Canterbury Heritage

Mind Field

2018-05-10T08:15:00.000+12:00

Self (anon.), Mind Field, 2018, mixed media abstract, 102 x 57 Cm.

Kiwi Glam 1966

2018-05-08T05:40:00.000+12:00

A significant time for Down and Nearly Under: post-colonial dependency on the Mother Country faded into fond memory for our expats as the fancy new passenger jets began to encroach upon our cozy insularity (and put paid to Kerosene for domestic heating). When designing forms for the new PAYE tax, the Department of Inland Revenue learnt that the average mental age of Kiwis was twelve.

The Government Statistician projected that our population would reach five million by the end of the millennium. He would have been right, but as successive statisticians noted, in the interim 1.2 million of us had declared, upon departing, our long term intent to seek greener pastures (Queensland benefited most from The Great Kiwi Brain-Drain).

But the residue, wanting to assure ourselves worthy of star rating upon a nebulous international stage, adopted the images of what we perceived to be Western sophistication, as this ubiquitous visual cliché appears to indicate.

Photographed opposite the village store at Castlepoint, a small beach-side town on the Wairarapa coast of the Wellington Region. To the far Right can be see the lighthouse, which stands near the top of the northern end of a one kilometre long reef.

But the real interest is the nippy little roadster - an early example of a Mark 1 Tiger, circa 1964. Behind the Walnut dashboard lurks a 4.3 litre, 260 cubic inch V8 engine. From an idea by Jack Brabham, to a design by Carroll Shelby, built by Jensen for the Sunbeam Motor Company of England and bearing the badge of a world speed record holder, this car appealed to the North American market so much that the Yanks bought the company during the model's run.

New price circa NZ$3,500 - currently fetching around NZ$150,00 for a really good one.

The image came to the digital dark room as a scan of a scratched and pitted 35mm enlargement of an over-coloured half-tone lithographic impression. Might have graced a garage workshop calendar in an earlier incarnation.

Artificial Intelligence in Freemans Bay

2018-05-04T07:28:00.000+12:00

This image is a photographic montage comprised from three frames of a 14 minute film entitled New Zealand, 1950's from the Huntley Film Archives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg7Oo7eg0VU

It depicts a 1955, South-westerly aspect of the South side of Wellington Street East, Freemans Bay from near what was the intersection with Union Street and is now the overpass across a motorway junction.

Three years earlier the territorial authority had served compulsory purchase orders on most of the properties in the area, with compensation set at 1952 valuations. However, the Council was not in a hurry to complete acquisition, which, amid much resentment and controversy, was eventually completed in 1979 - at 1952 valuations. In the interim property owners were reluctant to incur the expense of anything beyond what decreasing rental values would justify.

And so it came to pass that what had once been an inner city suburb renowned for the solidarity of its social cohesion and the political unrest that had been a thorn in the side of conservative governments from 1913, declined into abject dereliction.

In what was possibly one of the ugliest examples of the corporate psychopathy that might seem to have plagued the Auckland Council since its inception, the consequential window of opportunity was used to plaster the popular Media with images of the deplorable state into which the area fell - dodgy propaganda justifying the premeditated demise of a community.

Although the houses that comprise most of the image survived from the late 1860s until 1977, the photograph is date-able to 1955 by the lack of houses and shops in the block between Howe and Hepburn Streets, which were subsequently replaced by the Freemans Park development of apartment blocks and courtyard houses.

The artificial intelligence bit is the acquisition of every known digital image of the area and then renaming all of the images firstly with the date, then with the geographical location, aspect, elevation, etc., followed by relevant keywords up to a length of 256 characters in the file name.

The in-house Ponsonby & Freemans Bay database includes works of art, photographs, maps, ephemera, audio and video, etc., all of which adhere to the same file-naming protocol. An easy familiarity develops with the landmarks and eras to be seen in the images and the database becomes increasingly accurate (and interesting) as the knowledge-base expands.

Although there is a tendency to think of landmarks as steeples and towers, etc. below consciousness there is a whole other level of landmark recognition - a fact readily brought to mind as a strange sense of alienation when much of central Christchurch vanished in a cloud of dust a few years ago.

So whether it's swanning around downtown, or soaking up a Freemans Bay slide show, markers accumulate below consciousness ready to spring to one's aid with a slightly fuzzy sense of familiarity in a four dimensional cognitive model.

1955 14-19 Wellington Street East South side South-westerly aspect Union Howe Hepburn Pratt Franklyn 'New Zealand, 1950's' 14 min film 30854 Huntley Film Archives.jpg

String Band Promo

2018-04-04T10:45:00.000+12:00

Promotional announcement for a concerto in eight short movements for piano and chamber orchestra by the Wellington composer Lyell Cresswell (b.1944).

Auckland Chamber Orchestra - www.aco.co.nz

Lyttelton 1982 & 2007

2018-01-30T18:59:00.000+13:00

Two pairs of views of Oxford Street, Lyttelton from early February, 1982 and November, 2007.

Taken from adjacent locations at the intersection with Exeter Street, the upper pair of images depict a north-easterly view of lower Oxford Street, with the lower views depicting a southerly aspect of the upper levels of the street.

