“find the place where social science joins the humanities, where art and culture and history, time and space, connect, where theoretical and empirical studies fuse”
–Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone, xiv
Nga Kahu o Aotearoa: tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
And for all the hawks of home as well.
Thanks for your company, friendship, guidance, and protection.
Acknowledgments
This has been quite a project indeed, with many adventures and misadventures throughout seven months as a not-quite-stranger in a not-entirely-strange land.
I can’t possibly thank everyone, but many many people have been fellow travelers, hosts, friends, helpful and welcoming, and such positive influences on my work, my well-being, and this project’s success. So, here is an attempt to thank the folks without whom this would have been even harder, or impossible. It’s in no particular order, and if your name’s not here, it doesn’t at all mean I’ve forgotten you.
I always need to thank Amy Young for everything she has done, usually without even knowing it. She also pushed me to bring the project to a close in a timely manner. Typically, this was in the form of a challenge – if she got her Ph.D. before I got my master’s, she said, I would owe her big. And despite my meeting that challenge, I do owe her big. She’s an inspiration, a wise and trusted confidante, and great fun.
Mom and Dad and Kat helped me remember why I did this to myself, and gave me the refuge and encouragement I needed in the places I love. Their company, real and voice-only, was always a comfort and a motivating force. Mom and Dad also did all sorts of administrative stuff without which the trip would never have worked, sorting mail, relaying messages, and generally keeping a lid on the various tasks which were bureaucratically necessary for my continued existence in computer databases nationwide. They did such an excellent job at maintaining a “virtual Jeff” that even the junk mailers found it!
Rachel LaCour knows how much of her is in this and all I do. Here’s to many years of friendship and collaboration with her.
Colleen Oates gave me an excuse to escape at a critical moment: That fall weekend on the North Shore is still with me. She also gave me great insight into what motivates people, and reason to laugh at myself on more than one occasion.
Angelo Lynn gave me my first chance to work at a small newspaper, and shares my love for the role a little paper plays in a little community. Thanks to him and all the folks at the Independent. Sue, if it’s broken again, I swear it’s not my fault!
Zoe Smith helped me with critical articles which are hard to find. Many others have now reaped the benefit of our collective scouring of libraries nationwide; here’s to photo elicitation research!
Robin Rennison at the J-library put up with more weird requests than I could have thought I’d make, and laughed her way through all of the brain-stretching searches for “just one more” source.
David Rubin first helped me see that this techie-nerd could be a journalist after all. Pat Coleman kept me thinking that way at a moment of personal crisis for me, which must have seemed a sedate lunch.
John Cowpland and Kerryn Jones played willing hosts and company in Hawkes Bay. John handled more of my mail than I expected he’d have to, but laughed the whole way through. Next time in Vermont, John and Kerryn!
I had a great many auto mishaps and adventures. The mechanics of New Zealand should be proud of their representation in my experience.
The truly heroic effort, though, was on the part of farmer Weira Nata of Eastland (near the East Cape) who spent two hours digging, pulling, tugging, and towing my car out of a water-filled ditch. All he would take at the end of it was a heart-felt thanks and a handshake. So he gets more thanks here. If you’re going to crash your car in Eastland, find Weira out on a horse somewhere and ask him for some of his time...
But I never would have found Weira if not for the efforts of Richard Mandeno of Auckland (yes, New Zealand, there is a compassionate Aucklander!) and his cheerful family, who piled out of their car in the middle of their holiday to let Richard drive me around to various houses in the area until we found Weira.
My next mishap was shortly thereafter, outside Gisborne. I was picked up just at dark by a woman who was heading home with her baby son. She took me to her marae to use the phone and invited me to stay the night. I misheard her name and don’t know it now, so thanks so much to you. I didn’t stay the night because I had no way to get to your place in a car which didn’t work.
I did stay in Gisborne that night, though, in my car in the driveway of mechanic and AA contractor Graham Brown and his family. In the morning his cheerful wife fed me breakfast and I got to meet the kids before they headed off, brimmed hats firmly atop their heads, to the first day of school.
Near Stratford one night, I was off the road in search of a flat sleeping-place when the car ended up in yet another ditch. A man showed up in a car, and then sped off up the road to fetch two friends. The three of them pushed me out with no trouble.
In Murchison, in a rainstorm in the middle of the day, I locked myself out of my car in a rush to get inside where it was dry. I walked down to Murchison Mechanical and said, “I’ve locked myself out of my car.”
“Just now?” came the reply.
“Yes.”
“You’re joking. Nobody does that at lunchtime.”
But the man was very cheerful and lent me his tool for breaking into cars. I failed, but he came and gave it a try in person, which succeeded.
And then there was the night of the accident... I’m very grateful indeed to the man who picked me up on the side of the Crown Range Road in the dark. His young son Michael was very understanding as well, startled as he was to find a stranger from a wrecked car hopping into his dad’s car behind his kid-seat.
Constable Grant Keeble at the Wanaka Police was fabulous, humoring me in my many levels of awareness of self and accident – as patient, EMT, startled driver of a wrecked car, and so on.
Dr. David Allen was also very helpful, and indeed apologetic about the “high cost” of health care in New Zealand. An after-hours visit to the doctor, including an X-ray, cost US$66...
Nev Teat was very helpful in getting some of my gear back, Darren in assembling the multiple duvets on which I slept for a few nights, and Marco Svoboda in retrieving my gear from the wrecked car before it went to the dump.
Steve, the wrecker driver, took as good care of the car as he could have been expected to, given its condition.
And Lynn Edgar, at Wanaka Physiotherapy, helped me get the shoulder moving well again in short order.
But more than anything I’m grateful to my beloved yellow car, Sundog, for sacrificing himself so completely and protecting me so well. It could well have been me at the end of the road, rather than my car. I’ll miss you most of all, Sundog.
Turangi became my home base on the North Island and I am grateful to many people there. I am also grateful to those people of Ngati Tuwharetoa who took some time to explain bits of Maoridom to an unknowing outsider.
Clint, Janeve, Adam, Caleb, and Talor Green were welcoming hosts and always glad to have me return from an adventure, no matter how they tried to make me think otherwise! Monique Moynihan and Kelly Rice were their willing accomplices in running the Bellbird Lodge, a place I called home for nearly three months. Hans Andersen was good company, a patient fishing companion (even when I wasn’t), and always had the right thing to say.
Without Elizabeth Hura O’Connor of the Turangi Library and Suzanne Gwilliam of the Wanaka Library it is safe to say my master’s degree would be out of reach. They each administered an exam in U.S. Government which helped me fulfill a Missouri state requirement for recipients of degrees.
The places I explored were unenjoyable and incomprehensible without the efforts of numerous people to teach, inform, and expand the mind of a humble traveler. Thanks to:
The people of Parihaka. Notably: Mahora Tairawhiti; Maata, Toru, Puna, Ngahine, and Te Akau; Jasmine; Milton and Katerina; Norman and Tony.
At Bodhinyanarama: Ajahn Sugato, Ajahn Sucinno, Ajahn Sumangalo, Tahn Dhiravamso, Anagarika Peter, John, and “Aunty” Mabel Nyein.
In and around Albert Town: Ida Darling, Dot Sherwin, Moira Fleming, Alison and Bruce Hebbard, Ralph and Ethel Templeton, Garry Templeton, Harry, Jude, and Henry Dickey, Maxene Cranston, Rae and Ngaire Benfell, Stan and Elsie Kane, Peter Barrow, Rev. Catherine Little, Nigel Brooks, and Nev and Bonny Teat and family, and all the people who gave me lifts between Albert Town and Wanaka.
For publication, editorial help, and general friendliness to a foreign journalist who appeared as if from nowhere and submitted work all over New Zealand, I must thank Adam Stoltman of Journal E
Two anonymous kindnesses stand out along with those already mentioned: the Asian couple who reopened their Opunake takeaway to feed a hungry traveler, and the kind man in Tarawera who lent me his fishing rod and told me of a wonderful camping spot. Thanks for putting a smile on a stranger’s face at times when smiles were hard to come by.
After the project was technically finished, other adventures and kindnesses helped me stay sane and occupied, relaxing before the return home. Blair McKenzie went well beyond the call of duty, professional courtesy, and even “friendly local” to help me order a large quantity of film. He also showed me around his studio and reminded me that wherever I am, photographers are there and are not strangers but friends as yet unmet. Fergus and Mary Sutherland showed me a corner of New Zealand I would have missed and am glad I did not, including hoiho (yellow-eyed penguin), sea lions, and Tmesipteris, a living fossil plant. Lance and Ruth Shaw showed me another remote part of New Zealand and challenged me to help save it. I’m working on it...
Technology was, for better and for worse, an integral part of this trip and this project. Thanks are due to my tech support “staff,” Lee-Anne Wann at Vodafone in Auckland, Kelvin Smith and Keryn Edmonds at Desktop Technologies in Palmerston North, the folks in the Digital Department at ImageLab in Wellington, and Michael Balk at The Photographer’s Studio and Laboratory in Wanaka.
For the techies in the crowd: the equipment was a Nikon 8008, a Tamron 28-200mm f3.8-5.6 lens, a Nikon SB-24 flash and SC-17 flash cord, Fuji Provia and Sensia II film; a Macintosh PowerBook G3 with Zoom modem and VST Technologies internal Zip; Kodak PhotoCD technology; Sony MZ-R30 minidisc recorder, microphones, and headphones; Sony and Maxell minidiscs; Kodak PhotoLife and Energizer single-life batteries, and Panasonic and Eveready rechargeable batteries. IHUG was my ISP in New Zealand. Software used was MacOS 8.1, Qualcomm Eudora Pro 4.0.2, Nisus Writer 4.1.6, Netscape Navigator 4.5, QuickTime 3.0 and 4.0, Macromedia SoundEdit 16 version 2, Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Adobe PageMill 2.0, Adobe SiteMill 2.0, Claris Organizer 2.0 v2, Extensis Portfolio 4.1, Fetch 3.0.3, and SoundApp 2.5.1. (Trademarks and registered trademarks above are property of their owners.)
Fuji, through the Mizzou photojournalism sequence, gave me 20 rolls of film to begin my project.
A few of those rare gems in a traveler’s life must not escape note: the strange, fast, and lasting connection between strangers who meet in faraway lands. It is not with everyone that such a connection is formed, and they were valuable beyond words for a traveler starved for meaningful conversation and truly friendly company. I am glad of what little time I spent with June Tynan, Jane Edgar, Candace Willott, Tannis Richards, George Naish and Brian O’Connor, Katy Routh, and Lynda Smith. I’ll see you all again, sooner than we think.
The committee, Ann Brill and Mary Kay Blakely and David Rees, all added more than their fair share, while putting up with more than my fair share. I think they knew at the outset that they didn’t quite know what we were in for. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Three friends graciously excused my absence from their weddings during my stay in New Zealand: Thanks to Kris Reitz, Elizabeth Bell, and Rachel Johnston for understanding.
Phone conversations and Email exchanges with Becky Lebowitz, Cecelia Hanley, Robin Jones, Heather Thompson, Beth Bentley, Jen Hazen, and Tracey Wilkerson (as well as with many of those already mentioned) helped me maintain sanity, perspective, and a sense of continuing contact with the very special people in my life. They also offered insight into why I do the work I do, and why I love working with people like them.
Brent Johnson will be missed by all who knew him. His passing provided me with a chance to reflect on my distance from home and loved ones, the fragility of life, and the incredible – but still unsatisfying – nearness a telephone can bring in crisis. Thanks for making me laugh, Brent, and, even at your last, for making me think.
So many names, so much love and energy. Thanks to you all. Your help does not absolve me of any responsibility for the finished product, though you are aware, I’m sure, of your complicity in what I have done...
Introduction to the project
Small towns fascinate me. I want to live in one, to raise my family in one, to work in one, and to retire in one. They always have neat newspapers, too, because the community is so close. Without the paper, the people would still be close and still know most of what was going on. It is the opportunity of the local paper to showcase special things about the community.
Even breaking news isn’t so important to the local newspaper, because it’s often not a daily. Sometimes it’s a weekly, sometimes twice a week. So hot news topics have already been discussed at breakfast spots and coffee shops all over town before the paper comes out. Again, it’s the local paper which can highlight some of the special stories in the news, to show the residents more about their community.
I’ve worked with small newspapers in small towns and have loved every minute of it. The work itself is varied and multi-threaded. Nobody does just one thing. The ad folks help do layout, as do the news reporters. The photographers set up their own pages, and the production folks answer the phones when the front office staff are at lunch. The front office people do everything, including deliver the paper on occasion.
But it’s all about storytelling and everyone at the papers knows that. The ethics of telling stories about folks with whom you’re inextricably links made me think more about this in a paper for Lee Wilkins. I determined that I can’t control others’ ethical decisions, but I will cover people with whom I must coexist, and live with the decisions I make as a journalist and neighbor.
Storytelling can take many forms, including those at the counter at the local breakfast joint. Online storytelling is a relatively new way to do things, but I really enjoy it. The interplay between audio, images, and text fascinates me and has since I started working in multimedia, long before I’d ever heard of the Missouri School of Journalism.
I started seeing this while working at Middlebury College both before and after my graduation from college with a degree in Early Modern European history. Since then I’ve had a lot of opportunities to piece things together.
In reporting for the Missourian I thickened my journalistic skin and got more practice asking the tough questions. In J360 I put good writing to the fore, to make art of my solid reporting skills. J340 helped me see how to be a photojournalist and introduced me to several of my best friends, some of whom have helped me throughout this project.
My J340 and J360 projects worked well together in the spring of 1998 with a story on the Columbia unit of the National Guard. I put pictures and words together in a coherent single piece which was very strong and got lots of play in various outlets, from MiniMo to the Missourian to Vox to Missouri Magazine.
My first opportunity to add audio to that mix will come in two weeks when I spend another weekend with that same Guard unit on a live-fire exercise at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I will shoot and write and collect and edit audio. The initial work is already on my website; I will add the second installment as I put it all together.
My independent study with Ann Brill in the fall of 1998 helped me see what some of the challenges would be in getting this work online in a usable form, from the point of view of storytellers and producers of online products. It built in part on my experience as the TA for J369, helping people with varying strengths and interests assemble story packages for the web.
Since I want to not only work for a local newspaper but also freelance for various publications around the country, I am learning from this Guard experience that I can make one weekend of intense work publishable in many different markets. That’s very important to making money as a freelancer.
The issues I want to cover as a freelancer, though, are very similar to those I want to cover for local newspapers: special people doing special things to improve their lives and others’.
This project will permit me to expand beyond the United States and cover a community which is different in heritage, demographic makeup, and location from any I have previously covered. I will work in small towns in New Zealand, and cover one or two stories in significant depth.
Documentary photography is a journalistic method which tends to be both deep in coverage and widespread in terms of its prevalence around this country and the world. Documentary writing is related but so far has not collaborated frequently with documentary photography. To this mix I will add the possibilities of online media, including non-linearity and audio.
Local media coverage has an advantage over other types: Feedback is immediately present. Photo elicitation is only a bit more organized than a conversation about the work over beer or lunch, but is an excellent way to discover the point of view of the subjects about the story. Accountability is a key element of journalism; knowing the views of the subjects is vital to successful local journalism. This raises issues of ethics and about who controls the story which gets told. But the justification model proposed by Sissela Bok requires that all interested parties have a say before a particular item is published. Not that everyone must be happy with the final publication choice, of course, but all points of view should be known by those deciding how much to tell.
I learned about photo elicitation in Zoe Smith’s Photography and Society class and immediately was interested in undertaking this type of research. It superseded my original plan, which was a Q study along the same lines as the photo elicitation will now take. Q is time-consuming and resource-intensive, requiring a great deal of work before insight can truly be gained. Photo elicitation, for me, is a more direct line of access between journalist and subject, permitting open dialogue and frequent contact in comfortable settings.
This is definitely a key project for me in my personal and professional growth: If I can put this together, I can do anything I think I want to do. The challenges along the way will be related both to the type of work and its location. I have enough experience to feel confident arriving in a strange place to do this type of work among strangers who will soon become friends.
I am excited about the challenges and the opportunities here. It’s time to get moving!
Project Description
My project went through several major design revisions. Initially, the work was approved with several glaring blanks, which later changed and developed into something similar to what I had originally conceived, but at the same time fundamentally different. First I’ll show you what I proposed, and what I ended up with, and then I’ll talk about why the changes occurred.
Initial version
I will be working for a weekly or twice-weekly newspaper in _____, New Zealand. I will be working part of the time as a general staff member of the newspaper and part on an in-depth story, whose subject will be determined when I arrive in town and do some legwork to learn about the local issues. In this way the work as a staffer at the paper will be vital, as a source of information and a credible name to help me introduce myself and my work.
It will be published as a package of text and photographs in the newspaper . It will also be published on the newspaper’s website in a different arrangement of text and photos, with supporting audio as well. Other possible outlets, which are not instead of the local paper, but in addition to it, could be Journal E or untitled magazine, two documentary-oriented web publications.
Clips from the newspaper and printouts from all publishing web sites will be submitted in the final project report.
My work will begin in January, 1999 and will conclude between May and June, 1999. The exact dates have yet to be worked out with the person who has yet to accept being my on-site supervisor at a paper which has yet to say I can work with them.
This project is vital to my professional and personal growth, as the skills I learn and the experiences I have will be valuable in my chosen career path of small-town journalist and freelancer. My skills at writing, photography, and online media production are all in need of being taken to another level. This type of systemic challenge is exactly the type of experience I need to pick myself up beyond where I am now.
I will report to my committee via Email in weekly field notes, which may become more frequent than that at times. While each of my committee members has a skill which can help me improve my work in that area, they also will share responsibility in helping me move the story along as a whole.
Ann’s skill is in online storytelling and organization of multimedia work. Mary Kay’s is in writing and effective written journalism. Dave’s is in photojournalism and in-depth photographic stories, as well as the practicalities of online work and some photo elicitation experience. But each has worked with collaborators in other media and know about the challenges presented in such situations. I will learn as much as I can from each of them, in terms of making each element of my multimedia project stronger, as well as making the combination stronger than its parts.
My on-site supervisor will be ______, who is the ________. This person will help me in the following areas, and in the following ways:
[arrangements yet to be made]
There are two backup plans to this one:
1) I will stash a bunch of my luggage in a friend’s house in the Hawkes Bay area and travel around New Zealand, simultaneously exploring and introducing myself to editors at the newspapers in the communities I visit. I will explain my project to them, show my work, and ask if I can work with them. This may not work the first few times, but someone is sure to be interested.
2) If that fails, I’ll have had fun traveling all the same. I will return to Hawkes Bay and stay with my friend in the spare room in his apartment and do the story there for Journal E, untitled magazine, or some other publication which is interested in the work I want to do.
So all in all, it will be an adventure and a good process of finding the demand for the work I want to do. Obviously all arrangements (including the backup plans) are subject to the approval of my committee.
Final version
My work will be of an almost entirely independent nature; in place of on-site supervisors, I will submit work as a freelancer to various publications. The feedback I get from those people, as well as from my faculty and colleagues will amply satisfy the requirement for supervision and input from other professionals in journalism.
My work will begin in January, 1999 and conclude in July, 1999. Work will happen in several small towns around New Zealand, selected mostly subjectively on their varying characteristics.
Publication will occur in several ways: As text only, as pictures only, as text/picture packages, and on websites including text, pictures, and audio. Possible outlets for this include local and regional newspapers, magazines, and radio stations, as well as Journal E, a documentary-oriented web publication.
This project is vital to my professional and personal growth, as the skills I learn and the experiences I have will be valuable in my chosen career path of small-town journalist and freelancer. My skills at writing, photography, and online media production are all in need of being taken to another level. This type of systemic challenge is exactly the type of experience I need to pick myself up beyond where I am now.
I will report to my committee via Email in weekly field notes, which may become more frequent than that at times. While each of my committee members has a skill which can help me improve my work in that area, they also will share responsibility in helping me move the story along as a whole.
Ann’s skill is in online storytelling and organization of multimedia work. Mary Kay’s is in writing and effective written journalism. Dave’s is in photojournalism and in-depth photographic stories, as well as the practicalities of online work and some photo elicitation experience. But each has worked with collaborators in other media and know about the challenges presented in such situations. I will learn as much as I can from each of them, in terms of making each element of my multimedia project stronger, as well as making the combination stronger than its parts.
Changes
I arrived in New Zealand still without a specific connection to a specific newspaper, and unsure of how to go about finding one at that late date. Departing from a straightforward approach to the project derived directly from the guidelines and handbooks of the j-school, I proceeded to break or bend nearly every rule to do with projects. This turned out to be neither the wisest nor the dumbest thing I did as part of my project.
I began, however, by searching for a newspaper or other publication with which to develop a working relationship at least similar to the concept of a professional project from the handbook. In the next section I will explore more deeply the reasons for the failure of this approach, but in short the project concept did not easily translate to the New Zealand media environment, in terms of general professional intent, normal academic training practices in New Zealand, or in the working environment of New Zealand media.
As a result, I was left with two options: can the project and travel and have fun, or continue to search for some way to make a project-like work come out of all of this exploration.
I determined to give it my very best shot to make something that would be project-quality work, and to enjoy myself traveling in between what, it seemed, would be fairly discrete times of “project work.” This, too, did not work as planned, though it was more to my benefit that it did not.
My exploration of New Zealand was cultural, geographic, historical, and experiential in nature. I continue to feel that I know New Zealand and New Zealanders quite well as a result of my work and experience. I have always approached journalism in this multi-disciplinary way, much as an anthropologist or sociologist might, rather than a the facts-now, facts-only approach attributed to most journalists, including that particular repugnant type of journalist who I initially resembled, the “parachute journalist,” who, arriving in a strange place, immediately forms nearly immutable preconceptions and reports on those as if they were occurring around the corner, rather than across the world.
This broad, lengthy, slow (often sluggish) approach ended up serving me well, both in terms of collecting and organizing information for publication and in actually getting some of it published in New Zealand media.
Project Development
The project came off successfully in the end, though I was almost never sure that it actually would. The actual development of the project through the seven-month time period, as well as through the space of New Zealand’s physical, social, and community environments proved to be not only the biggest challenge, but the greatest strength of the work I did there.
I had originally hoped to fit the mold of the j-school’s “regular” off-campus projects, with a base in one place, with one publication, and an on-site supervisor. Serious endeavors to that end, both from Missouri beforehand and once in New Zealand yielded nothing.
I’ve always been stubborn, so I went anyway, determined to find or make a project out of what I could. From the ashes of the plans for a “typical” j-school project rose a challenge to create – from scratch, without even “average” cultural savvy – a freelance career, including contacts at publications, story ideas, and a system in which I could work productively. This approach and resolve bewildered my faculty committee from time to time, but – fortunately for me – they remained supportive and encouraging throughout. They became as curious as I was, I think, to find out how this whole thing would turn out.
I will approach the explanation of the project’s evolution in two major sections, the first dealing with finding communities in which I wanted to work, and which wanted to have me there, and learning about those communities, including gaining access, trust, and so on. This part I consider to be the first, and often the toughest, job of the freelance journalist: To find something to cover.
The second section will be about the publication process, in which I scouted, located, and approached likely publications to see if they were interested in the work I was doing. This, of course, is the second job of the journalist: To disseminate the information gathered.
The division is for ease of conception and to avoid confusion. However, it is important to note that the two sections were in progress simultaneously during my work in New Zealand.
I did think of them as separate tasks, and did not let one influence the other overly much. On the other hand, had I ignored the newspapers local to the places I was working, getting my work published would have been harder. And, had I selected only communities with nothing to say for themselves, I would have wasted what space I was able to find in various magazines and newspapers. So the two sections were not totally independent, but neither were they so interdependent that they must be examined simultaneously, despite the fact that they did indeed occur simultaneously, with a break in one set of tasks often filled by some of the other.
The third section will discuss financial consideration regarding the project, including discussion of both expenses and funding sources.
Additional details for many of the parts of the discussion below can be found in my field notes and in the “NZ News” dispatches, included later in this project report.
Locating a community: Finding a “home”
Locating a community to cover was a difficult task from the outset, not least because of my generally low level of understanding of basic New Zealand geography. Where were the small towns? I didn’t know, and often resorted to maps, which, of course, tend to list only larger towns. I also was able to read carefully through my Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand. (As it turned out, three of the five locations I ended up working in or exploring seriously were not in Lonely Planet, but most of the towns I first ventured into were.)
The progress tended towards the incredibly slow, with periods of sloth interspersed. I didn’t know at the time something which seems painfully obvious to me now: My early meanderings and blunders and misadventures were teaching me invaluable skills about New Zealand and New Zealanders.
I began by arriving in Auckland and purchasing a car. The vehicle would turn out to be a lifesaver – literally. But in the months between my mid-January departure from a north Auckland suburban home – in a bright yellow 1981 Ford Cortina wagon, driving on the wrong side of the car, and on the wrong side of the road for the first time ever, and in a manual-transmission, manual-steering car – and the night of June 10 outside Wanaka, on the South Island, the car was my home, my transport, and my way into these communities far from bus or train service, and even off the regular hitchhiking routes.
In the few days I spent in Auckland, I visited the public library and bookstores to read newspapers and books about New Zealand, in search of places I was interested in learning about. Then, very quickly, I tired of the city and decided to move onward.
My first stop was to the home of the only person I knew in New Zealand. (I later discovered that one other friend was in fact already in New Zealand, but I didn’t know it until June.) I headed to Napier, to John’s house.
While visiting him, we talked about where I might do my project. I’d stopped through Taupo on my way down, but it didn’t look like the sort of place I was looking for. I knew that a place would either feel right or not when I found one, and so I was waiting until my gut agreed with my head and my heart. This process paid off.
I talked about Turangi, and about Ohakune, and about a few other places. Each time John and his girlfriend Kerryn laughed at the idea of me working in such a small place. It was their reaction which made me sure I was on the right track: I didn’t care how small and insignificant others thought a place was. I wanted to find out how the people who lived there saw their hometown.
After leaving John’s place, I drove back over the mountains toward Turangi. At a gas station/bar along the way I met a man who told me of a great place to camp and fish, and who even lent me his fishing rod. That was the sort of connection I was looking for! I was glad to meet him and his kids, and to locate a great camping spot well off the main road, amid hills and fields of sheep.
With confidence renewed, and with one more friendly face added to the map of New Zealand, I drove to Turangi. I didn’t know it then, but it was to become a second home, though I would end up doing no project work there.
In exploring the area, I located a small village called Waihi. Outside the village – and this was the part that really intrigued me – was a sign reading “Private village. No entry.” I simply had to find out more about this community, which would shut itself off from the world so blatantly.
But I knew I didn’t know enough yet to just wander into the village. I spoke to a number of people in town, though: the owners of the backpackers’ hostel where I was staying, and other people I met around the place.
I also became a member of the Turangi public library (for NZ$1, and a local address – the hostel) and began reading through their New Zealand history section. And I became a regular patron of the local bookstore, which, though tiny, had enough of the “standard works” of New Zealand history to interest me.
I read histories of the area I was in, of the country as a whole, and as much other New Zealand history as I could find. I learned about several small communities elsewhere in New Zealand which I hoped to be able to visit later in the journey. I also learned about Waihi and the Ngati Tuwharetoa clan whose chief lived in Waihi. After a week or two of intense reading and talking, I began to feel as if I knew enough to make a beginning at Waihi.
But I still did not know how to gain entrance to what was clearly marked so as to keep me out. I started at a business on the lakeshore near the village, but outside it. I asked if they knew anyone I might talk to to learn more about Waihi. They suggested going to a house I hadn’t seen, hidden in the trees and brush outside the village.
I began a practice which was to become very important later in the project: I walked everywhere. I parked near the house, but not in its driveway, and walked up the drive to the house.
There I met a woman named Emma, who had a lot of family in the village and had lived there until she had inherited the house she was in now, with her husband. I explained myself and my project idea, and talked to them at great length on several occasions, learning more about New Zealand history and government, New Zealanders, and Maori culture. It was to be this type of free-form conversation which would be the basis for most of my learning and exploration of communities throughout the seven months of work.
Emma suggested some people I might contact in the village, and gave me permission to enter. I walked in and down the one street, to the house where Emma had told me I might meet Mary, who knew lots of Waihi’s history. I introduced myself and we talked for a short while, before Mary sent me down the row of houses again to talk to someone else. That person ended up suggesting I talk to the head of the village, Nata, and gave me his phone number.
I ended up meeting Nata after a funeral which I accidentally “crashed” by walking into Waihi, but he was friendly enough when I explained that I’d like to talk to him at some more appropriate time.
The whole time this process was underway, about two weeks of preliminary discussions, I was reading and talking to other people and learning as much as I could about Waihi and the Ngati Tuwharetoa people. I asked for access to, and was allowed to explore, the Turangi library’s special collection and read several rare folios about life in Waihi in the early 1900s.
I was prepared to talk to people about Waihi and have some background at least about what had happened in the past. I was interested in how they lived in the present, and what they thought about the past as well as the future. I felt very ready for a positive start, and thought myself incredibly lucky to have found such a great place to learn about so quickly. (It was still February.)
There was in this process a lot of waiting and my patience was certainly put to the test. However, I thought I knew a good thing when I saw it, and I was definitely willing to wait for it to work out in its own time – to a point.
People were away for weekends, or on holiday for a week, or were slow and returning phone calls, or any number of other reasons for delay. I continued to push subtly forward, leaving messages now and again for Nata, or stopping in to talk to Emma and her husband. But after a time I began to feel very demoralized about the Waihi angle.
Part of this was the strain of being so far away from friends and family, and knowing I wasn’t going home anytime soon. That was very difficult at times, sometimes crushingly so, and other times scarcely a thought in my mind. Throughout the trip, I did miss my friends and family quite a bit, and kept in close touch with them via Email and telephone. (I had a New Zealand mobile phone.)
And part of it was, in fact, pressure I felt from within to get moving on the project. While waiting, of course, I was hiking and fishing and cycling and exploring the central North Island. I even took a couple of longer trips, scouting towns in Eastland (the eastern lump of the North Island), and visiting John and Kerryn in Napier again. But I wasn’t there to be a tourist – or at least, I was there to strike a balance between being a tourist and being a working journalist – and the balance wasn’t making me happy.
After nearly a month of waiting around and not getting return phone calls I decided to quit scouting other places and just move on. I didn’t tell Nata this; the phone number he had for me would work anywhere in New Zealand, and if he called me back, I’d think about returning to Waihi depending on how the conversation went.
I headed to Taranaki, the western lump of the North Island, where I’d not yet been. I’d heard there were several small towns there which might be interesting, so I headed off.
I was following hawks by this time. Each time I made a decision about where to go for a few days, or when to head back or camp, I either saw a hawk or I didn’t. I always took the presence of hawks to be good omens, and I always felt terrible when I saw a hawk dead on the side of the road, run down as it was feeding on roadkill.
Wandering around Taranaki, I saw a hawk circling in the sky over a small cluster of roofs. I looked again and saw another hawk, and then a third. A careful examination of the sky revealed that there were no fewer than five hawks, all circling over this village. I knew I had to go there. The village was called Parihaka.
I drove a little ways toward the village, and got out near the first occupied house I saw. A man was working in the garden, so I approached him and asked how I might learn more about this small community. He gave me a response I would come to hear several times in small towns all over New Zealand: Walk over there, look at something we consider important, and then come back and I’ll tell you who to talk to.
