-down ruins of Aros Castle on a headland overlooking the sound. Finally, after a long descent and a brief detour around the upper town, the bus delivered us to the harbourside of Tobermory, our base for the next few days. The broad curve of the harbour wall is lined with the same multi-coloured shops and houses that have delighted visitors for decades, and as we walked the length of the arc to our accommodation we savoured the sea air and the lively atmosphere. We were staying right on the harbour-front in the town’s YHA, which is housed in a jolly pink dwelling near the fishing wharf. Just beyond the wharf is the spot where a lost Spanish galleon is said to have sunk following the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Tobermory at dusk

On our first patrol of the environs we walked up the steep hill to the upper town, which afforded us splendid views over the harbour. On talking to a local nature photographer we also spied our first example of the local wildlife: a church spire afforded a graceful peregrine falcon an excellent vantage point from which to keep an eye on the pigeons fluttering around the town below. Later, down near the marina, we met the town’s one true celebrity: none other than Tobermory Cat, who has his own Facebook page and a loyal internet following. (There are actually two TCs, a pair of brothers, which helps them to patrol their turf. This basically includes the whole waterfront). There was clearly plenty of history and plenty of Mull to explore in the coming days.

Tobermory Cat

Peregrine falcon

Day 3:

Duart Castle

With a watchful eye on the island weather forecast, the next morning we boarded the speedy but rather expensive bus from Tobermory to Craignure. (I concede that the journey is 21 miles, so it’s not exactly short). Once there, another bus with a cheery driver took us the short journey westward to our destination: the proud edifice of Duart Castle, the ancestral home of Clan McLean. There’s been a castle here since at least the 13th century, and the current upright square keep dates from the 14th century. Its commanding position on the approach to Craignure allowed the castle to control an important channel and access to Mull, while making assault by land or sea difficult.

Our entry tickets were sold by a distinguished gentleman in a kilt – later I wondered if he was actually the laird. Alas, no photos were permitted inside, but the castle was an intriguing mix of medieval and early 20th century living, with strong touches of family history in every room. The grand hall was particularly impressive, with its grand piano, many-pointed deer heads, and photos from two of the most prominent movies to have been filmed at the castle: When Eight Bells Toll from 1971, featuring a young and clean-cut Anthony Hopkins, and 1989’s Entrapment, with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones. In the beautiful Sea Room the McLeans could keep an eye on the busy sealane in fair weather or foul, and the view from atop the castle battlements on this clear, calm day was quite stunning.

Before we departed we ventured down to the water’s edge to eat our lunch and admire the castle from the seaward flank. The crag on which it’s perched is still as impressive as when the castle was first built, and visitors can easily imagine how difficult it must have been for the McLeans’ enemies to attack. Indeed, nothing short of a heavy naval bombardment would likely have startled the castle inhabitants. Nowadays the main inhabitants of the grounds are plenty of nimble swallows, darting hither and yon in search of an insect meal.

Upon being dropped back in Craignure by the trusty bus driver, we promptly headed out of the hamlet again, this time to the nearby Torosay Castle. To reach it we walked along a pretty forest trail, getting as close as we could manage to a herd of Highland cattle, whose lavish brown fringes tickled their moist noses. Torosay isn’t open at the moment, but you can put in an offer if you feel like buying it to add to your castle collection. So the day we visited the main attraction was the journey back to Craignure on the Isle of Mull (miniature) Railway, a labour of love for the island’s rail fans. It’s a pleasant 15 minute journey along the shore and through dense woodlands back to Craignure on the tiny train, and it’s still an enjoyable treat even for grown-ups.

Highland cattle

Torosay Castle

Mull miniature railway

We made our way back to Tobermory – becoming old hands at the island’s buses, we were – and settled in for a quiet evening. Tobermory seemed to come alive once the last bus of the day departed, taking with it most of the daytrippers to the ferry. Down at the harbour, where the tide was far out in the bay, the fishermen scraped their hulls. Up in the town people popped into the Co-op for their supplies, and carted beer and snacks for an evening’s entertaining. We did the same, enjoying a meal around the kitchen table in the hostel, and then a few tunes from my iPod upstairs.

Day 4:

Our next day was spent in the vicinity of Tobermory, in part because the weather forecast was poor and we didn’t want to risk being trapped at large in a downpour. So we chose to don our hiking boots and explore some of the walking trails to the south of the town, in an area known as Aros Park. This used to be an imposing estate surrounding Aros House, owned by the Allen family, who made their money from the shipping trade. The Allens owned Aros from 1874 until 1959, but by the end of the family’s tenure at Aros the Forestry Commission had acquired the surrounding land, and soon the house itself was in a dangerous state of disrepair. Sadly, it was demolished by the Army in 1962, and now a carpark, several barbecues and a public lavatory occupy the site on which the grand dwelling once stood.

Fortunately there are numerous trails running through the forests surrounding the old manor house site, winding through forestry land and circling a calm lake replete with spreading lily pads. We took our time to admire the many waterfalls in the park, and in particular the highest one, which roars over a rocky cliff and can now be admired from a safe distance in a smartly-built modern viewing platform. Further from civilisation we encountered an eerie dell of ranked pines in which stood an abandoned stone three-room hut, hard up against a hillock that would have blocked both the easterly gales from the sea and the warmth of the morning sunlight. Here and there we saw red robins darting, and on rare occasions fellow humans. The promised downpour never turned up, but we were glad of the chance to see some of Mull’s flora and fauna at close quarters.