Although there are few structural changes in the ensuing 25 years, the ubiquitous change of house colours is probably symptomatic of the progressive gentrification of the town as a trendy suburb of the close by provincial capital of Christchurch. But the real change is in the tripling of the number of motor vehicles to be seen in the images.

Oxford Street was the nascent town's first principal thoroughfare. Original location of the seat of the government of the province, it was also the site of the township's first school, town hall, post office, prison and hotel, etc.

Thanks to Gerard Richards of Auckland for the 1982 photographs.

2018-01-30T12:03:00.000+13:00

Lyttelton early February, 1982. A westerly aspect of the principal shopping precinct in London Street from the intersection at Oxford Street across Canterbury and Dublin Streets to Hawkhurst Road.

The photographer supplied three faded Kodachrome prints of a visit to the town in January or early February, 1982. The angle of the shadows in the images indicated that they were taken close to mid-day on a weekday when children could be seen wearing school uniforms, which ruled out the school holiday month of January.

Until about 1990 colour fading of Kodachrome chromogenic process 35 mm prints was caused by spontaneous chemical changes in the image dyes of colour prints. Today's prints are more stable and significant fading will occur in about forty years at room temperature, the colder the conditions, the slower the fading.

Thanks to Gerard Richards of Auckland for the original photograph.

The Tramway Hotel, Millerton, New Zealand, 1902-1982.

2018-01-18T17:01:00.001+13:00

Seen in the 1902 photograph is the newly opened Tramway Hotel just above the Taramakau bridge on Millerton Road. The hotel offered fourteen guest rooms, three lounges, a billiard room and a dining room with seating for thirty.

By 1982 (lower image) the old hotel had been closed for some time and within a further three years virtually nothing of the building remained, all of the recyclable materials having been taken by the community for improvements to their homes.

Thanks to Gerard Richards of Auckland for the four 1982 pics of the hotel, restored and blogged in fond remembrance of good times at Millerton in the '80s.

_____________________________________________

The Village Green Revisited

2018-01-18T03:56:00.000+13:00

The communal centre of the village of Freemans Bay at Auckland, New Zealand, from a pair of aerial photographs, dated to the 18th of February,1954 and the 5th of July,1979.

Known to bureaucracy as the Pratt Street Block in the time of the earlier image, the area is enclosed by Wellington, Hepburn, Anglesea and Collingwood Streets.

Pratt Street Block 1974

Subjected to compulsory purchase orders all of the properties within the block (with a few exceptions in the South-west corner) were cleared of all structures, the site was extensively landscaped using bulldozers and Pratt Street became a cul-de-sac culminating in a pedestrian entrance to an internal square of beguiling sylvan beauty (below).

The 1979 image was taken shortly after the completion of the Community Hall (1), the Kindergarten (2), the shopping centre (3) and the first and largest of the three apartment blocks (4)

Much is knowable about the people who have lived here, from the time when the first cottage (5) overlooked a swamp at the bottom of its backyard.

For instance the eight-room, two story Grocery shop at the corner of Wellington and Pratt Streets (6) first appears in the photographic record in 1881. By 1908 it belonged to a widow, Ellen Wilkins also owned the two-room cottage next door and the pair of two storied town-houses beyond that. Mrs Wilkins sold her shop in 1920 and was succeeded by the Francis, Emmerton, Barchard, Jeffs and Rupa families until it was demolished in 1968.

Or Richard and Esther Poulgrain of 18 Pratt Street (7). Born in 1851, the proprietor of the Vulcan Ironworks in Albert Street, raised eight children in what had begun as a simple two-room cottage in 1873.

Both the widow Wilkins' shop and the Poulgrain's cottage would make way for the 30 apartment Wellington Court building (4). Completed as social housing in April 1979 for $440,099, the territorial authority sold the freeholds of most of the apartments between 1997 and 1999. And so it came to pass that within four decades these handy little pied-à-terres would be changing hands at around 40 times their initial cost.

Denniston, New Zealand, 1981.

2018-01-16T16:27:00.000+13:00

Fifteen kilometres up The Coast from Westport, Denniston is situated on the Mount Rochfort plateau, 600 metres above the beach and about one and a half kilometres inland.

The sitting room had panoramic views to the West out across the Tasman Sea to the curvature of the earth (amazing sunsets). Windows at the other end of the room looked out to the snow clad peaks of the Papahaua mountain range.

By the time that this photograph was taken the population of Denniston had reduced from around 1,400 to 23.

Taken from near the front of the fire station, to the Right is the garage of Denniston Motors, with a petrol bowser on the forecourt and, unmoved for many years, an early 1930s school bus within.

Across the intersection, with its' red-lead painted corrugated iron cladding is the Doctor's house and surgery facing the (unseen) Post Office. Beyond the Doctors' is the Police Station, with the cell block (unseen) in the back yard.

It was a good time to be living on the sub-alpine plateau, the residents were mainly artists, musicians and potters, etc. and there were great parties that would attract friends from across the island and go on for days.