I walked over to a memorial to the Maori prophet Te Whiti O Rongomai O Parihaka. I’d heard his name before, but wasn’t at all sure where or in what context. I returned to the man’s garden, and he pointed out a house across the village, on a low hill. He told me to go there, and ask for a woman he thought was called Margaret. She would know more, he said.
I walked over and knocked on the door. The woman who answered my knock seemed a bit confused for a moment, and then became very welcoming, inviting me in and talking at great length. I explained myself, how I had arrived at Parihaka, and so on. She seemed to understand this, and invited me back the following day to talk more. I was feeling out how a project might work about Parihaka or about this woman, or something, at the same time as I was getting a stronger sense of what it was I wanted to do and how I wanted to go about this project of community exploration.
She said she’d see if I could stay in the village for a time, and in the meantime offered me a chance to camp on some of the village’s land down by the Tasman Sea, near a lighthouse. I went back the next day and we talked for 10 hours! She said I couldn’t stay just yet, but invited me back for the big hui (village gathering) the following month.
She and I talked about how my project might be able to happen. We explored ideas of her songs and poetry (she showed me a great deal of it) and my photographs and writing, or other options. We left it fairly loose, but it seemed to me that things were definitely moving forward.
I took a quick trip back to Turangi one weekend to meet up with a friend who was leaving New Zealand. I missed seeing him, but the moment I drove into Turangi, my phone rang. It was Nata. He said he’d not forgotten me, but would call me the following day to set up a time to meet and talk. He was guarded on the phone, but I was still pretty happy about the prospect of learning more about Waihi. I was (and indeed, remain) genuinely interested in learning more about Waihi, even if it didn’t turn into a piece of the project.
I did end up going back to Parihaka several times before the hui, and talked to Maggie and some others in the village, I was really getting to know Parihaka. I had, unknowingly, stumbled upon on the of the most important Maori villages in New Zealand. It was the site of several historic confrontations between the Maori and the British, and was a birthplace of nonviolent resistance, preached by Te Whiti and Tohu, two prophets from the village.
At the hui, a complication appeared in what I had hoped to accomplish. I was not allowed to make pictures or record audio in the village, or of the people at the hui. Some attributed it to superstition, others to custom. Some photographs were up on walls of village buildings, but they were more of the “family snapshot” type of image. Also, they were made by people from the village, which was a key difference. The Maori have a keen sense of who is “inside” and who is not. It’s a loose sense, in that if you can trace your ancestry back to even just one Maori, you’re considered a Maori. But if you can’t, you’re not. And when it comes to the closest parts of the family hearth, the marae, anyone not of that marae must be formally invited in and welcomed in a particular way. I was clearly an outsider.
I had a brief hiatus in the whole project work after my first hui at Parihaka, because my family came to visit for two weeks. It was great to see them, to take a break from the intense concentration and up-and-down of the process of feeling out Waihi and Parihaka, and to explore some more of New Zealand as an outsider content (at least for those two weeks) to remain so.
At the end of my family’s visit, I flew back to Wellington with nowhere in particular to be for several days. I arrived in the evening, picked up my car where I’d left it and tried to figure out where to drive to. Everywhere I could stay was too far to drive that late in the day, so I headed off in search of a field to park in, so I could sleep in the back of the car, as I usually did.
Instead I ended up at the gates of the Bodhinyanarama Buddhist monastery in a valley outside Wellington. It was another place I decided to try to explore, learn about, and document. I was able to talk to the monks quite openly about perhaps documenting their work. They responded equally openly: Such an endeavor wouldn’t be very welcome, but we could come to some sort of compromise, they thought.
I was able to photograph around the monastery, but not the monks themselves. I was also able to record some of the chanting, but none of the discussions.
I saw this as progress of a sort, but only incrementally. Waihi had been a first shot. Then Parihaka, where I got further, with rapport with one person expanding to the group but no access, and then to the monastery, where I was able to develop a rapport with the group and limited access. I saw the depth of my involvement in each successive community increasing, which was promising.
On a trip to Parihaka for a third hui, this time with one of the monks from Bodhinyanarama , I was able to learn a great deal about the two cultures by watching them collide. I had not intended to have this happen as starkly as it did, but the very fact that it surprised me was also a learning experience. Peaceful monks were largely unheard of in Parihaka’s popular culture exposure; many of the young people thought Ajahn Sucinno was some sort of martial-arts expert, which was amusing to Sucinno and to me. For his part, he didn’t understand why they wouldn’t allow him to eat before noon each day, in accordance with his monastic vows, rather than wait until 12:30 or so for lunch. I learned about flexibility and definitely saw the benefit in being adaptable when doing this sort of work; I had managed to more or less fit into both arrangements and was able to bridge the gap and prevent Sucinno from starvation and from being overwhelmed by the idea of sleeping in a room with a couple of dozen others. (He slept in my car; after 14 years of having his own small room, Sucinno would have been unhappy with the snoring and the crying babies in the night.)
After several more days at the monastery, I left the North Island, to go explore small towns in the South Island. I had a few ideas of places I might look, and I was sure there would be more small towns I would just run across. I was right.
On the ferry ride, however, I was able to take advantage of a desk and power point and do quite a bit of work readying material for possible publication when the opportunity arose. It was sometimes hard to take time to do this type of work because of the effort and excitement associated with learning about the communities I was in. At this point, though, I realized I had a lot to catch up on from the North Island, and went in search of a place to stay for a few days to a few weeks and relax, reflect, and write.
Another aspect of the project was putting material on my website for colleagues and the faculty to look at and give me feedback on. I did this intermittently, at best, but always tried to remember to do it.
During May 1999, I explored several small communities, almost landing in Collingwood on the northern end of the South Island, but then cancelling at the last minute and moving on. I was still paying attention to my gut feelings.
It paid off later the next day, too, when I drove past a remote farm near Murchison which also had what the sign called a “bike-packers.” I turned the car around and drove in. I ended up being the only person there, staying about four days, and having the woodstove, couch, and main table all to myself. It was a wonderful small cabin and a great place to hole up and write. Write I did. I also had access to a phone line and was able to put material online and exchange lots of Email with people. That break was an excellent way to recharge, feel like I’d done as much as I could with the material from the North Island, and be ready for the South Island.
Also, while near Murchison, I was able to have a phone interview for work in Antarctica. (In keeping with my general tendency to do many things at once, I was not only doing this project and being a traveller in New Zealand, but I was also applying for a job to begin after the project work was completed in August 1999.)
From Murchison, I went to the west coast of the South Island, and spent a week in Hokitika. It was not the sort of town I wanted to work in, so I left and headed south to Okarito, which was a very small town right on the ocean. I stayed there for about a week as well, talking to a few people but generally getting the sense that it was not a town which was all that happy to have outsiders around. I moved on.
After some more exploring and some good hiking and meeting a couple of people who are still great friends, I ended up in Wanaka, a town in a region of mountains, rivers, and lakes. It was a beautiful setting, and I located a small town outside Wanaka which ended up being perfect for my project: Albert Town.
It is worth noting that I found Albert Town in late May. I had been in New Zealand since mid-January, and had only four months later – after some extensive exploration – located a place which was going to work out. I knew it very quickly after arriving in town.
On a community notice board I found the phone number of the secretary of the community association. I called her and spoke to her some over the phone and arranged an interview with her for the following day. I joined the local library again and read as much as I could get my hands on.
The project came together very quickly after that. The townspeople were very welcoming indeed. I met most of them one-on-one initially (or at least couple by couple), bringing introductions from previous interviewees. I sat in their living rooms and at their tables, drinking more tea than I thought possible, and shared more than a few beers as well, talking about Albert Town’s past, present, and future with people of all ages and professions, some of whom had retired there from other places, some who had lived there all their lives, and others who fell somewhere in between.
I walked everywhere in Albert Town – every street. I knew names of houses with names, knew the residents by face if not by name, and, I think, became somewhat of an eccentric part of the town’s landscape for the couple of months I was there. At a community potluck dinner, more people knew who I was than I knew. But I met a lot of people, discovered and then solved a mystery in the town, and really came to feel like it was a home away from home.
(I even visited when I was back through New Zealand after Antarctica, and found a great many doors still open to me, and plenty of tea hot in the teapot.)
It was another gut-feeling decision, and, at long last, it had paid off! Project work cranked into full gear, despite the fact that I was sharing a bunkroom with four other guys in a backpackers’ hostel five kilometers away in Wanaka. After I wrecked my car, I made a sign for hitching. One side read “Wanaka please;” the other read “Albert Town please.” I got a great many lifts from people who wanted to know why I was hitching to Albert Town. Those lifts also gave me an insight into the community, from residents as well as regular passers-through.
I feel strongly that the success in Albert Town was due as much to persistence as to the learning I had done in the previous locations. Listening, hearing terms and topics, reading about them in the media and in books, and generally picking up a great deal of cultural familiarity benefited me well. I knew all the acronyms for government departments, all typical gripes of New Zealanders about their government, and so on. I was also able to identify things that were unique to Albert Town as a result of this exposure to a wider New Zealand. It gave me a great context for understanding the people and issues in Albert Town.
I had been progressively understanding more and feeling more at home through each of the towns I spent time in, including three which have not been mentioned here: Waihau Bay and Mokau on the North Island, and Jackson Bay on the South Island, which I explored only briefly (for a couple of days or less) before deciding to move on.
With this great foundation in New Zealand cultural and political dialogue, I was in a perfect position in Albert Town: an outsider looking in, with the understanding and perception of somewhat of an insider. This is the root of my success in New Zealand: reading and talking, even when it seemed like nothing at all was happening, and even when I wasn’t in “work mode.” I picked up a lot of tidbits which only became relevant (or even, in some cases, comprehensible) later.
Several weeks in Albert Town went by very quickly, with lots of pictures, audio, interviews, reading, and walking around. Some results of that work were published, and more remains to be published in later years.
Publication: Getting the word out
I approached several publications over the course of my work in New Zealand. I bought and read a great many magazines and newspapers, scouting for ideas, learning about the culture, politics, and so on, and looking for possible venues for my work.
In Turangi, I initially approached the Turangi Chronicle, the local weekly newspaper. It was easily scouted and located, because it was the only local paper.
I walked into the office and spoke with the editor briefly. She was not interested in having me around, and was actually rather abrupt, though not curt, in telling me so. It would have been a good place to publish work in Waihi, though as it turned out I would have had nothing to publish!
Local newspapers were, in fact, often the first places I approached, though Taranaki did not really have a local paper to speak of, and the local papers in Wellington already had covered the monastery closely in recent months, due to their construction of a new building for meditation and reflection.
The Mirror, in Wanaka, did not have enough space to run my proposed piece on Albert Town, but was receptive and interested in hearing from an outside journalist working in its coverage area.
The Otago Daily Times, a larger regional paper covering the Albert Town area, did end up publishing my material. I approached the features editor, Barry Stewart, in an Email and then a phone call. He was very interested from the very beginning of our exchanges, and indeed offered to run more of my material if it was from their coverage area. He repeatedly apologized for not running more pictures larger, but cited space constraints on the page. I did get section-front play, so I was more than happy with that (though I always like to see more pictures run bigger, too!)
I always bought The Listener, which was a weekly music, art, and entertainment magazine, as well as publisher of the TV and radio broadcast schedules. I wondered if I might be able to angle a piece their way, too, though I ended up not doing so.
I also approached North & South, a monthly magazine of current affairs and culture. It was a magazine I had always enjoyed reading, for their commentary, in-depth reporting, and general quality. They have a section each month called “Four Corners,” where they showcase a place or event in New Zealand of curiosity or interest. It’s kind of a quirky section, and I queried them about the monastery. They were very interested, and I submitted material to them. I’m actually not sure whether it was published; I still haven’t seen a copy of the issue it was supposed to run in, and the editor I dealt with has now left the publication.
Mana is a magazine about Maori culture and affairs. I approached them about Parihaka, but the editor, Lloyd Ashton, was straightforward: It was unlikely that I, as an outsider, would see anything in Parihaka that some observer had seen before. They wanted to run new views and invited me to send them material if ever I wrote it for another publication, but were very reluctant to publish a non-Maori viewpoint which was not necessarily revolutionary in insight.
I considered New Zealand’s National Radio (like National Public Radio in the U.S.), as well as a startup local radio station in Wanaka, for some audio pieces on Albert Town, but ended up not having enough material for National Radio, and the startup station folded before I was able to put together a package for them.
I also located a magazine called Inspiration Input, about spirituality and consciousness, and so on. I read a couple of issues and decided they could use some actual facts in their piece. So I queried them about Bodhinyanarama, and they were very interested. So much so, in fact, that I rushed to put together a piece and they ran it in their very next issue.
I was constantly reading a number of other New Zealand magazines and newspapers, including New Zealand Geographic, any small-town newspapers I could find, and the regional daily Southland Times. I was always on the lookout for others on newsstands and in bookshops wherever I went. I ended up discovering that the publications I liked reading the most were also the ones I was most likely to want to publish in. Which feeling drove the other, I don’t know: Did I want to publish my work in places I respected, or did I respect them because I thought I could get published in them?
In the end, of course, I got many more rejections or (worse) total lack of response than I got acceptances. I made contact with publications in a combination of ways: in person, via phone or fax, or by Email. In each case the editors were able to respond in a like means of communication and, indeed, my entire work with Barry Stewart was conducted over the phone and in Email. A few times I did send pictures in the post, rather than scans (which I also had available), and I always received them back in a timely manner.
I developed story ideas the same way, too: all the time. I was on vacation with my family, and my sister was driving over an especially steep mountain pass. I was concerned that our car might just drop over the edge into a gorge several hundred feet below; the road was that narrow! And yet when we came upon a group of men driving tractors over the pass, flying “Top of the South Tractor Club” from their bumpers, I wanted to hop out and interview them. I continue to look back and see story ideas all over the landscape of New Zealand; some of them I will do in the future, and other ideas I will leave to other journalists.
Querying the publications was the same type of process as in the U.S., or at least the editors responded well to the style of describing a bit about the article, showing (in the query) that you can write, and proposing a length and timetable, as well as any photographs.
Financing the project: The buck stops here
Money. Without it, I couldn’t have done this project. The obvious stuff was expensive: flying to New Zealand, lodging, car and fuel, food, film and processing, Internet and phone connectivity. And then there were the “incidentals,” which were as crucial to the success of the project as any of the others: Small gifts for bringing to people’s homes when invited (particularly in Maori villages, showing up empty-handed is bad form), beer or snacks with people during conversations (often shared between me and my interlocutor), car repairs, photocopying, and printing pictures.
I primarily got my funding for the project from student loans, based, of course, on expenses generally incurred at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I did have to pay tuition during the four-month semester I was away, and I was unable to take an assistantship of any kind, since I was off-campus.
Other funds I sourced from my own savings (from work before returning to graduate school), and from a couple of generous gifts from family members, who were supportive in far more many ways than just money.
It did help that I was confident of finding a job after the project was over, and so I was able to “loan myself” some money from savings, and “repay myself” from earnings later.
I was able to earn some money while away by working at a few places along the way (a couple of backpackers’ hostels), and could have earned more had I worked the freelance angle harder and sold pieces outside the realm of my project work.
Another issue to consider seriously is exchange rate. While I was in New Zealand, a single U.S. dollar bought two New Zealand dollars, meaning that something which cost NZ$10 cost me US$5. That was a big help, since many books still cost $15-20, but in New Zealand currency. So many things seemed “half-price” to me. Of course, in other times or other countries, the exchange rate would not be so advantageous. Check this out before you go, or you may end up spending far more than you had expected.
Mary Beth Meehan’s project report (see References) has an extensive list of sources for grants, fellowships, and scholarships, and for learning about those opportunities; I highly recommend it.
Finally, expect to spend more than you think you will. Give yourself a little bit of cushion, or a special fund for “special” expenses, whether mementos or a room with a nice soft bed after weeks of sleeping in a car. It doesn’t have to be big, but it’s nice to know it’s there, even if you’re just spending it on doctor’s bills after a car accident...
Research Paper
Literature Review
Social scientists have often tried to operationalize community. It has been measured with several similar instruments, mainly focusing on psychological sense of community (PSC) (Doolittle and MacDonald, 1978; Glynn, 1981; Glynn, 1986; Bachrach and Zautra, 1985; Davidson and Cotter, 1986). Nasar and Julian (1995) showed that PSC could be extended to both geographic and non-spatially-related “communities.” Bell (1997) noted that the traditions which are invented to help a community cohere can become fiercely imbued within the members of that community as they assert their local culture in opposition to external homogenizing forces (Berger, 1998).
Media use has been added into the measurement mix, with researchers noting that local media use correlates highly with PSC (Davidson and Cotter, 1997; Emig, 1995). Stamm (1997) showed that local media use also contributes to community involvement.
While the studies of PSC have measured perceptions of community and attributes of ideal communities (Glynn, 1981), none have attempted to describe the communities in question. Even the media-use studies have left out any description of content of the local media.
While the lack of descriptions seem not to influence the measured impact of media use on community involvement, or the perceptions of community, each of these studies has indicated a need for further research into what makes these communities the way they are. The media studies have also posed questions about the way media plays into community identity and involvement.
Efforts in public journalism (or civic journalism, as it is sometimes called) have earned commendations for quality of reporting (Rieder, 1995) and have improved the quality of reporting irrespective of changes in the methods of journalistic inquiry (Archer, 1996). Journalists must be sensitive to cultural taboos and to the cultures in which they work (Sunoo, 1994). This is especially true in my case, since I will be in another country while I do my work.
Friedland (1996) indicated that newspapers should do what they do best: “reporting and interpreting the local news.” As the only public source for local insight, local news organizations have a unique angle on the events in a community. Friedland warns that the challenge for newspapers which attempt to participate in – and encourage – public life is to focus on potential solutions, rather than just the problems in the community. The newspapers, like their readers, must become positive forces in the community.
MacMillan and Chavis (1986) attempt a definition of sense of community:
Sense of community is a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together. (9)
Pahl and Spencer (1997) note that interpersonal connections are strongly related to PSC. To this, MacLeod et al. (1996) add that local media use is a good predictor of knowledge about the community. Emig (1995) asks which community ties precede media use and which are consequences of that use. He does so while noting that “stronger community ties relate to more (or more in-depth) media use.” Emig does not indicate, however, what depth of use might add that quantity of use would not. It is reasonable to imagine, though, that their effects differ. The work of Davidson and Cotter (1997) further confounds this point: respondents with high PSC scale scores had high interest in news of all types, including local news.
Media use, then, is closely related to feelings of community strength in individuals. But the nature of the relationship remains largely unexplored. Is local media use related to high interest levels held by people with high PSC? Is media use a consequence of PSC, a precursor to PSC, or some of each? Or, possibly, is the varying quantity depth of media use, as related to PSC?
Any of these is a valid question for further research, but there is another: What is it about local media which ties it to PSC in its audience? Presently, we don’t understand the nature of local media coverage enough to tie elements of coverage (and, subsequently, its use by the public) to changes in (or presence of) PSC.
This is precisely why photo elicitation was developed. With qualitative studies we are able to examine the process of media coverage (Pauly, 1991). Photo elicitation can do so in the context of local communities, to explore how the media cover the communities – as, for instance, communities with numerous interrelationships between members and groups – and how the community members perceive their community.
Photography on its own can be messy for the photographer: Harper (1994) warns that there can be confusion between recording information and creating knowledge. Photojournalists work to create and express knowledge through their interpretations of the information in their images. Photo elicitation, Harper says, gives a photographer cultural knowledge which would otherwise be totally lacking in the project. It can deepen the photographer’s understanding and, as Truax (1997) noted, affect how new photographs are made.
Harper is in a position to know. He was one of the earliest practitioners of photo elicitation and has published many works on the subject (Harper, 1979; 1986; 1987; 1988; 1994). The process, he says (Harper, 1987), of integrating the photographs into the interviews makes the photographs the center of attention of both interviewer and interviewee. While it has been warned that asking people for their reactions can predispose interviewees to responses they think the interviewer wants to hear (Advertising Age, 1967), the interview both imposes the order all qualitative research needs (Janesick, 1994), and reverses the traditional media role: The subject of the photographs (the interviewee) becomes the teacher as the photographer learns about the context and background in which the photographs were made (Harper, 1987).
My own thrust in journalism is to be sure I’m telling stories as well as I can to my chosen audience. By asking open-ended questions which do not impose my own structures onto the images or their interpretations (Wagner, 1979), I can best base the interviews in the subjects’ terms and methods of interpretation (Harper, 1988). I can see the story from the subjects’ point of view (Harper, 1988).
This is similar to the approach used by photographer-students at the Missouri Photo Workshop (Kuykendall, 1998), who arrive in a small Missouri town with little or no knowledge about the town or its inhabitants. They are taken on a series of tours through the town and its history by local officials, newspaper staff members, and other residents, which introduce them to the issues the town is dealing with. The photographers then go out in search of stories which they then “pitch” to their faculty members. The search for stories can be short or long, and involves spending time with potential subjects prior to photographing them, to learn more about the life of the potential subject. The exchange between photographers and town residents increase the sensitivity of the photographer to the lives of the people in the town. Often one story idea leads to another, in a discussion of local goings-on. This is a form of in-depth interviewing often used by photojournalists (and other types of journalists) to help decide what to do a story on (Kuykendall, 1998).
The origins of photo elicitation are in the copy testing area of advertising research (Coe, 1963). Originally, however, copy testers did not do an in-depth interview with interviewees, favoring instead a series of specific questions in the rational deterministic tradition (Coe, 1963). Cash and Ross (1958) pointed out that the interviewees’ responses could be very revealing, but couldn’t reconcile themselves to the apparent lack of researcher control in such an interview.
Collier (1957) noted that photographs stimulated the memory of the interviewees and gave a greater depth and focus to the responses. He warned that this meant that other meanderings of thought were left out or neglected, but thought the depth gained on the subject at hand was more important.
Now, however, with Fontana and Frey (1994) saying that unstructured interviewing, with the researcher presenting himself in the role of learner, can be a very effective method of using information gleaned in an interview to go deeper in that interview. Much earlier, and standing totally alone, Harper (1979) said that this effort is an effective way to earn the ethical “right” to take pictures, which is by nature an exploitative act. He also advocated researchers living side-by-side with subjects, something very common to journalists in small communities.
In strict terms of photojournalism, this type of depth and research do not coexist well with the world of deadlines, but instead work towards two competing journalistic pressures: context and perspective. These latter move to the fore, ahead of timeliness and oddity, which are two major factors in news decisions (Killenberg and Dardenne, 1997).
Petrella (1995) expressed concern that photojournalistic images needed more feedback from their subjects. This is one way to do this, and even for photojournalists to incorporate the perspectives of the subjects into the work in progress (Truax, 1997).
The way images affect “those who are not in the business of understanding photographs” (Smith and Woodward, 1998) can be illuminating. However, Truax (1997) and Woodward (1997; Smith and Woodward, 1998) note that the images which elicited the most response were those least like documentary photojournalism as it is taught in the academic and professional worlds.
It is the literal images, Truax and Woodward argue, that spark the deepest discussion. One of Truax’s interviewees noted that perhaps this is because the photojournalistic images say something already; what more needs to be said? Also, of course, the interviewees are likely to be reluctant to criticize the work of the person sitting in front of them (Advertising Age, 1967). Woodward (Smith and Woodward, 1998) aptly points to the mutual jitters, as the photographer also wonders what will be said about her images.
Truax and Woodward have offered both literal and interpretive images to their interviewees for comment. In professional terms, a “literal” photograph is one which is easily read. Truax (1997) also called these “record shots” and noted his dislike for standing in front of a building and photographing its facade from a straightforward point of view.
It is worth considering that this ease of reading is the cause for the imbalance of comment towards the literal images. The opinions of photojournalists are very different from those of their subjects (Woodward, 1997; Truax, 1997). What happens if the interviewees are only given photojournalistic images in the photo elicitation interview? How does the level of discourse change, or does it remain unchanged? If interpretation is already present, how do researchers discover interviewees’ point of view about the interpretation, without seeming to pry?
Methods
It is generally accepted that photography is the first contact the audience has with a newspaper. After that come cutlines, headlines, and then the written text. To maximize the evaluability of media coverage within a community, photography was selected as the specific element of media coverage content under review for this study. This by definition raises the question of the effects of other elements of a newspaper: cutlines, headlines, and text; as well as the effects of other local media (radio, television, magazines, web sites).
Since this is an exploratory foray into this area, only one element of one medium will suffice to begin the conversation.
The story itself will be chosen when I arrive in New Zealand, and will be appropriate to the community in which I work. The story in its final form will involve text, photographs, and audio. Therefore, from the beginning, collection of information for all these types of publication will occur: note-taking for later writing, photography, and recording of audio.
The research, however, will be based solely on the photographs.
I will take working prints from the story back to the subjects for comment, as is normal photo elicitation practice. I will not only select images I think will be in the final edit, but also images which I think won’t make it, to see how the subjects respond to each type (Woodward, 1997).
The images will be organized along general themes as appropriate to the story (Woodward, 1997; Harper, 1987). In a departure from previous photo elicitation studies, I will supply my interviewees only with journalistic images, rather than “record shots” (Truax, 1997) or straightforward pictures of places, things, or events in the story. I will endeavor to get feedback from the interviewees about the journalistic qualities in the images, as singles and as a whole.
I will engage in a dialogue (Truax, 1997) between myself and the subjects, learning context and perspective from the discussions (Collier, 1975). The photo elicitation sessions will be recorded; some of that sound may be used in the final published project, as well as sound recorded during spontaneous events in the lives of my subjects.
From the experiences of previous photo-elicitation interviewers, the photographs will be not only the center of attention but a draw for other members of the household and community to participate as well (Collier and Collier, 1986; Harper, 1987). This relocation of the focus of attention away from the interviewer-interviewee interaction will make note-taking and audio recording easier (Collier and Collier, 1986), which will further facilitate the project and my learning process.
Photo elicitation has been done with film as well as with still images (Krebs, 1975) but the structure of the interviews is very much the same: open-ended questions which do not presuppose much, if anything, about the point of view of the interviewee (Krebs, 1975; Wagner, 1979; Schwartz, 1989). Getting the interviewee to talk about his or her point of view is the purpose.
The questions the photo elicitation interview will answer (Advertising Research Foundation, 1939) will include the interviewee’s opinion about the image, in terms of what’s there and done well, what’s missing and should be paid attention to, and help me refine the story as I see it (Becker, 1986).
I will conduct the interviews in a flexible and casual manner, to help the interviewees feel comfortable talking with me about my story and my work; I hope to teach them about me and what I do as they teach me about themselves and what they do.
The photo elicitation interviews will also serve as part of the ongoing access negotiations I will necessarily undertake with my subjects while in the process of a long-term documentary project about them (Beeson, 1993).
Research Results
Five people were interviewed, all residents of Albert Town, though with varying lengths of time in town, purposes in living there, and of different ages, occupations, and family connections. This last is important because it is reasonable to think that members of the same family may hold similar viewpoints on many issues, and will almost certainly have similar versions of family history to communicate; it is more useful for the researcher to have variety in these interviews, to learn as much as possible across a broad range of unknown topics and points of view.
Eleven pictures (see Appendix 1) were shown to the interviewees, in no particular order. Indeed, due to shuffling, sorting, and flipping through the stack of images, the order of viewing can be best described as non-standard and possibly as random. No captions or other identifying materials were supplied with the images, besides stating that the images were made in Albert Town.
The images were chosen from a larger body of work to represent a broad range of images and possible topics of conversation; even so, many topics that came up during the interviews were unknown to me when choosing the images. This element of unexpectedness confirmed my suspicion that there are a great many things in an image besides those which the photographer sees, as well as the idea that photo elicitation is an effective way to get people to talk about many subjects which would otherwise remain unknown or obscured to the journalist. After picking a group of images, I then edited them down to a manageable number, which would neither be so small as to prevent detailed discussion of any issue, nor so large as to passively pressure interviewees to rush past each image in an attempt to finish the stack in some predefined period of time.
The interviews were recorded on minidisc (see Appendix 2 for transcripts), which alleviated a lot of the intimidation of a large cassette deck, though I was frustrated at the size of the microphone required for good audio quality. I made no attempt to conceal the recording device or microphone, always asking the interviewee prior to turning the recorder on; the microphone was unconcealable, not only for its size but also for its giant yellow foam wind-shield which made it stand out quite well from any surrounding.
As in the experience of myself and many other journalists and interviewers, after an initial awkward time, most interviewees carried on conversing with me as normal, rather than in a stilted or self-censored fashion of one who is too aware of the microphone. There were exceptions to this, of course: One woman spoke in complete paragraphs during the interview, taking significant time to compose her thoughts before opening her mouth. She did, however, offer a great deal of information (as well as some excellent sound clips), so there was a mixed value to that interview. Another woman asked me to turn off the recorder after the interview, not to tell me something secret or in confidence, but to prevent the recording of her request to watch the rugby test match which was about to begin!
The results of the interviews fell into two broad categories: Those comments referring directly to the images or their content, and those comments bringing depth and meaning previously unknown to the interviewer. In both cases useful information was gained and interesting conversations were had. It is convenient, however, to break up the results into these two sections, to show not only what can be learned anew, but also what can be gleaned from the insights of others into the actual photographic work in hand.
The interviewees were Moira Fleming, longtime local resident, retired schoolteacher and principal, and secretary of the Albert Town Community Association; Ida Darling, great-granddaughter of the town’s first resident, Henry Ferris Norman, and current Albert Town resident (with Phyllis Spraule, a neighbor); Rae Benfell, a retiree who has vacationed for years in the area with friends and family, but has now moved to Albert Town full-time with his wife; Maxene Cranston, a relative newcomer, having lived in Albert Town only for the last four years, a sculptor and core member of the area’s “new age” community group; and Harry Dickey, who spent his early youth in Albert Town and then moved with his family to Wanaka, before growing to adulthood and moving back to Albert Town with his wife and young children.
They were chosen partly because I had encountered them during my work in Albert Town, partly because they seemed to be interested in my work, and largely because I felt their input would be valuable for a variety of reasons, including aesthetics, degree of distance from (or closeness to) Albert Town’s issues, and their level of interest and involvement in Albert Town as a community.
Comments on images and content
Ida’s response to the picture of the waterfront, sign, and mountain range (Picture 3) was very directly related to the image: “That’s the Clutha River, Mount Maude in the background, Mount Maude there on the left-hand side and the other one is what they call Grand View.” But she then proceeded to tell me how that mountain got its name, before returning to the literal contents of the scene, discussing the contents of the sign.
Ida also was very perceptive in identifying Logan Hebbard as not a member of the Templeton family (though of course he had married a Templeton) just by the look of him: “No, the Templetons didn’t look like that and I knew all the family.”
Ida’s discussions of the items in the images did, all the same, offer additional detail about the subject. She mentioned a little bit about the way the old building (Picture 1) was built: “That building, by the way, is made wit handmade nails – they’re square.” I would be hesitant to call that adding true “depth” to the conversation, but extra details can add to the richness of a story, and certainly showed me how familiar she was with the building her great-grandfather had put up nearly one hundred and forty years before.