Upon returning to town that afternoon we paid a visit to the excellent little Mull Museum, which details the history of the town and the island. Apart from the expected tales from prehistory and World War Two, my favourite was the story of the Newfoundland three-masted schooner Neptune II, which was blown far off course during a routine overnight passage from St Johns to its home port in Bonavista Bay in November 1929. Instead of a 100-mile journey, the five crew and five passengers were thrown into the mid-Atlantic, and repeated storms forced the vessel further and further eastwards, away from home. In one of the sensational news stories of the year, the Neptune II eventually found a safe harbour in Tobermory in January 1930 after a 3000-mile journey lasting 48 days, with all crew and passengers disembarking safely.
In another historical oddity, Tobermory contains not one but two rarities: Edward VIII red postboxes, erected before the King’s forced abdication in 1936. One is located next to the fishing wharf (pictured) and another is in the upper town.

We also ventured out to sample some of Tobermory’s nightlife, but probably not in the way you’re expecting. We walked up to the parish church for an evening recital of handbell-ringing from a visiting troupe from Dunkeld. A most enjoyable hour it was too, even if it did seem like we were the youngest people in the audience!

Day 5:

Finally on our fourth day on Mull we took the plunge and committed to the long cross-island journey that would take us to the far western tip of the isle, and thence on to the historic isle of Iona. It entailed getting up early for the 7.30am bus, if that’s any measure of our dedication to the touristic endeavour. This was one of the high points of our Scottish adventure, because Iona is a major drawcard for thousands of visitors every year. Just as Canterbury is famous as the home of English Christianity, because it was there St Augustine founded England’s first abbey in 597, Iona is famed because this small island was home to an evangelising saint, St Columba, who brought Christianity to the north from the 560s until his death in 597. And this task, which was no mean feat in an age of barbarism and paganism, was accomplished a generation before Augustine’s crossing from Europe.

St Columba has many legends attached to his long life. This one’s rather quaint, as related by Otta F. Swire in her 1964 book, The Inner Hebrides and their Legends:

St Columba & the squirrel
He had grown tired and dispirited, as who does not at times? [...] Feeling as he did, he decided to leave Iona for a time and consider in peace and solitude what his future should be. So he took a coracle and set off by himself for Mull, where he landed and wandered into the woods which then covered the island, to meditate and pray... At length he came to a forest pool. On a stone at its edge sat the red squirrel, obviously so busy and preoccupied that she did not even hear the saint's approach. And she was busy in the queerest way. She was dipping her beautiful bushy tail into the pool and then shaking it dry over the grass behind her. St Columba watched for a time, then, coming quietly forward so as not to startle her, he asked what she was doing.

"I'm trying to empty this pool," said the squirrel.

"You can never do it like that," exclaimed the saint. "Why, it would take you years and years, longer than you can hope to live"

"That's true," answered the squirrel, much impressed. Then her lovely little prick ears and her tail began to droop and she said sadly, "I suppose you're right. It's all no good. I've just wasted the summer. I'd better stop"

She climbed down from her stone and stood thoughtful. Then she suddenly jumped up on it again and began soaking her tail once more, remarking, "Anyhow, I'm making it easier for the next squirrel, if only a little"

St Columba gathered a large handful of nuts and placed them beside her. Then he returned to his boat and his job. He had had his sign.

In the 6th century AD Celtic Christianity, originating in isolated sects of Irish monks, was one of the few literate influences in the British Isles. St Columba was famed for arriving on Iona, a low sliver of an island just off the coast of Mull, and building a monastery there that stood as a beacon of civilisation for centuries, until constant pillaging by murderous Viking raiders sent the monks packing for Kells in Ireland. (And if you’ve seen the world-famous Book of Kells in Trinity College Dublin, then you might be aware that scholars believe it actually originated in Iona, before being moved to Kells by fleeing monks). The monastery fell into disrepair for several centuries after the raids, until it was revived as a centre of pilgrimage in 1200 on order of the King. After the Reformation it fell into hard times once more, and when Samuel Johnson paid a visit in the 1770s the abbey was unroofed and derelict. The effect of the visit upon Johnson, was clearly undimmed by this:

We were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!

- Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, 1775.

The abbey has been the subject of major restoration since the 20th century, and now stands complete, despite the odd bit of scaffolding on the church tower. The abbey can be seen clearly from the shoreline on Mull, at the tiny hamlet of Fionnphort, where you board the busy ferry for the ten minute crossing over to Iona: a rugged, sandy-brown medieval complex, set against low green hills dotted with outbursts of bare grey rock. Pride of place in front of the abbey goes to the imposing St Martin’s Cross, an original eighth century Celtic stone cross with finely carved designs on both sides and a landward side covered in a sprinkling of moss. The cross stands in front of the current medieval abbey, with modern cloisters on the left, a medieval church on the right and a separate but attached shrine to the saint himself located in the centre. Perhaps the best view of the abbey is from the small hummock just in front; there’s a socket for a now-vanished medieval high cross here, and it’s reputed that St Columba had his own humble dwelling on this spot.

