Maori canoe remains lifted from Auckland beach.

The remains of an old Maori canoe discovered by a passer-by were lifted from a beach today and taken to an Auckland Regional Council depot for assessing.
The canoe, described as a waka tiwai, a type of craft used normally for fishing and river travel, was found on Friday at the southern end of Muriwai Beach.
Head ranger Scott Da Silva said a local person noticed something sticking out of the sand on the west coast beach and, on closer inspection, saw it was more than just a piece of driftwood.
ARC historic heritage specialist Robert Brassey said the canoe, which was made from a single piece of kauri, had appeared to have been washed up in a damaged condition and then buried in about 1.5m of sand, which had helped to preserve it.
He said it was difficult to date the canoe, because it might have been made from a tree that was hundreds of years old and there was no other datable material associated with it.
However, it was likely to be pre-European.
It measured about seven to eight metres in length, of which a section of about two to three metres was intact.
"It would need conservation treatment to preserve it," Mr Brassey said.
"Some of the sides are missing, but it has the potential to be preserved."
He said what happened to the canoe would be up to the local iwi.
A timber conservation specialist, Auckland University senior research fellow Dilys Johns, would assess the find and make a recommendation to iwi.

- NZPA

IRB International Rugby Sevens Tournament ...... Wellington 2009 Sold Out!

Wellington Sevens tickets sold out
By GREER McDONALD - The Dominion Post
Last updated 09:14 29/09/2009

Tickets to Wellington's rugby sevens tournament in February were snapped up within three minutes this morning - setting a new speed record for sales.

Tickets went on sale at 9am via the Ticketmaster website.

The two-day party for the 2010 NZI Sevens will take place on February 5 and 6.

The iconic Wellington event has sold out every year for the past eight years and ticket prices ranged from $45 for a child seat in the family zone to $170 for the platinum and silver covered section.

Tickets for Wellington's biggest party, which draws a capacity 35,000 fans to the two-day tournament, were sold out within five minutes last year.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/2912320/Wellington-Sevens-tickets-sold-out

US Consul General, Nick Greanias, tries out the French common press at Pompallier Mission during a recent trip to Northland which also took him to other New Zealand Historic Places Trust properties Clendon House in Rawene and Waitangi.

Visiting Pompallier Mission - the French Mission printery in Russell, and Clendon House - the home of James Clendon (New Zealand's first US Consul) were both highlights for the visiting dignitary.

The Gaveaux press at Pompallier is one of New Zealand’s most interesting and important historic artefacts, with more than 30,000 books printed on it between 1842 and 1850. These were not only some of the first books made in New Zealand but also some of the first books in Maori.

The press continued to print Catholic literature till the Northern War broke out in March 1845, when the printing equipment was moved for protection.  At the conclusion of hostilities the following year printing resumed at the Kororareka/Russell printery.

In 1850 the missionaries were relocated to the new colonial towns of Wellington and Auckland. The printing equipment was packed up and eventually sold or given away.

In 1857 Waikato Maori asked Bishop Pompallier to send them a printing press. The Gaveaux press was despatched, but exactly when, and how, remains unclear.

King Tawhiao used the Gaveaux press when he began publication of Te Paki o Matariki in 1891. After 1933, when commercial printing of this newspaper began, the press remained in the Waikato as a taonga. From 1950 it was stored in a special building on Turangawaewae Marae. In 1967 Queen Te Atairangikaahu gave permission for the Gaveaux to return to its own turangawaewae at Kororareka/Russell.

http://www.historicplaces.org.nz/en/placesToVisit/northland/PompallierMission.aspx

http://www.historicplaces.org.nz/en/placesToVisit/northland/PompallierMission/History.aspx

Pompallier, is the sole surviving building of the French Catholic mission headquarters to the Western Pacific. Not only a witness to "The Birth of the Nation", Pompallier is also a uniquely French Provincial building that stands as witness to wider French influences in New Zealand and the Pacific.

As a visitor you will receive unique hands-on experiences in the working mission factory and hear the stories of the peoples who worked and lived through fascinating times of Treaty-making and subsequent war.

This French factory was built in pioneer New Zealand to print Maori language books for the Roman Catholic Mission. The last remaining building of a once-crowded mission headquarters, it is New Zealand's oldest Catholic building, and our oldest industrial building.