Rae seemed to gravitate towards whatever in the images was familiar to him, from a neighbor’s trailer (Picture 8) to a friend’s house (Picture 2). He moved fairly quickly through the pictures, but flipped through the stack a couple of times, revisiting certain images and offering second thoughts as they came to him. He did relate some information which was additional and outside the realm of the image, but it always related closely, such as his discussion of Alec Sherwin in the context of the old building photograph (Picture 1): “He’d lived here since God knows when and he could actually remember the punts working across the rivers and he was an interesting old fella.”
Harry Dickey’s reactions to the pictures were very brief, but he was able to bring his mother into the conversation, as well as opening the door to deeper conversation in later discussions. So while he didn’t offer a great deal in terms of reactions to the pictures, the rapport I had with him deepened as a result of the photo elicitation interview.
Comments bringing additional depth to the discussion
Moira’s comments about Templeton and Son (Picture 11) serve as an excellent example of additional information which can be gleaned from the stimulus of a photograph. Her discussion not only of the history of Templeton’s but also of her expectations for its future in the context of its present development were ideas I had heard bits of from other sources in other discussions, but never from Moira, and never in such a fully-developed way.
Moira also turned the picture of an empty section (Picture 2) into a discussion not only of the physical lay of the land in Albert Town, but also an insight into the precarious existence of the properties, like hers, right along the edge of the flood line.
She found something to enlighten me about in almost every image; it made clear to me at the very beginning that the true key to success for photo elicitation is not image quality or subject matter, but is the willingness to talk on the part of the interviewee!
Rae did ask one solid question which made me bring additional depth to our conversation. He asked me why I made the image of the empty section and the roods (Picture 2). I gave him the best answer I had, but it made me vocalize a reason I’d always like that picture.
Maxene used the photos as jumping-off points for further discussion of her experiences of Albert Town. The picture of the poplars over the empty section (Picture 2) reminded her about skating on the lagoon: “We went ice skating and you just sort of ice skate all around the trees.” The picture of the cemetery (Picture 6) took her back to her birthday and part of the day’s celebration, which occurred near that area of the riverbank.
The largest stimulus for Maxene was of Logan Hebbard (Picture 9). Upon discovering where he and his wife were building a house, she launched into an explanation of the traffic flow right on that corner, including local pets and children, as well as the cars speeding by.
Varying feedback
An example of the varying feedback is in the responses to the image of the road counter device (Picture 8). I photographed it as an issue image, since a major topic of community conversation (as well as conversations with me) was the paving of roads in the town. The residents wanted the roads paved to cut down on dust, wear on their cars, and so on. The local council wouldn’t pave roads without a certain amount of traffic on them, and installed road counters to keep track of usage.
Moira reacted with a lecture of the bureaucratic process by which roads are selected to be sealed: “They insiste that a certain traffic volume go over the road before they’ll look at the cost evaluation process that says whether it will be viable to seal the road.” Later, upon seeing another photograph of a road (Picture 1), she returned to the subject of poor road sealing by the council: “A little further down the road you’d have seen the awful ditches they haven’t put the gutter in.”
Ida seemed nonchalant about her personal stake in the paving of roads. (The roads right near her house are all paved.) She did note that people seemed to care a lot about paving of roads: “They didn’t put it on in the holiday time when we’ve got more people here though.” She did not mention, as I thought she might, that she’d been there for years and any paved roads was an improvement.
Rae, who lives right around the corner from the road counter’s location, first sort of leaned back as if remembering a number of discussions he’d had about this issue. He began to speak generally about the issue, and then pointed out that the residents all drive back and forth over the counter as much as possible to bump up the traffic count: “They’re trying to get that road sealed and Queenstown Lakes District County mob, they’re the one to do it, and they’re bringing up every excuse they can. ... We did our best, we drove over it a half-dozen times each.” He also noted that the trailer in the background was one owned by a neighbor of his, which he had borrowed recently: “That’s the trailer we borrowed this morning, that’s Brian’s trailer.”
Maxene said that she never saw that area of town, despite its reasonable proximity to her house (about a mile): “I don’t even know where Dale Street is.” She did lament the fact that her road is not sealed, either, and discussed the problems she has as a result: “You have to ring the council and tell them to come and grade the road. ... And then they oil it, which is good for the dust but ... it’s very smelly and it seeps into your lawn.”
Harry didn’t have much to say about this image or any other, but mentioned to the house he grew up in, which was right nearby: “I used to live up Dale Street a bit further up ... There was nothing there.” The road in question didn’t go anywhere then, though it existed then.
Conclusions
The usefulness of photo elicitation for others has included increasing depth of interview discussions, memory stimulation, and increased cultural or local knowledge. I found these to be true, to an extent, though focus was not increased in the discussions; sometimes, in fact, elements I considered important to the strength of the image distracted the discussion from the major concepts in the image.
An example, which was not surprising but indeed gratifying, was that the physical or visual significance of an element in an image is amplified by the significance of the element in the mind of the interviewee. The best example of this is the image looking down Kingston Street (Picture 1). The oldest building in town is visible at the end of the road. (It must be noted, though, that I composed the photograph with the intention of leading the eye to that building.) Most of the interviewees commented on the old building almost to the exclusion of every other element in the image!
Ida: “This is just coming round to the old building.”
Rae: “You’ll know the history of that old pub down there down the end of Kingston Street there.”
Harry: “Right looking down that’s, now that down beside Dot, that’s the old pub isn’t it, the old wooden thing?”
People saw their own ideas in the pictures; they mis-recognized places or faces, and saw my illustration of an issue or a place as expressing their viewpoint, rather than another’s.
Maxene: “Ah, theater lady. ... Actually it isn’t the same lady because I remember the name now.”
Moira: “Oh, I thought you were down in this corner. It looks the same.”
Ida: “Oh yes, of course, because they won’t give us sealed roads up there.”
This somewhat confused reaction confirmed my hope that I was being a fair observer of events and issues. It also confirmed to me that what I have to say with an image is not necessarily the message I will end up communicating to the audience. However, the images I felt were powerful or important for one reason or another were also seen to be significant by the interviewees, albeit for their own reasons, often different from my own.
I learned more about the town’s history, about its future, and about people’s opinions on certain issues (like road sealing) just with the images as stimuli for talking.
Harry: “We just walked across down to the corner to get the bus. ... Lagoon Avenue just went up to, went up to what’s it called Wilkin Garden now.”
I learned that photo elicitation is a very effective means of learning in more depth about a subject, as long as the images and interviewees are chosen with a bit of thought, and certainly with the awareness of the process of photo elicitation.
Photo elicitation can be very useful for documentary journalism. It can generate additional discussion on a level beyond a normal interview, can trigger memories and insights which can be interesting or even important in the final story package. It would be most useful when used during a project, as well as at its conclusion, to gain depth, information, and possibly access, while a project continues to develop. But even used at the end, for feedback, it was enlightening and interesting.
When I was setting up the photo elicitation interviews, it seemed people were surprised that I would want their comments on my images. But they agreed generally readily. (I was unable to interview Garry Templeton, which I would have liked to do, because of personal events in his life.) Some seemed initially reluctant to talk about the images, but ended up doing so reasonably well. Others were more forthcoming once the minidisc recorder was shut off, so I was unable to record their thoughts, but I still took notes and learned from their comments.
I found that photojournalistic images were very useful as photo elicitation stimuli, though the complexity of photojournalistic style can detract from the quality of discussions which I would imagine could be had with straightforward, more literal images. The photographer’s point of view is not always truly apparent (something for me to work towards), and the viewer’s point of view, whether in concord or contrast, is nearly always expressed no matter what.
Conversation expanded and deepened both during the interviews and during later discussions not part of the research. This demonstrates that photo elicitation can be used to bring together photographers and their subjects in a way often difficult to approach without using this method. There is always a detachment of each from the other, but a brief window for each party into the mind and heart of the other is a revealing glimpse. If interviewees are cooperative, as mine were, the mutual trust and connection can grow beyond what might happen if it were just another interview or another afternoon at home.
The fact that Rae asked me why I made a particular photograph is fascinating: I was asking him to respond, but he didn’t have any idea why I might have made that image. He felt comfortable enough to ask, which I very much respect and appreciate. I’m glad it was a discussion we both felt at ease participating in.
None of the interviewees fully understood the purpose of the research method, so I did make a point of explaining it to them when they asked or when it became clear they were at a loss about what to do. The lack of public familiarity with this research process may have worked to my advantage, and it also forced me to put into words exactly what I was doing, though I was careful not to be to specific about the types of responses I was expecting.
I was very glad that photo elicitation is not a manipulative “experiment”-style research method, not only because that sort of research raises personal ethical concerns (the language and concept of “manipulating” a situation surrounding a subject worry me), but because it is very easy to explain photo elicitation without sounding deceitful: “I’m going to show you these pictures, and listen to what you say when you see them.”
Further, I had to do some explaining of the subject matter of some photographs for interviewees who did not immediately recognize elements of an image. I made an effort to do so without leaning one way or another, and in an open way which would invite the interviewee’s response sooner rather than later.
Some subjects which came up in conversation would have been interesting to explore further, and in a longer project would have been delved into more deeply than I was able. Others were subjects I had worked extensively with, but which I had not discussed with that particular person before the photo elicitation interview.
Depth, personal connection, and a wider view of my photographic work in Albert Town were all worthwhile developments from the photo elicitation interviews, and all recommend the use of photo elicitation research in other similar projects.
Further Research Opportunities
This study is limited to a single community, which means it is not generalizable. However, as the first such study, it indicates directions for future, more generalizable studies to take.
Some of these directions may include multiple community/multiple newspaper studies, comparisons of different types of local media and their community coverage, and using stimuli other than photographs. Q is an ideal methodology for this to be undertaken on a more systematic basis, with more resources available than those to which the present researcher had access. Q was the original research method considered for this research; for a preliminary design of this type of research, not attempted before, contact the researcher.
The Shooting Back project has published several volumes of photographs by members of a community (homeless children, children on Indian reservations) showing their perception of their surroundings (Hubbard, 1991; Washington Project for the Arts, 1991; Hubbard 1994). The projects have involved teaching children basic camera technique, and then providing them with film and equipment to photograph at will. This has proved enlightening and insightful, giving the public views of situations and events to which professional photojournalists have a hard time gaining access (Washington Project for the Arts, 1991).
Coverage of a community by its members – as contrasted with professional journalists – can portray a different set of circumstances than the traditional media ever show. The comparison between how media cover a community and how the community members cover themselves and their organizations will shed light on the nature of community as it relates to local media coverage and use.
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Correspondence from the field
Field Notes
My formal field notes to the faculty were part of keeping in touch while so far away. Writing them made me do more thinking along the way and focus my ideas more sharply and sooner than I would have otherwise. It imposed upon me the discipline which I now have within to do a project like this while on the road.
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 1
Hello!
I'm in search of small communities in which to possibly work. I've talked to a few folks and checked out papers in the library, as well as bookstore and library shelves, to find communities which are interesting to me and which might be interested in my work. I have a few possibilities which I'll be exploring, including a small place called Five Rivers in Southland, Taupo in the central North Island, and Kaitaia in Northland (north of Auckland). As well, I'll be talking to Jim Tully at the Univ. of Canterbury (in Christchurch) in the next couple of days about possibilities in that area.
Things are well so far; I'm exploring and enjoying learning more about NZ than the books contain...
Hope you all are well!
More soon.
Jeff
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 02:37:49
From: Jeff Inglis
To: ann_brill@jmail.jour.missouri.edu,mkb5@juno.com,jourdlr@showme.missouri.edu
Subject: field notes today
Mime-Version: 1.0
Hello from Turangi, New Zealand! It's at the base of Lake Taupo, in the central North Island.
I'm here, doing some research for a couple of possible project stories.
The first is to spend the time in a Maori village called Waihi right near here. I read about it in the library yesterday and then went there today to talk to the people who live nearby. It's a closed village, with signs at the entrance saying "no entry" and so on. Entry to it, as with many Maori community centers, is only by invitation.
So I spoke with a couple of people who live outside the "no entry" section, and one of them, Emma, is the cousin of the chief of the iwi, which is a Maori family group. Emma said she'd talk to the person in the village who knows most of the history of the village and so on.
That person (the village historian, more or less) is out of town for the weekend, but her husband is at home, so Emma said she'd ask if she'd be willing to speak with me. I'll go back to Emma's house tomorrow to find out what the woman and/or her husband said.
I spoke with Emma and her husband for a while. He's a prison unit manager, and there are some interesting story possibilities there. NZ prisons are really making an effort to retrain prisoners so they can get jobs when they get out of prison, and contribute to society in a positive way. There are some problems with how it's happening, though, because at the same time as this job skills initiative, the prison authorities are trying to keep inmates housed in the general area where they were arrested.
But most of the crime is in Auckland, and the area around there isn't so good for teaching farming and forestry skills, so it's a tough combination of initiatives. That's a possibility for exploration as well.
A third possibility is to go to a village nearby called Okahune, which was, until recently, a timber and railway town but is now almost exclusively a tourist center. I could look at the town's transformation and self-image, now that the change has happened. Possible sources could include the few remaining timber and rail folks in town, as well, of course, as the people who left those industries and are now making a go of it in tourism.
I haven't really looked at Okahune yet, except on paper. I've read a bit about the prison idea, but my primary interest at the moment is Waihi, if I can get to speak to this historian person and possibly gain entry to the village through her.
I think I went about learning about Waihi pretty well - finding as much as I could in the written history, and checking the back issues of the local paper (the Turangi Chronicle) to find that there's not been much coverage of the village or the iwi it serves, the Tuwharetoa.
I think at the moment, though, I'm going to find a story I can work on before finding a local outlet for publication. I have the publication requirement at least partly taken care of with Journal E, so I'm less concerned about that at the moment.
More soon, as I learn whether I'll get to keep working on Waihi or go to something else.
All's well otherwise - enjoying exploring and eating and sleeping well in this beautiful place! I hope the semester is starting well!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 11Feb99
Hello!
At the moment I'm waiting to meet with the chairman of Waihi village, who will (I hope) show me around the village and be a final contact for permission to spend some time with them. Each time I've gone into the village (which I've done twice now) I've parked my car outside the gate and walked in - people seem to notice me less that way (especially as compared with driving a bright yellow station wagon around...
I've been thinking a lot about Dave's suggestion to spend a little time in a few places, rather than a long time in one place. That would fit well with my desire to keep traveling a bit while working on this project, but it remains to be seen. I also think it might be easier to ask to spend 2-4 weeks in one place than 4 months. (Though of course I can always ask to extend the time while the project continues.)
I also think it would be interesting to look at a few different towns and/or issues in some depth (though less than a 4-month depth...) and maybe be able to draw some comparisons between them. So I'll keep that in mind and see about Waihi before making a decision - it may be that there's more there than I think there is (and I think there's a lot...).
Ann asked:
> What are you experiencing that would add to
> the information we have about journalists who "take off" for somewhere --
> anything different about being a cyberscribe?
Well, there's a lot of cultural knowledge which I don't have - yet. I've spent a good few hours in the local library, reading about local history (both specific to Waihi and in general about Ngati Tuwharetoa, which is the Maori group based in Waihi, as well as general info about this area of NZ). I've also been reading about the NZ government to learn more about the ministries of Maori affairs and treaty negotiation.
Being a cyberscribe actually makes things a bit easier - I can send out informal Email newsletters to folks and get feedback from friends and family and colleagues before putting together a professional-quality package. I can also get input and questions from them which make me think new ways. If I were just filing stories with maybe brief phone conversations about the general topic, it would be a lot harder to ask the right questions.
"Taking off" for somewhere also involves a decent amount of trust in fate or luck or whatever you want to call it. Things happen, and if I keep in mind that whatever is happening is supposed to happen for a reason, and if I remember to make as much as I can out of each event, I get a lot more out of it. If I take what I call the "British colonial mindset," though, where they had ideas about what they wanted and were going to do, and failed miserably in the long run, even as they made a big name for the Empire, I find that I'm disappointed a lot - things don't turn out the way I'd planned and so I have to re-plan or re-think.
I much prefer to see what happens and think about where to go from there when things happen. I think that's a really important part of things.
Another part of taking off for me is being really far from loved ones. Email and the occasional phone call (I have a cell phone with me) are a real gift - being able to be in touch and feel like I'm still part of their lives and they're part of mine even so far away makes me stronger. It is hard to be on my own picking my path and finding my way alone, but it's liberating since I can be with others in spirit. Without being in touch with them it would be much harder and even impossible.
More soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 22Feb99
Hello all!
After a really frustrating couple of weeks trying to talk to folks in Waihi and get a bit further in, I decided to bail out. I really did want to stick with it, and I'm still interested in going back and trying again later, but I want to feel like I'm making some progress, at least, with this project.
So I left the Turangi area and headed west to Taranaki (the western lump of the North Island), where I'd not yet been. The North Island has lots more Maoris than the South Island, and I'd heard briefly of a small village at the base of Mt. Taranaki which might be interesting.
So with some driving around - and finding at least one other town I might be interested in - I located Parihaka. I pulled in and was welcomed by a Pakeha (European) man who told me a very small bit about the village, mainly that the residents are almost all descendants of the original village founders (and, like him, people they have married). He told me to seek out a woman in an old house I could just see peeking over the hill. He thought her name was Margaret, but he knew she knew things about the village.
So I walked up her drive and introduced myself (after first going to the back door and finding no people but a pot of boiling water on the stove). She invited me in and showed me some of the poems she has written about the village and Maoridom and we talked - for 6 hours!
I learned a lot, and in the process of the conversation I (obviously) explained a lot about my project and, later on, asked if I might be able to spend some time in Parihaka as part of it. She said she would ask around and would have an answer for me in two days' time - MUCH faster and more welcoming than Waihi, that's for sure!
She's a fascinating woman, who knows lots about the village and has met lots of various people, including the Dalai Lama, who came to Parihaka as a result of having a vision in a dream, and others as well. She was the first one to understand my explanation of what I'm doing (recently adopted) - "following hawks." Hawks have been excellent signs to me on this trip, appearing in the middle of adventures, or in the sky after I take a turn on the highway, showing me I've made the right decision. I'd never seen five all at once before, until I noticed them circling over Parihaka as I drew near. And when I left Parihaka, one was hovering just over the edge of the road, its head towards the village, as if to say, "We'll be here." And I've only seen one today - a really low count for a traveling day...
So I am waiting for tomorrow morning, at the moment, and exploring a bit in the meantime.
I think moving on from Waihi is good - the phone number the guy has is my mobile number, so he can reach me wherever I am and we can talk more then. I'll head back to Turangi in a few days to see a friend before he heads off to Northern Ireland, and I may (depending on the word from Parihaka) head back to Waihi for another try then as well.
Maybe one of these days I'll start shooting and writing and getting audio and so on - but in the meantime I am shooting some and talking to people and I've made double-sure I have enough batteries to be ready when the time comes...
More very soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 24Feb99
Hello!
Here's the update:
I spoke for 10 hours! with Maggie from Parihaka yesterday, and she had not been able to find the man who she needed to ask if I could stay, but on thinking about it she thought I might not be able to. But she invited me for the hui (big gathering) on the 18th and 19th, so I'll plan to go back then.
A few people I met in Parihaka were concerned about other things written about the village having been biased. I explained to Maggie about the research part of things, which (among other things) gives them a chance to spot and help correct any misunderstandings I may have, as well as to give me a deeper understanding of what's going on. She seemed interested in that.
As well, I talked to her about putting her poems together with recordings of songs or her reading the poems, and images somehow relating to the poems - I'd also put together a text about the village and Maggie and how this part of the project came to be. She was very interested but needed to think about it - so I'll head back there in about a week to see what she thinks. I proposed an initial experiment with one poem and we could see what happens from there...
Then I headed back to Turangi to meet up with a friend who's heading home shortly. Turns out I just missed him - he left yesterday rather than today, but driving into Turangi I got a phone call from Nata, the head of Waihi village... He said he's not forgotten about me, but was rather distant on the phone ("we try not to give more information than we have to about the village and its history") so I'm not sure what will happen. He said he'd give me a call tomorrow to find a time to meet, which would be really cool, even if nothing pans out for Waihi - I would love to learn a bit more about the village and at least have the chance to feel Nata out for the possibility of part of my project there... We shall see!
I'm glad I moved to Taranaki for a bit - I feel like getting out of the wait-and-watch pattern was good, and who knows? Maybe it karmically moved things with Nata and Waihi along somehow. It was good to exercise my conversational interviewing skills with someone, and to feel like I was starting to make a connection...
It seems like things are moving forward a bit more, I think (I hope!) but nothing is certain... (Except chocolate!
Be well, and as always, let me know what you think of what's going on so far!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 13Mar99
Hello!
Well, I feel like I've listened and watched and have some serious ideas for how this project is going to come together. I even think it could relay happen!
Here are my ideas for pieces of a project entitled Voices of New Zealand:
1. Maggie at Parihaka and her poems, with writing (by her and by me) and my photographs
2. A man in Havelock North who takes tree seedlings from the Himalaya, grows them in NZ, and then transplants them back into the Himalaya to help reforestation
3. A sheep station - and how the people work with the animals (esp. dogs) to work the farm
4. Gold miners on the West Coast of the South Island - what they're up to
5. Greenstone carvers on the West Coast - what they do and how
I'm thinking less along the lines of small-town emphasis, and more towards how people in various places (mostly rural) conceive of themselves and their identity as regards the world they choose to inhabit. All 5 of the above are very different worlds - Maori, world environmentalism, rural farming, gold mining, and artisan/tourism.
Of course, some of these won't come together and some other things may seize my interest in the process of this whole thing, but that's the direction I want to head in. What do you think about them?
I've been having a hard time motivating but have spent a lot of time looking at newspapers and TV and trying to sort out what I'm interested in as well as what I can conceive of doing... I've been happy with how I've been dealing with people who ask what I'm doing, as well as how my own thoughts about what I'm doing have evolved.
I wish I were shooting more film, and getting more audio, but I think that'll come, and now that I have a set of tasks to get moving on, that'll happen more.
I've been working hard at being patient and paying attention to the hawks... They're definitely with me on this trip!
Hope you all are well - please let me know what you think of this! (Of course, the photo elicitation will be part of this, too, with me showing images to people either during or after the time I've spent with them, mainly depending on how much time I'm able to arrange to spend with them. And the feedback, even if entirely after the fact, will still be useful in terms of learning for the future!)
More soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 25Mar99
Hello!
This may be the only field notes for a couple of weeks, as today is Thursday and my parents and sister arrive Monday morning for a 2-week visit. I'll be exploring with them, including going on my first trip to the South Island, so there may be ideas I have and stuff to write about regarding the project, but it will also be a time for relaxing and recharging, and taking a break from working on things, so don't be alarmed if I "disappear" for a couple of weeks. As always, if you get worried about me, just Email...
Anyhow, these past few days after Parihaka have been tough - tougher than usual, that is. I think Parihaka could be a great part of my project, if not the whole thing. But they don't seem very interested in having an outsider do anything of that nature. It's a fair enough problem they have with it, really, but it's a bummer... I'm hoping to take my family there for a day and feel out whether they'd let me bring my camera and minidisc recorder back next month on the 18th.
Of course, it's entirely possible that the family will want to go elsewhere, so I won't be able to visit Parihaka until the 11th or 12th in that case...
I also am still reading and researching the other ideas I had and wrote about earlier, but the past couple of days have been sort of relaxing and waiting for the family to arrive, so I've not gotten much done on them.
The rough timetable is this:
Monday: pick up the family, head south on the North Island, arriving in Wellington April 4 or 5. April 5 we take the ferry across to the South Island and spend 6 days there. On April 10 I fly back to Wellington, pick up my car, and go any of a couple of places.
I may go back to Parihaka, especially if I don't visit there with my family. I may go to Havelock North and see about the guy growing Himalayan trees. Well, those are really the two options.
I want to head to the South Island soon, because the gold miners and the greenstone carvers are there (and they're not anywhere on the North Island - there's no greenstone mines here and the gold got all panned and mined out in the late 1800s). Those could turn into lots more stuff, and exploring other places on the South Island may make my brain give birth to other ideas as well.
I'm learning a lot about going in "cold," though, mainly that it's tough but possible. It will be a welcome return to a world where I have lots of contacts and know people and am not immediately an outsider, when I get back to the US... But I can manage and I'll have something, in some form, for you by my defense!
The company and inspiration from my family will be great...
Hope you're all well!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 16Apr99
Hello!
By now you may have read my message about the Buddhist monastery. I've refined my approach to people in different ways, and I think this one was the most well-received yet. I'll see what happens when I go back, and I'll get some time to talk to Ajahn Suchino alone in the car as well, while we're driving to Parihaka, so we'll see what comes of that also.
I arrived and was definitely unsure of why I was there, but just as sure that I needed to be there for a little while. They asked what I was doing in NZ, and I told them a bit about my project, describing the nature of others' projects as well as talking about the type of thing I hope to do, including the research bit of it.
I do think that I don't want to tell someone's story (or some group's story) unless they want it told for one reason or another. Not that I want to totally serve their agenda (or my own) but I don't think people should give up their privacy just because a journalist turns up at the door. I told them that, and told them that I thought my time there was both personal and professional, and that I needed inspiration for continuing this project. They were quite welcoming to me and so I'm not sure if I'll be able to spend some more time there, photographing or collecting audio or what. I know that those will help me focus my thoughts for writing, though - my thoughts about the place at the moment are not unfocused but are on so many levels and about so many topics that it's hard to know what's for me and what's for publication.
I like that the line is fuzzy, but I do need some images and/or audio to help me discover what's for publication.
I was able to make some photos and collect some audio on the walking paths, with two general ideas in mind as parts of a possible larger project about the monastery. The first idea was exploring life from death - mushrooms, ferns, plants growing on dead trees are examples of that in the natural world in the monastery. The other idea was of a small piece on the paths around the monastery, with the various places for meditation along the way (there are seats at intervals on the paths). So I started to work on that, shooting the seats themselves, and the view from the seats, as well as collecting about 30 seconds to a minute of audio at each seat and place I stopped. I don't think that's the whole of it, and I know I'll need to go back and shoot again and go deeper, but it's a start.
As soon as I can get to a scanner, I'll put the images online for you all to look at and comment on, I'll also process the audio soon and get that online too. I, too, want to see some of this go up very soon, and so I'll be sending a message shortly to Adam Stoltman at Journal E telling him he'll be getting some preliminary material and with a plan of where it's going, as far as I know at the time.
This weekend I am picking up one of the monks and taking him to Parihaka. That journey may be something I turn into part of the project - it's definitely part of the story at least - and I'll be interested to see what comes out of the meeting of the people of Parihaka and these monks... I don't know what will happen with Parihaka - I'm still working on writing about it for me, as well as for everyone else. And I don't know if I'll be allowed to shoot or record while there. I'll see what happens...
Next week I'll go back to the monastery, I hope well-prepared after my talks with Ajahn Suchino on the trip, and see what might happen there.
Be well! There will be more soon...
Love, Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 29April99
Hello!
I've been working on my adventures, and I have a lot of writing to do. I'm heading to the South Island and will soon hope to find a place to spend a week or two (or three!) to sit and write and organized myself and my stuff...
I also got a lot of images scanned to PhotoCD, and I'll be putting them online soon so you can all have a look and let me know what you think... I just have to find a place where I can use a phone line for a while or find a cooperative Internet cafe with a fast connection, so I can connect my laptop and get lots done...
I got some audio of the monks chanting, and several rolls (4? 5?) around the monastery grounds and so on. I didn't get any images of the monks chanting or meditating - it seemed like it would be a really big imposition on them, and every time I tried to refer to it I got no response, or no interest.
It's definitely a tough line to know how to cross, about how to photograph a group. Shooting an individual or a couple of people is different, because I can develop a rapport with them, but shooting a group of people means I need to develop trust in each of them, which is harder indeed.
I feel like I'm moving in stages here. First was Parihaka, just getting rapport with one person and then expanding that into getting to observe a community in action, while still trying to get access to shoot or record (which access never came). Then was the monastery, which was getting rapport with a group all at once and then moving that towards access. I got to shoot some and record some, but not as much as I'd hoped. So perhaps next time I'll get further.
Tomorrow I head to the South Island, which is the bigger island of the two, but is also much smaller in population than Auckland alone. One of my destinations is Stewart Island, which is the smaller island at the bottom of the South Island, where very few people live.
I am very much looking forward to re-beginning this adventure! It's been great so far and an amazing learning experience. I definitely feel, though, like I want to put together what I can from Parihaka and the monastery before I really dig into stuff in the South Island. Also, I can move stuff towards publication that way.
When I get some stuff together, a package will go out to Adam Stoltman at Journal E, and also to Brian Storm at MSNBC, so we'll see what that turns up.
I have had a piece published in the current issue of the IPI Report, about a press freedom case here in NZ, so I suppose that counts for publication as well... But publication is very much on my mind. Any thoughts you have are most welcome!
More very soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 30Apr99
Hello!
While on the ferry, I was able to process audio and images and have them much readier for transmission to the web, so you can all hear and see what I've been doing. I got lucky - the ferry has workstations, so I'm all powered up and so on (no phone connection, but hey - it's all free!).
It does take time and energy to put this stuff together - it's sometimes hard to make myself slow down a bit to do the info processing which makes publication possible...
I'll work very hard on getting this stuff out to you so you can have a look and let me know what you think...
More soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 2June99
Hello!
Persistence pays off... I'm in Wanaka now, on the South Island, just above Queenstown. I've found a very nice little town called Albert Town which is very interesting to me and will be, I think, the saving grace of this project/adventure...
I'm about 5 days into research and interviews and things seem to be going well and looking to continue that way, so here's my official notice that I've re-started project work... For real this time!
I definitely feel like Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama were starting points, where I moved along a path of progressive comfort with people and myself in NZ, as well as getting more and more used to broaching the subjects of audio and photography, as well as developing my own interviewing style, where I am not only talking to the people in a real conversation but also getting useful information, in a strangely balanced dance...
Albert Town is a small town, but bigger than both Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama, at the confluence of the Clutha and Hawea rivers in the western part of Central Otago. It has one of the longest histories of European settlement in this region, having been the original town and river crossing point in the area for gold diggers and sheep-station founders.
Now it is an outlying town of Wanaka, where people come for holidays and for a relaxed, comfortable lifestyle in the rugged country here. It has an active community association, is courting new business to revitalize itself, and working to preserve its heritage and character as well as its well-being for the future.
This is in fact the type of town I must confess to hoping to find. I do in some ways wish I'd found it in February, but this was not to be. I now anticipate spending the next 3 to 4 weeks in Albert Town or engaged in Albert Town-oriented research and interviews. (There is no library in AT, but several volumes of local history in the Wanaka Library; also a few of the people actively involved in AT affairs, as well as local government, do not live in AT proper, but nearby. Further, AT's key position in the river valley means it relates in unique ways to other towns in the valley, both historically and economically.)
I may spend more time than that, but that's the initial prediction.
Publication options are currently being explored. They include Journal E
The people I have spoken with in AT seemed pleasantly surprised by my attention, and are most willing to help, as are the government agencies (and the government's contractor for civil services). Nothing like reporting in Columbia, for sure!
I expect to spend a few days each week walking around AT meeting people, photographing the town and life there, and exploring the town and surrounding area. I expect that I will have a large number of opportunities to photograph aspects of life in AT, in ways not only insightful, but also of a type and quality worthy of the type of broad chronicle I envision for the pieces on Albert Town.
I am also working on writing about Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama, and finding avenues of publication for those pieces as well. I'm still waiting to hear from Adam Stoltman at Journal E regarding his interest in any of the photographs from the monastery.