Iona Abbey

St Martin's Cross

Cloisters

Chapel

Hilary had visited Iona once before, so we split up to explore different parts of the island and meet up for the ferry later. Fiona and I headed west along farm lanes until we reached a broad sweeping bay on the sandy western shore of Iona. Here we paused for lunch in the bright Hebridean sunshine and happened to spot a local seal bobbing in the waves, looking for a meal close to shore.

Iona shore

After a celebratory icecream in Fionnphort, which was barely disrupted by a family of long-horned sheep rambling up the main road past all the parked tourist coaches, we boarded our bus for the long journey back to Tobermory. It had been a particularly successful sojourn.

Back in town, we decided that we’d spent too much of the day sitting down – it was more than two hours by bus each way to Iona – so after dinner al fresco on the pier we donned our boots once more and walked the cliff path northwards round the coast to the lighthouse. Despite clinging mud on the path and vertiginous drops to the shoreline below we emerged at the lighthouse unscathed. It was perfect timing too – we arrived at 8.30pm and the sun was still reasonably high, casting a golden light over the calm, flat ocean. We were able to get a good close look at the lighthouse (which was erected by the famous lighthouse builders, the Stevenson Brothers, in 1857) and a family of nearby oystercatchers, whose distinctive cries were the only sound in that peaceful place. By the time we departed at 9pm the light was still strong, and our half hour walk back to town was lit by a pale but clear light of the setting sun, which reminded me how much I enjoy high latitudes in the warmer months.

Tobermory lighthouse

Day 6:

Finally it was time to head back to the real world. We had one last morning to enjoy the gentle charms of Tobermory (and the scones from the bakery!). Just before midday we rolled out of town on the bus for the last time, joining a few of the locals heading to the football club near Craignure to watch a social game. It was another brilliantly clear Scottish day, and we relished the ferry ride back to Oban from the open top deck, photographing the watchful seagulls swooping in the ship’s wake, eagle-eyed for scraps of discarded lunch.

Back in Oban the crowds were out in force for a local fete along the waterfront. Yes, there were bagpipes. The sun was hot and plenty of pale Scottish skin was sizzling. We stocked up with supplies for our long train journey ahead, and rejoined the mainland set. Within an hour of our 4.10pm departure the gleaming sunshine had turned to dank, sweeping rainclouds – perfect timing and perfect train weather when you’ve already seen the route you’re travelling on. Soon we were back in beautiful Edinburgh, our expedition to Mull chalked up as a resounding and memorable success.

Last morning in Tober

‘Austrians’ on the gumfields

2011-07-14T02:52:00.005+01:00

Guest post by Dr Rebecca Foley

[The following is a companion piece to my earlier article on petitions regarding the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum – Ed.]

When examining the petitions presented to the 11^th Parliament (1890-93) we noticed a number of petitions asking for something to be done about an ‘invasion’ of ‘Austrians’ on the gumfields north of Auckland. The Austrians referred to in the petitions were actually ethnically Croatians, often called Dalmatians, from the Adriatic coast of Illyria. While the petitions focus on the ‘Austrian’ question, the wider gum industry was already under examination by the Government through the establishment of a Commission in June 1893 to examine the state of the gumfields.

Gumdigger, c.1901
(via Alexander Turnbull Library)

The Gum Trade

Trade in kauri gum – used primarily in the manufacture of varnish – was well established by the late 1850s, and trade continued to grow throughout the 1890s, with prices for the gum rising apace. The majority of the gumdiggers were British citizens (which included New Zealand-born colonists), with over 1000 Maori, approximately 500 ‘Austrians’, and 345 ‘other’ foreigners, making up a total of nearly 6000 diggers.[1]

The Petitions

In mid-1893 concerns surrounding the gumfields north of Auckland began to surface in Parliament through a number of petitions presented to the House. The petitions concerned an alleged ‘invasion’ of Austrians onto the gumfields and asked for either legislation or some other measure of protection against this influx. ‘Austrians’ did not occupy a highly valued social place in the gumfields, and were generally treated with suspicion by other gumdiggers due to their hard work.[2]

The table below outlines the relevant petitions regarding Austrians on the gumfields.

Date (all 1893)	Main Petitioner	No. of signatures
22 June	Herbert Wilson	17
27 June	Charles Hardy	19
27 June	William Hedley	39
28 June	P A Sanvig	81
29 June	William Wallnutt	63
22 August	A J Wilber	537
13 September	J Morehouse	877
Total		1633

The Morehouse petition appears to have been the result of an organised public campaign. The Northern Advocate[3] reported that an Elected Gumdiggers’ Executive Committee was established on 22 July 1893 to send petitions to Parliament arguing against the influx of ‘Austrian’ aliens on the gumfields, and against the ‘truck system’, whereby gumdiggers were pledged to sell to one storeowner only.[4] Once the petitions were presented to Parliament the committee of gumdiggers refocused its energies on the general election due at the end of 1893.[5]

Jackson Palmer, the MP for Waitemata, presented all the petitions to the House. All were sent to the Public Petitions committee, which produced a number of reports on the issue. On the Hardy and Hedley petitions the 13 July report from the committee recommended that the petitions be referred to the Government for consideration. For all of the other petitions, which received reports dating from 7 July to 29 September, the committee made no recommendation due to the Gum and Gumfields Bill being before the House, dealing with the topic of the petitions.