But the halcyon era would not last, by the 1990s commercial dope growers had moved in, arson became the new game in town and the doctors' was fortified, even the garage burnt. But what little is left slumbers on as a no more than a ghostly curiosity for tourist.

Original photo by Gerard Richards of Auckland (his sporty Vauxhall HC Viva to Left), subsequently tarted up and reminisced upon by self.

The Village Green

2018-01-10T09:54:00.000+13:00

An elevated westerly aspect of the village green at the south-west corner of the intersection of Wellington and Hepburn Streets, Freemans Bay, Auckland, New Zealand. Sunday, 31st December, 2017.

There was a time when our village green was a swamp where waterfowl roamed amid marsh-misted reeds at the headwaters of a stream. One hundred and seventy eight years ago the least affluent of the earliest European settlers came to this place to cut bull-rushes for the liveable huts they would construct nearby.

By the beginning of the 1850s the stream was forded by a steep livestock track that led from David and Margaret Archibald's suburban farm on Franklin Road to the garrison towns' markets. The first settler's cottage stood close to where a fashionable Japanese restaurant can now be seen just to the right of centre in the photograph.

By the mid 1860s the stream had been enclosed in a brick tunnel down to the lagoon at the far western side of Freemans Bay, where the last boat shed survives opposite the supermarket. As the pressure of suburban in-fill increased six houses and three shops soon occupied the site of what is now the village green.

With its panoramic views of the city and the harbour Wellington Street West, as it was formerly known, was originally deemed to be in the suburb of Ponsonby, rather than industrial Freemans Bay, and thereby to nominally separate it from the city end of the street, with its pubs, boarding houses and brothels.

Between 1878 and 1886 Auckland's population doubled and about a dozen shops; grocers, bakeries, a butcher, and a boot maker, etc. formed the centre of the village. Suburban in-fill was complete by 1900 and remained more or less intact until 1970. Diagonally opposite the green one the original grocer's shops survives as the iconic Rupa's Cafe.

From 1952 the territorial authority began acquiring much of the Freemans Bay area by compulsory purchase for residential redevelopment. Demolition of the structures on the site of the village green took place from 1968 to 1974. Formerly occupying the back garden of a cottage on Hepburn Street, only the gnarled tree to the Left of centre in the photograph survives from the early 1950s, all of the other trees in the image are less than forty years old.

Opposite the village green on Hepburn Street, new social housing was completed in 1965 (David Lange, sometime Prime Minister of New Zealand, lived here in his time as a Legal Aid lawyer at the Magistrate's Court). Gentrification of Freemans Bay began in 1970 with the completion of the Sheridan Square town-house development opposite on Wellington Street, and the eleven shops that adjoin the village green were built between 1974 and 1978.

The population of Freemans Bay peaked a century ago at 10,500, today it's somewhat less than half of that. More than a million dollars is now required in order to acquire a bijou town-house in the vicinity of this village green that's within an easy walk to both the Paris end of town at Ponsonby and the centre of Auckland city.

Not trusting the fallibility of received history, the foregoing was mostly compiled from contemporary newspaper reports and 339 old photos.

Auckland, New Zealand Then & Now

2018-01-06T10:20:00.000+13:00

Dated to 1979 and 2018 is a pair of northerly aspects towards the Hobson Street ridge, with the Central Police Station visible to the Right.

Postcard from the Edge

2017-12-06T07:45:00.000+13:00

This could be entitled Swamp Gully sure ain't what it used ter be, but is in fact the subsequently renamed city of Auckland as might be seen from the South Island of New Zealand, or in the Godzonian* dialect as The risible naïveté of Pig Islanders as sympathetically viewed from the Mainland.

* Godzonian; adjective derived from Godzone, an ironic contraction of God's Own Country, being a trope that's indicative of the gullibility that permeates within our snug South Sea Bubble.

Program cover - Auckland Chamber Orchestra

2017-11-14T09:53:00.000+13:00

Program cover for the Auckland Chamber Orchestra

Raye Freedman Arts Centre - 5pm Sunday 26 November 2017

Concert: Capriccio

Peter Scholes conductor
Soloist Ben Hoadley bassoon

Program

Ibert - Capriccio
Sofia Gubaidulina - Concerto for Bassoon and Low Strings
Debussy - Syrinx
Arnold - Divertimento
Ravel - Introduction and Allegro

Auckland Chamber Orchestra

Fleeting Fragments Artful

2017-11-08T06:33:00.000+13:00

Program cover for the Auckland Chamber Orchestra

Sunday Morning Boulevardiers, Ponsonby, Auckland, 2017.

The Cruise of the Rosaura

2017-11-03T06:43:00.000+13:00

With nearly a hundred cruise ship visits to the Auckland of 2017, we're currently beset by our bureaucratic spin doctors' assumptions on just how popular their alleged world-class super-city has become as a port-of-call.

However, such hyperbolic acclaim is reduced to a mere shade of a much earlier era when internecine war between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan, which included the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons, put paid to the Far East as a destination for the cruise ships of the 1930s.

And so it came to pass that the fashionable landing-places of the South Seas enjoyed a prosperity that would not be repeated for eight decades, for in that earlier time the sight of three or four cruise ships lined up along our wharves was not uncommon, with even the Oil Wharf at Freemans Bay called into duty as a passenger terminus.