Feeling pretty good about having had this gut feeling about AT, and then working on it and making something of it. You will, of course, be getting regular updates (or perhaps irregular, but frequent, is a better way to characterize them...
Be well, and please write to let me know what you think!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 9Jun99
Here we go...
The queries are out to local media for publication of my work in Albert Town... And work continues - the mystery is still unsolved, but is providing a great narrative vehicle, I think...
Photographs are still coming - I've been out with my camera for several days now, and there are a few gatherings of townsfolk (one tonight and one Saturday) at which I hope to be able to make pictures. I'm slowly meeting more and more folks, and I definitely feel like I have a good grasp of the layout of the town - now to get more familiar with its people and its life as well...
This is hard work - motivating to go out and talk to people and ask them for some of their time is always tough, and it's still even harder for me to ask to make pictures of them than it is for me just to ask to talk to them... But this is a barrier I must - and which I want to - overcome or at least work on overcoming...
It turns out that if I want to be even remotely economical about image-scanning, I have to send them to Wellington in batches of close to 100 to be put on PhotoCD (which takes the cost per image down to NZ$3 from NZ$25 or higher!). So there will be some delay in the time between going out photographing and when you get to see what I've shot... Also still waiting for high-bandwidth connections to transfer audio, but have managed to MP3 it, which makes the audio I have come down to about 8 megs (from nearly 80!). Audio from Albert Town is still only nat-sound type; working on getting into some more focused interviews with folks where the audio recording will be possible.
(I don't like just showing up and recording folks the first time out. I'd much rather wait and let them feel comfortable with me first - much like my attitude about photographing, actually. I think I'd rather have the human-to-human connection before the machines appear... But this does set me back a bit, in terms of figuring out how to introduce the machine after the initial encounter or encounters. I've been more or less successful in other places, sometimes, but that process is still a tricky one for me. I have some tips from Rachel LaCour and Becky Lebowitz on how they do this, which helped - mainly in that I see they have similar problems to the ones I have, and just work really hard at overcoming the barriers they feel...)
So that's the news at the moment about the project - I'm feeling good about it, good about Albert Town, and everyone I've met so far has been really nice - even the people who walk by me on the street say hello while they eye the camera and notebook I'm carrying...
More soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 17June1999
Hello!
I'm now working on an extended proposal to the Otago Daily Times, the regional newspaper for Albert Town. I spoke yesterday to their features editor, Barry Stewart, and we agreed we could work together on finding something they are interested in publishing and that I'm interested in writing!
So I'm working on a piece selling him on either a sizeable single piece or (I hope) a series, perhaps all in the paper or perhaps on the website as well as in the paper.
I am also exploring other publication opportunities for Albert Town - other, smaller, more local newspapers, and local radio stations.
I have also just started brainstorming places for publication of my work at the monastery and at Parihaka. Mainly, I think, those will be magazines, but Adam Stoltman at Journal E has indicated some interest in some of my work at the monastery, so I'll get going on that as well...
Learning lots about how to get many many things done at once - trying to keep priorities in line and make sure I'm doing the best thing for the project (and the stories) most of the time. It's a bit set back because I'm no longer independent for transport, but I've been doing well getting rides from friends and hitchhiking.
It's definitely feeling like I'm moving along. I just realized that 2 months from tomorrow I leave for the US... Yipe! Lots to do... I do, as you know, have a tendency to get very carried away in research and leave actual production to the last possible moment. But I think what I'm conceiving as "the last possible moment" is moving up very soon, and I've already started to write lots and organize photos. On Tuesday (4 days from now) I'll have my second PhotoCD back and will get those images online shortly thereafter. Albert Town's images will come soon, too - perhaps a week beyond that and I'll have enough images to get a PhotoCD made of them as well...
So here we go, swinging in to the end of the project... I'll keep you posted!
I hope the summer's going well for you all! More soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 21June1999
Hello!
I'm in the closing stages of the main part of the project here, and getting set to start the research aspect - the photo elicitation - and also work on getting stuff published.
My film (except one roll) will be processed by this evening and ready for choosing the pictures I'll use for photo elicitation. The big change between this effort and other PE efforts is that I will be using only "journalistic" images - those images which have a chance of being published in magazines or newspapers. I will not be using "anthropological" images - straight-on shots of buildings or places, for example - since those have already been tested and successfully used as stimuli for PE. What I'm trying to do (this is as much to remind myself as to remind you) is to see if PE can be extended to journalistic images as well. It is entirely possible that it cannot, or that other unforseen circumstances will cause problems for the use of journalistic images as PE stimuli in this instance. But it's well worth the effort. So we shall see where it goes!
Also about to happen is publication. I have sent an extended proposal to the Otage Daily Times (known as "The Oddity" not only for its initials but also because it pushes the boundaries of journalism as NZ tends to accept them). Barry Stewart, the editor there, is working with me to find a way to publish it online and/or in the newspaper.
I also have left messages for two area radio station managers. We'll see where that goes - that will be a whole new set of activities for me to undertake, and a lot of it depends on the success of the PE interviews (which I will record).
I am also hopeful that the ever-swamped Adam Stoltman at Journal E will come through with some interest for me regarding the monastery, and, perhaps, Albert Town as well.
And, finally, I am trying to find the addresses of the (very small but active) magazines about Maori affairs, to publish some of my writing about Parihaka.
So I have 2 months to make all this publication happen - at least to get it accepted for publication in such varied places, but I'm looking forward to the challenge...
Looking back, it's easy to think I should have started querying publications earlier. Certainly this is true for the Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama packages, since the experiences themselves have been over for some time. But I think they were fairly deep experiences, and letting them process in my head before publication will, I think, produce better pieces in the end. Also, since there is no real time-sensitivity to these pieces, the delay only really matters in terms of the project itself.
And as for Albert Town, I do feel like I'm cramming a lot of publication in at the end, but I do feel like my inquiries are coming to a close, to a level of acceptance in town and to an understanding of life in Albert Town. So now is the time to begin to process the whole experience and write about it, edit the images, and start getting more interviews recorded, with the PE as a mechanism for revisiting some people and some topics.
I also feel like the extended period of time I've been in New Zealand focusing more or less on the idea of this project has really added to my ability to carry out this type of intense work fairly rapidly and effectively once it has begun. A good part of the early time I felt unfamiliar even with the basic workings of local government, or about how ratepayers' money gets collected and used. Knowing about these types of mechanisms in NZ means I can rapidly move deeper into issues with people, rather than spending long periods of time getting things explained to me - I've already spent that time with other people in other places, and now I can bring that learning and understanding to bear on the issues in the present.
I expect to be in and around Albert Town for the next two weeks, give or take, finishing interviews, and, mainly, working on getting the work published in various places around here and around NZ.
I did submit a piece, including pictures, on the monastery, to a publication over the weekend, and have yet to hear back from the editor, but as the copy deadline was today I'll give her a ring later on and see what she has decided to do. That will be my first publication for the project so far, but the others, I expect, will follow shortly, since I now have things in the pre-publication stages of readiness.
I'll keep you all posted, of course! It's coming together...
Be well!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 22 June 1999
Hello!
I'm hard at work here getting stuff ready to submit... I'm definitely feeling like I learned a lot at Mizzou now - I can hear Steve Weinberg hollering at me about the changes in voice which run throughout this draft (and which I will, I promise, fix or be able to defend before I submit it...). I can hear Dave asking me, "So what does this image tell me?" The writing is getting stronger, the pictures are getting more coherent... Does this mean I'm actually making progress? Good heavens!
So I'm hanging in - more to do, and the prints will be ready for photo elicitation interviews to begin tomorrow... It's coming together with a crash and a bang... Argh. Much work... I'm also noticing and adapting better to my internal work schedule - mornings and evenings are way more productive than afternoons, so I do random stuff during the afternoon like write Email, rethink general ideas about the pieces, and list all the stuff I have to get done. Then, when I kick into a more productive phase, I am all sorted out for what to do...
Onward!
More soon!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 1July99
Hello!
I'm hard at work here, getting interviews, collecting and processing audio, and getting stuff ready to submit to various places. It's tough being on other people's timetables so much, but that's life... I do feel like there's enough on my plate to keep me busy (surprise surprise!) so that's not a problem.
Looking forward, though, to doing this type of work from a place I can truly call my own - living in a room I share with others and having no real office space to work in is tough sometimes, when my need to work doesn't jive with others' plans for their days.
Anyhow, it's less than two months until my defense, and I thought I'd bring you up to date on what my plans are in terms of the project.
I expect to be done here with the photo elicitation interviews in a week, barring major revisions in my interviewees' schedules, in which case I'll get some other interviewees who are available...
In slow moments, I'm typing up the project writeup, etc. so it can be ready to print off and turn in to you when I get to Columbia. To that end, I am expecting to be able to print and photocopy madly when I return to Columbia and give you each a copy of my final project writeup on Friday, Aug. 20, which will give you the weekend and most of the following week to look over what I've done. I hope that will be enough time - if you will need advance copies of any parts of it, let me know and I'll do my best to get it to you.
It is worth noting even now that I am up against some strange editorial calendar variations, as may be expected. To wit, the Otago Daily Times is working on publishing my stuff within the next two or three weeks, while I may not have a piece run on the monastery until September or even October in North and South magazine.
I am not sure what difference this may make in terms of satisfying the publication requirement of the project, which, as it is still in flux, is the one most in question (but it will definitely be satisfied). For instance, should I defend and expect to send in an appendix of copies of work published after the defense? Or should I get letters of acceptance from the publications which will run my work after the defense, and just go with those? Or should I do something else - in which case, what?
I also have some stuff yet to go out - some on Parihaka, and other stuff on Albert Town, the former to Mana magazine, a magazine for and about Maori, and the latter to Journal E - Adam Stoltman is nothing if not encouraging and demanding... So I'll send off another set of submissions to him and see what happens...
But things are going well - hitching to and from Albert Town has proved quite successful, and has introduced me to a number of other folks I might not have met...
So that's the plan at the moment - how does it sound?
More soon! Be well!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 3July99
Hello!
I'm about to head into the Fourth of July with the ground covered in snow, and with a woodfire well-stoked in the sitting room. Very strange indeed. Enough to turn my head around and inside out and whatnot.
But I can report that the first hurdle of those few left was passed today: I have in my possession a clip about Bodhinyanarama! Published in an actual magazine. Pictures and text. So left are Albert Town and Parihaka - and more about the monastery, as well, of course.
Also, I have finally, at long last, hit upon the perfect literary device for the piece on Albert Town to get into Journal E. It's exactly what Adam likes (which means it's nothing like anything he's ever seen before) and works very well indeed with my pictures and audio. It's the motif of a walk with 92-year-old Dot Sherwin, who was born in Albert Town and has lived her entire life there. She can't see to read, but is very mobile and walks several times a week.
So that's the mechanism for the story, and I can fit in the history and anecdotes and audio and pictures. I actually get to tell the kind of story I've been wanting to!
So it's a matter of patching stuff together to fit the meanders of her walks... And then a long long long online session to upload almost 80 megs of stuff (3-5 megs of pictures, but 70+ megs of audio!) for Adam...
So I'm totally psyched - more work to do, but work I'll definitely enjoy and learn from as well.
This is the kind of story, the kind of work, the kind of storytelling, I've been trying to figure out how to do. I've learned so much - even in the past 15 minutes, during which this has all come pouring out of my head and through my fingers onto the screen here.
It's not over yet, but thanks for being there to keep me going... I knew if I spent long enough at it, and thought enough and talked to enough people, and looked carefully around Albert Town enough, I'd find something. And I have. PLUS, it's something the local historical society will absolutely love... So I can give something back to this fabulous community as well...
I've really been trusting my gut about how to ask questions, and who to talk to, and when to go out to AT, and when to stay away and do something else (work or play or whatever), and I can feel it paying off. I have felt this thing sort of boiling around inside me for a while, thinking about a random glimpse I caught of Dot walking out her back gate one gorgeous afternoon, and it's finally all come together in my head... Now to make it happen in real life, but that's the easy bit.
So I've learned to keep trusting my gut and keep asking the questions and learning and learning and learning...
And that's the field notes this night before a White Fourth of July... More soon!
Be well!
Jeff
To: my committee:
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: field notes 7 July 1999
Hello!
I'm happy to report that the final interview of my project will occur in 3 hours' time! I'll be taking my photos to the last Albert Town photo elicitation interviewee this afternoon.
I now have only to get things published - one item has been published already, some things are in the works still, and others are accepted and just awaiting the actual publication date. And some things are still being queried to various publications, as well as the local historical society in Albert Town.
The project writeup is approaching 36,000 words, and is over 100 pages, not including the clips I'll include when I get them...
I'm learning a lot, still, and am very much enjoying myself. I'll be leaving Wanaka/Albert Town on Saturday (today is Wednesday) and becoming a traveler again, for the remaining 5 weeks of my time in NZ...
I'll keep you posted, and see you in something like 5-1/2 weeks!
Be well!
Jeff
NZ News
Throughout the trip, in addition to the field notes to faculty, I sent an irregular series of newsletters to friends, family, colleagues, and those I met along the way. This I called “NZ News” for lack of a better way to refer to the series, which became a sort of public journal-space for me. It is strange to write about such personal things and know that so many will read them (and have faces for each name on the recipient list), but it expanded my awareness of myself and others, and of our perceptions of each other.
It also became a means of exploring my own thoughts and getting feedback from a wide variety of people – thanks to all who read and thought and wrote back. I was able to see myself from a bit of a distance and keep myself focused on the project (or on having fun, or whatever I had resolved to do). It also kept me writing, and thinking as a writer and a storyteller to know that people were reading what I was writing. I could search and search for a project possibility, but before too long people would start Emailing me, asking about the next NZ News... In retrospect, it was a way I kept myself more or less on the ball, as well as being a very convenient (and fun!) means of staying in touch with lots and lots of special people.
I include here the text of my messages so that the reader will have a sense of what was going on for me personally through this whole adventure. Further, the reader must understand the up-and-down nature of this type of work and this type of adventure: Many things happen along the way which must be dealt with either as part of the project or separately from it. From these messages you will be able to learn the real story behind my stories and packages.
14 Dec 1998
first edition: NZ News
Hello!
Welcome to the first edition of NZ News, my little irregular newsletter which will bring you updates of the sorts of things I'm doing in New Zealand and Australasia for 8 months beginning in January.
This is a preliminary introductory note to say, "Hey - you're on the list" which means you should Email me if you *don't* want to be. (I'll take no offense, I promise.) If I don't hear from you, I'll leave you on the list, for better or for worse!
It'll also give you a brief agenda of my next couple of months.
I'm leaving Columbia tomorrow morning (Tuesday, Dec. 15) and will be driving east for the next 2-3 days.
On Thursday or Friday I'll arrive in Newburyport, Mass., to visit my friend Colleen and drop off my old computer, which will be her new one. From there, after a day or so, I'll head home to Bridport, Vermont, either directly or via Portland, Maine.
I'll be in Bridport (address and phone below) from (at the latest) Sunday, Dec. 20 until Sunday, Dec. 27.
That day I'll head down to Boston for a big family gathering, and spend the night in Boston. The next day I'll meet up with my friend Juniper for the day, and see Becky Lebowitz for a meal and more stories and adventures.
From Boston I'll head back to Vermont, again either directly or via Portland, Maine (it all depends on where my sister and a couple of friends will be, and when).
For New Year's, I'll either be in Vermont or New York City - it all remains to be seen. If you want to come, and have a vote for either location, let me know!
(IMPORTANT NOTE - If you're going east for the holidays and need a way to get back to the Midwest, I have a perfect solution, so Email me!)
Until January 9, I'll be in Vermont. That morning, I fly to LA, to visit my friend Amy. I'll also hope to see Robin and Jenn, if they're in town.
On January 15, I leave LA for Auckland, and the real adventure begins...
The only other things I know are happening come 8 months later: Around August 15, I'll fly from Auckland to LA. After a couple of days there, I'll head to Columbia around August 20-22. I'll be there through about the 30th, catching up with friends, doing paperwork, and defending my project (the final hoop for my master's degree!).
I'll leave Columbia around August 30, and drive back to Vermont for a bit of a breather.
Then, who knows?... Ideas are welcome! (Yes, Antarctica is still a possibility - more on that in the spring.)
I hope I'll see more of you than I've just mentioned, somewhere in my wanderings - if you'll be near where I'm going to be, let me know - and if you'll be anywhere in the South Pacific or even Southeast Asia, let's plan on meeting up!
Take care - more news in January!
Love, Jeff
2 Jan 1999
NZ News: contact info in NZ
Hello!
Here's the basic game plan for the early segment of my NZ trip, and contact info as it currently stands.
Jan 9 - leave Burlington, VT - fly to LA. Stay with Amy Young, 310-478-4265, Email access daily.
Jan 9-14 - in LA. (see above contact info)
Jan 14 (evening) - fly to Auckland, NZ. Stay in the Albert Park Hostel, 27-31 Victoria Street East, +64-9-309-0336.
Note regarding dates: remember that NZ time is 17 hours ahead of Central Time, 18 ahead of Eastern Time - so Jan 18 in NZ is mostly during Jan 17 in the US.
I'll stay in Auckland for at least a few days, until I get my Internet service and cellular service set up and working properly. My Email address will NOT change. I will let you know my cell phone number when I have it arranged.
Then I'll work my way down to Turangi, where the Chronicle is published. I'll probably move along the north shore of Lake Taupo. After Turangi, I'll probably head to Napier where John Cowpland lives (the NZ photographer friend of mine who came to Missouri). I'll be in touch with him throughout my stay in NZ.
I'll dump some things in Napier and then travel light around various places to try to find a place to do my project.
After I leave Auckland, I'll almost always be traveling with my computer and phone with me, so I'll be reachable if you need or want to find me.
That's the basic itinerary at the moment - I'll let you know more when I do (like my cell phone number).
More soon!
Love, Jeff
8 Jan 1999
NZ News: leaving VT
Hello!
So here I am, about to leave Vermont. Those of you who think I'm lucky should consider the following:
1. I did successfully bicycle 15 miles today (to the post office and back) amid a snowstorm. No, the roads weren't bad, so long as I stuck to the sanded parts. And yes, there was important mail there waiting for me.
BUT, read on:
2. My parents, who were supposed to come up to VT from NJ to drive me to the airport and see me off, were turned back by the weather - winter storm warnings all over the Northeast. They tried to drive up and made it 40 miles in just under 2 hours. So they turned around and headed back, returning home safely 3 and a half hours after leaving, having covered 80 miles. Yes, that speed does average 23 mph.
3. Just after my parents called to say they weren't coming, my computer's hard drive died. Among the items on that drive (and, thankfully, backed up on other disks): the draft of my project, which I must complete and turn in to graduate; the assignments for my government class, which I must turn in to graduate; addresses and phone numbers of all of you; everyone's Email address, and all of my Email correspondence for the past 3 years. So the drive is back up and running now. I'll run some tests on it and be glad I'll be in LA for 5 days where I can get it fixed if it needs to be.
4. I called to double-check on my flight out of Burlington and it was cancelled. So I'm on a later flight, with a 30-minute layover in Newark, NJ, during which time I'll see my parents and maybe my sister, if she safely completes her drive from Maryland to NJ this evening. Of course, nobody is sure if the planes will be taking off anywhere near on-schedule.
5. My friend Amy, whom I'm going to visit in LA, had the sewer back up into her apartment sometime in the past two days and has been cleaning for at least a day and a half. So I'm not out of the woods even when I leave VT!
So I am not as lucky as some of you may think, and indeed decidedly less lucky than I might have hoped... But I am lucky to have all of you as special folks in my life, and I'm grateful for that.
So off I hope to go to Newark and then LA tomorrow - more soon!
Love, Jeff
13 Jan 1999
NZ News: leaving LA
Hello again!
I am now preparing to leave LA, where I did successfully arrive on Saturday (well, technically, 1am Sunday!) after all the travel disarrangement I wrote about in the last message.
Thanks to all of you who wrote with words of encouragement - they are much appreciated!
I did get to see my parents during my layover in Newark, NJ - in fact, my planes were so badly delayed that we had more time to share in the airport than we might have had if they'd made it all the way to Vermont, as they were intending to!
Now in LA, where it's sunny and a nice springy temperature, like 60 or so. I've been hanging out with my buddy Amy and getting lots done around her apartment (she doesn't have visitors, only laborers who stay short periods!
Tomorrow evening I leave LA for Auckland at 7:40pm, arriving in Auckland on Saturday (Auckland time) at 5:30am.
The update at the moment on cell phone and Internet access is looking quite favorable - by Monday I'll have a phone number and fax number and a reliable local number (in NZ) to dial to get my Email. So that'll be nice, but it means I'll be out of touch from Thursday night (LA time) until Monday night (NZ time), except for the few phone calls I'll make to let some of you (like Mom and Dad) know I made it safely.
I got an Email today from the head of the journalism department at the Univ. of Canterbury in Christchurch (whom I'd Emailed several months ago) and he said that he has some ideas for where I might be able to do the project, one of which is in the Christchurch area. So I'll be in more touch with him, as well as pursuing the original plan of show up and talk someone into letting me do the project there.
I hope you're well - I'm thinking of you as I begin this big adventure - drop me a note when you get the chance, and let me know how you're doing!
More soon!
Love, Jeff
16 Jan 1999
NZ News: sunset/sunrise
Hello!
The short version is that I'm in New Zealand, typing this now!
The longer version is:
As the sun set over Los Angeles, my good buddy Amy drove me to LAX. The flight was full, but I was on it and the legroom was ample and the food, well, filling.
Almost 13 hours after we left, flying over the Equator before the International Date Line, we arrived in Auckland right on time. I got through passport control with no trouble, and the customs folks were politely confused about my purpose here (which is the best I can say for myself as well...) and let me go through without paying any customs duties or anything... Very nice of them, I say.
Made it into Auckland, found the hostel and rapidly showered and changed into clothes appropriate for the summer - even winter in LA is colder than this - and less humid.
I've wandered around a bit today - I'll see about going sea kayaking this evening or tomorrow evening at sunset, and then perhaps tomorrow I'll head out to the Antarctic Museum here in Auckland (there's also one in Christchurch) - and Monday get lots done - Internet connection and cell phone/modem etc. Right now I'm typing this and sending it from my own computer because one of the folks at a cyber cafe here is very nice - he said, "If you know how to do it, you can hook it up, but I'll be no help." So I hopped to, and less than five minutes later am here on my laptop typing and sending Email!
The hostel's relatively nice, if hot (but what's not here in this town today?). I'll be there for a couple more days, and then move on down to Taupo, where I'll play some and talk to the folks at the newspaper as well - I read another copy of it today in the library (checked out a bunch of different papers there) and it looks like the sort of paper I might like to work for - non-daily, small-town, with a vibrant feel to the paper and good reproduction of quality photos and decent writing as well. We shall see what they say!
Hope you're well and enjoying what you're up to... I've located a map on the web, which I'll be drawing on and updating at various points, so you can follow my route somewhat as I meander...
Seven months (yes, my math has been wrong - it's not 8...
Be well, and write soon!
Love, Jeff
16 Jan 1999
NZ News now on the web as well!
Hello!
Just a quick addendum to the last note - my "NZ News" dispatches are now on the web, accompanied by some maps (as soon as I find a better one, I'll use it - I promise!
Check it out at
Be well!
Jeff
19 Jan 1999
NZ News: triple rainbow over Rangitoto
Hello!
After being rained out for a couple of days, I was able to go sea kayaking last night in Auckland Harbor. I took the ferry over to Devonport and met up with a guy who leads trips at sunset. I was the only one on the trip last night, which was very nice.
We explored out along the Devonport shoreline and around some big bluffs to a small beach only accessible by boat or swimming. We hopped out to walk around and cook some dinner. As we started making dinner a light rain started, which was nice. The light was incredible!
And then, just as I took my first bite of dinner, a rainbow appeared, going all the way across the sky, directly over Rangitoto, a volcano island in the harbor! As we watched, it became a double and then a triple rainbow, each a complete arc.
Those of you who've heard news of my previous adventures know that rainbows are great omens for my meanderings, so it was amazing to see this one appear!
Paddled back in the fading light, catching the last rays of sun as it set over Auckland, and then hopped the ferry back.
My journal was soaked (so much for the "dry compartments") and my upper body tired, but I showered and collapsed into bed.
In other news, I bought a car today - the final transaction will happen this evening, after the old owners get off work. It's a bright yellow station wagon, a 1981 Ford Cortina, which I can sleep in the back of. It's a really great car and the circumstances of its appearance in my life are all excellent and encouraging...
I also now have a cell phone number where you can reach me if you want, complete with voicemail. It's free for me to receive calls, but I don't know how much they cost from the US.
The whole wireless Internet access setup fell through when we discovered (by trial and failure) that the data suite I was looking at only works with Wintel machines. Doh! But it will actually save me a good bit of moneyy to do things just based from landlines, so that's a bonus.
I hope you're well! Email me when you get a chance!
Love, Jeff
4 Feb 1999
NZ News: a long silence
Hello and welcome back to the irregular newsletter!
Apologies first for the long silence - I am still alive and well, but was without my laptop's power adapter for over a week - it's back now... Not so sure about my battery though, at the moment. We shall see!
It's a long story but suffice it to say warranty repair overseas is not Apple's strength...
Anyhow, over the course of the past week or so, lots has happened.
I left Napier and headed up towards Taupo. On the road I met a guy in a pub who told me of a good place to camp. So I went there and relaxed - a great pick-me-up after a tough week.
Came up to Turangi (south of Taupo, at the southern tip of Lake Taupo) and noticed right away that there were kids running around without parents right nearby, playing in each other's yards and so on. The schools are right next to the downtown area, and there are only 3500 people who live there. (Can you tell I like it?)
I hiked the Tongariro Crossing - NZ's best one-day hike - through a rainstorm but it was incredibly beautiful all the same - from a flat plain up the side of a volcano, across the crater, back up to another crater, next to beautifully-colored mountain lakes, and down across a high alpine meadow steaming with hot springs, into a jungle and out onto a prairie! Incredible!
Stayed and explored the town for a little while before heading off to Eastland, where I'd heard lots of cool towns could be found.
I certainly enjoyed the exploration, though the small towns were so tiny as to be very hard to find, and very far between. After a lot of pool and a few beers with the locals, I stayed the night in Waihau Bayy, most of the way up the peninsula that is Eastland, and continued my drive the next morning out to the East Cape, the easternmost point in NZ.
On my way back from the Cape - about 1pm - the adventures really began. I'd just used the easternmost outhouse in NZ, at the base of the trail to the East Cape Lighthouse, and was heading back towards the main road. I first stopped to get out and have a look - the wind took the door right out of my hands, and then very nearly took me off my feet. I managed to stay standing amid the pelting gravel of the windstorm, and made it back inside the car, which was filling with grit through the slightly-open windows.
With the car safely sealed a moment later, I continued on my way. About 3 km down the road, a car passed me going the opposite direction. Since it was a one-and-a-half-lane road, I pulled to the left (yes, I was on the correct side of the road) and promptly ended up in a ditch - the road had narrowed and I'd pulled too far left.
The car was stuck in mud and water. I climbed out totally unhurt and more than a bit frustrated with myself for not knowing how wide my car is.
The other car backed up and a family hopped out - they were on holiday from Auckland. The kids and the mom went down to play by the roaring ocean, while the dad and I wandered around in search of a farmer with a tractor. We shortly found the tractor but without an accompanying farmer. In search of him, we drove down the road a couple more kilometers, and I had a nice run across a beach chasing a horseman who turned out not to be the farmer, as previously thought, but to know he'd gone back home.
On the way to his house, we found the farmer driving towards us in his Land Rover. After much digging and pulling, the car came out of the ditch, revealing that my journal had been soaked a second time and other stuff was wet, too. (That journal got retired, the pages photocopied and mailed home.)
Two hours after the accident, the car was out of the ditch but wouldn't start. So the tired farmer hitched the car up to his Land Rover for a tow to town. The tow was uneventful except for one thing - going around a curve, the steering locked briefly and I went into a ditch a second time! I came out of that in short order, and made it safely to the garage in town.
There, the car started just fine and they pronounced it quite workable. So off I went. Along the road south to Gisborne, I met up with the Auckland family again, who were happy to see me back on the road, and off on the rest of their holiday.
I got to Gisborne without incident, where I went to the only Internet cafe in town, only 2 days over, and so new there was no cafe as yet. I checked my Email and chatted with the guys who run it, and then had an incredible dinner - fish, onoin, and mushrooms in a garlic sauce on flatbread! YUM!
Then headed back out on the road, planning to find a nice inlet or bay to sleep near, and arrive in Napier the following morning to see John and Kerryn again, and to pick up my power adapter replacement.
On the first hill out of Gisborne, though, the car just plain stopped - no lights, no engine, nothing.
I made it to the side of the road but couldn't put my blinkers on. It was just at sunset; in the fading light I flagged down the first driver who passed, a Maori woman traveling to Gisborne with her young son.
She took me to the marae of her husband and son - a marae is a sacred family meeting place - where I used the phone to call a repair truck. Then I went to her house and met her family. We talked for a while, which was really nice, and then Graham, the repair guy, showed up.
He and I headed out to look at the car. The battery was flat, so he hooked up a battery pack to it, strapped it into the engine compartment, tied the hood shut, and I drove down the mountain behind him, with my lights off, to save the battery. In the dark, no lights, on the wrong side of the car and of the road...
For lack of anywhere else to go - the Maori family had invited me to stay, but I had no way to get there - I slept in my car, in Graham's driveway. In the morning, his wife made me toast and I met their kids before Graham and I headed into town to get the car fixed.
Three hours and a new alternator later (NZ$150), I was back on the road. Made it to Napier to find that the power adapter hadn't arrived yet, and that John was busy - work work work!
Made it back to Turangi, where I've been pretty much ever since. Went to some thermal pools, explored a bit more of the national park, and started research on project topics.
There are three possibilities at the moment:
1. a Maori village just outside Turangi is closed to the public but has a very active community life. I may be able to spend time there.
2. the prison system in NZ is in major flux at the moment, as inmate populations climb and training programs for inmates are moved to places ill-suited for the training (e.g., forestry programs into cities)
3. a town just south of Turangi, Okahune, has converted from a timber and rail-based economy to tourism. The transformation and the present state of the town are possibilities, as are the few remaining timber and rail people.
Now I'm working on researching the ideas and trying to learn more about the village, as well as get access to visit it. I'm also working on finding a place to live in the area, so that I'm not in my car for 4 months...
Now that my computer is working again, I'll be sending you more frequent updates (and shorter ones!) as well as being able to write back to you more promptly...
Be well, and write when you get a chance!
Love, Jeff
6 Feb 1999
NZ News: Waitangi Day
Hello and greetings from Turangi, North Island, New Zealand on Waitangi Day!
Waitangi Day is one of two national NZ holidays. (The other is ANZAC Day, remembering the members of the NZ armed forces who have served in various engagements at home and overseas.) Waitangi Day was originally just the Northland (north of Auckland) provincial holiday, but in the 1980s it became a national holiday, called New Zealand Day. Then, a bit later in the late 80s or early 90s, it became Waitangi Day, in honor of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, between the British and the Maoris.