The Gum and Gumfields Bill

The bill, introduced by Mr Palmer on 30 June 1893, dealt with a broad range of issues, such as the state of the roads north of Auckland, whether gumdiggers should pay for licenses to dig, whether newly landed foreigners should be able to become gumdiggers, and the contribution of the gum industry to reducing demand for public charity. It also proposed restrictions on working in New Zealand: a man had to be resident in an area for 12 months before being able to work there, and set a tax on working of one shilling for British subjects, or £5 for foreigners.

The issue of roads in the North was contentious. While other parts of New Zealand had roads paid for by revenue gained from the sale of land, in the North little land revenue was raised due to Māori opposition. Then a law change saw all unsold land become the property of the State and proceeds from sales return to the Government. No land revenue meant no roads.[6] The roads in the North were undeniably terrible, with part of the blame said to lie with gumdiggers who used the roads for transporting their gum to sales points. Associated with the state of the roads was the argument that unless the roads were improved settlers would not travel north of Auckland, thereby undermining the development of the region.[7]

In August the gumfields topic was first raised in the House by Robert Thompson (member for Marsden)[8], who asked the new Premier, Richard Seddon [9], whether the Government intended to introduce a bill dealing with control of the gumfields and the raising of road maintenance revenue.[10] Mr Thompson had recently been in Whangarei and was no doubt pressed by his constituents on this matter.[11] The Premier’s reply outlines that the report from the Commission, established to examine the gumfields issues, would decide whether any legislation was to be introduced to the House.[12]

The Commission was made up of three men: J Giles, as Chairman, J C Firth and Gerhard Mueller (Commissioner of Crown Lands), with the terms of reference to inquire into and report on the state of the Kauri-gum fields north of the city of Auckland.[13]

At the second reading of the Gum and Gumfields bill the first mention of the influx of Austrians was made in Parliament, when Palmer stated that unless something was done the ‘gum-diggers who could hardly now make a living, would be driven out’. It was believed that the massive numbers of Austrians rumoured to be heading towards the gumfields would take away employment for New Zealanders and leave them to the vagaries of public charity.[14]

The Commission at this stage was ‘at considerable expense’ taking evidence, and debate on the bill was adjourned for a fortnight to allow the report to reach the House to influence its deliberations.[15] From reports in the Northern Advocate it appears the commissioners travelled to many small settlements including Dargaville, Ohaeawai, Kohukohu, Kawakawa, Hikurangi and the larger town of Whangarei.[16]
When the debate resumed in the House, opposition to the exclusion of foreigners from the gumfields was lead by Captain William Russell Russell, the doubly-named MP for Hawkes Bay. Captain Russell opposed distinctions made on the basis of race, and was concerned that distinctions of this type would prevent settlers from any other country than England coming to New Zealand.[17]

Another MP, Richard Taylor (representing the City of Christchurch) raised the issue of the truck system. This was a system whereby gumdiggers were ‘imported’ to New Zealand and were required to sell their gum to only one buyer. He believed that this would lead to the ruination of the people of the colony as the imported contractors were paid less, and were pledged to sell gum to those who imported them.[18] However, the Commission found that the ‘trucking’ system’s use was not at all as widespread as rumours indicated.

Messrs William Buckland (MP for Manukau) and Robert Thompson opposed the idea of a tax on the gumdiggers. Mr Thompson, clearly with one eye on the upcoming election, stated that ‘there was no class of working-men more deserving of the sympathy of the House than the gumdiggers were’. He went on to argue ‘there were no class who were more respectable, who were better conducted, or who gave the authorities less trouble than those working on the gumfields’.[19]

Finally the Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission report was presented to both Houses of Parliament in late August.

The Commission’s report

The Commissioners heard from 157 witnesses involved in the gum industry. It appears that this had become a little tiresome:

In thus casting about for evidence, it has been a necessary consequence that we have sometimes tried to elicit information where none of any value could be obtained; that a great many things have been said which perhaps were hardly worth saying; and a great many more which were only worth saying once have been many times repeated.[20]

This rather candid admission can perhaps be related to by Parliamentarians of this age who also, at times, have to sit through hours of hearing of evidence on various bills, inquiries and petitions.

Apart from examining issues such as how long the gum industry would continue and the viability of a tax on gum diggers, the Commissioners would have also noticed the state of the roads in Northland including one particular episode reported in the Northern Advocate. As the Commissioners travelled from Kawakawa to Hikurangi in a horse-drawn coach, bad weather set in. Part of the road flooded and the commissioners were ‘soon standing in the vehicle up to their knees in water, and all their luggage and papers were afloat’.[21] Luckily all was put right, although the reports taken by the Commissioners were soaked through, but not destroyed. Later, on the same journey, three of the horses got bogged down in a swamp and ‘Mr J C Firth, who affects to take a great interest in roads, was induced to speak his mind with considerable warmth’. Finally, after 10 hours travelling, the trio reached their destination, with the newspaper report concluding that ‘the Gum Commissioners had a practical lesson that should be of assistance to them in framing their report’.