However, this particular tale doesn't concern those ships, but rather about the first of the large Passenger Yachts to call, which was to be seen at the Oil Wharf in February 1935. Well we might goggle at the floating gin palaces that flaunt their owners' brazen wealth in the environs of what is now called Viaduct Harbour, but when 55 year old brewing magnate Wally Moyne brought his entourage of through-and-through posh persons to town aboard his 83 metre Rosaura few gobs were left unsmacked among the more impressionable our forebears.

Also known as Lieutenant Colonel Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, DSO & Bar, said Wally was cruising for four months on his new boat - he'd sunk her predecessor, the equally gargantuan Roussalka, when she ran on to a rock in thick fog off the Irish coast 17 months earlier. On that occasion all of the passengers and crew were rescued, as was his pet Panamanian monkey. Named Gandhi (to whom it bore a peculiar resemblance), the antics of the securely chained beastie were now amusing the colonial beau monde, whose eyes had never bulged further from their sockets.

Eight en-suite staterooms provided accommodation for up to a dozen guests, but by the time the graceful craft arrived at the farthest reach of her 52,424 kilometre cruise, there were only three passenger aboard. First was Wally's lady friend Vera, better known in the gossip mags as the estranged wife of the Baronet Sir Henry John Delves Broughton, who is chiefly remembered for, (although acquitted), murdering the Earl of Erroll (an event that was the basis of the 1987 film White Mischief).

After their wining and dining the Governor General and his missus at Wellington, 43 year old Vera Broughton, that big game hunter and intrepid sports-person, thrashed Viscountess Bledisloe at tennis before flying from Rongotai aerodrome to Auckland's Hobsonville in an open two seater biplane, from whence she made an amphibian flight to the Bay of Islands for a spot of big game fishing.

Also aboard was Terence Philip, with just a touch of Attila the Hun around the jaw line, Philip was excruciatingly handsome, charming and a well-heeled London art dealer, who specialised in flogging expensive British pictures to rich Yanks. He was also a good mate of the last passenger's 'æsthete' cousin by marriage. She was the 50 year old Mrs Winston Churchill, who would seem to be having a sorely needed break from the frenetic lifestyle of her manic-depressive husband and the rough-and-tumble of his more dubious chums.

So far we've recounted not much more than bowdlerised version concerning the toffs swanning around our coasts on their floating realm of conspicuous wealth, but for rat’s arse connoisseurs of lascivious titillation, let us digress to a tad more dishing of the that most fiercely spiced of dirts...

Mr Pug, who'd lead us a decade later to a two-nil victory in the final round of that spot of bother we had with the Boche, had finally outgrown his rambunctious predilection for batting for the other side - that virtually ubiquitous rite of passage among his caste, (among whom it was reasoned that such experience went a long way to making a enlightened sort of cove more fun for an eventual better half when it came to bedroom sports). So exotic matinee idols that looked like Tarzan, but talked like Jane, gave way to an heterodoxical sort of bit on the side named Doris.

Emanating from the wrong side of the tracks, the Viscountess Castlerosse had taken life by the scruff of the neck and screwed her way to the top in her role as outrageous enchantress on the international society circuit. Legend would have us believe that she bewitched the naïve Winnie with the Cleopatra Clench. A talent for which technique she was said to share with a certain American divorcee, who would besot a king-to-be on a previous cruise of the Rosaura.

So while her husband was snuggling up with his notorious courtesan on the Riviera, darling Clementine fell head-over-heels for the only superficially eligible guest aboard the motor yacht. Unburdened by an overwhelming work ethic, or anything so shoddy as driving ambition, and so utterly unlike her husband in almost every respect, the suave Terence Philip, an homme fatale, with a reputation for witty drawing-room persiflage was "not the marrying kind" - as they used to say in those relatively well-mannered days before we all succumbed to politically correct gay-speak.

And so, after a fortnight on our coasts and laden with a couple of Komodo Dragons, a pair of Tuatara and two Malayan Sun bears in a deck cage, the Rosaura cleared Deep Water Cove in the Bay of Islands for New Caledonia, while a somewhat embarrassed and melancholic Clemmie, who'd been shaken to her core by Terence Philip's extravagant travesties of flirtation, moped around the ship's ultra-luxe music room and library.

Retold and embellished by subsequent generations, the past is said to be the only dead thing that smells sweet, so, of course there's a whole lot more to this tale of adventure, but this ain't gonna be the place for it. We'll just have to settle here for the eventual fates of those involved.

Named after Moyne's daughter, the Rosaura was the first to go; requisitioned by the Royal Navy the motor yacht struck a mine off the coast of Libya in 1941 and sank taking 78 lives with her.

At 64 the colossally rich, well-meaning, and intelligent bon viveur, Lord Moyne was assassinated at Cairo by Israeli terrorists in 1944.

Considered one of the best-dressed women of her time, the distinguished ethnographic photographer Vera Broughton never remarried, soldiering on to a timely demise in 1968.