Since then, Maori land claims have been disputed with the Europeans, even up to the present day, which finds the NZ cabinet including a portfolio for a Minister of Treaty Negotiations, concerned not with overseas commitments of the NZ government, but with land claims in NZ.
Yesterday I left Napier and headed to Palmerston North to see that place, and to drop off my computer's battery for repair. I learned that the person in Napier I'd been dealing with had been going through the Palmerston North dealer himself for the power adapter replacement, so I cut out the middle man. The battery will be in my hands Thursday if all goes well... (Don't hold your breath!)
I went up through beautiful Rangitikei District and at dinner in The Bar, in Ohakune, which is not truly the only bar there but one of a few in the town center. A nice place indeed - and certainly there are stories there to be told...
Slept in a layby on a farm road last night and woke up to the sunrise over Mount Ruapehu - lovely indeed. Went to Waiouru (yes, it's spelled right!) and saw the Army Museum, which was interesting, covering the military history of NZ from the arrival of the British in the 1800s to the present-day UN missions involving NZ troops.
Then back up here through the National Park. Still in search of housing, and I'll head over to Waihi in the morning to see if I can find more folks there to talk to about the village...
Along the way, I pulled off the road to have a closer look at the scenery. Just in front of where I pulled over, two Land Rovers appeared from nowhere, with people and dogs in them. They'd just been hunting or walking, but they were moving through the bush rather easily in the vehicles now - no road or track to be had... Very odd to pull over and see these trucks appear in the middle of the bush like that!
Anyhow, off to enjoy the rest of this sunny and hot Waitangi Day - hope you're well!
Love, Jeff
22 Feb 1999
NZ News: Turangi-Taranaki
Hello and greetings once again from my laptop...
I'm in Taranaki now, the western lump of the North Island, exploring possibilities for spending time in a village here. I'll know more tomorrow, I hope, including whether this one village will a) let me spend time there and permit a camera to be used within their meeting house/communal area, or b) say "no thanks, but come back for our festival in 3 weeks". So we'll see what happens there...
Waihi, the village near Turangi, still hasn't progressed much, though not for lack of trying - the guy never calls me back, no matter how many times I give him my number. So I've taken the hint and gone in search of other places...
I've spent the past few nights by the side of the Tasman Sea, which is very warm and the surf is up, so there are folks swimming and surfing and playing on the beach, which is fun indeed. I've been enjoying the wandering around...
I'll know more tomorrow, and to tell you more about the village at the moment could jinx things, so I'll write more very soon indeed!
Love, Jeff
24 Feb 1999
NZ News: and back again
Hello!
I'm exhausted, after a 10-hour conversation yesterday with Maggie, in Parihaka. I'm not sure if I'll be able to spend a while in Parihaka, but I can go to the hui (community feast and gathering) on the 18th and 19th, which is great. Also, Maggie's interested in a collaborative package involving her poems and my images, as well as my recording audio of her singing and/or reading... We shall see - in a week I'll go back and find out what she thinks - she wanted some time to think about whether she really wants to do it or not, but she seemed very intrigued...
Headed back to Turangi to meet up with a guy here (who left yesterday, not tomorrow as we'd thought...) but when I arrived in Turangi, my phone rang - it was Nata, the head of Waihi village, who's sat on my phone number for so long! He's been busy but hasn't forgotten me, and will ring me tomorrow to try to set up a time for us to meet.
He was quite guarded on the phone - saying things like "we don't give more information than we have to about the village" - so I'm not sure what the dynamic will be like in person... But at least I'll have a chance to find out, and to possibly explore maybe doing part of my project there.
I also found a couple of other towns worth exploring - one called Mokau on the west coast just north of Taranaki, and another called Douglas in the center of Taranaki, which has (for some reason) a boarding house... There's a story there, for sure...
So we'll see what goes on - I'll keep you posted! Email me when you get a chance!
Love, Jeff
8 Mar 1999
NZ News: the Parihaka experience, and a few others...
Hello again and welcome to the newcomers to my irregular Email newsletter!
I'm in Turangi, again, my home away from home, at Bellbird Lodge. But I've wandered quite a bit before coming back here.
I went back to Parihaka and spent another good few hours with Maggie - recorded her reading two poems, and singing another. I also finally found a place that processes slides in less than a week, so did that. Now it's time to put them together...
I'll head back to Parihaka in the next few days, I think, though I also have to be back there on the 18th for their big hui (gathering/feast/celebration/meeting) so I may wait until closer to that time and wander elsewhere in the meantime.
Since I last wrote, I've been around Taranaki another time or two, spent more time by the side of the Tasman Sea, and done some hiking and exploring of very small roads, including one where the man herding cattle told me there was nothing at the end of the road but bush, despite the road's continuing for another 4-5 miles! He seemed in earnest, so I took him at his word and turned back...
Part of my adventures are definitely seeming to involve remote public toilets in New Zealand - having already used one by the East Cape Lighthouse, I found another down a long, winding one-lane road just before it dead-ended at a farm driveway. Strange, but true!
I've also seen a couple of movies (Elizabeth and The Thin Red Line - both worth seeing), met lots of interesting people (travelers and locals from various places) and went to a once-in-a-lifetime event, a launching of a waka, a Maori war canoe, on Lake Taupo. (Yes, I recorded some of the singing and chanting!) Photos weren't really successful, since the ceremony took place just before dawn, and at dawn the waka was launched and paddled rapidly away. But it was lovely - all hand-carved, and holding 25-30 people! Very neat indeed - I'll try to put something together about the experience soon, as well - another piece to the project puzzle!
That's about the size of things at the moment! Email me when you get a chance - I'd love to hear from all of you!
Be well!
Love, Jeff
16 Mar 1999
NZ News: leadup to St. Patrick's Day
Hello all!
It's really not much of a lead-up to St. Patrick's Day for me, though there's a bar in Auckland which is trying to break the Guinness World Record for most people named Patrick (or Fitzpatrick or Kirkpatrick) gathered in one place for St. Patrick's Day. Who knows what will happen?
Tomorrow I head down towards Parihaka, to be there on the morning of the 18th, which is when the hui begins. I went back there a couple of days ago and talked to Maggie some more, which was good - and there's now an interesting twist on my ideas about Parihaka...
It seems someone from Wellington wrote to them there and asked if she could write a book on the history of Parihaka. They talked about it among themselves and decided that they needed to write their own history, and Maggie's going to be the lead author and coordinator of the project.
I immediately offered to photograph for the book, even including a return visit (or visits) to New Zealand at some point. She was (again) interested but reserved, so we'll see what happens - she said she'd talk about it with the others and see what they said. I suggested that we could have an experiment during the hui, so they could see how I work and go from there - she said she'd mention that as well.
So we'll see what happens with Parihaka - I may have to scrap the whole thing, which would be a bummer, but it might turn into a really interesting book project if things turn out well...
I'm in New Plymouth at the moment, after a trip through Mokau on my way from Turangi to Parihaka, and then a trip back up to North Taranaki. I've been doing a bit of bureaucratic stuff here in New Plymouth - printed and mailed off my taxes and entry to the College Photographer of the Year competition - in the multimedia category. If you want to see what I'm entering, go to http://www.jeffinglis.com/stories/index.html.
In other news, I sent off a letter of interest to the Antarctic Support Associates (the folks who do the hiring for work on Antarctica, including work for the newspaper there) and got a very quick message back from the woman in charge of hiring, who indicated that she thought I look well-qualified but that hiring doesn't really start until late April, so I'll hear more from her then... Could be fun - wish me luck!
I hope you're well - drop a note when you get the chance!
Love, Jeff
25 Mar 1999
NZ News: Parihaka and back (looooooong!)
Hello!
I'm again in Turangi, which seems very much to be my home away from home... I went to Mokau for 2 days, and then to New Plymouth for a couple of days, in the process determining that "Shakespeare in Love" is well worth watching, and that Taranaki is a very beautiful part of New Zealand (as if there's a not-beautiful part anywhere outside of Queen Street, Auckland...).
On the evening of the 17th I headed down towards Parihaka, stopping at the Rahotu Tavern for a beer in honor of St. Patrick, and then slept near the lighthouse at Cape Egmont, 5 km west of Parihaka.
The morning of the 18th arrived with a lovely dawn, the sky crystal clear over Mt. Taranaki, and I headed to Parihaka.
Just before 8 am, as the light grew over the pa, a few of us arrived at the gate of the top marae: Mahora Tairawhiti (my friend Maggie), her uncle Rangi, and a pair of community planners (Tony and Erica) from Auckland who had worked on a project helping the village plan their growth a few years ago.
At 8 am, some children emerged from the dining room and rang a large bell. As we walked onto the marae, a woman from inside sang a greeting from the hosts, and Maggie sang the greeting from the visitors.
We ate a delicious - and HUGE - breakfast during which I got to meet lots of different people, which was really neat. It was like being part of a huge extended family - everyone was welcoming and interested in talking to everyone else. Handshakes, hugs, kisses, hongi (pressing of noses) were shared by everyone.
After breakfast, we cleaned up, reset the tables for the next meal, and sat and talked for a while, drinking piles and piles of tea...
At about 10 o'clock, we headed into Te Paepae, which was the name for the meeting house. Other visitors arrived, and after they were sung onto the marae, we greeted them each in a long receiving line and then sat for the talking to begin.
Everyone introduced themselves and said where they were from or what group they were part of. I gave a short, informal geography lesson to explain where Vermont is... Some of the people still thought it was in Canada, though...
The other groups were from local schools and the polytech in New Plymouth. There was also a guy from the Work and Income New Zealand office, trying to improve Maori contact with that government office.
Then we had lunch and took a break for relaxing and for the kids to go outside and play. I spent some time talking to a Pakeha (European) called Norman, who speaks excellent Maori and is from near Invercargill on the South Island. He was really interesting to talk to - he's learned Maori over the past six years and is now working teaching little kids Maori in what are called kohanga reo, or language nests - like nursery school, only with emphasis on language as well as other things.
Instead of the normal afternoon discussion and debate, nothing happened, which was a bit odd for everyone, but I was able to talk to a number of different people and learn more about Parihaka and other places and programs going on for Maori in Taranaki and New Zealand.
I went out to the lighthouse with Norman and his friend Maata and the kohanga reo bus, taking the little ones home at the end of the day. As a result, we missed evening tea (dinner) but Freda, who was one of the kaumatua (elders) of the top marae, let us reheat the food and eat when we got back.
In the evening we had karikia, which is prayer, and then sat and talked. I went over to Maata's house to help her edit and rework a short story for a correspondence course she's taking on creative writing. That lasted a good few hours, but I also got to meet her kids: Puna, Te Akau, Ngahine, and the baby, who we called Pipi.
I snuck in late to Te Paepae, the meeting house, where we also slept, and tried not to wake anybody in the process of getting into bed.
In the morning, Mahora's uncle Rangi woke us up by turning on the lights and singing a morning prayer. Some folks stayed in bed for a while after that, but I hopped up and joined the group heading down to the bottom marae to be greeted there and have breakfast.
We were sung onto the marae again, though this time with Mahora singing for the hosts and Freda singing for the visitors, rather than the other way around (as it had been the previous day). Breakfast was again super-big and yummy.
The truly amazing thing about these huge meals for large numbers of people is that nobody is in charge of serving or clearing the tables, and yet everything gets done. Everyone is aware of all the tasks which need doing, and everyone can do them, so whenever someone takes a break or sits down to eat, someone else pops up and takes the empty place. I got to do some of this too, shifting from clearing tables to drying dishes, to rinsing, as people moved around and started or finished conversations. It was a truly amazing group process, and very un-European in its lack of pre-defined order.
After talking and eating and cleaning up, we all headed over to the meeting house where we were welcomed by Tom and Mahora as tangata whenua (hosts, people of the land). We introduced ourselves, which was an awesome experience for me to hear person after person recite their whakapapa, or geneology, from memory, from themselves all the way back to the canoe in which their ancestors arrived in New Zealand. I was only able to go back as far as great-grandparents, but I think I got some points for the effort...
We all asked questions about Parihaka and about each other's endeavors, and we talked about various things to do with Maori-style decision-making as contrasted with the European style, and so on. The contrast is incredible, and yet the two cultures live side-by-side...
After lunch, we went back for more talking, and then I took a break and played with the kids in the afternoon. Puna, Te Akau, and Ngahine were joined by Jasmine and her brother Malcolm, a two-year-old who had been in and out of the meeting house all morning, causing no end of mirth and disruption...
I learned a lot from them - not only a few Maori words but also more about the families. Jasmine said, "I have 4 fathers and 5 mums," and then went on to list her incredible number of "aunties" and uncles - the kids really are raised by the community as a whole. All the adults take responsibility for all the kids, and the kids look out for each other as well. Several times Malcolm came over to Jasmine (age 10) in tears for one reason or another, rather than going to his (biological) mom or dad, who were nearby with several of his aunties and uncles.
We played and ran and talked and told jokes, and laughed. They were really smart and all wanted to learn more about the US and the other places I've been lucky enough to explore. It was fun telling them stories and hearing their stories...
A number of the adults were playing guitars and singing hymns for hours while we kids were outside... The music was a nice background to our craziness!
After dinner I sat and talked for a little while and then hopped in my car to follow Maata up to New Plymouth to watch her three older kids play in-line hockey. Te Akau rode with me, and after a few words of conversation, fell fast asleep, waking only to put my pillow behind his head when I handed it to him.
The hockey was great - Te Akau and Ngahine are in a younger league, so things were pretty slow and the court was about the size of the penalty box on a regulation soccer field, but the kids were good and excellent sports. Puna's team played in a larger area in another rink across town, and they were excellent - fast-moving, playing as a real team, and scoring on tough shots past good goalies...
After the games were over, I said goodbye to all of them, and made my way back towards Turangi, sleeping on a bluff above the Whanganui River.
Since my return to Turangi a few days ago, I've gone rock climbing, learned for certain that fly-fishing is not my sport, and thought a lot about Parihaka and the project and where to take things next...
Monday my parents and sister arrive in New Zealand for a two-week visit, which will be quick but lots of fun... Before I meet up with them I'm hoping to head out to Whakaari (White Island), a volcanic island in the Bay of Plenty, and to see a rugby match in Hamilton, and I may even go sea fishing... So these next couple of weeks will be some serious time off and recharging and relaxing...
Hope you're well! Write when you get the chance!
Love, Jeff
15 Apr 1999
NZ News: hard to believe...
Hello!
The first bit of news is not about my project, but is a memory of my friend and colleague Brent Johnson, a longtime MU j-school student who died the other morning (this date line screws things up like knowing exactly what day things occur...) of complications from open-heart surgery to repair his ailing heart. To those of you back in Missouri and elsewhere who knew him, I'm thinking of you all, and of Brent...
And to every one of you, if you can, donate blood to the American Red Cross - Brent needed a lot of blood during the operation, and the supplies in Columbia, MO are low. And wherever you are around the world, there are people in need, so give blood where you are, in memory of Brent or for those who will need it in the future.
And now to the NZ News part of things...
It seems hard to believe that it was only 2 and a half weeks ago that I last wrote an "NZ News" update - so much has happened...
I did get to White Island and walked around and explored the place - it's an amazing living volcano out in the middle of the ocean. The ride out was a bit rough, but most of us kept our stomach contents down... It was an incredible sensory experience - amazing colors, weird smells, cool sounds, gritty ash and sand in my teeth, and warm but rough to the touch. It used to be a sulfur mining place, but there's not enough sulfur (or demand for sulfur) to make it profitable, so now it's run as a tourist destination. We explored all over, checking out where a crater had pumped out so much ash over the previous few months that a lake appeared where none had been before - and the water was bright green!
It was like a miniature world, with rivers, mountains, deserts, and so on, with the people hugely out of scale - I felt a good bit like Gulliver in Lilliput...
After that, I hopped back in my bright yellow car and drove to Hamilton to meet my friend Tannis and her friend Candace, with whom I spent a couple of great and relaxing days walking, playing with Candace's flatmate's nephew, reading, cooking and eating yummy food, and going rock climbing on volcanic rock - sharp, but the bubbles make amazing holds! I should also note that I found the tent of my dreams there - Candace, if yours goes missing, you know where it is!
After spending time there, I headed up to Auckland to meet my family at the airport - they arrived right on time, a bit tired but safe and sound, and navigated the car successfully through Auckland's morning traffic to our place of lodging, which was delightful. We spent two days in Auckland doing various things and figuring out where we were going from there.
When we left Auckland, Kat (my sister) and I headed to Parihaka, where we met up with Maggie and talked to her for a while, had a look around the pa, and then headed on. Mom and Dad went straight to Turangi, where Kat and I met up with them the following day. Kat and I met some interesting locals in the Opunake Hotel, one of which meant that we found a delightful confectionery in Wanganui the next day and had yummy chocolate!
We went to Turangi then, meeting up with Mom and Dad at Whakapapa, where they had just done some walking around on Ruapehu. We walked some more around there and headed into town. We stopped by the Bellbird to say hello to the Greens, but only Janeve was home - so we said hi to her and then headed off again, after an amazing dinner at the Tongariro Lodge (expensive, but well worth it!).
Wellington was our next stop, after a trip down the Desert Road and a stop in Waiouru, where Dad went to the Army Museum - I'd already been. The place we stayed in Wellington was not a good place, but in a good location, so we walked around downtown and Kat and I went climbing in a gym on the waterfront.
Off we then headed to the South Island, on the ferry to Picton, through the sounds, which were incredible. There are lots of little houses tucked away in the nooks and crannies there, served by post boat, and some of which are only accessible by boat. I'll go back there and hope to explore that area and that life some, as another aspect to the project...
We stayed in Nelson after a drive along the waterfront, which was lovely. We walked around Rabbit Island, and then searching for a craftsman's shop Mom drove us almost to the edge of the sea down a long dirt road - she then backed us out of it and turned around - very well done indeed!
We also went to a glassblowing studio, where we watched the people make two beautiful glass bowls. It's an incredibly careful art, and very relaxing to watch.
The next day we drove to Hokitika (yes, we put 1200 kilometers on the car in 7 days!) stopping at various places along the way. The road wound through native bush, forests, and along cliffs above rivers. Quite something indeed. We stopped at a greenstone shop in Hokitika where my rock from Ireland picked up a traveling companion, a stone found on the beach and made into a necklace.
And then we were on to Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers - none of us had ever seen a glacier, so this was a definite goal. Because of the weather, we ended up not being able to walk on either glacier, but we were able to walk up near the face of each one, through a valley from which each had receded over the past couple hundred years. The sense of scale was the opposite of White Island - people were so incredibly small compared with the towering cliffs and immense ice... I'll go back and walk on at least one of them...
It was nice to relax there, though it was an enforced relaxation, due to the rain. It was a good break from a speedy trip around lots of places.
After two days there, we headed to Christchurch, driving over Arthur's Pass. That was a steep climb! Kat drove very well - we passed a group of men driving tractors, towing caravans, and flying pennants which said "Top of the South Tractor Club." If I can find them again, there will be a story too...
The road to Arthur's Pass climbed up through a river gorge and past incredible alpine scenery - from meadows to cliffs to high alpine plains. The government is building a road to bypass the really steep part, which will be a loss to the experience of that drive, though I imagine the cyclists will appreciate it...
Christchurch was a very cool town - very compact and city-like, but it had a good feel to it. We headed out to the Banks Peninsula for a day, to take a harbor cruise, on which we saw little blue penguins and about 11 of the rare Hector's dolphins, which swam along with the boat for a while.... It was truly amazing - I've seen penguins in captivity a few times before (including in Ireland!) but had never seen them in the wild. And the dolphins definitely knew we were there and kept us company for a time. Perhaps I'll get down there and be able to swim with them before they head out for the winter...
During the cruise, I also found a small Maori village there - Onuku - where I'd like to visit as well. So we'll see what happens! It may end up being a South Island project, more than an NZ project, but that could be cool as well.
While in Akaroa, I ran into my friend Tannis, who was down there visiting her friend Dave. She does remind me of my good friend Tracey - not only in that I keep running into each of them when we least expect it! I went out for a beer and a snack with Tannis and Dave in Christchurch that night, which was great.
The last day in Christchurch, we went to the Canterbury Museum and the International Antarctic Centre to see their exhibits on Antarctica - Dad and Kat are reading lots about the Antarctic, and I might be going, and Mom's interested as well. While we were at the International Antarctic Centre, the place was evacuated due to a problem with the electrical system. It was fixed, and we went back in, but it was a good 40 minutes of unexpectedness...
And then it was time to head to the airport - Mom, Dad, and Kat were flying to Auckland to connect with their flight to LA and then on to Newark and Boston, and I was flying to Wellington to pick up my car and continue my solo adventures...
It was a great trip - lots of fun, good to be together, and a nice break for all of us from our various routines! 30-odd hours later, they were all back safely home, trying to figure out what time and day it was, and I had turned up at another place totally unexpectedly...
When I arrived in Wellington, I picked up my car and then headed out - but to where? I had no real plan, and Turangi, where I wanted to end up at some point soon, was too far to drive at night. So I followed my nose, and drove north. At two different points, I saw a sign for an intersection and thought "I'll go this way" but when I got to the intersection I went another way.
At around 9pm I drove up the Stokes Valley - picked mainly because it was nearby and the family had all been talking about our trips to Stokes State Forest in school - in search of a paddock to sleep in. Instead, I ended up at the gates of a Buddhist monastery at the end of a dead-end road.
I was as surprised as I have been in some time - I had had no idea that the monastery was there, and certainly no intention of going there. But there I was - something felt right. So I slept in the car outside the gate and headed in early the next morning.
I'll write more later today about the monastery!
Love, Jeff
16 Apr 1999
NZ News: the monastery
Hello!
And now the story of the monastery...
I arrived late at night outside the gates of this monastery at the end of a road I'd never been on, in a valley I'd never known about. I had no idea there was a Buddhist monastery anywhere in NZ, much less right here, but there I was staring at the sign, which read: "Bodhinyanarama Buddhist Monastery."
I hopped into the back of my car, and slept. In the morning I walked up into the monastery and looked for a person to talk to. I found two men building a staircase of dirt and logs, and asked them whom I might speak to to learn more about the place. One of them was a monk, with a shaved head and dressed in golden robes and sandals.
He had been at this monastery for a year, but a monk for about 13 years. He told me a bit about it, but his response was remarkably similar to the response I got at Parihaka - effectively, "Walk over there, look at something we consider very important, and then walk back here and talk some more."
So I walked up to the stupa they're building - a sanctuary for meditation and reflection, which is a replica of a famous stupa in Burma - and then walked around a track overlooking the monastery and came back down and saw that there were a group of people bringing food up for the meal. I met two Kiwis who were there having a look around - the partner of one of them used to be a monk and had participated somehow in the building of this monastery, which was founded in about 1985.
I watched as the visitors each took a bowl of food and stood in a line. As the monks went by, each monk held out his bowl and was given a spoonful of whatever the person was holding. After the monks had all gone through the line, they went to a nearby table with other food on it, and took what they needed for it. We then all went into the sala, where the statue of a Buddha was, and monks chanted a thanks and accepted other offerings from the visitors. Only after the chanting were the rest of us allowed to take food from the table. It was offered to the monks by the
Lao community in and around Wellington - each day a different group brings food. (It is, by the way, an amazing way to sample a cuisine - to taste the food they give their monks!)
The monks are not allowed to take what is not freely given, so even their food, shelter, and clothing depend on the generosity of others. It is an intricate relationship which I would like to explore more - in Buddhist teaching, a community cannot be whole without both spiritual and worldly needs met. Some people work in the world, and earn money and rely on the teaching and influence of the monks for their spiritual well-being. Others are monks and nuns, who rely on the others for food and shelter and clothing. Without the other, each would fall short of the goal of enlightenment.
I talked with a couple of the monks in the afternoon, and read in the library to know more about Buddhism. It strikes me that this particular part of my journey is both personal and professional. While reading and thinking, I began exploring my own ideas of what I believe and having reactions (positive and negative) towards elements of Buddhist teaching. As well, I learned about this incredible place and group of people whose interrelationship I want to explore more.
I stayed there for 2 nights and 3 days. While there, visitors must keep the monastic timetable, which is:
5:15 morning chanting and meditation
6:30 a light chore or task (I cleaned windows and toilets
7:00 morning meeting and a light breakfast
8-10:30 work around the monastery (I repaired a broken toilet, and helped build the staircase I'd come upon at the beginning of my visit - this included angle-grinding rebar and making the steps as well as digging the dirt and pounding the steps into place)
10:30 the meal (the monks - and therefore the visitors - do not eat after midday)
1:30-5:30 light work or meditation
6:00 evening meeting and a cup of tea (sometimes also discussion of a sutta or other part of Buddhist teaching)
7:00 evening meditation
8:30 bed or more meditation
I was very fortunate that there were very few visitors there, and so I was able to speak at length to each of the four monks. Another key part of my learning was John, who was the non-monk at work on the staircase, who had been a monk in Thailand but had disrobed and was living at the monastery for a month to help him readjust to being home in New Zealand.
The place is one of incredible peace and beauty, and the monks are learned and thoughtful. I talked to them about how I came to the monastery, and how I arrived at Parihaka and other places, as well as about my project and what else I do. They were fascinating to talk to and to listen to.
It's truly difficult to put into words what this experience was like, but I wrote more in my journal than I had in weeks. I will return there to see if I might be able to spend some more time with them, doing some work towards my project. I made some photographs and recorded some audio of the paths around the place, and exploring the life-death cycle in nature which happens everywhere but seemed to grab my attention in this place especially.
To meet people who are truly dependent on others for their literal survival, and yet who have enough trust and support from the lay community to continue their search for enlightenment, was truly inspiring.
Listening to them discuss the Honeyball Sutta was fascinating - Buddhism is not a religion in the sense that there is no supernatural being which is worshipped, but there is a set of teachings - the Dhamma - which were put forward by the Buddha (the Enlightened One) as the path he followed to Enlightenment. They were aware of many different levels of the sutta, and talked about teachings from other monks and how things could be interpreted now as compared with how they would have been interpreted when the sutta was written.
Also truly incredible was the feeling in the sala while they were chanting and meditating. The chanting is beautiful - I hope to be able to record some of it - and the meditation time is so peaceful but at the same time physically rigorous for the necessity of remaining almost motionless in a seated position. I'm not a sitting meditator - there are, of course, any number of positions for meditating, including walking - but that was tough, though I had some success.
I am not sure why I arrived there, much as I am not sure why I was drawn to Parihaka. I do know, though, that I saw a great many fantails my last day at the monastery. Fantails are birds which the Maori see as messengers. I'm not sure what the message was, but I have an idea. One of the monks, Ajahn Suchino, will come with me to Parihaka this weekend. Maybe something will come of that - perhaps that's why I saw a Maori messenger at a Buddhist monastery. So we'll see what happens...
It was a place that I think the significance of will continue to sink in over time - I'll send on my observations as they come...
Be well!
Love, Jeff
29 Apr 1999
NZ News: the last of the North Island
Hello all!
First off, if any of you want to send me a message to my cell phone (for free) you can! Go to www.mtnsms.com and click on the link to send a message. In the field where you put in my phone number, type +6421-212-3033 and then send me a message! Don't forget to put your name at the end so I know who it's from...
Since I last wrote, a great deal has happened, including the virtual appearance from nowhere of something which will be part of my final project submission: the monastery actually became part of my story!
I must find a place to sit and write and work on all these things which are in my head... I know there's a book in all of this. I really started to realize this while on the road with Ajahn Sucinno (I've since learned how to spell his name...) and we were trading stories of the various places we've traveled and people we've hitched rides with or had other adventures with. I've kept a running list of these scenes for years, but have never written them - only told them. I do have pictures to go with many of them as well...
So that's part of it, and the adventures I've been having on this trip are part of it as well... Perhaps something like Pico Iyer, traveling and journalism mixed up together with sociology and anthropology... And with feedback from the subjects as research. Who knows where this will go?
Anyhow, on a plot level (and more), I left the monastery, headed up to Napier, narrowly getting off a speeding ticket (sometimes an American accent is useful!) and visiting John and Kerryn, where we had yummy pizza and some good conversation, though John had recently returned his Qantas trophy for this year's competition to award it again... Perhaps he'll see it soon!
Had a really relaxing time there and then went up towards Hamilton, where I met up with Candace, a friend I met through Tannis a while back, and spent a couple of days with her and a friend on the friend's dairy farm. We had yummy pizza there, too, and it was nice to be herding cows and wandering around in gumboots... I'd never been on a motorbike that old with two other people before - it's a wonder it didn't just kick over right there in the middle of the farm... Also really great (and tiring!) to go dancing to a great young Irish band, Ealu - if any of you in the US know of pubs they should play in, let me know - I'm compiling a list for them!
My computer was delivered to me in Hamilton in perfect working order - battery and everything! It's only been 3 months...
After leaving Hamilton, I headed down to Turangi to worsen the torture of my presence just a bit at the Bellbird - Janeve responded in kind, happily telling me to "get lost" and "get to that other island" but at the same time making sure I was coming back... Even the dog didn't want to go to the lake, but stuck around to try to get some love from me... (It worked!)
Great to catch a glimpse of the Greens again and to split fish and chips and a bottle of wine with the ever-cheery Kelly, the newest worker at the Bellbird. (She still doesn't know about the initiation! Should we tell her?
And then to Wellington, where I stayed the first night in the Beethoven Backpackers in Mt. Victoria. It was nicer than the B&B the family all stayed in when we were last there, but it was quite dirty and a bit loud. Also, the guy who runs it, Alan, is known as a character with a strong opinion about everything and no inhibitions. But I wasn't up for a tiny guy mouthing off big-time, so I left the next morning and after a day playing at a museum, headed up here to Paekakariki (which means "perch of the parakeet") about 40 km north of Wellington, overlooking the ocean. Much nicer place.
The big adventures in Wellington were:
1-getting a PhotoCD burned with a lot of my images from this trip. Soon they'll be online, so I'll send another message about that when they're there for folks to look at and give me feedback on...
2-spending almost an entire day at Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. It's an amazing place, incredible architecturally and in terms of information design. It's interactive, accessible to all ages, and full of information and cool stuff organized in a way similar to the one I've been searching for for years - a way to give people a very subtle guide cue as to a "suggested" route to follow, but with lots of options open to them at all times. It worked. I am hooked. From action to little games, to full-on virtual bungy jumping, it's an incredible experience. I may head back tomorrow morning before the ferry as well...
Of course, Te Papa was conceived by a huge design team (over 80 people!) and cost a huge sum of money - a couple of hundred million NZ dollars. It's organized on a concept of zones, within which things are coherent, but between which experiences and layout can vary widely. The intermediary spaces are uniform throughout, alerting the user (see? we are museum users!) to a change in scenery. There are long sight lines through the whole place, so you can see several exhibits at once, so you can say "oh - that looks interesting - let's go there." It's also in context with the landscape around it, orienting the marae inside it with the traditional alignments of marae, to the most open part of the landscape. It also meets the water nicely. Searching and wandering yields results and hidden treasures, and is always worth it. But if you don't have the time, you can see lots and lots without looking too hard or too far.
The basic concept is one of the atrium/circulation loop, but each "stop" on the loop is also designed that way, so there's a spiraling effect which permits effective use of physical space as well as an interesting experience which surpasses the "walk that wall, then this wall, that the other wall" museum experience.
So I have lots of thinking to do about creating virtual spaces...
Much love to all of you!
Write when you get the chance!
Jeff
5 May 1999
NZ News: stuff online
Hello!