Early into the report the commissioners address the issue of what makes a good settler. They say:

The connexion of the gum-digging industry with the settlement of the country is one of the most important matters affecting the future of the district north of Auckland. The gum-digger generally bears the reputation of not having in him the makings of a settler; and there can be little doubt that in the majority of cases his mode of life encourages a roving disposition, and indisposes him to bind himself down to a spot of earth consisting of a few acres only.[22]

However, it appears that some gumdiggers had become settlers and ‘must be regarded as having done permanent good to the country’. The commissioners also acknowledged that while gumdiggers left the earth no better off where they had been digging, it was unlikely that gumfields would be put to agricultural use anyway.[23]

One of the main evils of the gumfields, according to the commissioners, was the state of the roads, something they had experienced for themselves. This was considered to be ‘entirely the reverse of beneficial to settlement’ and was considered as to ‘render nugatory any prospect for future settlement which the North might otherwise have’.[24]

One of the recommendations of the Commission was to place an export duty of £3 per tonne on Kauri gum exports, with the proceeds from this to go towards roading repairs. This was not a unanimous recommendation as Mr Giles was opposed to it. The roading repairs, it was claimed, would benefit New Zealand as whole as it would allow greater settlement in the northern districts.[25]

The ‘Austrian invasion’ also received attention from the Commission. It had been rumoured that ‘the gumfields were going to be swamped by large numbers of Austrians from Dalmatia’.[26] To date only 514 had arrived, but there were concerns over how many might follow them. This figure is interesting as in the 1891 census the number of Austrians in the entire country was counted at 564. In the northern districts there were a total of 150 Austrians, with 78 in the county of Rodney and 48 in Hobson.[27] An influx of 514 may well have been regarded as alarming at the time, and would have doubled the numbers of Austrians in the country.[28]

However, the Austrians were described in glowing terms in the Commission’s report; they were considered to be ‘honest, industrious, sober and frugal’[29] and said to ‘work longer hours, live more economically, and be content with smaller wages than the average British digger’.[30] Descriptions of this type make it clearer why the Austrians were not well liked on the gumfields, in fact they have been described as occupying a social position not unlike that of the Chinese on the goldfields.[31] To control the rumoured increase in the number of gumdiggers it was suggested that gumdiggers should be required, for a fee, to take out an annual license to dig gum.

Regarding the licensing proposal the commissioners recommended, with Mr Giles again disagreeing, that to limit the number of ‘foreigners’ in the gumfields, the gum digging license should only be given to settlers who had lived in New Zealand for 12 months.[32] The proceeds of the fee were intended to go towards a fund for the relief of the ‘aged and worn-out gum-diggers’.[33] A report from the Northern Advocate suggested it may have been a difficult proposition to get gumdiggers to pay for their licenses. Henry Wilson, a Government Forest Ranger, had recently tried to collect gum licenses from diggers in Puhipuhi – an effort he likened to ‘looking for needles in a haystack’. Whenever the diggers heard he was in the area a message went around and they ‘immediately planted themselves in fern or behind trees’![34]

The Commission’s report was vigorously debated in the pages of the Northern Advocate. The paper condemned the proposed tax on gum, which was expected to go towards paying for roads. It asked why gum diggers should pay a special tax that nobody else was paying and ‘What in the name of thunder has the gumdigger done to merit this harsh treatment’?[35] It went on to say ‘We have heard of such a tax being proposed as a poll-tax on Chinamen to prevent them from coming into the country, but never in the history of Colonial finance has anything so crude, so unjust in the incidence has been proposed to be applied to white men’. Other letters to the editor on the tax on gum noted that ‘The taxation proposed by the Commissioners is so unjust we are not surprised at the general howl and outcry against it’.[36]

Such was the rallying point of the tax on gumdiggers that a weekly newspaper was established for the diggers to ‘protect their interests, and oppose the gum tax!’ This was, unsurprisingly, called the Gumdiggers’ Weekly with eight pages of reading, to which ‘every gumdigger must subscribe’ costing one shilling a month.[37]

Meanwhile in the House on 1 September, Palmer mentioned receiving the Morehouse petition, the largest of the seven presented. He said that should the Government bring a bill before the House on the subject of the influx of Austrians, he would reserve the petition until the bill was before the House, when he would press the petition in support of the legislation. Premier Seddon replied that it was impossible to say when the Commission’s ‘elaborate and … very good’ report would be discussed, and that the Government had not made up its mind on whether to bring legislation before the House.[38]

Later in September, Palmer asked Seddon whether he had received certain resolutions from gumdiggers. The resolutions asked for the imposition of a license-fee instead of an export duty; to grant only British subjects a license, or if an alien they must be naturalised and have lived one year in the colony; and that the Government should do all in its power to protect the gum industry. The resolutions also highlighted what were seen as misleading statements in the Commissioner’s report regarding the average wage of gum-diggers: the average had been set based on summer earnings when winter earnings were much lower.[39] It appears that the gumdiggers had moved from using the petitions process to sending resolutions directly to Government.