In 1838 three Frenchmen, a bishop, a priest and a brother of the recently-formed Society of Mary landed at the Hokianga. The arrival of a French Catholic Mission in New Zealand outraged the English Church Missionary Society and Wesleyan missionaries, who despised Catholicism and thought Maori should be Protestant. It also disturbed the British Resident at Waitangi, James Busby, who feared colonisation by France. But despite their hostility Bishop Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier's mission survived.

A number of historic places were registered by the NZ Historic Places Trust (NZHPT) recently in the Northern Region, including the former Cleave's Building and Queen’s Ferry Hotel in Auckland’s Vulcan Lane, and the Cape Brett Lighthouse in Northland.

The Queen's Ferry Hotel is extraordinary in that it has functioned as a pub since 1865 – an amazing record of 144 years of unbroken service in the hospitality industry. The building also makes a significant contribution to the heritage landscape of Vulcan Lane due to its distinctive, ornamental 19th Century façade.

By the 1890s the Queen’s Ferry had become popular with bookies who did a lot of their business there, and for most of the 20th Century it remained a favourite working class pub with patrons that included sailors and journalists, to name a few.

Such literati as James K. Baxter, Denis Glover, Frank Sargeson, Rex Fairburn and typographer Bob Lowry were all regulars at the Queen’s Ferry.

The former Cleave's Building nearby has also been registered and is a rare surviving example of a colonial printery.

The site had become a centre for printing in Auckland, beginning as the offices for the Free Lance newspaper which was then taken over by Arthur Cleave in 1889. Cleave established himself as a successful publisher with his Auckland Provincial Directory, the New Zealand Sporting and Dramatic Review and later the New Zealand Illustrated Magazine.

Cleave’s publishing business continued to grow, and in 1912 he built Norfolk House – a purpose-built printery on the corner of High Street and Vulcan Lane.

Meanwhile further North, the Cape Brett lighthouse has also been registered as a Category I historic place.

Located on a DOC Reserve at the mouth of the Bay of Islands, the Cape Brett Lighthouse is a rarity in New Zealand in that it is the only lighthouse to have survived in the same place it was built, with its original equipment still substantially intact. The building and its contents show the complete working of a lighthouse through the whole range of its active life, and as such is a time capsule in its own right.

First lit up in February 1910, Cape Brett was a first order lighthouse – the most powerful class of lighthouse based on the largest type of Fresnel lens used for coastal sites. It was the last of its kind built in New Zealand, and the only one constructed in the 20th Century.

A microcosm – albeit on a grand scale – of New Zealand’s railway history has received national recognition by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.


A 200km stretch of the central North Island Main Trunk Line (NIMT) has been approved as an historic area on the National Register by the NZHPT Board. The area extends south from the Taumarunui Railway Station to the Makohine Viaduct near Ohingaiti.

NZHPT Central Region Acting General Manager Robert McClean says the registration recognised, and celebrated, a remarkable early 20th century engineering achievement that was instrumental in creating and supporting Central Plateau communities along the Main Trunk Line.

“The Main Trunk Line is like the backbone of New Zealand – historically and practically it kept us moving, economically it made us strong and socially it linked us together. From a heritage perspective there are a number of significant landmarks that deserve to be highlighted and celebrated.

“Last year we celebrated the centenary of the Main Trunk Line’s opening. Now we are heading into the next 100 years with this Historic Area as a starting point, recognising how this stretch of rail has been so much a part of all our lives in some way.”

All the public submissions expressed support for the registration. Registration is an information and advocacy tool, and in itself has no direct regulatory effect.

“It provides information about the history and importance of a place, setting out the heritage values which can then be taken into account when making decisions about a place’s future," Robert says.

“The public can freely access all the information NZHPT has prepared on the Historic Area through our website (www.historic.org.nz). As well as making for an interesting and informative read it is a valuable teaching resource.”

The successful prosecution of two Alexandra men who damaged and modified an archaeological site in Central Otago has been welcomed by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust for the strong message it sends.

Cam Withington and Lex McLean entered guilty pleas in the Queenstown District Court on 29 July and agreed to pay a significant donation to the NZHPT for breaching provisions of the Historic Places Act (HPA) 1993 by damaging and modifying an archaeological site which was thought to be part of the North Pole diggings in the Garvie Mountains. Mr Withington was convicted and discharged without any fine and Mr McLean discharged without conviction. In neither case were any costs imposed.