Subsequently a life peeress in her own right, Baroness Clementine Ogilvy Spencer-Churchill, died at the age of 92 in 1977.

To have news value has been likened to having a tin can tied to one's tail and Terence Philip's place in posterity appears to be represented by no more than his friendship with Clementine Churchill. However, the alleged receiver of swollen goods is depicted by the actor Simon Williams in the 2002 TV movie The Gathering Storm, a biographical film about the Churchills in the years between 1934 and 1939. Other parts include Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine Churchill, John Standing as Lord Moyne and Albert Finney as Winston Churchill.

La penultimo Dogaressa of the unfinished Palazzo Venier dei Leoni at Venice, Winnie's by then impoverished girlfriend Doris, whose Lion-hunting career among the denizens of deepest Belgravia might be compared to the ups and downs of a barmaid's knickers, turned out to be just another notch on some mighty fine bedposts. Exhausted, the grande horizontale succumbed to a drug overdose in 1942.

Winston had wanted every kind of love that was available, but couldn't find all of them in the same person, or the same sex. But like Rudyard Kipling, having at the end of the day probably come to the conclusion that a good woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke, at the age of 90 he faded away to a real bonzer send-off in 1965.

And the moral of the yarn? Like the more ostentatious of our current batch of gadflying Real Estate speculators, with a fondness for beige Leatherette - you'll never know how popular you are until you own an effin big motor boat.

The Last Cruise of the Reliance

2017-10-12T20:10:00.000+13:00

Arriving from Melbourne on the 11th of April, 1938, with 140 American and 60 German passengers and 374 crew, the Hamburg-Amerika Lines' 19,618 ton cruise ship Reliance of 1914 is seen here berthed at Auckland's Freemans Bay Oil Wharf.

Superseded in the Hamburg - Southampton - Cherbourg - New York service by such crack German liners as the Bremen and the Europa, like many a grand old lady of the sea, Reliance was by then circumnavigating the globe on a regular basis. However, the war between Japan and China at that time had precluded the usual East Asian ports-of-call for luxury cruise ships and Reliance found herself joining the 18,017 ton Mariposa and the 42,348 ton Empress of Britain at the city's overly crowded wharves.

After a three night stay at her 25th port of call since leaving New York on New Years Day, the 590 foot (180.4 metres) Reliance cleared port for Wellington, before returning to New York six weeks later via Suva, Apia, Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Panama Canal and Havana.

Less than four months after leaving Auckland Reliance met her end at Hamburg on the morning of the 7th of August, the day scheduled for her afternoon departure on another world cruise. A suspicious fire broke out at 6 a.m in a store of ballroom decorations. Although brought under control within five hours, the midships section of the passenger accommodation was destroyed ( https://www.meherbabatravels.com/ship-travels/reliance/ ). The vessel was laid up and shortly after declared a total loss. Seventeen months later Reliance was sold to the Krupp Werke and was broken up at Bremerhaven in 1941.

As to the other cruise ships in the historic photo, the largest ship ever to visit New Zealand up to that time: the Empress of Britain (1931-1940), was sunk by the Germans as the hulk of the Reliance awaited her final demise. However, the much loved Mariposa (1931-1974) sailed on for another thirty-six years, the latter part cruising the Caribbean as the Homeric. In 1973, a major fire destroyed much of her galley and restaurant and she was scrapped in Taiwan. During the breaking process, her sister ship, the Chandris Lines' Ellinis (ex-Lurline 1932-1987), suffered major engine damage on a cruise to Japan; Chandris was able to purchase one of the Mariposa's engines from the ship breakers.

The above image is but a detail from a much larger photograph in the digitalnz.org collection, where it is mis-dated to 1934 and merely annotated as "View of Freeman's Bay and the Ports of Auckland main wharves with docked ships, showing Mechanic's Bay and Auckland city central business district" https://www.digitalnz.org/records/30657644/view-of-freemans-bay-and-the-ports-of-auckland-main-wharves-with-docked-shi

Bird's-eye view of the last exit before the extinction event

2017-08-11T03:21:00.000+12:00

Arriving by sea, it's best to enter enter a port at dawn as the rising sun burns off the motionless sea mist. When the air has been freshened during the night and seems to hold a faint scent of flowers. Dew gleamed on every leaf and blossom, creating the feeling that the place had been created anew that very morning. The ship slowed to a speed at which the throb of her engines was no longer perceptible and the vessel glided silently into the tranquil harbour.

But then again, for the more modest and chaste-souled of closet ethnographers, it's probably all about ways of seeing...

An all fur coat and no knickers sort of town, where it's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody, this is Auckland, largest conurbation of what Orstryliuns know as the sheep-shaggers of the shakey isles. You might well think so, but one couldn't possibly subscribe to the Ocker opinion that a Kiwi leisure centre is five sheep tied to a lamp post, or that the only reason that they have women here is because the sheep can't cook.

Although exemplifying the Oceanic Malaise of apathetic boredom and vapid monotony of incurious minds, this little world unto itself is a cheerful, friendly kind of place, peopled with escapists, unpublished poets and endearing halfwits with comic accents.