Seddon replied that at the stage of the session and the importance of the topic it was impossible for the Government to introduce any legislation to give effect to the recommendations in the Commission’s report. He did think it possible that a general law could be passed to enable the Government to prevent undesirable immigrants from landing in New Zealand in numbers detrimental to the public welfare.[40]

Finally on October 3 the Gum and Gumfields Bill was discharged without further consideration[41] thus ending the debates in the House over the influx of Austrians and the state of the roads north of Auckland.[42] It all appears to have been a false alarm; the invasion of the Austrians was vastly overstated and amounted to no more than some rather inflated rumours.

Political games?

The sudden interest in gumdiggers can be cynically linked to the election due at the end of 1893. The Northern Advocate in August reported that ‘A vast amount of interest was professed to be taken in the generally neglected gumdigger by those who are not usually given to bestowing much consideration upon them’. [43] However, this tone changed by November when the Seddon-led Government was described as ‘the only Government that ever took any interest in the gumdigger’.[44] This may be one reason for the gumdiggers targeting Parliament: they actually felt they would be listened to and action taken. The favourable comment may be linked to the announcement by Seddon that it was the Government’s will to regulate the gum trade to improve the conditions of the gumdiggers, and to set aside land especially for homes for the gumdiggers.[45]

The existence of a gumdiggers committee to specifically present petitions to Parliament is interesting and reflects the political awareness of the gumdiggers at the time. Petitions were obviously seen as an important avenue to influence Parliament and to gain certain protections. Nevertheless there appears to have been no favourable outcome for gumdiggers.

The Government announcement that it was to regulate the gum trade and set aside land for gumdiggers was never acted upon. While some gumdiggers rallied around Houston to vote him in for another Parliament, it appears he did not care to raise the gumdiggers’ concerns again: in the 12^th Parliament the issue of the gumdiggers was hardly raised, aside from a few questions to the Government. The Austrian question seemed to have been dropped and the plight of the gumdiggers ignored, despite a serious drop in gum prices. It was reported that a Commissioner had been sent to England, who would inquire into the state of the gum industry and why the prices had dropped.[46] After this report there is no more mention of the gumdiggers until 1896 –another election year – when another Austrian invasion scare began.

On 14 July 1896, Mr Houston reported to the House that 120 Austrians had landed in Auckland and were headed to the northern gumfields.[47] He demanded that the gumdiggers be protected from this influx. Seddon replied that what the Government had proposed two to three years ago, that is to restrict the number of diggers on the fields, was in the interests of ‘our own workmen’. He said that legislation would be introduced which would have a restricting effect.[48] This, again, was not acted upon.

[1] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.11. The figure of 6000 diggers is a vast increase from the 1891 census figures, which put the number of male gumdiggers at 2544 and female at 149. In comparison the 1896 census has 3250 male gumdiggers and three women.
[2] New Zealand Historical Atlas, Malcolm McKinnon (Ed.), Auckland, 1997, p.48.
[3] A local paper still in print today.
[4] Northern Advocate, 9 September 1893; 7 October 1893.
[5] The committee actually put forward the suggestion of standing a gumdigger as a candidate to contest the Bay of Islands seat, subject to sufficient support from electors. It was decided to put forward William Fitzpatrick, the Chairperson of the Gumdiggers Executive Committee (Northern Advocate, 7 October 1893). Later however, Fitzpatrick stood aside to allow a Mr Trounson to stand for election, a move that was not entirely approved of by all gumdiggers (see the Northern Advocate, 11 November 1893). Trounson did not win the seat.
[6] For an exposition of this argument see the Northern Advocate, 26 August 1893.
[7] The Northern Advocate, an eight page newspaper ‘with further improvements to follow’ which covered the northern area, had much space dedicated to examining the conditions of the roads and proposing solutions.
[8] The gumdiggers regarded the seats of Marsden, Waitemata and the Bay of Islands as the most important to represent gumdiggers interests in Parliament (Northern Advocate, 11 November 1893).

[9]Seddon, who would go on to rule for another 13 years until 1906, had only just taken office on 1 May.