The damage occurred on 3 June 2007 when a party including Mr Withington and Mr McLean mounted an expedition along with a TV3 crew. Footage from this expedition was broadcast by TV3 on 10 June 2007.

The presiding judge confirmed the importance of the archaeological provisions in the HPA, and said the bringing of this case was well founded. He stressed the importance of goldfields sites to the history of Central Otago and New Zealand.

NZHPT senior archaeologist Dr Rick McGovern-Wilson said the judge’s decision would send a clear message that New Zealand’s heritage has legal protection.

“NZHPT is delighted with the judge’s ruling and the message it sends. Hopefully this case will deter others from damaging heritage sites, particularly in Central Otago, which has been stripped of a lot of its heritage over the years.

“Investigations of actual and potential archaeological sites should be left to the experts.”

The NZHPT and the defendants issued a joint statement, whereby:

Mr McLean and Mr Withington agree that their actions on 3 June 2007 in the Nevis Valley were in breach of Section 99 of the Historic Places Act 1993.

They support the work of the NZHPT in preserving New Zealand’s heritage for the benefit of all New Zealanders. They encourage anybody contemplating any physical investigation, such as theirs, to ensure that before undertaking any such investigation that they consult the Trust, and this includes the collection and removal of any artefacts from sites.

Central Otago and the Nevis Valley, in particular, is filled with sites that meet the definition of an archaeological site under the Historic Places Act 1993. The NZHPT, Mr McLean and Mr Withington urge anyone contemplating digging, removing artefacts or modifying a possible archaeological site (a place associated with the pre-1900 human activity) to contact the NZHPT before doing so.

- It's ciao and haere mai

http://video.stuff.co.nz/waikato/WTSSpro/index.html

Wellington theatre company Taki Rua performed the play Strange Resting Places at Hamilton's Clarence St Theatre this week. The play is a funny, yet moving, portrayal of the experiences of the Maori Battalion in Italy in World War II and explores some of the similarities in Maori and Italian culture. The final performance is in Hamilton tonight. Times photographer Iain McGregor caught some of the play's highlights. Click on the headline for his audio slideshow.

Odd-sounding 'spud' linked to Captain Cook
By JEFF TOLLAN - The Timaru Herald 18/04/2009

It wasn't your ordinary spud. In fact, it wasn't anything like a spud.
It was heavy, round and had made the spud harvester make some funny noises.

"We've found a cannonball," Jeffrey Murray said to his father, Bruce, over the telephone.

It's not just any cannonball. It could be from Captain James Cook's ship, Endeavour, which spent several days off the Morven coast when it navigated the country in 1769-70.
Jeffrey was part of a gang potato-harvesting in a Morven paddock, about a kilometre from the sea, three years ago when the surprise find rattled its way up the harvester's conveyors.

When workers called out to stop the harvester because of the sound, there was a sigh of relief to find just a clay-covered lump of metal.

"We thought for a start that it might have been an old bit of farm machinery, but soon realised it wasn't anything like that," he said.

When Bruce rang up to see how work was going he thought they were joking.
Bruce dug around to try to find an explanation for why the ball was there and eventually learned there was a reasonable possibility it came from Cook's ship.

The chart mapping the Endeavour's journey around New Zealand shows a zig-zagged loop just off the coast of Morven.
The ship was in the area for about two days, long enough for Cook to send a longboat ashore and map some of the scenery.

Cook described flat hills being visible from the ship, most likely the Morven Hills, Bruce said.

The cannonball probably ended up on the property because of fog.
To avoid running aground in dense fog in the days long before radar, ships had a cannon which was rigged to fire a ball a certain distance.
Once fired, the crew aboard listened intently for a splash, or a thud.
From that, they knew whether they were near land or not.

With the cannonball ending up a kilometre inland, Cook's ship may well have been close to shore in a fog.

Though Cook is known to have been in the area for several days, Bruce said there has been no confirmation the ball is from Endeavour, but good guesswork suggests it is.

Tests can be done to find out where the ore came from that was used in the ball, but they come at a price.
Regardless of its origins, the spud that wasn't still makes a great conversation piece.