Protected by mediocrity and insensitivity from the terrors of the world in a cultural climate that hopefully engenders patience and stoicism among expatriates, Homo Kiwiensis enjoys a comfortable lower middle-class existence with a mental outlook of its own, self-judged and self-approved (each little sugar-coated embellishment seems to be the outward denial of an inner doubt).

Unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, or any other, it's becoming an increasingly polarized culture, not yet freed from the disturbing passions of its past, but already troubled with anxieties about a very different future, quite possibly as an ark where the residue of civilisations' last golden age might shelter from a seemingly inevitable ecocide.

Along a Road Less Travelled: a Preface

2015-01-07T10:01:00.000+13:00

After a more than five year hiatus, Mr Canterbury Heritage returns, to endanger his relative anonymity in recounting a more personal history of the province in particular, and thereby to a recent saga of these remote islands in general.

The narration of our earlier stories proved quite unexpected results, not the least of which is that, since its inception, this social history and its ancillary extensions have accumulated a readership now well within its second squillion.

But more surprising was, that although the subject has been exclusively about a provincial backwater of a society that's long been used as a literary trope for remote obscurity, New Zealanders account for only fourth place among the readership. Those in North America and Europe comprise a significant majority.

However, the inspiration and encouragement to return and proceed upon a road less travelled rests mainly with a whole lot of Kiwis.

From smarmy criminals to old school chums now with chairs at distinguished foreign universities.

From those who've farmed their land for seven hundred years to visceral magnates with political influence and a hankering to slither up the social ladder.

From neuro-developmentally disabled indigents living under city bridges to painted cougars in the caravanserais of senescent nomads that wander our byways.

From belligerent bureaucrats, with antisocial personality disorders, to Prime Ministers come to borrow the mower.

And yea, even unto to the sixth affluent generation of patrician gentry, whose influence may have waned since they threatened the wrong prime minister, but nonetheless still get wheeled out for a spot of dinnertime persiflage with visiting foreign heads of state.

And many more...

This then will hopefully, for awhile at least, become a quasi-ethnographic assessment of an era at a place where the surge, of what we term civilisation (for better or worse), dissipates on its farthest shore.

In lieu of a suitable illustration for this preface the writer makes so bold as to include a recent effort, of which a local swineherd was the muse.

The portrait is a result of the ArtRage computer application, which facilitates not only a full range of the artist's traditional tools and palettes, but much that was previously unachievable by painters of old.

Christmas card, 2011

2014-11-08T01:19:00.000+13:00

The belated image is of Canterbury Heritage's Christmas card for 2011, a truly memorable year in which a spot of the whimsical was sorely needed.

Christchurch Heritage Tragedy

2009-08-02T09:48:00.003+12:00

It was announced on the 31st of July, 2009 that a two storey Sydenham warehouse dating from the late 1860s is to be demolished to make way for a new terminus for Leopard Coachlines.

Situated on the eastern side of Montreal Street, between the railway line and Disraeli Street, and forming part of the complex of buildings that has been the premises of CRC Salvage and Demolition since 1984, it is Christchurch's oldest surviving industrial building.

Canterbury Heritage calls upon the Christchurch City Council and the Historic Places Trust to save this historically significant part of our cultural heritage from destruction.

LINK TO PHOTO SET OPENS IN A NEW TAB OR WINDOW
Above: details from street and rear views of the historic warehouse, from a set of seven photographs by Greg O'Beirne.

Now & Then: Christchurch Unchanged

2009-08-01T08:23:00.003+12:00

There are few views of Christchurch that have not changed signficantly in the last century, but this south-westerly aspect of the Antigua Boatsheds and the Hospital footbridge from Cambridge Terrace can be counted among them. Glimpsed through the trees to the upper Left in the drawing is the spire of the hospital's original chapel and also the water tower, which was demolished in 1946.

The 1909 pen and ink drawing is by the English artist Sydney Robert Jones (1881-1966). A notable watercolourist, etcher and illustrator, Jones studied at the Birmingham School of Fine Arts and then worked for an architectural practice in that city. After the First World War Jones specialised in depicting rustic England. He toured the country with his wife, Frances, recording in pencil drawings and water colours, English villages, cottages, and manor houses. Jones also wrote several books on the English countryside, including Old English Country Cottages, The Charm of the English Village, The Manor Houses of England, London Triumphant, etc.

As yet we have been unable to locate an historical record that indicates that a 28 year-old Sydney R. Jones visited Christchurch.

Curator's Choice: 1930 School Certificate

2009-07-30T07:43:00.004+12:00

From our archive comes a blank New Zealand School Certificate from the 1930s. Listed are all of the possible subjects then available to students. Nearly a quarter of them are technology based subjects suited to young males intending to sign articles for a five year industrial apprenticeship, with a further 20% tailored to the requirements of their eventual spouses to be.

Beyond compulsory English, a further six languages, including Mãori, offered graduation opportunities. Among them were Latin and Ancient Greek, and although the former might still be available in rare instances, by the later 1950s not even Christchurch's more exclusive groves of Academe offered Greek as part of their curriculum for a classical education.