[10] Hansard, 2 August 1893, vol 80, p.361. This is also reported in the Northern Advocate, 5 August, 1893 and shows the surprisingly rapid spread of information by telegram.
[11] See the Northern Advocate, 3 June 1893.
[12] Hansard, 2 August 1893, vol 80, p.361.
[13] The appointment of the members of the commission was not without controversy. In mid-June a meeting of miners and storekeepers in Northland made a respectful protest against the appointment of Gerhard Mueller to the Commission. This was because he was considered to have no comprehensive knowledge of the gum industry and ‘as being of German origin he could not be expected to assist in excluding German or other foreigners from the gumfields’ (Northern Advocate, 10 June 1893). However, Mueller remained on the Commission.
[14] Hansard, 3 August 1893, vol 80, p.436.
[15] Hansard, 3 August 1893, vol 80, p.437.
[16] With a population of 6120 according to the 1891 census (figure which includes Chinese and half-castes).
[17] Hansard, 17 August 1893, vol 81, p.136.
[18] Hansard, 17 August 1893, vol 81, p.137.
[19] Hansard, 17 August 1893, vol 81, p.137-138.
[20] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.1.
[21] Northern Advocate, 5 August 1893.
[22] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.4.
[23] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.4.
[24] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.4.
[25] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.5.
[26] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.6.
[27] 1891 Census, published 1892, Wellington.
[28] It appears however that this never occurred; in the 1896 census there are 881 people from Austria-Hungary (1896 Census, Registrar General’s report, published 1897).
[29] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.7.
[30] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.7.
[31] New Zealand Historical Atlas, Malcolm McKinnon (Ed.), Auckland, 1997, p.48.
[32] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.9.
[33] Kauri-Gum Industry Inquiry Commission, p.9.
[34] Northern Advocate, 12 August 1893.
[35] Northern Advocate, 26 August 1893, see also the 14 October issue for a settler’s view.
[36] Northern Advocate, 14 October 1893.
[37] In fact the Gumdiggers Weekly advocated government control of the gum industry to stabilise the price of gum and to fund roading and care of elderly gum diggers. (From an article reprinted from the Gumdiggers Weekly, in the Northern Advocate, 7 October 1893.) After four months the Gumdiggers Weekly ended up incorporating with the Northern Advocate.
[38] Hansard, 1 September 1893, vol 82, p.203.
[39] Hansard, 13 September 1893, vol 82, p.203.
[40] Hansard, 13 September 1893, vol 82, p.203.
[41] Hansard, 3 October 1893, vol 82, p.926.
[42] However, things did not get any easier for the gumdiggers. Gum prices plunged and there was widespread concern amongst diggers that they would be forced out of work. The Government was asked for assistance, and the issues of roads and rail came up again. It was argued by some gumdiggers that if the roads were better maintained and developed, and the rail line was extended, more gum could be dug for in the further reaches of the gumfields (Northern Advocate, 18 November 1893).
[43] Reported in the Northern Advocate, 19 August 1893, originally printed in the New Zealand Herald (no date available).
[44] Northern Advocate, 25 November 1893.
[45] Northern Advocate, 25 November 1893.
[46] A-J, p.118, Sept 20, 86^th volume.
[47] This however, would only increase the number of Austrians (Dalmatians) in the country to 1001, going by the census figures for 1894 taken on the night of 12 April.
[48] A-J, vol. 93, July 14, 1896, pp.144-145.

Portrait Award 2011

2011-07-03T00:20:00.000+01:00

National Portrait Gallery entranceway mosaic, 14 June 2011

In my last week in London I made a point of paying one final visit to the National Portrait Gallery, because the free exhibition of the BP Portrait Award 2011 had just opened. It’s always interesting to see what the judges regard as highly skilled work, just as it is for the Photographic Portrait Awards presentations at the same gallery. Certainly, the three top award-winners displayed a strong command of the painter’s art, and I admired the skill that went into the works, but the chosen winners struck me as interesting choices. They were definitely impressive in that they depicted their subjects with talent and painstaking effort, but the relative conservatism of the prize winners left me wondering about the place of modern portrait painting in an age where portrait photography (which I admit, I generally prefer over painted work) is so much more immediate and can be every bit as expressive a medium as the more deliberate, time-consuming art of painting. Perhaps it’s the sheer bloody-mindedness in clinging to an old-fashioned artform that we should celebrate.

All three of the winning paintings pleased the eye and showed impressive ability with the brush. The winning portrait, ‘Distracted’ by the Dutch artist Wim Heldens, was a worthy but rather unassuming head-and-shoulders male portrait that was clearly well-executed but I struggled to see what was particularly special about it. The runner-up, ‘Holly’ by Louis Smith, at least had a certain ‘wow’ factor: the Guardian described it, rather accurately, as 'a naked woman handcuffed to a rock wall waiting, with rather striking calmness, for an eagle to come down and eat her liver'. It combined a sweeping canvas, an ornate mock-antique frame and a neo-classical semi-nude reclining sylph adopting one of the traditional nonplussed, recumbent poses so beloved of Victorian and earlier artists, who adored dabbling in classical and Biblical references just as long as it meant they could paint plenty of scantily-clad artists’ models. Ian Cumberland’s third prize winner, ‘Just To Feel Normal’, had the most character of the top three, imbuing the raddled, over-red face of a dropout with a simple, endearing humanity.

Of the other portraits on display, there was the usual selection of paintings that appealed, paintings that weren’t to my taste, and paintings that I failed to see the point of. I particularly enjoyed Daniel Fooks’ ‘quintych’ – five portraits of the Scottish actor Peter Capaldi (‘The Thick of It’, ‘In The Loop’) – and Edward Sutcliffe’s picture of actress and MP Glenda Jackson, both of which made great use of the character lines in their subjects’ well-lived-in faces. Finally, there was Raoof Haghighi’s ‘Take Me Home’, which was either a cryptic and poetic artistic statement or, more likely I think, just a self-portrait of an artist on his sofa, wearing a silly hat. A small measure of how seriously the artist seems to take himself is the quote attached to the painting, in which he claims the artwork tries to delve into ‘identity and personality that go beyond the scope of the mind and self-realisation or liberation’. Alert Pseud’s Corner immediately!