Just a quick note to let you know that some of my work is now online. No audio yet - I need a much faster connection to be able to upload that efficiently. But images and some text are up now:
http://www.jeffinglis.com/ and click on the link about the New Zealand trip. From there you will find links to fun pictures, more serious pictures, a map (at last!) showing my various meanderings, and the text of all my NZ News updates (except this one) for your viewing pleasure.
There is a condition - you must tell me what you think of it. The design is crap and there are a lot of rough edges (like text saying "audio clip" at the bottom of each page, even when I'm telling you there's no audio) but the main point is to keep all of you quiet, who have been clamoring to see my images all this time!
So tell me what you like, what you don't like, etc...
More soon!
Love, Jeff
15 May 1999
NZ News: the first of the South
Hello!
First, a couple of news items:
1) I've updated my website (http://www.jeffinglis.com). There, you can see some of my pictures (feedback is welcome)! Also there, by popular demand, is a relatively detailed, relatively accurate map of New Zealand and the various places I've driven... My trips around the North Island certainly were circuitous!
2) In addition to the pictures of White Island and the monastery on my website, there are some pictures of my family from the trip they took over here to visit me and explore, and there are some pictures of - and for - various friends, so have a look if you want to see who I'm keeping company with!
3) I have just finished reading Wally Lamb's book, I Know This Much Is True. Truly incredible, and worth every one of the 900 pages - each of them has something new to offer and to explore... Read it if you haven't already!
I'm in Okarito now, and it's been just over 2 weeks since I came over to the South Island on the ferry from Wellington, and there's much to tell... Not sure why I haven't written before now, but plenty has been going on!
I arrived in Picton and drove the Queen Charlotte Drive northwest through the Queen Charlotte Sound, where I stayed in Te Mahia in Kenepuru Sound, which was beautiful. I was the only guest there, which began a long stretch of being alone or with very few others - I love the off-season for travel!
The next day, I drove out to the head of Kenepuru Sound, which was really incredible, with nooks and crannies in the rock and water everywhere... Lots of cool birds and plant life as well.
From there I headed back out of the sounds and up to Motueka on the north coast of the island. I had thought of spending more time in the sounds, but something lured me onward, so off I went... Motueka was okay, not great, but I had a good night's sleep and was happy to head off further north through the Abel Tasman National Park towards Golden Bay and Farewell Spit, the northernmost area of the South Island (further north than Wellington, the southernmost point of the North Island!).
I drove over the mountains and through the park, which was incredible - long views and lots of relief in the landscape. Many hawks, as well, I should add... I stayed in Collingwood, a tiny town in the Golden Bay. I almost stayed there for a week, in a cottage near the beach, but felt drawn onward then too. But I headed up to Farewell Spit and had a nice walk and sit on the beach there.
The Dept. of Conservation (DoC) has taken an interesting method to protecting Farewell Spit, which is a nature reserve for bird nesting and seal rookeries. They bought three farms bordering the spit (towards the rest of the land) and now lease the farms to a farmer who runs sheep and cows, but maintains the land in a sensitive way. It also permits DoC to control access to the spit much better than it would otherwise be able to. And, since it is all government-owned, the public can wander about the farm and shoreline on foot quite easily, all the way up to where the spit reserve begins, from where you need a permit to proceed.
Near Takaka, there is a set of springs called Pupu Springs, which pump out enough water to make the sand and rocks dance at the bottom of the pools! They also are home to the clearest water on the planet (except perhaps a lake under the ice on Antarctica). The pool is only 47m wide at the widest point, but some scientists set up mirrors to test the actual water visibility, and found it's over 80m! The pools look very shallow, because you can see right to the bottom, but they're up to 10m deep... Truly incredible. And if you have equipment you can dive in them (though the water is 12C (55F) all year...) which would be very cool indeed, I think...
I headed out of Collingwood back down towards Motueka (the only way out of the area) and up the Motueka Valley towards the Hope Saddle and Murchison. It was north of Murchison that I put lots of stuff (including pictures) online, staying at a lovely "bikepackers" hostel where I was the only guest. So nice to relax and sit and write and think and tend a wood fire...
While there, I also had a good interview with Valerie Carroll of Antarctic Support Associates, so that was good... No word yet on a job offer or anything, but we got on well and my interests and abilities seem to go well with what they were looking for... Wish me luck!
After 3 days near Murchison, I headed southwest through Greymouth (where I stopped at the post office to mail off clips and a formal application to Valerie at ASA) and then on to Hokitika. After some searching, I was able to find the backpackers where I had hoped to stay - Seaside Backpackers, which also has the "Jade Experience," where you get to carve your own jade piece.
So I designed and carved a hawk out of jade, which is now hanging around my neck - very nice indeed!
I ended up staying there about a week, doing work around the place in exchange for lodging and some food, which was nice. It's a good town and I enjoyed the work - I was cutting up and disposing of a few trees which Gordon (the owner) had recently felled in his back yard. So I got an excellent look at the Hokitika dump, which was unexpected and not unlike dumps elsewhere in the world...
After several days and some serious reading, talking, wood-hauling, and drinking, as well as a trip with my friend Alison to Hokitika Gorge, which has amazingly clear bright blue water, I headed out, with Alison along for the ride.
We wandered south to Okarito, where I am now. I may yet be the only one here tonight, though there's been someone else here but me for the past 2 nights.
I took a really nice walk along the beach and back through the bush yesterday, which was lovely - lots of beautiful rocks, lovely birds, and of course the pounding ocean...
Okarito is the home of Keri Hulme, who wrote the book The Bone People, and outside her house are two signs: "Unknown dogs and cats will be shot on sight" (it's a kiwi habitat around here, and dogs and cats will harm the kiwi), and "Unless I know you or you have contacted me in advance, please don't come in" (apparently lots of people come to see the house and meet her because of the book, which if you haven't read you should!).
They may need someone to stay here to look after the hostel for a few weeks, so I'll ask the warden about that when she returns (she's away for the weekend) and possibly stay on and do some project work as well as relaxing and hiking... We shall see...
That's about the size of the current update, so I hope you're well! Write when you get a chance!
Love, Jeff
29 May 1999
NZ News: West Coast and onward
Hello all!
Welcome to the newcomers to my irregular newsletter of my adventures and misadventures...
I'm in Wanaka at the moment, in the western part of Central Otago, just over Haast Pass from the West Coast.
They didn't need someone to look after the hostel in Okarito after all, which was a bummer but I've been happily moving on.
Left Okarito and headed up to Franz Josef, at the base of the glacier of the same name. The weather was bright and sunny - very different from when the whole family was there. Amazing views, even from town... I was able to book a full-day glacier walk. I cooked myself a really big dinner and went to sleep. In the morning, I was so comfortable in bed that I just stayed there...
When I finally made it out of bed and down to the glacier walks office, I got a crazy look from the woman at the desk - it was 11am. The walk had left 2 hours before. But I rebooked for the next day and headed out for a day trip to Fox Glacier. I ended up walking around Lake Matheson, which was beautiful and calm, with great views of Mt. Cook and lots of sun!
(After Okarito, for those of you who are keeping score on my project work, I was on a committed vacation for a few days... More on that topic in a few paragraphs...)
Made it back to Franz Josef for dinner, where I met up with some folks who had done the full-day walk that day and were raving about it. I was really psyched up for it, and made it out of bed on time the next morning, along with the other two people in my bunkroom. During evening TV time, though, I noticed that there was a sign up in the hostel: "Needed, part-time cleaner." I killed three cockroaches on that sign alone (not to mention the ones by the toaster...) so I suppose the sign was somewhat redundant...
In the morning I was up early and out the door to the glacier walk office. There were a whole herd of us on the bus (something like 35 people!) but we were pleasantly informed by one of the guides that we would split up into smaller groups for walking on the glacier itself; we were just in the big mob for the walk up the valley to the glacier face.
Made it up to the glacier face no problem, put on our hobnail boots (later to become a subject of amusement) and chose groups. I chose to be in the "fast" group mainly because everyone else (except those of us actually in the "fast" group) chose to be in the "middle" group - not a single person in the "slow" batch. So there were three "middle" groups - very odd. Everyone insisted on being average... Except the ones in the fast group, who were really great.
We spent the day walking all over the glacier, with our guide cutting steps with a pick all along the way. There were 8 of us. The one woman in the group, June, took no abuse from the blokes among us, despite what a few in particular dished out to their female friends in other groups (who we saw along the way at various points).
It was indeed a great day - the sky was brilliant blue, few clouds (until the afternoon when we were coming back down the glacier), and very warm despite the ice all around.
The ice formations were amazing, and the sounds very cool - I'll get some images on my website as soon as I can (but don't hold your breath).
The "fast group," as it turned out, was not so much faster-hiking but we did go further and go through some really cool crevasses, through which we all made it safely, through teamwork, guts, and sheer luck dealing with gravity!
We all chatted away at various points during the trip, and at some point we began discussing the Mallory expedition to Everest (the remains of which were recently found). As you might expect, we made a lot of fun of the equipment they used then - dressing in tweed jackets and so on - but all the while we were wearing the very same hobnailed boots they used...
After the long day (6-7 hours on the ice) we were all exhausted... I staggered home, hopped in the shower and then in the spa (nothing like a hostel with a spa!) and back into the shower before cooking a very simple dinner and wandering down to the pub to meet up with the folks from the hike.
The first person to greet me I didn't even recognize - he'd had a hat on all day, and glasses as well. The man who said hello to me in the pub had long hair and no glasses. But a good five minutes later I figured out who he was and apologized for not recognizing him earlier...
June and Eamon and Colin (3 folks from the trip) also were there - they are from Ireland but living in Sydney working in various jobs there. June and I made the sort of connection between people that is so rare when traveling - a fast, close connection with the quiet knowledge that the next time we see each other could well be years away... (But at the same time knowing we will indeed meet again.) We had a fascinating talk about Buddhism, the quest for our passions in life, and the adventures we've had along the way...
It was a great evening of conversation and laughter and drinking and drinking and pool and drinking... (Colin wins extra points for putting a piece of pizza in my hand at 1 in the morning when we were all desperately meandering towards the hostels...)
The next morning was a very serious challenge, but I made it out of bed and into the car and headed south towards Haast, after seeing the others off and delivering a message to a friend of John Cowpland's who works in Franz Josef.
For the next 40 or so kilometers, I seemed to travel in convoy with June, Eamon, and Colin in their car, though they were off to Queenstown that day... So we had a good few more laughs on the road and at the last gas station before Haast, and then I was just driving and exploring and looking and watching...
The drive to Haast was lovely, through lake and hill country full of native bush not yet destroyed by possums... Relaxed around Haast, cooked a good meal, and read some, which was nice.
Met another new friend in Haast, Jane from Christchurch - a Kiwi traveling New Zealand! - and drove her bags up Haast Pass to Makarora so she didn't have to haul the gear up all that way... Dropped her gear in Haast and continued on to Wanaka, looking forward to meeting up with her there and having more adventures!
Jane showed up the next evening and we went climbing in the morning - a whole day of fun on the rock with a local guide who knew lots about where to climb and had all the gear Jane and I lacked. We both learned lots and had a blast on a glorious, cloud-free day. Got home, happy and tired, and cooked up an enormous dinner with Jane's roommate, Sara, and ate and drank wine and played cards until we were dozing off in our chairs...
The next day I picked up my film and got my first look at the film I'd shot on the glaciers and while climbing - let's just say Fuji's doing its work very well!
Headed out of Wanaka the next morning, planning to head south towards Fiordland to do some kayaking before putting myself firmly back into project mode, but the road drew me north, towards Mt. Cook. So I followed, happy to have the pull of fate back with me... Saw lots of hawks and 4 rainbows that day! Lovely views driving through the Mackenzie Country (named after a famous sheep stealer, who is supposed to have driven the stolen flocks far from the east coast stations and up into the mountains just east of the Southern Alps). On the way up, I had a flash of insight and decided to toss myself back into project mode sooner than I'd thought.
The Clutha River runs from Lakes Wanaka and Hawea (right here near Wanaka) all the way across Central Otago and out to the ocean near Balclutha. It's not the longest river in NZ, but carries the most water and is home to many small towns...
So I made it to Mt. Cook Village (where the clouds prevented any views of Mt. Cook) and turned around and headed all the way back to Wanaka! I hit the library the next morning and learned lots about the history of the area, up to the mid-1990s. I still have more reading to do, but it's a start...
Also headed about 3km out of Wanaka to Albert Town, one of the key towns on the river, because it was the only place the river could be forded for a great distance. It was especially valuable during the gold rushes and also when farmers were driving sheep out to their newly-claimed stations in the area. Wandered around there, found not only the old graveyard but a new monument in the corner, placed at Christmas 1998. So that's a mystery to be solved... Also found the number of the secretary of the community association, and am hoping to reach her by phone today and meet up with her soon to talk more about my project and Albert Town... I'll keep you posted!
In Wanaka I also ran into Nick Fisher, who I'd met in Turangi in February, and who has been tramping all over NZ since our looooooong day climbing at the National Park Backpackers near Turangi. We went bouldering yesterday, which was great...
That's the news for now - hope you're well! Congrats to my uncle Alan, who is now an official MD!
Love, Jeff
4 Jun 1999
NZ News: persistence pays off...
Hello!
Persistence pays off... I'm in Wanaka now, on the South Island, just above Queenstown. I've found a very nice little town called Albert Town which is very interesting to me and will be, I think, the saving grace of this project/adventure...
I'm about 5 days into research and interviews and things seem to be going well and looking to continue that way, so here's my official notice that I've re-started project work... For real this time!
I definitely feel like Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama were starting points, where I moved along a path of progressive comfort with people and myself in NZ, as well as getting more and more used to broaching the subjects of audio and photography, as well as developing my own interviewing style, where I am not only talking to the people in a real conversation but also getting useful information, in a strangely balanced dance...
Albert Town is a small town, but bigger than both Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama, at the confluence of the Clutha and Hawea rivers in the western part of Central Otago. It has one of the longest histories of European settlement in this region, having been the original town and river crossing point in the area for gold diggers and sheep-station founders.
Now it is an outlying town of Wanaka, where people come for holidays and for a relaxed, comfortable lifestyle in the rugged country here. It has an active community association, is courting new business to revitalize itself, and working to preserve its heritage and character as well as its well-being for the future.
This is in fact the type of town I must confess to hoping to find. I do in some ways wish I'd found it in February, but this was not to be. I now anticipate spending the next 3 to 4 weeks in Albert Town or engaged in Albert Town-oriented research and interviews. (There is no library in AT, but several volumes of local history in the Wanaka Library; also a few of the people actively involved in AT affairs, as well as local government, do not live in AT proper, but nearby. Further, AT's key position in the river valley means it relates in unique ways to other towns in the valley, both historically and economically.)
I may spend more time than that, but that's the initial prediction.
Publication options are currently being explored. They include Journal E
The people I have spoken with in AT seemed pleasantly surprised by my attention, and are most willing to help, as are the government agencies (and the government's contractor for civil services). Nothing like reporting in Columbia, for sure!
I expect to spend a few days each week walking around AT meeting people, photographing the town and life there, and exploring the town and surrounding area. I expect that I will have a large number of opportunities to photograph aspects of life in AT, in ways not only insightful, but also of a type and quality worthy of the type of broad chronicle I envision for the pieces on Albert Town.
I am also working on writing about Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama, and finding avenues of publication for those pieces as well. I'm still waiting to hear from Adam Stoltman at Journal E regarding his interest in any of the photographs from the monastery.
Feeling pretty good about having had this gut feeling about AT, and then working on it and making something of it.
Be well and write when you get a chance!
Love,
Jeff
9 Jun 1999
NZ News: the game is afoot
Hello!
I now have a mystery to solve, in addition to my look at life in Albert Town.
Across the river from Albert Town, in a camping ground run by the Department of Conservation, there is a disused cemetery. In the center of this fenced-off area of overgrown undergrowth is a cairn, built by Richard Norman, the uncle of two present-day residents of Albert Town, 87-year-old Ida Darling and her 92-year-old sister, Dot Sherwin.
The cairn is made of gravestones collected from throughout the cemetery, rescued from a government bulldozer sent to clear the grass from the area. Richard and a couple of his friends built the cairn and then collected stones from the riverbed on which to inscribe the names and dates of those buried in the cemetery.
On all four sides of the cairn are names and dates of the town's earliest pioneers, as well as small children and babies who died here in the harshness of the climate and with no doctors for days of riding in any direction.
Looking at the southern face of the cairn, something catches the eye a bit further along: a bit of white wood, with what could be writing on it, in the corner of the graveyard. A closer look reveals a message:
"Please water me if my bottle is dry for my family put me here to guard our lost members. Thanks." The sign indicates a small, 6-inch-high Blue Mountain conifer decorated with oversize Christmas tree ornaments, each with a name on it. Closer to the tree is a rock with an inscription:
"In memory of those who should be here 25/12/98:
Stewart Findlay Richardson
Aileen Eleanor Baker
William Seddon King
Jeremy Alan Richardson
William Simpson Cunningham"
The handwriting is firm and certain, though a bit unruly without light blue lines between which to form the letters.
Lying about this small shrine is a walking stick - perhaps a pilgrim to this place was cured of lameness - and a host of empty plastic drink bottles, testaments to those who have watered the tree. All the bottles but one are dry.
I bend down to the tree, remove my own water bottle from its pouch at my waist, and pour a bit of what remains onto the roots of the tree. It is like a baptism; I hold in my mind these unknowns, these strangers, and wonder what it is that makes me honor them this way. Some water I keep - the living must carry on.
The mystery thickens: A short walk away, through the pines which drip sap on campers' tents and caravans all summer, and which drop the branches and pinecones to feed their fires, is a small fenced-off rectangle, closer to the toilets and the road than to the cemetery.
The grass inside has thrust itself up over the rocks which clearly used to cover the site entirely, but nature has not yet covered the marker itself:
"In memory of Jerermy Alan Richardson [sic] 12th March 1987"
I have heard from Ida Darling that nobody really knows much about this grave, but it contains a baby which died while its family, homeless, were camping at Albert Town. The local Presbyterian minister, Ida says, is the only one who might know more. Nobody told the authorities about this, but no doubt they know and have not moved the grave.
That Jeremy Alan Richardson's name appears, with a spelling difference, on both markers makes the phrase "who should be here" more obscure: Should the people whose names are on the tree's marker be in the cemetery, be in Albert Town, be alive, be at the Christmas ceremony planting the tree, or what?
Stranger still is that, in this town of 264 properties and something like 300 full-time residents, nobody seems to know. Not Dot or Ida, who are the local repositories of history, living and past; not Stan Kane, the curator of the local history archive; not Stan's wife Elsie, long a children's nurse in the area, who seems to know as much of the historical record as Stan himself; not any of the Bakers, Cunninghams, or Kings in the phone book; nobody.
In fact, nobody seems to know the marker is even there. Some of them - though not Stan or Elsie - know about the baby's grave, which has been there over 12 years now. The most plausible guess I've heard is from Peter Barrow, owner of a tavern in nearby Wanaka and president of the Wanaka Community Board, which represents Albert Town, Wanaka, and nearby communities to the district council in Queenstown, 100 kilometers away over the mountain road. Peter thinks it's something some fishermen put there.
Many fishermen (and women, and children) do come to Albert Town in the summer months. So many, in fact, that the town's sewage treatment system may require a NZ$170,000 expansion, including a new oxidation pond, to handle the increased demand.
But would fishermen place a monument to their dead at a place they merely visited for short summer holidays? I say no. The people who planted that tree and painted the signs care about the place as much as they do the people - are unable to view the people and the place as separate. So who are these people so intimately connected with Albert Town, but with only a tree in the cemetery to remind the odd passer-by that they ever existed?
---And that's NZ News for the moment... More soon!
Love, Jeff
10 Jun 1999
NZ News: Antarctica news - such as it is...
Hello!
ARGH! Just got a message from the Antarctica people...
Apparently I won't know for another few weeks about the job in Antarctica... They've offered the job to two folks (not me) and are working on getting funding for a third person (possibly me) so we shall see what happens... Keep your fingers crossed for me!
The Albert Town mystery continues...
Love, Jeff
12 Jun 1999
NZ News: project rolls on...
Hello!
Just a couple of quick notes...
For those of you who have been enjoying picturing me in a bright yellow station wagon rolling around the NZ countryside, it's time to let that picture go. Two nights ago I was driving alone and slid on an icy road into a streambed. I'm fine - a couple of strained ligaments in my left shoulder and a couple of cracked ribs are all the damage to me. But Sundog, the intrepid vehicle, is in the dump, unwanted even by the auto salvager here in town... Sadness indeed, but I'm very happy I'm safe and will heal fully in a few weeks...
So I'll be working on arranging alternate transport, and putting my camera on auto-focus for a while, but things will continue... This evening there is a pot-luck dinner in Albert Town, and I'll be going to that, with food, camera, and notebook in hand. Should be a good way of exploring the social life of the community, and getting to know some more folks I've not met yet.
Hope you're well - take good care, and know that I'm thinking of you wherever you may be...
Love, Jeff
17 Jun 1999
NZ News: 2 months left in NZ...
Hello!
Albert Town is closer to publication now - a long talk with the features editor of the regional paper and a few more queries out about it and about Parihaka and Bodhinyanarama, so we shall see what happens from now on...
I'm writing a lot and shooting a good amount as well... Nice to be doing both and having fun all at the same time! I also have an outline for three books about my various adventures, in Ireland, New England, and New Zealand. So at some point (in my spare time
But two months from tomorrow I leave from Auckland! And two months and two days from now I'll be in Columbia... YIPE!
The plan still is to head to the North Island in early August (you on the North Island have been briefed on that), so I'll be in the South Island until then. The loss of the car has obviously made some changes to my travel plans, as has my shoulder injury - minor overall, but not something I want to aggravate with kayaking in the Sounds...
I'll be in Wanaka at least until the end of June, and perhaps a bit longer than that, depending on how I revise my travel schedule... (And whether or not I get another car... Still thinking on that.)
So things are going well - the physio says I'm healing well, which is good. (Knock on wood.)
I hope you're well! Drop a note when you get the chance!
Love, Jeff
21 Jun 1999
NZ News: the end is near...
Hello!
In an interesting surprise this afternoon, I discovered a possible reason that the folks at Waihi village were reluctant to talk to me. Nine months ago a plot of land there, on which is the house of one of the village elders, was designated as a "meeting house property." That designation is a specific category of zoning, which means the owner is exempt from paying property tax on it due to its status as a property central to community function.
Apparently, however, the district council has just learned of the designation and is appealing the decision, arguing that the property shouldn't qualify for the status. The council is also asking why it was not notified when the court decision was made 9 months ago. No surprise the villagers didn't want a stranger around asking questions, with at least a controversial land use designation in the works...
I'm still in Wanaka, of course, still working on the project about Albert Town. This week I'll begin the research phase - photo elicitation - and see where that goes!
I have a piece about the monastery (words and photos) already out in publication (it'll be out in the beginning of July). I also am due to send a 1500-word piece about Albert Town to the Otago Daily Times tomorrow, and go from there - I'm hoping it will be a words and multiple pictures package. I have a query out to a Maori news magazine about Parihaka as well, so it looks like things are going along nicely for publication! Yahoo!
I expect to be working on this for about the next two weeks (including photo elicitation interviews) and perhaps a week beyond that with getting material out for publication.
Then I'll be off on the road again, to Fiordland, Stewart Island, the Catlins, and then up to Christchurch, to Hanmer Springs (for skiing, I hope - if the shoulder cooperates!), and then to Picton before going back to the North Island to visit friends all over the place...
I won't be buying another car - it's not worth the effort for only 2 months of travel left, and I might as well cut my losses and just take buses and get lifts from fellow travelers.
I hope you're well - drop a note when you get the chance!
Love, Jeff
1 Jul 1999
NZ News: final week of project
Hello!
Just a quick note - I'm more than halfway through my photo elicitation interviews in Albert Town, and am working on getting text and photos out to various publications for Albert Town, Bodhinyanarama, and Parihaka... Things are crashing and coming together - it'll be a busy week. The delay so far has been basically due to the fact that it's school mid-term holidays at the moment, so some of the folks I'd hoped to interview this week were away or otherwise occupied... I'm hopeful that by Wednesday of next week all the interviews will be over and I'll be set!
I've also updated my website - http://www.jeffinglis.com - click on the current project part, and check out any of the stuff there! (I'm still working on putting the jade-carving piece together, so it's not quite ready yet, but the others all are...)
I'll probably spend a few more days after the interviews end in Wanaka to get myself together, get the last bits out to publishers, and so on. And then I'll move on towards Fiordland, Southland, Stewart Island, and the East Coast of the South Island...
More soon - drop a note when you get the chance!
Love, Jeff
7 Jul 1999
NZ News: back on the road
Hello!
This afternoon is the last interview of my Albert Town project! Some things are still in the works being prepared for publications about Parihaka, Bodhinyanarama, and Albert Town (one has already been run!) and so we'll see what happens there...
Today is Wednesday, and I'm in Wanaka until Saturday. Then I'll head down to Te Anau to check out Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound in Fiordland.
From there I'll be off to Invercargill to get to Stewart Island for a few days, and then to Dunedin, Christchurch (perhaps some skiing at Mt. Hutt!) and then Picton...
From Picton I'll head to Wellington, where I'll meet up with Steve Engle, who has been there this whole time but I've only just managed to locate him... He'll be the first friend from home I'll see this whole trip (with the obvious exception of the family...)!
And then up across the North Island visiting other friends from my time up there earlier in the year... I'll leave from Auckland on Aug. 18 and then, with a quick stop in LA (one night), back to Missouri for the defense...
So I'll soon have more adventures to tell you about... Drop a note when you get a chance!
Be well!
Love, Jeff
16 Jul 1999
NZ News: there is magic at your fingers...
Hello!
Welcome again to the newcomers to my irregular and idiosyncratic newsletter from New Zealand...
I'm in Invercargill at the moment, just returned from a trip to the Catlins, a region of wilderness and beauty between Invercargill and Dunedin, on the southeast coast of the South Island.
Since I last wrote, I have left Wanaka, wandered through Queenstown for 2 and a half hours before going to Te Anau, and learned exactly why I avoided Queenstown so studiously...
I have also seen the new "Star Wars" and "Notting Hill," and am about to go see "A Civil Action" at long last...
I went up to Milford Sound for a day in the fog and rain, but it was still lovely - waterfalls pouring down everywhere and snow on the bits of the high mountains when we could see them. They are big mountains, rising out of deep seas, with all sorts of lush native bush clinging to the areas wherever it can...
Headed back to Te Anau, explored around, and decided to rearrange the next couple of weeks a bit, leaving everything the same for the North Island trip. Instead of spending lots of time in Fiordland now, I moved on and explored the Catlins (more in a bit about that) and will go to Stewart Island shortly for about a week... Then on the 25th (about) I'll head back to Fiordland to go on a 5-day cruise on a small boat in Doubtful and Dusky sounds, which I think will be wonderful - I'll tell you all about that when it's happened...
But back to the Catlins now - I left Invercargill on the morning train to Balclutha (which means either "town of the Clutha" or "mouth of the Clutha" - the Clutha is the river which flows through Albert Town and all the way out to the sea near Balclutha). Hopped off and was met by a tall, thin smiling man called Fergus. I tossed my bag in the back of the van, and hopped in to meet the others on our two-day tour.
And then we were off - a quick narrative about the area we were passing through, and then we arrived at the house where Fergus and his wife Mary live with 2 dogs and whatever visitors are passing through or on their tours. At the time, their niece Siandra and her partner Michael wer visiting, so we ate a lovely homecooked lunch with them and headed back out to the wild. We explored the native bush in the area and saw some sea lions on the beach. One charged us, which was a bit confusing as people were backpedaling quickly, trying to escape and photograph at the same time. It made me laugh and think about the stories I've heard of being a photographer at a massive news event, with lots and lots of people jockeying for position to photograph a moving target.
A nice walk along the beach, and another to a pair of waterfalls, reminded me respectively of Sandy Hook in New Jersey and the MKT trail in Columbia, passing through the cuts in the hills...
A nice short evening kayak (in which my shoulder performed with little complaint but a marked decrease in strength!) topped things off before we piled in for a lovely dinner, made, I believe, by Mary (who had set it all up in advance and was away for the day). Conversation ranged from zoos in New York City to gnomes in England and passed through teddy bears (Mitchell was introduced to the company) and penguins along the way, as well as many other subjects.
After dinner, made more spectacular by Fergus's long-distance tea-pouring (as in the book Wild Swans), we went out "weta-ing," a curious event made more curious by the "verb-ing" of its noun. A weta is related to the grasshopper but has evolved in New Zealand to fill the niches normally held in the rest of the world by rodents of various kinds. I'd seen a different sort of weta in Okarito, but the ones Fergus took us to see were cave wetas, with very long antennae. There were a good number of them, in a small cave not ten minutes' walk from Fergus and Mary's house. Also in the cave were glow-worms, which were nice to see as well.
After that, it was definitely time for bed but I managed to stay up a little later to practice for my defense by explaining about what I did to Mary, Fergus, Siandra, and Michael, as well as Mary and Fergus's daughter Min and her husband Craig, who had arrived as we were leaving to go weta-ing...
A wonderful sleep was ended too early in the morning when the alarm went off at 6. We had to grab a quick snack and head out again to see yellow-eyed penguins, which are the world's rarest penguin, but amazingly lovely. We drove a while and then walked a while and sat on a hillside next to the penguins' nesting area, watching them come down from their nests to the seaside and head out to sea.
By the time we got there, three were standing on the beach, looking back towards the nesting area, as if they were waiting for friends or family. After a time, none came, so they seemed to give up and head towards the sea. The surf was roiling with a high tide and a storm surge, so they were a bit timid. A wave caught them unawares and they were suddenly tossed into the sea, where they struggled, flapping their wings and managing to get back to the shore. They walked away, waited a bit, and headed back to the sea. Their movements were awkward but somehow graceful as well - the individual steps and hops were precarious at times, but they managed to make it to their destinations and to pick routes which suited their ability. Later we saw some very steep slopes which they were able to climb, bit by bit, and then slide back down again.
The penguins are reasonably short by people standards, but reasonably middle-sized by penguin standards, and have the normal white front and black back we expect of penguins, but they also have a yellow band around the back of their heads, from eye to eye, as if they were keeping their glasses on.
Eventually the three went out to sea, bobbing and diving through the pounding surf. We sat back down to wait, as the sky grew lighter and lighter with the overcast dawn. Soon one more penguin came poking along the track down the hill to the shore, seeming to take its time, looking around at different times, almost as I'd imagine Winnie the Pooh would move through the woods.
That one was more decisive and hopped shortly into the sea, after initially being swamped by a wave, seemingly intentionally. And then another came down to the water and jumped in, swimming away to join the others. Further down the beach, Fergus told us, a few more had gone in, but the eight he saw in total were far from the 13 or more he was expecting. Perhaps the storm had kept them out all night? We don't know.
Fergus then showed us around the nesting area, while checking, resetting, and re-baiting traps for predators (introduced species: possums and stoats primarily). In this location, penguins live and nest under significant shelter provided by vines which entwine and entangle the bushes and shrubs in the area.
After checking out life as a penguin (wet, cold, and never truly safe from predators), we walked across the bluffs and beaches to the house, where a yummy breakfast of porridge (made with salt, for those of you who know the difference), toast, and fruit awaited. It was a late breakfast, but a solid start to the day all the same.