Thus it was that a youthfull Mr CH would cycle down to Miller's Department Store in Tuam Street (currently the City Council offices) every Saturday morning, where Leslie Beaumont Miller (1890-1960) made his top floor staff cafeteria available as a classroom for serious lads hoping to learn sufficient Greek as to be able to enjoy Plato in the original.

Art Deco Christchurch: West Avon 1930

2009-07-29T14:05:00.005+12:00

LARGE IMAGE OPENS IN A NEW TAB OR WINDOW

The West Avon apartments on the south-west corner of Hereford and Montreal Streets in what was then the inner city suburb of West End.

Built in 1930, but now sporting a 1980s penthouse, the Grade 3 protected building is currently painted in shades of blue and orange.

West Avon was designed by the Christchurch architect Wilford Melville Lawry (1894-1980). A long time resident of Mount Pleasant, Lawry subsequently designed the now demolished 1934 Methodist Orphanage and Children's Home in Harewood Road, Papanui (below). The site is now occupied by an old people’s home.

Among Lawry's other surviving designs are the 1935 Regent Theatre at Hokitika (below top) and the 1940 Century Theatre in Edgeware Road, St. Albans (below bottom), which was converted into a supermarket in 1969.

Canterbury's First Fire Station

2009-07-27T07:10:00.006+12:00

LARGE IMAGE OPENS IN A NEW TAB OR WINDOW

Photographed in August, 1862, this is a view of the three buildings occupying Lyttelton Town Section 33 to the eastern side of the access to the Canterbury Association's 1850 jetty. In 2009 it is the south-eastern corner of Norwich Quay, where the over-pass to the wharves begins just below the intersection with Oxford Street.

A similar view 147 years later
To the Right in the top photograph, at the south-eastern corner of the intersection is the Lyttelton Fire Station. Built in 1858, it preceeded the formal establishment of the Lyttelton Fire Brigade by four years.

Above the engine shed's front doors is the sign of the Liverpool, London and Globe Fire Insurance Company. That company shipped the engine, and the bell in the belfry above, from England to their Lyttelton agents.

Under the supervision of Thomas James Curtis, the Fire Brigade's Superintendent from 1862, the engine's steam powered pump could lift water, via a hose from the beach, three blocks north to Exeter Street.

From the rear in 1865
Next door, to the centre of the top photograph, is the 1852 premises of Bowler and Company. William Bowler (1803-1863), who lived in Sumer Road (just visible at the top Left of the top photograph), was a General Merchant and Shipping Agent. Bowler sent the first direct shipment of wool from Canterbury to London in 1856 and was subsequently owner of the paddle tug Lyttelton, which began service in the port from January, 1861.

Sketch detail: 1869 Royal Visit
Although the company's sign continues to indicate Bowler and Co., Isaac Thomas Cookson (1817-1881), agent for the Liverpool and London Fire Insurance Company had already entered into partnershp with Bowler, with the company's name becoming known as Cookson, Bowler and Company

The Fire Station and adjacent premises of Bowler and Company were demolished by 1880 to make way for the Lyttelton Harbour Board's extant former offices, currently occupied by The Harbourmaster's Café.

To the Right in the top photograph is the store of James Drummond Macpherson (1829-1894), built in 1859 on piers above the original beach. A Customs Agent, Lloyd's Agent, Ship owner, General Merchant, Coalmonger and Farmer, Macpherson was the first representative of Mathieson's Agency, a London company which shipped merchandise to the colony on consignment.

circa 1863
From 1864, using spoil from the railway tunnel construction, reclamation of the foreshore began. Five years later, with nearby soil quarried by prison labour, the beach in front of Scotsman's store disappeared beneath the site of the Port's first Railway Station.

circa 1908
The 1859 store became the Railway's offices and parcel shed, a role that it would continue to fulfil until 1963.

Overpass construction 1962
Knowing the price of everything, but nothing of heritage value, between 1965 and 1970 the Lyttelton Harbour Board set about the needless destruction of most of the historic buildings along the town's waterfront. James Macpherson's 1859 store was among the first to go. Its site remained vacant for 40 years, eventually succumbing to a nondescript concrete box in the neo-brutalist tradition.

The only surviving relic of Macpherson's ownership is the 1855 steam tug Mullogh, whose rusting bones now rest on Lyttelton Harbour's Quail Island.

100 Years Ago Today 23 July 1909: Lyttelton Larrikins, Linwood Library & Colonist's Collections

2009-07-23T05:34:00.002+12:00

Idlers at the Post Office corner in Norwich Quay, Lyttelton, have in many years polished an area on a big telegraph post, and a band along the post office wall, by the constant rubbing of tired shoulders, and countless men have spat upon the footpath thereabouts.

Yesterday several men who were causing an obstruction at the corner were "moved on" by a constable, but as soon as he had passed four of them resumed their posts on the path. Three of them found the consequences this morning in the Lyttelton Police Court.

Sergeant Ryan stated that many complaints were made of the way in which idlers blocked the footpath at that corner, and also at the one opposite, and that great annoyance was caused to people, especially ladies, using the path for its legitimate purpose. In this case he did not press for a penalty, being desirous only of impressing those in the habit of lounging in the vicinity with the fact that the by-law should be observed.