The free Award exhibition runs until 18 September.

Memory of long-dead dogs

2011-06-29T23:10:00.000+01:00

It’s strange being back. I’ve now been in New Zealand for a week, and I’m getting used to the culture shock of moving from one country to another on the other side of the world. Of course I’ve done it plenty of times before, but it’s always a little unsettling.

The first thing I noticed, as I followed the well-worn trail down from the family home to Onehunga Mall to buy a new SIM card for my phone, was the punishing winter glare. It was a warm, clear-skied day, with traces of rain evaporating from the mismatched concrete on the footpaths, and the light of the sun was piercing and disorienting to my eyes, which have grown accustomed to the gentle, pollution-filtered rays in England. And the precipitation - it comes every day in punishing, increasingly subtropical waves. On Tuesday I was out driving in a lightning storm, with sky-splitting dazzling cracks and relentless, teeming rain bouncing off the roads. At journey’s end I lurked in the parked car as long as possible, hoping it would abate. When it didn’t I pulled my hood up to offer feeble protection from the elements and I ran, skittering between the largest puddles as they merged into one, and re-entering the dry with soggy trouser-legs and a dripping coat.

Some things remain constant. New Zealand TV is still relentlessly lousy. TV1 and TV2 are a complete write-off and have been for years, but even TV3 seems to have joined them with a slew of reality programmes and identikit American shows about grisly murders. And TVNZ7, which is right up my alley in terms of featuring intelligent programmes, is being killed off next year as soon as its existing funding runs out. Is it any wonder that so many of my (clever, high-earning, ideal audience demographic) friends have almost entirely given up watching TV in favour of internet news and podcasts?

Some things have changed. The combination of the rise in GST and general inflation means that prices now seem prohibitively expensive here. I was in downtown Auckland awaiting my first ride on the new train line to Onehunga and I needed to find a cheap lunch option. Strolling up to Burger King, I discovered that a regular burger combo now costs $9.90. Ten bucks for fast food!

But the main thought that crossed my mind as I took my usual walking route to Tin Tacks Corner and south past the down-at-heel shops of Onehunga Mall, is that for every house on the back streets of this part of Onehunga I can still visualise the dogs. Dogs who for many years punctuated my after-school paper route delivering the long-defunct Auckland Star with sudden bursts of peril. Some would charge at me from behind their garden fence as I reached across to shunt a newspaper in the letterbox. Some would yap at me from behind closed windows or at straining at the end of leashes and chains. And others, the most troublesome, were allowed to roam free by their idiot owners, and would chase my bicycle, barking madly and nipping at my ankles.

It was a long time ago, and they’re all dead now, those dogs. But I still keep a wary eye on the houses they lived in as I walk south, down the hill to Onehunga.

The architectural history of the Beehive

2011-06-29T02:55:00.000+01:00

The Beehive, March 2010

Dr Robin Skinner, an architecture lecturer at VUW, spoke last night in Parnell here in Auckland on the behind-the-scenes machinations leading to the design and construction of the Beehive, the distinctive Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament. Skinner, who has been lecturing on the topic for nearly a decade, dispels the widely-held belief that the famed Scottish architect Sir Basil Spence 'designed it on the back of a napkin', and that his overall involvement in the project was minimal. Rather, Skinner produced evidence to show that Spence was paid a large sum of money to be actively involved in the fine detail of the project. This work lasted over a year, both in New Zealand and back in Britain, and Spence was only sidelined in the mid-‘60s once New Zealand’s Ministry of Works architects re-asserted their dominance over the project. After Spence's death in 1976 Ministry of Works officials downplayed his initial role, and without Spence to refute the claims increasingly this has become the accepted view.

Skinner was able to show some fascinating early design sketches for the new Executive Wing, by Spence, the Ministry of Works, and by disgruntled private sector New Zealand architects. Spence’s working documents show the impressive level of detail he provided, and reflect his life-long interest in round buildings. The Ministry of Works and disgruntled private sector New Zealand architects came up with their own concepts for the site too, with comically awful results - this was the mid-'60s after all, the decade in which concrete bunker monstrosities were par for the course. It is a sobering thought that the Beehive, which is acknowledged as a distinctive design but is still very much an acquired taste, was the best of a decidedly mixed bunch.

It’s also interesting to note that during the gestation of the Beehive, which paralleled the early years of the iconic Sydney Opera House project, its proponents were confident that in this project New Zealand would have its own local architectural world-beater – a symbol of architectural modernity and innovation that would seal New Zealand’s standing as a confident and independent young nation. While the building has attracted a certain fierce loyalty over the years, and is certainly a much more pleasant place to work since its thorough internal re-fit in the 2000s, it could hardly be said to have attained the status of a beloved cultural icon in the way that Sydney’s beautiful finned creation has. As Tom from WellUrban puts it, it's probably a case of the Beehive endearing through enduring: '[I]t may be a period piece, a tacky hangover from 60s Modernism, yet time has moved on to the stage where it's almost reached the level of kitsch that leads to ironic celebration and thence to real appreciation'.