Then, quickly, up again, out again, off again. We went to see where little blue penguins live, around the corner from the yellow-eyes, but there was nobody home. They'd been there recently but were out when we got there, so we had a look around their quarters, seeing how they live and how these small penguins get up and down steep slippery slopes covering in grass and wet rocks. Truly amazing... And a reminder that we can do anything if we take it slowly and just keep making progress, no matter how small the steps.
Back to the house for a bit and then back out again to have a look at some old-growth native bush, preserved by forward-thinking colonists at the turn of the century. Old old old trees - rimu and matai over 1000 years old; a plant of such primitive development that it is considered a living fossil, a tmazipsum (check my spelling, Fergus, but you said it starts with a T!); hearing the cry of the kakariki, the native parrakeet, which is very rarely heard and even less often seen; and more and more and more... Lots of mud, lots of walking, and lots of natural history, botany, biology, ornithology, and more...
Then back to the house for even more delicious food - for those of you who haven't tried a mushroom and sweet-pickle pizza you really should (trust me on this one!) and then the inevitable packing up and departure.
Mary recommended I read a kids' book to Mitchell, called "The Best-Loved Bear" by Diana Noonan, who it turns out is a neighbor of Mary and Fergus's. So rather than send me out in search of it in the big book world, Mary rang Diana, and I was able to borrow Diana's personal copy of the book to read to Mitchell during the bus ride back to the station to meet my shuttle to Invercargill. A very sweet book indeed, and it made Mitchell and me very happy. Thanks, Mary, Fergus, and Diana!
I'm now back in Invercargill, where a very friendly local photographer answered my query "Where can I buy film around here?" by picking up the telephone, ringing his supplier in Auckland, and letting me place an order with my credit card to be shipped to his place by tomorrow! I had expected directions to a camera store - I got incredible service indeed...
Heading to Stewart Island tomorrow or Sunday, depending on how I feel... I have 4 weeks and 2 days left in NZ - time is getting short indeed...
Hope you're well wherever you are - write when you can! (Pictures of the wildlife will be on my website later rather than sooner, I fear, but I'll send out another note when they're up...)
Love, Jeff
24 July 1999
NZ News: movin' right along...
Hello all!
Well, what to tell? Since my last message, I have wandered about Stewart Island for a few days, which was lovely. For some of the time it rained, but mostly it was dry - and often sunny!
I didn't get to see kiwi, because the guy who does kiwi-spotting tours was on holiday (yes, even tour operators get holidays) but I went on a nice scenic cruise with two other NZers who were traveling (good on them!). We headed around Paterson Inlet, which is the big body of water inland in Stewart Island. It's still tidal, of course, but is very well sheltered from the open sea.
We saw seals basking on rocks and playing in the water, caught some blue cod for dinner (yum!) and generally enjoyed ourselves, exploring and talking and relaxing. It was definitely a great prelude to my coming wander around Fiordland on a boat...
I also did some walking - just day walks - and lots of relaxing and reading, which was very nice indeed. It was just the sort of mostly-on-my-own experience I needed before heading off to an intense time aboard a 65-foot boat with 10 other folks. I am looking forward to it, but it'll be a different experience for sure...
Now I'm back in Invercargill, having seen the tuatara that eluded me last time - 120 years old one of them is!
And the really big news is that I was offered the job in Antarctica, so I have much to think about. I am, as usual, seeking counsel (and counseling!) from the family and various other close friends about whether to take it on, but I definitely am leaning toward doing it...
I'll keep you posted! The woman from Antarctic Support Associates and I spent most of the day in a phone tag match, but we were able to finally talk and sort out some of the next steps in the process... A bit of crazy timing, though, of course, because I'm heading to the middle of nowhere tomorrow and will be there for 5 days... Details, details...
So that's the news at the moment - I'll write another note after I get back from Fiordland, when I'll talk about that trip, as well as knowing more about Antarctica...
Be well and write when you can!
Love, Jeff
1 August 1999
NZ News: it all begins......NOW!
Hello!
Okay, so here's the deal. I'll tell you more about the trip to Fiordland in a moment...
But the question on so many lips these days (or at least the ones whose lips have been typing Email...) is - Will Jeff go to Antarctica? And the answer is Yes.
I'll be sending out my itinerary for my US trip shortly - when I get the logistics figured out - to those of you who I'm hoping to visit, to make sure it fits with your calendar! So more on that soon too.
But this job on the Ice is going to be super, I think - I'm really looking forward to it, though it'll be lots of work and some serious away-time from friends and family. But it's doing the kind of work I think I want to be doing, and will definitely test me personally and professionally in ways I won't ever have a chance to be tested again. So it'll be good and difficult...
To that end, I'm announce a contest to rename this newsletter. Shortly, of course, "NZ News" will be a bit passe... So a 6-pack of beer or a bottle of wine or some other yummy beverage to the person who suggests the best new name, judged by me.
So there's something to spend a little idle time on, if you have any...
In short, I'll be one of three journalists on Antarctica, working for the Antarctic Sun, which is the newspaper published by the US Antarctic Program. We'll be putting out a weekly paper and web edition as well, so you'll be able to have a look at what's going on down there. We'll get to go to various places around the continent as events occur and as we find stories to work on. I know next to nothing about Aaron and Josh, who are the other two on the team, except that Aaron is in the wilds of Alaska at the moment and Josh is working for Fox in New York. I'll meet them in a multinational conference call on Aug 12 (my time)...
I'll be working on the Ice from early October to late February, and I'm not sure when I'll be back in the US - I may see friends in NZ, or go to Australia, or do something else altogether, or run home and move into a cave in the Vermont woods. Who knows?
Okay, now back to Fiordland. I hopped the bus from Invercargill through Gore to Te Anau and arrived in good time and feeling great after several one-hour catnaps on the bus. In the morning, after a brief rescue mission to find management for a woman who was locked out of her room after taking a shower (with only a towel and a borrowed sweater to keep the snowy chill off!), we were off on the bus to Manapouri.
Once there, we rapidly checked in, swiped our credit cards and were off across Lake Manapouri. It was a bit of a damp day, with some clouds and snow, but it was nice enough. When we crossed the lake, we got into a coach to take us across the spit of land between Lake Manapouri and Deep Cove, the anchorage in Doubtful Sound.
We boarded the Breaksea Girl, a 65-foot ketch with sleeping space for 14 (including crew). We found our bunks and got settled in as the boat headed out to the mouth of Doubtful Sound, to see if we could make it to Dusky Sound that afternoon. The sea was too rough, so we did a bit of exploring around Doubtful for the day, checking out various parts of the fiord.
It's impossible to give you a play-by-play of the whole thing - too much to say, too much still in my head unprocessed as of yet...
But we saw some amazing wildlife - swimming with bottlenose dolphins, and with NZ fur seals! The seals are almost better because they swim right up close to you, brushing your face and hands, while the dolphins keep their distance... Truly incredible. And damn cold, even with wetsuits...
We also spent some time on one of the Seal Islands in Dusky Sound moving quietly, definitely visitors in a wild place, with birds and Fiordland Crested penguins (nesting in tree roots! - who'd have thought? not I!) and fur seals all through the bush. I got up very close to a couple of the pups, which are really really really cute... Can't wait to see the photographs...
Saw a frozen fiord (it was cold!), some sperm whales on the surface, Royal albatross, Buller's mollymawks, Cape Pigeons, wandering albatross, and other sea birds. Walked through various parts of bush, looking at what's re-growing after being damaged by deer and possums. (Neither species is under control, but things are slowly improving, so long as current policies continue and get more stringent.)
And the rocks and bush and fiords are beautiful even when there's no fauna to be seen... Some really remote places to go rock climbing, too... One of these days!
I'm working on a piece to sell to various publications around NZ, because the folks who run it - Ruth and Lance - won the "service to the environment" award in the NZ tourism awards the day we got back from the cruise!
Had lots of fun with the folks on the boat - as always, I got on better with some of them than others, but that's to be expected, and there was no blood...
Ruth and Lance are definitely passionate about Fiordland - Lance used to be a deer hunter, fisherman, and crayfish (lobster) man, and is now truly happy being in such a special place without having to kill anything!
It was lots of fun living on a boat - I'm still sort of rocking back and forth, now that I'm on dry land...
And now I'm in Christchurch, having signed my contract with ASA yesterday and "looking forward" to being poked, prodded, stuck with needles, Xrayed, and interrogated tomorrow to pass my physical qualification exam for the Ice... (So it is still possible, on an outside chance that I won't PQ and won't go... I hope not - knock on wood!)
And then back up to the North Island to see various friends there and then back to the US for a whirlwind trip to Missouri to defend and then around to see friends and family... It'll be a long trip, and I won't be able to see everyone, so please accept my apologies... If you're in New Jersey, New York City, Boston, or Vermont, though, let me know (unless I have already sent you a message about my trip) and we'll see what we can work out! Obviously, I'll make sure to see as many folks in Columbia as I can... I fear much drinking...
See many of you soon - much love to all!
Love, Jeff
16 August 1999
NZ News: leaving NZ
Hello!
I'm leaving NZ in a short while - those of you who are on my travel schedule for August and September know who you are and have my itinerary. Those of you who I won't get to see this trip, or for a while - be well and stay in touch! And I'll look forward to seeing you when our plans and locations work out...
It's been a crazy two weeks since my last NZ News. I've had my medical exams, filled out paperwork, had a four-way conference call between New York, Alaska, Colorado, and NZ, and managed to stay as sane as usual in the process! I've visited the folks on the North Island that I'd hoped to see - thanks to them for putting up with me and my crazy situation...
I'll be heading from here back to LA for a night and then to Missouri to the university to get stuff done there and complete all the degree requirements (which I hope takes no more than 10 days, since that's all I have!
In that vein, NZ News is not over. (I can hear you screaming now, "No! I never want another one of these long long Emails again!" But you're not so lucky...
I should also report here that I have a new phone number where you can (sort of) contact me. It's voicemail only, but I'll get the voicemail every time I check my Email. The number is +1-760-875-9079. It doesn't have my voice on it (that's what you get for free) but I'll get the message. It's a US number, but it's better than nothing...
So thanks for coming along for the ride, and I hope you're looking forward to being on the ride to the Ice as well. If you don't want to get this newsletter anymore, just Email me - I'll take no offense, I promise.
Be well - more soon!
Love, Jeff
Project Results and Conclusions
Publication
I submitted work to the following media outlets:
The Mirror, a local weekly newspaper, published by the larger regional Southland Times for the Albert Town area. (Albert Town)
North and South, a national arts, culture, and political magazine. (Bodhinyanarama)
The Otago Daily Times, the regional daily newspaper covering the Albert Town area. (Albert Town)
Inspiration Input, a monthly new-age type magazine published from Christchurch. (Bodhinyanarama)
The Addison Independent, a local newspaper in Addison County, Vermont. (Albert Town)
Journal E
I also wrote a report of my research for the Upper Clutha Historical Society records, to be used by people studying the history of Albert Town and the surrounding area.
I had work accepted by, and published by, The Otago Daily Times, Inspiration Input, and The Addison Independent. So far as I know, North and South is planning on publishing my work in an upcoming issue.
Journal E has indicated they are working on using my Albert Town work as part of a new section of the site.
The Mirror turned down my work on Albert Town because of its very limited space.
I will continue to explore avenues of publication for this work. I have a query letter out to Critical Mass
In terms of approaching publications to explore their interest in my work, I followed a progressive pattern similar to that involved with locating towns to work in. I became better able to explain my project as time went on, partly because my idea for the project itself became clearer, but also because I became more familiar with the publications and with the story-pitching process as I went along.
Each publication is specific and unique (or at least considers itself to be so), and therefore there is no easy rule for coming up with a pitch strategy, except to get to know the target publication so well that you can place yourself in the role of editor (or section editor, or whomever you will be querying) and imagine what you would see in an ideal query letter coming in out of the blue from an unknown person.
See Appendix 3 for copies of the work published to date, as well as the material I’ve submitted for publication.
Conclusions
This journey in New Zealand was as much personal as it was professional. In both contexts, this was a successful endeavor and adventure in small communities in New Zealand. My confidence and gut-feeling that something would come of this have paid off. Even more encouragingly, my smaller instinctual feelings along the way, about which places to spend time in, whom to talk to, and so on, were also justified. There were, of course, hard parts, and it is telling that only five months into the project did the first publication accept a piece of mine.
In one of my early field notes (February 11, 1999), I wrote: “‘Taking off’ for somewhere also involves a decent amount of trust in fate or luck or whatever you want to call it. Things happen, and if I keep in mind that whatever is happening is supposed to happen for a reason ... I get a lot more out of it.”
That is an important lesson to have learned, albeit the hard way (and therefore the permanent way), and one which I hope I can keep at the forefront of my mind throughout my career.
I have learned about how to handle myself and others in small community journalism, explored and expanded my ideas about communities and people. I have learned that the freelance life is indeed something I can love, and that being based in one place or another is very useful as well as desirable when working on a project of this nature.
A real challenge during the project was not the volume of publication, but getting published at all, as an unknown foreigner spending a short time in a country. I know that I will publish more work based on this experience in the future, but getting any of it published in New Zealand during the project I consider to be a real triumph.
Part of that triumph was the multi-tasking of project work and publication preparation, which were all going on interchangeably, and simultaneously in my head nearly all the time, sometimes even during interviews. Querying publications was something I might have done earlier, but I didn’t feel comfortable with what my plans were for some time, and wasn’t ready to “go public” until right about when I did.
This multi-tasking practice (at which I have been working for years, and am still working), came in truly handy near the end of my stay in New Zealand, when I was finishing the work in Albert Town and getting several pieces out to publications. I had a lot to do very quickly, and couldn’t afford to mix one batch of writing up with the others.
The evolution of the project idea in my head was greatly helped by people who asked me what I was doing in New Zealand. Each time I answered that question, I got a little closer to the actual answer, until I had figured it out for myself and everything had fallen into place. The ongoing conversations with strangers and friends about my work helped me focus in a way I never would have, if I had only talked to editors and to potential story subjects.
I’ve learned that I can do what I set out to do, and that there are people and publications which are interested in the work I do. I’ve learned more about how to think about different angles of a story for various publications, and have learned to keep my eyes and ears open for new venues of publication all the time.
I have learned to listen to what others say about my work, and to let that inform the direction of my exploration. Not to dictate it, but to suggest a new angle or point of view, or a new interpretation of old information. Further, I have learned to listen to my gut and to those around me, whether technically involved in the project or not. Telling nearly everyone what I am working on means repeating the same conversation over and over but sometimes gems appear in strange places and odd questions from even odder people. My gut reactions proved right nearly all the time; that is a vital lesson, whether reporting from a combat zone or a cozy residential living room.
I have also learned that spending a significant amount of time in a new country, culture, or environment is absolutely essential to the success of a project about elements of that place and society. And as I wrote on June 4, 1999, when I had begun the Albert Town work, “Persistence pays off.”
Going in “cold” has its advantages, too, but I very much appreciate having a network of supportive contacts, colleagues, and friends in the U.S. (and, now, elsewhere overseas) who can help me along in the process, so I’m not out there feeling so alone so much of the time.
Parachute journalism is not my thing, though I don’t at all mind, and indeed enjoy, the challenge of photographing an intense activity in a short period of time. I have had reinforced, though, the importance of significant research prior to events of that nature, as well as follow-up afterwards.
Some of this research is on the order of national history, or just watching the TV news and reading magazines and newspapers to learn about current events in the place. Other of it is specific, of course, searching out historical records about a place or people of particular interest. But conversation out of context and with no knowledge is necessarily basic. This affected my early explorations around the North Island, and the value of the depth of my previous work was clear to me in my work Albert Town. I already understood general frustrations with government, some of the history of the area and how it fit into New Zealand’s national history, and so on. This rapidly elevated the level of my conversations with people of all backgrounds; when they noticed I needed no explanation of terms or situations, they delved deeper into the topics we were discussing.
Further helping my project move forward was my reluctance then, as now, to impose myself overly much on subjects. In my April 16, 1999, field notes, I wrote, “I don’t want to tell someone’s story (or some group’s story) unless they want it told. ... Not that I want to totally serve their agenda (or my own) but I don’t think people should give up their privacy just because a journalist turns up at the door.”
I very much tried to paint myself as outside the mold of traditional New Zealand journalism, in which, as my friend John Cowpland related, he never got to spend more than 15 minutes with a photo subject, no matter the story. I tended to be more of a sociologist or anthropologist, which is how I often explained my departure from common ideas of journalists.
This was made easier early in the Albert Town work by the fact that I was wearing a sling, and therefore visibly vulnerable. Further, everyone knew who I was: I was “the guy in the sling.” Worse yet, but very indicative of life in small towns, nearly everyone had seen my car in the wrecker’s yard the day before, so they knew what had happened.
Mixing work with play has been a great way to undertake an experience like this, offering me opportunities to relax, take time off, and, several times, to find – by accident – another angle to explore my existing work. The most valuable aspect of this “time off” was contact with New Zealanders outside the realm of the project. It was those exchanges (as well as some within the project context) which built up my readiness to a stage where I could converse capably with many different people and have at least some knowledge of what they were saying.
On April 29, 1999, I wrote, “The adventures I’ve been having on this trip are part of it as well... Perhaps something like Pico Iyer, traveling and journalism, mixed up together with sociology and anthropology.”
Watching my own development from town to town was fascinating. Watching me home my approach and test the waters in various ways, trying to be culturally sensitive without knowing exactly what that entailed (a hint: smile a lot, and be as humble as you know how), and learning from those experiences, was very rewarding. I could see myself changing and growing as a journalist and as a human being.
Spending time in Parihaka, Bodhinyanarama, and Albert Town was rewarding and enjoyable. I definitely feel that I have friends to visit in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world, which I suppose can be said to be the most important outcome of all of this effort.
I also have story ideas which appeared at many strange times, including during what can best be described as a near-death experience driving a high mountain pass, during a drive in which I departed from Wanaka well before beginning the Albert Town work, and during a very hungry afternoon at the monastery.
Email was a vital means of communication, helping me combat loneliness as much as being a conduit for useful and meaningful information relating to the project. My connections with other people, and the importance of the regular presence in my life of special people in my world was reinforced and truly brought home to me at several occasions, when I considered the possibility of flying home early for one reason or another.
Being away was very hard. I’m an adventurous type, but I know where home is, and I know how important it is to me, and how important I am to my loved ones. That security is part of the reason I feel comfortable going off for long periods of time. But it also makes it hard to go, and the return all the better. In terms of expenses, the telephone and Email were the big ones by far (aside from the car, which would have been much less of an expense if I’d been able to sell it at the end). But I have always considered phone and Email expenses to be part of the basic cost of living my life, so I pay them with pleasure.
It’s been really great. I’m in New Zealand typing this part now, and it’s sad to think of leaving, but exciting to think of heading home and getting on with other adventures, as yet unknown. And of course, as with any project of mine in which I get as involved as this one, the true conclusions will remain unknown to me for some time – perhaps years, but definitely weeks and months away...
Appendix 1: The Photo Elicitation Images
Note: The captions given here are to help explain the images to the reader of this report. No captions were supplied with the images during the photo elicitation interviews. Also, no numbers were on the pictures during the interviews. Numbers are only used here for reference.
1. Looking down Kingston Street, towards the old building.
2. Looking across an empty section (on Kingston Street) towards the poplars and the Cardrona River.
3. The riverfront in Albert Town. Mt. Maude and the Grand View Range are across the Clutha River from the sign, which talks about the early history of Albert Town. The sign is located near the site of the ferry and punt crossing.
4. Members of the community decide whether to have a Christmas party, during the mid-winter potluck in June.
5. Moira Fleming, right, answers questions posed by Henry Dickey, who is just about to turn 5.
6. The monument area, including the small Blue Mountain conifer and water bottles.
7. From left, Alison and Bruce Hebbard and Rae Benfell try to figure out how to work Alison and Bruce’s new digital camera while clearing land where the Hebbards’ parents will build a home, on the lot next to the Benfells’ house.
8. The road counter on Dale Street, placed there by the district council to count the traffic on the road prior to paving it.
9. Logan Hebbard watches his son, Bruce, clear the land where Logan and his wife will build their new home in Albert Town.
10. Peter Cross (front, in multi-colored jersey) and Harry Dickey repair a broken shed Peter wants to put up in his yard.
11. Templeton’s Garage, where there are always different cars parked inside and out.
Appendix 2: Photo Elicitation Interviews
Interview 1: Moira Fleming, June 24, 1999
JI: “Well, here are the pictures. There are 11 of them. I’ve been lurking around Albert Town causing all sorts of interest and excitement for various folks. Let’s get them oriented properly here. And, yeah. So now you get to have a look.”
MF: “Oh.”
JI: “This is fun for me as well.”
[Picture 11]
MF: ““Oh well, um, Templeton and Son, the garage and engineering shop, has been there a very very long time. It’s had alterations done to it. Historic Places have an old photograph of the first little shed that was there that the grandfather of the boy who is running the business now, from Pembroke as it was. He actually started up business in Pembroke but he shifted to this riverside site and it’s of great value to the farming community in the area. They have their machinery fixed by Templeton and Son, and they’re also a petrol outlet for the residents of Albert Town, so it’s a very good facility for our town. And there would be a time, I’m not sure how long, but there would have been a time when the hotel and the shop and the post office and the garage, I think there was a time when they were all operating together, so it was quite a busy little town, you know, but then the rest went by the boards, so the garage is the only surviving thing from way back. I could be wrong with that. They could have come after the pub had closed, but I’m not sure about that detail. It is a thriving business, and I think there will be more improvements and I think it will grow more as Albert Town grows.
“And there are children, more generations.
[Picture 8]
“What have we here? Road counter. Very occasionally, not on a regular basis, but very occasionally, they put road counters on our roads because we have a longstanding agitated debate with the authority to have the roads sealed and they insist that a certain traffic volume go over the road before they’ll look at the cost evaluation process that says whether it will be viable to seal the road. Of course we go backwards and forwards over them, when they’re there.”
[Picture 3]
JI: “This one I have to apologize for because the printer ran out of ink.”
MF: “So we’re a bit green here are we?”
JI: “A bit green just in the corner.”
MF: “Well we are greenie as a matter of fact, sort of, partially.
“That’s quite a lovely photograph, really. The human invasion into that scene is as unobtrusive as we can get it because the picnic seats, we felt, or viewing seats, were essential. We had– we had nothing. It was a really derelict part of the riverbank and we wanted it developed and that has come about with funding through the authority. The plaque was erected by the Historic Places Trust and the Albert Town Community Association assisted them with a little bit of finance, putting the frame in and having it there. It was put together with the assistance of the Department of Conservation who have similar plaques on their walks so that it was very– a very viable thing for them to go to DoC and say ‘How do we do this?’ and ‘Who does it?’ and they went right through the same process to get that plaque there. It’s gone through the same process as the DoC signs so in that way – the framework isn’t quite the same as DoC’s – it’s gone through the same process and it, it will have a similar look to the DoC things which gives a little key to everything that’s around about, it was giving them information about the area. That was positioned close to where the punt used to come across the river, so it has a historical significance in its positioning. Not far from there, the punt operated and it carried cattle and vehicles of all kinds, horse-coaches, cars when cars arrived, people, lots of animals. At one time they did ford the river but it was way up past where the punt is, away round the corner where there’s a big – still a big shoal. If the river’s low, it’s possible to walk across there and it was right in front of what was called the Wanaka Station.
“Long before there was a Wanaka, there was a Wanaka Station, right in Albert Town. And the settlement where Wanaka is now was called Pembroke. But this was the Wanaka Station and it ran right round the front of the lake to the other side of the lake. It was a huge area of land, but the homestead was right there and they drove the cattle over close to the homestead.”
JI: “Is that near where the cemetery is now?”
MF: “No. On the other side of the river.”
JI: “Right, but the crossing would have gone..”
MF: “Oh, the crossing. A little further up the river.”
JI: “Okay, I know where that is then.”
MF: “If you– if you walk along the low terrace on this side of the river, right at the end of the terrace you can look across the river and see the bar and on this side is the traditional Albert Town swimming hole, because it’s an eddy that comes right round behind the bar, a very very safe swimming hole. Everybody swims there in the summer. Everybody!
[Picture 2]
“Oh! My goodness. You can see here the difference in height through the terracing that’s taken place in the land formation. As you come in from Wanaka, you are on a, you have to drive up out of Wanaka onto a terrace and you’re on that terrace until you come down quite a dip in the road and then to get into lower Albert Town you come down another dip. We’re in a glacial valley and Albert Town actually sits on hundreds of feet of gravel, crushed rock and gravel. The drainage is quite supreme but in parts, in parts, at the same time in parts of Albert Town there’s a clay mud pug that won’t let any water in at all and creates quite a problem with surface water.
“We’re looking across a double section that is owned by families who – two sections are owned by families who have been here a very very long time.”
JI: “Which families are those?”
MF: “Templetons, the same as the garage people. They own several properties around this area of Albert Town. But these two are either old aunts or uncles and I don’t think they’ll ever build there, but I think while they’re alive they won’t sell them either.”
JI: “There is a section for sale right across from Ralph and Ethel’s house that Alison and Bruce are selling.”
MF: “Yes.”
JI: “But I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
MF: “They’re in the family, too, you see.” (laughter) “And it will be their mother or father who has that section. They’ll be selling it on their behalf. Or they may have given it to them one Christmas. There’s a section across the road from me, too, that’s vacant, and I’m not sure where the relationship is but I think it’s there.
“But that demonstrates right there very well that little shelf that comes along and then drops and those houses there are on that dropped level. And when the Cardrona River floods surface water comes up through the gravel. It’s not that the river comes over the section, the water comes up through the ground and there’s a little creek that, it’s actually an underground waterway that used to run down and in front of that little building in that section and down there and out through there so that when the surface water comes up, it comes up too because it can’t get away. So this house that’s not showing here, the house that’s there, has actually had water in its lower floor and it has been up to the back doorstep of all of those houses and right over the sections of all of those houses right up to the buildings. The whole sections have been underwater.”
JI: “Is there any warning when that happens, I mean there must be some but if it comes up through the ground...”
MF: “Well if it comes up through, the warning is that the rivers are high and that the Cardrona River is very high. It’s only a little creek most of the time. The snowmelt comes and she roars down there and brings debris and gets caught up in the trees and every so often DoC will come down and clear all that away which is nice because it’s lovely to walk through there.
“But when you come down there a little bit, when you come down this terrace that you’re on here and go along a little bit this house, for example, is higher this section is higher than the section next door that way and the section next door that way so it’s up on a little peak, and no water has ever been in this house but it’s been around about.
“So that the whole section– from my back garage I come up three steps to get onto the level that’s out on that side of the house.
“It’s interesting because the lie of the land comes this way from the river, there’s a little slope up that way and I’m sort of on the peak of that.
[Picture 9]
“Wow, holidaymaker. (laughs) Over in the camping ground. No, he’s right beside the road. Where is he?”
JI: “He’s up, that’s where Alison and Bruce were clearing the property.”
MF: “Oh right!”
JI: “And that, I believe, is their father or uncle and I’m not sure which at the moment.”
MF: “It would be their father because the father and mother are building the house. That’s on Alison Avenue. Well, if the pub was built you’d have a beautiful view of the pub. That’s lovely isn’t it. Well, they’ll be very handy. It’s only 30 paces to get an ale.
[Picture 10]
“Oh wow Here’s a notice going up somewhere. Now where’s that?”
JI: “His face might give you a clue. (pause) Yeah, it’s a bit in shadow.”
MF: “I can’t think where that is.”
JI: “That’s – and now I’ve forgotten his first name but his last name’s Dickey. He lives next door to Ralph and Ethel, in the back. It’s right up on Arklow Street.”
MF: “Oh right.”
JI: “And they’re fixing a shed that they’d towed.”
MF: “Oh right, that’s a bit tricky. I didn’t recognize the houses.”
JI: “Some of these are in here because some people will know what they are and other people won’t. It’s interesting to see...”
MF: “Yeah there aren’t many clues to locate that anywhere.
[Picture 6]
“Woohoo! Wow. Well, you see, that’s one of the problems isn’t it. We want our walkway to come down there. And link up with the Cardrona River, link up way down there. Have you walked down there? We want to develop a walkway and maybe get out at Templeton Street, which is the first one that runs off Kingston Street, come up round there or reinstate a little bridge that used to be across the Cardrona, because the main road to Pembroke was over there. It wasn’t where it is now, it came from the punt over there and crossed the Cardrona.”
JI: “So where’s the path going to go then? It’ll go along the Cardrona...”
MF: “No, it’ll come right down from...”
JI: “From the Outlet Track.”
MF: “Yes, and link up and come right down the riverbank.”
JI: “Come down this side of the riverbank?”
MF: “Yes, come right down where we have those tables and chairs. It’ll come past there – there’s a bit of a track there now and it’ll just get developed. It won’t be a sealed pathway, no, but it’ll be what we call a boardwalk – where there are mushy bits of stuff they put little boards across with chickenwire that stop them sinking into the ground, you know, that sort of thing.”
JI: “And stop you sliding off them, too.”
MF: “Are you going to Stewart Island?”
JI: I am.”
MF: “Oh good! You’ll get lots of boardwalks on Stewart Island. It’s just a beautiful place, a beautiful place, but the walk will be over there. The walkway will be over closer to the river.”
JI: “I think that’s on the other side, though.”
MF: “What other side?”
JI: “This is at the cemetery.”
MF: “Oh, I though you were down in this corner. It looks the same.”
JI: “No, because this is the monument and this is the Christmas tree. It didn’t come out very well.”
MF: “Oh right. I should have recognized that but we’ve got a fence now there and it says ‘No vehicles past this thing,’ and it’s just down there. Weird. Weird. Oh yes, the little headstone right. Haven’t you had fun!”
JI: “I have.”
MF: “Oh here they are, yes. You’re going to take a picture as well. Oh, you had everybody and his dog here didn’t you? (laughter)”
[phone rings, side conversation]...
[Picture 7]
MF: “Well there’s some very earnest gazing going on there, isn’t there really? Yes, indeed. Rolling a film.
[Picture 5]
“Oh! Goodness me! Who’s that! Whoops! (laughs) Ask a question you get an answer!
“He wasn’t fazed a bit. He was the only child there, and he wasn’t fazed a bit, and he was going to school the next week. Just amazing! (laughs) Can’t help it, just can’t help it.
[Picture 4]
“Oh, that’s are we going to have a Christmas do. Oh no, it’s not. It’s who had that one right isn’t it?”
JI: “No, that’s are we going to have a Christmas do.”
MF: “Oh it is Christmas do. I wasn’t paying much attention to that. I knew there was a raising of the hands. That’s very interesting isn’t it.”
JI: “What’s interesting?”
MF: “You probably got a good cross-section of the people who were there. I didn’t count, did you?”
JI: “No, I didn’t either. Should have done.”
[Picture 1]
MF: “Wow.”
JI: “Now I know you know where that is.”
MF: “I do know where that is. That shows you the terracing as well because the road vanishes down that dip. Isn’t there a grandeur about the surroundings? I think it’s wonderful.
“You can see how they sealed our road down the middle, and a little further down the road you’d have seen the awful ditches they haven’t put the gutter in. So when the people build their house, they’ll have to put the bit of guttering in.”