Mr George Christopher Smith, J.P., was on the Bench, and the three men, Carl Davidson, Peter Peterson and Otto Neilson, having pleaded guilty, he fined each of them five shillings and costs.

Linwood Library Opened by the Mayor

Opening Day

The Linwood Public Library, which. has been established through the efforts of the Linwood Citizens' Association, occupies the neat wooden building that was in former years the Linwood Borough Council Chambers, on the corner of Worcester Street and Stanmore Road. The building is vested in the City Council, which has granted its use to the Library Committee, and has also made a grant towards the purchase of books. The amount thus granted has been judiciously expended, and there was a very fair assortment of books upon the shelves of the institution when it was formally opened yesterday.

Mr William Wilcox Tanner, president of the Linwood Citizens' Association, welcomed the Mayor of Christchurch, Mr Charles Allison, and thanked the Council for its assistance in establishing the library. He assured the Mayor that the institution would, grow, and that it would prove in the future of very great value to the residents of the eastern portion of Christchurch. The Mayor said that he heartily sympathised with any movement for the foundation of a library, and he must congratulate the Linwood people upon having at last obtained one. The success of the library would, to a great extent, depend upon the wisdom exercised in the selection of the books placed upon the shelves. Care must be taken that none of that numerous class of modern novels which were pernicious in their tendency were allowed a place upon the shelves.

Linwood was not making the use of its recreation ground which it could and should do, and he hoped that in regard to the library, the residents would see that it was to their best interests to make use of the opportunities which were now placed in their way. He declared the library open, and wished it a successful and useful career. (Applause).

Mr George Watts Russell, M.P., congratulated the people of Linwood upon the progressive step they had taken, and said that though the library was at present but a small one, he believed it was based on good, solid, progressive lines. In two years, he believed, it would have greatly increased its size, and justified its existence.

The City Council had voluntarily handed over the building for the library, from which it had been receiving revenue, and it had given a subsidy. That subsidy, he believed, would be made an annual one, in the same way as the subsidy given by the Council to the Sydenham Library. In regard to the Christchurch Library he was sorry to say that they could get no subsidy from the Council. The Mayor was as hard as a rock on that subject. He desired to thank Councillors Thomas N. Horsley and Henry John Otley, representing the Linwood Ward on the City Council, for their services in advancing the cause of the library, and also Mr W. W. Tanner, who had devoted a great deal of time to preparing documents and doing other secretarial work which, required the experience of a man of public affairs. The district was under a debt of gratitude to Mr Tanner in this matter. In conclusion. Mr Russell said he would be pleased to give the newly-opened library any assistance, in his capacity as chairman of the Board of Governors of Canterbury College, or as a member of Parliament. (Applause).

There was a very large attendance of residents at the opening ceremony, at the conclusion of which afternoon tea was dispensed by the ladies of the district.

Early Canterbury: The Museum Collection

A joint meeting of the Board of Governors of Canterbury College and the committee recently set up by a meeting of old colonists was held at Canterbury College yesterday afternoon in connection with the decision of the Board of Governors to establish a section at the Canterbury Museum for the collection of mementoes (sic) and records of the colonisation of Canterbury. Mr William Guise Brittan was voted to the chair pending the arrival of Mr G. W. Russell. M.P., chairman of the Board.

Mr Robert Speight, assistant curator at the museum, who was requested to report on the space available, said that it was intended to reserve a part of the statuary room for the collection, which would include documents, maps, portraits and pictures of the early days. Mr Brittan said he understood that considerable space would be required. Mr John C. Andersen said that even the official records would require a larger room than the Board room, and there would also be files of newspapers, maps and so on.

Mr Henry George Ell, M.P., said that the first thing was to collect, and the question of space would be one for the Board. It was sufficient at present that there should be a safe resting-place for documents as they were collected. Mr John D. Hall said that it would be important to frame conditions, to be attached to all documents, books or pictures handed over, to ensure their safety and preservation.

A. sub-committee consisting of Messrs G. W. Russell, M.P., H. G. Ell, M.P., J. D. Hall, A. C. Rolleston, Rockwood Charles Bishop and W. G. Brittan was appointed to draft conditions and to prepare a general appeal to the public for records of the history of Canterbury, and particularly early Canterbury. Mr G. W. Russell suggested that Mr Speight should .be secretary to the joint committees, and should take charge of the work on behalf of the board of Governors. The suggestion was agreed to.

Mr G. W. Thomas (Akaroa) wrote expressing his willingness to collect records of Akaroa and Banks Peninsula. It was resolved to write to the following gentlemen asking them to form local branches affiliated to the Central Committee :- Akaroa, Mr G. W. Thomas ; Kaiapoi; Mr Joseph Lowthian Wilson ; Geraldine, Mr Thomas Buxton, M.P. ; Timaru, Mr James Craigie, M.P.

In reply to Mr Ell, Mr Russell said that the collection of Maori history should be a separate project. It was not so important as the European history.

Editor's note

Articles from The Star newspaper of the 23rd of July, 1909.

Where known, individual's initials have been expanded in the first instance to their full names to assist researchers, etc.