JI: “So they’ll have to get the trucks back out again, the people back out again.”
MF: “Don’t you love it? They’ll have to pay for it too..”
JI: “The people who build the house?”
MF: “I think they will. They’ll ask them to contribute or something. But it peters out very early in the piece. Up here on this side of the road there’s no guttering, there’s just the corner and they go around that far into the corner, which successfully runs the water when it rains because they put the crown of the road up very high – because the crown of this road is up very high compared to the rest of the – so when it rains the water runs down onto the unsealed part of the road and creates potholes and you know puddles and surface flooding.”
[miscellaneous conversation, not relating specifically to Albert Town or the images]...
MF: “The tree that’s outside the front door on the corner of the library, the spreading big spreading cherry blossom tree I had a little plaque made, set into a stone at the base of that tree.”
JI: “What does it say?”
MF: “Well, I just presented the tree to the school.”
Interview 2: Ida Darling and Phyllis Spraule, June 26, 1999
JI: “Well, here are the photos. You can have a look first if you like Phyllis, or pass them along. You can take them out of the paper if you want to.”
[Picture 11]
PS: “Oh that’s the garage, Templeton’s garage. It came out good.”
JI: “Thanks.”
ID: “Templeton’s Garage established in 1913 and still going strong yes, very good.”
[Picture 8]
JI: “That’s the road counter over on, turning off Alison Avenue on., up towards Lagoon Avenue, but before you get to Lagoon Avenue it’s...”
ID: “Wairau Street?”
JI: “No, isn’t that the dead-end street?”
JI: “Is it Tania Terrace?”
ID: “Oh yes, it is Tania Terrace and Gunn Road, yes.”
JI: “It’s upside-down. There you go.”
PS: “This is excellent.”
ID: “What were they doing here?”
JI: “That’s the road counter.”
ID: “Oh yes, of course, because they won’t give us sealed roads up there but they had a road counter across to see. They didn’t put it on in the holiday time when we’ve got more people here though. They’ve put it down when there weren’t very many people about so they’d say there’s not enough people there to warrant sealing that road. That’s why that would be down.
[Picture 3]
“Hey! It’s the, it’s the, yes, that’s the Clutha River, Mount Maude in the background, Mount Maude there on the left-hand side and the other one is what they call Grand View over there, that one down there, that’s Grand View. That’s where the first pioneers came up over that mountain there and they looked down over this here and they said, ‘What a grand view,’ and that’s how it stuck and that’s the name of it, that’s the highest point over there is Grand View. And that was the very early pioneers way back in 1850, late 1850s.
“And the notice board, here, of course, gives you a little bit of the history of the early part of the pioneers coming here through this district and it’s all about them written up on there, particularly about my grandfather and my family, they’re all on that board, which is very interesting to me.”
[Picture 2]
ID: “Oh this is along by Lagoon Avenue.”
PS: “No, it’s over here. Right on top of the hill, isn’t it?”
ID: “Up here? Looking down that way? Oh, and I didn’t even recognize it with the long grass!”
PS: “I wouldn’t have either. See this house in the corner, the pink house.”
ID: “Yes, that’s the pink house on the corner. Oh very good. A pity that it’s in the wintertime just the same, no leaves on, would have been very pretty with all those poplar trees with their autumn colors on, would have been lovely.”
[Picture 9]
JI: “That is, I believe, that is Alison and Bruce Hebbard's either father or uncle, I’m not sure which.”
ID: “It must be on the Hebbard side. It’s not a Templeton. At least I don’t think it is. No, Templetons didn’t look like that and I knew all the family, so you’ll have to ask them. I would think it would be on the Hebbard side by the look of that to me. Nobody I know.”
PS: “Is this over by the monument?”
[Picture 10]
ID: “Now what is that one. It’s out here, it’s over here isn’t it?”
JI: “It’s right across the street.”
PS: “That’s Peter, uh, Peter, uh, Cross.”
ID: “Is it? And this is um, um, Dickey, Harry Dickey. Look at the colors in this! It looks as though they’re right out of - the materials are made out of patchwork, doesn’t it?”
JI: “It’s actually a Canterbury jersey.”
ID: “Is it?!”
JI: “It’s what they call the ‘Uglies.’”
ID: “I would call it, I would call it the Uglies too. Nothing matches, nothing looks. Look at that, look at all those colors! Goodness me!
[Picture 6]
“Oh rubbish. This is what’s going to happen now with all those, with all this business with a dollar a bag to put your rubbish away. People will be throwing the rubbish out, and that’s a first-class photograph of what will happen.”
JI: “Do you know where that is, though?”
ID: “Down in the, down here?”
JI: “It’s in the cemetery.”
ID: “Oh is it. No, I haven’t been over with the leaves off you see and I didn’t recognize it. Oh, is this where that little notice is? Oh! Well, that’s been put up since I was over there, last time, like since I was over there. I obviously haven’t been over for a while.”
JI: “Yeah, it was put up at Christmas.”
ID: “Oh! Well, I’ll definitely have to go and have a look at that.
[Picture 7]
“Oh, there’s Alison there. That’s right. Whereabouts is this one taken?”
JI: “That’s actually right on the section next to where the Benfells are, right on the corner They’re building a home for their parents.”
[Picture 5]
ID: “Oh! Uh that’s the birthday boy. Young...”
PS: “Your neighbor.”
ID: “Henry. Well, and Moira Fleming. Moira Fleming and Harry. I don’t know what the story is. It looks like a flat piece of bread. It doesn’t look like a flash birthday piece of bread does it? Were you at this?”
JI: “It was at the potluck.”
PS: “Yes.”
ID: “Oh this was up at the potluck that night!
[Picture 4]
“Oh look at this, look, she’s got a very serious look on her face, Val Garrett.”
PS: “Were they singing or were they asking questions?”
JI: “It was, um, the vote, should we have a Christmas do or not.”
ID: “I see you there, but I don’t see me there. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Now I see myself. Well, I didn’t even know you took it! Well, for goodness sake! All the hands are going up round this corner anyway, they must have wanted it. There’s Glennis, Val, I don’t know who that one is. They all seem to want it.”
PS: “I think it’ll be fine if they have it perhaps two weeks before Christmas, not in Christmas week. There’s too much happening that week. All the different organizations are having parties.”
ID: “Yes, people are too busy at that time of the year.
[Picture 1]
“This is just coming round to the old building. There you are, there you are now, you can put down at the very bottom of the street there is what remains of the old hotel built by Henry Ferris Norman in 1863. That’s all that’s left of the old building. That building, by the way, is made with handmade nails – they’re square. They are square nails. You go down and you have a look at the old building you’ll see that the nails are square and they’re handmade.
“Underneath that iron it’s all covered with shingles which is wood and they had to cover it over. I suppose they were starting to disintegrate so they covered them over and they’ve put iron on the top of it now so I don’t know how much longer it’ll last but it’ll last there.”
PS: “Probably get blown away one of these days.”
Interview 3: Rae Benfell, June 27, 1999
JI: “Well, do you want to have a look at these photos?”
RB: “Yeah, if you’ve got ‘em I’ll see what the story is.”
[Picture 2]
“That’s round there, that’s their house.”
JI: “That’s whose house?”
RB: “Our friends.”
JI: “That’s the one they’ve rented then.”
RB: “Yeah, that’s the one they rented. They’ve just taken off for home today. They just come up for the weekend They come up Thursday sometimes. That’s Ralph Templeton’s just over here, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s their place.
[Picture 4]
“A bit of the clan. Well, what was that about. Who wants a party or something?”
JI: “Yes, who wants a Christmas party.”
RB: “Really serious.”
JI: “Yes.”
[Picture 7]
RB: “Here you go. Now that’s that fancy digital tape thing is it. I’ve never heard of them before, you know.”
JI: “Yeah, they’re pretty wild.”
RB: “Digital cameras or something. I’ve never heard of that before. It was a hell of a shock to see something like that.”
JI: “And there you are too having a look.”
[Picture 6]
RB: “There’s the old headstone. Earlier on, the ones that were involved with that, they just camped right, virtually their caravan backs onto that.
[Picture 10]
“Now what have we got? What’s that?”
JI: “It’s Peter Cross.”
RB: “I don’t think I know him.”
JI: “And then in the back, you know him.”
RB: “Yeah, I know him. I can’t think of his name now but I know him.”
JI: “Harry Dickey.”
RB: “Harry, yeah.”
JI: “That’s his neighbor across the road.”
[Picture 9]
RB: “There’s the old fella.”
JI: “Which old fella is that? That’s their uncle isn’t it? Alison and Bruce’s.”
RB: “Yeah, no, father. Father, yeah. He’s going to be living there.”
JI: “What’s his name again?”
RB: “Logan was it? I’ve never met them before. I knew Alison and Bruce, like, but I’d never met them. They’re good people. They’ll be good.
[Picture 2]
“Oh yeah, I know looking across from that spare section down towards the Cardrona outlet. It’s from the spare section just down there towards the Cardrona?”
JI: “Yep.”
RB: “Fellow right there, Ray Benny, he’s right next door to our friends and he’s from the west coast. He comes over from Haast. It’s their holiday place. And he’s got another section just down Kingston Street. He’s talking about trying to sell up in Haast and move to here and build there. He’s having trouble selling it. You don’t sell houses very easily there.
[Picture 3]
“Is that the new whatsit, is it? I haven’t actually been down to see that yet. I’ve been past it, but I haven’t actually stopped and had a look at that yet.
[Picture 8]
“What the hell have we got here? That’s the counter, that’s the road counter. Is that round in Alison Avenue? Yeah, that’s Brian’s trailer. That’s the trailer we borrowed this morning, that’s Brian’s trailer. It’s right outside their place. That’s useless anyway. Well, they don’t take any notice of it. See, we’re trying, they’re trying to get that road sealed and Queenstown Lakes District County mob, they’re the one to do it, and they’re bringing up every excuse they can. So they put a counter there just before Easter. And of course before Easter there’s no one around and the very few, well, we did our best, we drove over it a half-dozen times each, you know, and that, but then, immediately before Easter, before all the cribbers come up, they took it away. So it was, it was duly noted, of course, I mean, that’s silly, wasn’t it there, and so they put it back again now but, soon school holidays they might that it away again, when it starts to bet busy again. Or maybe they won’t.
[Picture 11]
“That’s Templeton’s garage.
[Picture 1]
“You’ll know the history of that old pub down there down the end of Kingston Street there, isn’t it? Not that I could tell you that much about it, but it just showed up in one of the photos here. There’s a lot of people around that know more than I know about it. Apparently it was a pub at one time.
“She must have been a great old place. It’s a pity that – there’s an old fella that lived in that street. I can’t think of his name now. He’s an old guy and he just died about, oh, it’d be a year, I suppose. And he’d lived here since God knows when and he could actually remember the punts working across the rivers and he was an interesting old fella. It would have been a good year, probably, since he died. We met him one night we had a Christmas do down at the hall, and I was talking to him for a long time. He was a good old fella.”
[Picture 4]
“It’s proof there that someone wants a party.
[Picture 5]
“Is that the old and the young? Moira and the wee fella, Henry.
[Picture 1]
“That building, that there, that was on a calendar, you know with 12 photographs of old buildings. It was a calendar that was sent all over New Zealand and there must have been hundreds or thousands of them printed. And they had the caption wrong. They had it as being in Blenheim. The caption at the bottom explained all about it, and said in Blenheim and I was shown the photo with a cover over the caption and I said ‘Oh there’s our old pub’ and they said ‘Nope, that’s in Blenheim.’ ‘Look,’ I said, ‘that’s not in Blenheim, that’s down the road here.’ And I was almost fooled into believing the caption and I thought, ‘No, it’s not.’ I can see it, you know. You’ve got some snow on the mountains in the background too.
[Picture 9]
“His name is Logan but I can’t think of her name.
[Picture 10]
“What does this fellow actually think he’s doing?
JI: “He got one of these pre-fab sheds and he assembled it. They’re from Oamaru I think, and he assembled it there and tied it on the trailer because he figured it’d be easier to have the guy he bought it from assemble it. But the wind took it over the Lindis Pass and warped the side and bent some things and broke some things so he had to fix the rivets again. So he was just drilling the hole for rivets.”
[Picture 6]
RB: “Water bottles. Could even get a close up of the wording on that.”
JI: “I have got a close up of it.”
RB: “Oh you have, have you? Yeah, old Yve would be pretty interested in that.
[Picture 3]
“I must go down and look at that. Is there anything of interest on it?
JI: “Yeah, it just talks a little bit about the history of the place and has three pictures or four pictures of the early days around the place. I guess Moira said that that’s basically where the punt ran from.”
RB: “There was two punts.”
JI: “That’s where the first punt went, and then the other punt was further up by the bridge.”
RB: “I was told there was two. I suppose there was.
[Picture 2]
“What’d you take that one for, exactly? Any reason?
JI: “I sort of liked how it looked, the houses, with the environment as well. Coming down over the hill down into Albert Town that’s sort of all you can see is these little roofs and trees and the bluffs and stuff It’s only when you get closer that you can see...”
RB: “There’s some good, in the summertime, we go down that area and swim in the swimming holes in the Cardrona. There are some quite nice picnic spots. Quite often we’ll shoot down there with the kids and stuff.”
...[meandering conversation]...
RB: “I think it’s quite fascinating the fact that you’ve picked Albert Town.”
JI: “Why’s that?”
RB: “Well, of all the places you could have picked, why pick Albert Town? Just because it was here? There is something in it for people, I suppose, because we picked it against a lot of other places we might have gone as well. We could have gone probably anywhere, I suppose. We were camped here in the caravan, but why Albert Town I don’t know. Just kind of liked it I suppose. We could have gone just as easily to Luggate or Hawea or Wanaka itself, anywhere.”
Interview 4: Maxene Cranston, June 29, 1999
JI: “Well, here are the photos.”
MC: “These are photos you took yourself?”
JI: “These are photos I took myself. I didn’t print them myself, but I went to the Photographer’s Studio.”
[Picture 11]
MC: “Oh, Templetons! I go there all the time. I just started going there for the petrol and, but always car servicing and stuff like that, it’s great. Yeah, the most interesting workshop. You go in there, they’ve got all that junk everywhere it’s just fascinating, yeah. All right. Yeah, we go there. Trustworthy person. Well, I think it’s nice because it’s like a nice family small town business.
[Picture 8]
“My God what’s that?”
JI: “It’s the road counter.”
MC: “Oh, is it?”
JI: “Yeah, it’s the road counter over on Dale Street.”
MC: “Dale Street. I don’t even know where Dale Street is They have a road thing there?”
JI: “Yes, they’re looking at sealing it.”
MC: “Oh, okay. So what does the road counter do?”
JI: “It just counts the cars going over it.”
MC: “It just counts. In the summer it gets really dusty. The house gets very dusty. But it does, um, a lot of people go that way and sometimes I think people avoid it because of the potholes and that and you have to ring the council and tell them to come and grade the road. You have to do that a lot. And then they oil it, which is good for the dust but people get really pissed off with the oiling ‘cause it’s very smelly and it seeps into your lawn and it burns all your grass off and stuff like that, and it gets all over you.”
JI: “Does it get all over your car, too?”
MC: “It can do, or it gets in your tires and gets in your shoes and then you start trampling it through the gardens and it’s waste oil so.”
[Picture 2]
MC: “Ah, now, if you saw those in autumn. Did you see those poplars in autumn? You missed something very special. That’s the lagoon, yeah. We went ice skating there once, two – two winters ago? That last winter that, or the one before that, it was, we had such hard hard frosts that the lagoon, the whole lake, actually froze and a family down the road had heaps of ice skates and we went ice skating and you just sort of ice skate all around the trees and everything like that. It was just fantastic. Yeah, it’d be nice, but it hasn’t iced over since then. And the autumn is just fantastic there, just those trees, it’s just beautiful.”
JI: “Poplars in autumn are really great.”
MC: “Yeah, if you get a good autumn. We’ve had a few autumns that they’ve rotted because it was too much rain. But the autumn just gone, it was an excellent autumn. So that reminds me of ice skating and autumn.”
[Picture 3]
MC: “Albert Town. I don’t go down that part of the river much around that side. I should do it more. This is past Templetons, yeah, yeah. That sort of reminds me of the walk further around. Have you been through there? And once again you go down through the, the, the”
JI: “Dean’s Bank? Is it the Outlet Track?”
MC: “No, the other way.”
JI: “Oh to the Cardrona.”
MC: “Cardrona, yeah, and all down there and once again that’s sort of a neat little hideaway. That’s sort of what that reminds me of, the few walks, but the ones that you always say ,‘We should do this more often’ but we don’t because we’ve got what we’ve got right in front, out where we live we walk out there, but once again that is just in autumn walking down and in the summer when everything is just amazingly green down in that valley, yes. Picnics and things like that. You go down and get like little private places and, um, we’ve actually been down there and felled trees, with DoC approval because they wanted them thinned out a bit. So every so often they let people go down in there with a chainsaw.”
JI: “For firewood?”
MC: “Yeah, and stuff like that.”
[Picture 7]
JI: “Some of your fellow Albert Town denizens.”
MC: “Yeah, who I don’t know.”
JI: “That’s Rae Benfell, he lives right on the corner next to the cardphone.”
MC: “Okay.”
JI: “And these are Bruce and Alison Hebbard.”
MC: “Okay. I recognize Alison but I don’t know their names and stuff like that. He’s got a Te Anau fishing hat on.
“Yeah, I never usually sort of get involved with the um, like they have community meetings and little market days and stuff like that there, but sort of I never actually. I think Terry used to get involved with the community sort of things but we don’t now. If they decided to do some major changes and stuff like that – Terry’s a lot more active, actually, in political type things if anything comes up, but Albert Town is changing so, it’s, um – and we’re planning on moving because it’s getting busier. Yeah, it’s becoming a desired place to live, and I want to live in a lot more space like what we had, because all the baches are being sold and younger couples are moving in and people who – elderly people are sort of, it’s, there was, like, I think a whole era of elderly people in at one time and they’re actually dying off and of course young people are buying their houses once again, you know, and living in them, not just – it’s not a holiday place anymore, that’s, um, yeah, a lot of people living there. So now that we have neighbors on every side it’s just a little bit noisier and that nice big reserve across the road from us is, has been sold, which we thought it never would, 15 acres, and of course we built upstairs to get a better view of that and the river and, um, yeah, so, probably in a couple of years that’s going to be, I think that’s going to be eight sections but still, no, we don’t want people to look out at that. And then when they open the back and seal it all, it’s just going to be traffic, buzz buzz, and no, that’s not what we, um, it’s not very enhancing.”
JI: “So you’re looking to stay in the Wanaka area, though?”
MC: “Definitely. Not in town here. It’ll probably be somewhere between Albert Town and Hawea or close to Albert Town if we can find something there, yeah. So but it’s been quite good what we’ve been doing because we’ve been gardening on a small scale and glass house and all that sort of thing and now it’s just like okay we want a bigger section so we can do it bigger and stuff like that. Yeah, so I feel a little bit detached from Albert Town in some ways that it is getting busier, yeah.”
JI: “And the pub will go right in there.”
MC: “I know! I know, and I don’t drink so it’s no– Just, it’s going to be really strange having that there, but that’s taken a long time in coming, too. But it’ll happen, and it’ll happen all very quickly and all at the same time, yeah, so hopefully we won’t be there (laughs). But it has been great, just being, I mean I’ve only been out there four years, and Terry’s been there ten, and it’s just been, yeah, it’s a beautiful place, but yes, a lot noisier, yeah, too noisy, yeah.”
[Picture 6]
“Oh my God that’s um– actually where is that, is that down by the Cardrona area?”
JI: “No, it’s actually in the cemetery.”
MC: “Where’s the cemetery?”
JI: “It’s in the reserve across the Clutha from the rest of Albert Town. If you go over the bridge–”
MC: “Over the bridge.”
JI: “And then there’s reserves on both sides.”
MC: “Yeah.”
JI: “And you go to the left.”
MC: “Oh, that’s the camping area.”
JI: “It’s a camping area but there’s a little–”
MC: “That’s, oh, okay, and that would be the evidence of the camping, all the bottles.”
JI: “It’s interesting because it’s a little monument to five people who used to camp there but have died .”
MC: “Oh, okay.”
JI: “So this is actually the efforts of the people who planted the tree to water it. But they didn’t clean up the bottles.”
MC: “Oh okay, so they left lots of bottles for people to water and–”
JI: “And these ones are empty. These ones here are actually full. The sign says, ‘Please water me when you come by.’”
MC: “It’s quite nice over there. On my birthday I went over there, in March. Down the bank here somewhere. I wanted Terry to– We have, on our birthdays like the whole day is dedicated to the other person, whatever they want to do and we give gifts all day and the whole day is like all lovely breakfasts and morning teas and lunches and whatever you feel like doing with lots of other surprises and treats and things so we create the whole day and I asked Terry to, first thing before we came into town for morning tea to meet lots of people, to pick a really nice place and do like a really nice meditation, you know talk through a meditation, and he took me here, down the bank under a tree and that and we did a really nice meditation about celebrating the being born and the day of birth and it was really nice.”
...[long discussion about birthdays and birthday celebrations]...
[Picture 10]
MC: “Is that Mike O’Connor?”
JI: “No, that’s Peter Cross and that’s Harry Dickey.”
MC: “Whose house are they building?”
JI: “It’s actually a shed Peter brought up from Oamaru, but the wind over the Lindis didn’t cooperate.”
MC: “Oh no! Oh wow, okay.
[Picture 9]
“I’ve seen him around, no, no that’s somebody, that’s just a visitor, a passerby, isn’t it?”
JI: “At the moment, yes, but he’s building there soon.”
MC: “Whereabouts?”
JI: “That’s Bruce and Alison Hebbard’s father and they’re building a house on the empty section right next to the cardphone.”
MC: “Oh right. I don’t know how they’re going to live up there with the cars! What about that place there in front of the cardphone with the two dogs and all the cats, toms! The big dog’s pretty good, but it encourages– the little dog encourages the big dog. I’ve seen a few times cyclists, attacking, just across the road biting at their ankles and I just sort of think of my God those little dogs and that little dog’s going to– a car might go over it and she’s got heaps of cats. Have you see n how the cat sits with the dog sometimes?
JI: “Yep, but whenever I show up, the little dog comes over to greet me and the cat just runs away.”
MC: “No, I couldn’t live up on that corner.”
...[traffic discussion]...
MC: “The four wheel drives can handle it, but you’re walking along the road and you get hit by stones, you get stones thrown over you. You can tell Albert Town’s getting really busy for us.”
...[discussion of river embankment near where Maxene lives]...
JI: “This is– not the last photograph. How many more? Three more.”
MC: (yawn) “That one reminds me of going down to Ida’s place, because Ida’s place is down there somewhere, isn’t it? And the hills, the other day these hills, when you’re at the top of the main road when you’re coming down to the gully into Albert Town and stuff like that, at the turnoff I look out at those hills and wow, I probably finished work at like 5:30 and just at that time I looked out and those hills they just looked so massive with the snow on it and with the snow on it they look huge, and I was sort of driving down there thinking just like ‘They look so unreal and just sort of alpine majestic,’ like I needed a camera but you would have needed one that took a view just that big because that was the whole picture and that and it just, yeah. And it sort of made me think, that would be the nice aspect to have your lounge looking at those mountains.
“After all the six years in which I’ve been in Wanaka it’s still, it’s like Terry and I go down and sit there on the lake and we just sit there and look, and think, ‘We live here!’”
[Picture 5]
“Ah, theater lady. I don’t know her name.”
JI: “That’s Moira Fleming.”
MC: “She’s involved with the theater group and stuff like that?”
JI: “She might be.”
MC: “You didn’t talk to her?”
JI: “Yeah, I did but not about that. Actually she’s also active in the community association. She used to be the principal in the local school.”
MC: “She sort of looks like somebody who’s involved with the theater group and one day there was a kids, I was doing the lighting for it and it was a really good kids story. And they had adults in to help tell the story and they had this one guy but he didn’t turn up, and the lady– actually it isn’t the same lady because I remember the name now...
...[theater discussion]...
MC: “She’s attentively focused and eating her toast.”
[Picture 4]
JI: “This is the last photograph.”
MC: “Okay, oh, there’s Ida! Was this in the lodge?”
JI: “Yes.”
MC: “Was it a community meeting?”
JI: “Yeah, it was the potluck.”
MC: “Oh, okay I looked at that and then didn’t go. Are they voting or something?”
JI: “They’re deciding on having a Christmas party.”
MC: “Oh, well, they’re all saying yes yes yes, except these ones over here, but they’re probably, Ida would have been chatting and probably wouldn’t have heard. (laughs) She’s a neat lady.”
JI: “She is, she’s great, and her sister Dot.”
MC: “I have met Dot. Whenever I think of Dot I remember a poem – or a song – somebody wrote for Dot. Did Ida tell you that one? She had to skipper the boat, yeah. ‘Cause Ida gave me a booklet one time of just some history and some stories and that and I skimmed through it, you know, the families, and then there was this song ‘Dot’ and then you look at frail Dot sort of, huh, you know. I can imagine Ida, you know, being at her vitality now, doing something like that, but Dot’s just so quiet and fragile-looking.”
JI: “She still walks all over the place but she’s pretty much blind, you know.”
MC: “Oh is she? Well I guess she’d have it all memorized by now.”
Interview 5: Harry Dickey, July 6, 1999
JI: “Here are the pictures.”
[Picture 8]
HD: “What’s that?”
JI: “It’s the road counter.”
HD: “Oh, is it?”
JI: “Over on Dale Street.”
HD: “Over there. A bit up in arms. The Albert Town ratepayers want that road sealed don’t they, because it’s quite a main road. The bus goes round there, the school bus.
[Picture 2]
“Where’s that one taken? Oh okay, oh that’s in front of Ralph’s.”
JI: “Just in front of your place.”
HD: “Oh yeah, just about in front of my place.”
[Picture 3]
HD: “Is that where the punt used to be, in front of Dot’s?”
JI: “Yep.”
HD: “Have you been into the pub up here, the picture of the punt on the walls?”
JI: “Just up here, Barrows?”
HD: “No, no the other pub, Bullock Bar.”
JI: “Oh yeah.”
HD: “There are some pictures of the punt there.”
[Picture 7]
JI: “That’s Bruce and Alison Hebbard.”
HD: “Yep, playing with the camera.
“Oh, is this the one you were looking at?”
JI: “Yeah, this is the mystery.”
HD: “This is the mystery, over in the corner.”
JI: “But the mystery is solved, thanks actually to Rae and to Ngaire, his wife.”
HD: “Oh, that’s right.”
JI: “They know the folks who put it there, so they put me in touch with them.”
HD: “They forgot to take the rubbish away. ‘Please water the tree’ but no one takes the rubbish away.
[Picture 10]
“Oh, that’s us fixing the shed. (laughs) Neighbor assistance, you see. They actually only come up on holiday. They’re building a new place in Wanaka, but that’s his parents’ place where he was and so he just comes over.”
[Picture 9]
“Who’s that old chap?”
JI: “That’s Bruce and Alison’s father, Logan Hebbard.”
HD: “Oh okay. He’s the one they’re building the house for.”
JI: “Yep.”
[Picture 1],
HD: “Right looking down that’s, now that down beside Dot, that’s the old pub isn’t it, the old wooden thing?”
JI: “Yep.”
HD: “When was that built?”
JI: “1863.”
HD: “1863. And when did it cease operating?”
JI: “Sometime in the 10s or 20s. I’m not sure because it ceased operation as a pub but it was also a school and a post office.”
HD: “Oh, okay.”
JI: “It was a post office up until about in the 40s I think.”
HD: “Oh, right. I’ve quite often been past there with Henry and I say ‘That’s the old pub.’ He wants to go have a look inside one day so we asked Dot and she said ‘Yeah, come inside.’”
[Picture 5]
“Oh there he is, talking to Moira.” (laughs) Who done the photos for you?”
JI: “The Photographer’s Studio.”
HD: “That was at that ratepayers association party.”
HD (to his mother in the next room): “Do you remember the post office down next to Dot’s?”
Harry’s mother: “No, it was before my time. I’d talk to Dot.”
JI: “I spoke with Ida and with Dot.”
Mother: “A lot of history is going to be lost when they go. She’s 92.”
HD: “Better ring her up. She hasn’t been up this week. She comes up here most weeks, doesn’t she?
[Picture 10]
“Oh you even got a bit of my car in there. That’s a story.”
“What was the outcome of the pub, have you heard?”
...[pub update discussion]...
HD: “I think it’ll be a good thing for the town, actually, if they do it. Because it’s going to be more than just a pub. It’s going to be a store and wasn’t there going to be a campervan waste disposal point they could hook up?”
JI: “There’s going to be a shop and a pub and a takeaway and a restaurant.”
[Picture 8]
HD: “I remember I used to live up Dale Street a bit further up from where that car counter was, just when you go up to the left and then right onto Lagoon Avenue. Frye Crescent wasn’t there, of course. There was nothing there. We used to walk across that to catch the bus on the corner of Alison Avenue, basically on the corner of Alison Avenue and the main road. Didn’t go to school there for long, just started. When did we shift into here, mother?”
Mother: “Must have been 29 years ago.”
HD: “Twenty-nine. Cause when we lived in Dale Street there was nothing behind Dale Street, was there, it was just paddock.”
Mother: “No.”
HD: “We just walked across down to the corner to get the bus. Nothing anywhere else either. Lagoon Avenue just went up to, went up to what’s called Wilkin Garden now isn’t it, the Hunts used to live in there.”
...[discussion of road layout in 1970]...
...[mother starts to have a look at the pictures]...
[Picture 3]
Mother: “It’s a bit smarter than it used to be.”
HD: “Where the punt was, in front of Dot’s.”
Mother: “It’s not long since they’ve put that up.”
HD: “No, but I haven’t been down to read it yet.” (laughs)
[Picture 6]
Mother: “That’s what you find where everybody’s been. Lot of fish caught there along that river in the corner.”
[Picture 10]
“What’s going on in here?”
HD: “ I supplied the rivets and stuff. He was trying to put it back together and I supplied the rivets.”
[Picture 4]
JI: “Henry’s in that one too, and so are you Harry.”
HD: “Oh, that voting bit?”
JI: “Yeah.”
Mother: “He’s voting both hands.”
JI: “Yes.”
[Picture 9]
HD: “Mrs. Hebbard, she’s Ralph’s sister. What’s her first name?”
JI: “I can’t remember. Does it start with an S?”
Mother: “Sheila. No, that’s Pringle.”
HD: “That’s the other one, that’s her husband.”
Mother: “Sheila’s the other sister.”
HD: “Yeah, Sheila Pringle.”
Appendix 3: Materials Submitted and Published
Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, New Zealand
Inspiration Input, Christchurch, New Zealand
North and South, Auckland, New Zealand
Peace and Tranquility in the Hutt Valley
by Jeff Inglis
A few minutes' drive north of Wellington's busy government and business life is a sanctuary, a place for retreat and reflection for all beings, a place so peaceful even the possums are protected.
The Stokes Valley begins at a motorway and ends atop a ridge covered in native bush. The only sign to the world that anything unusual is up there is a white and golden spire rising not quite 10 meters out of the trees. Prayer flags stretch from it off into the bush, to a hidden anchor point somewhere away from the possums' sharp teeth.
Driving up the main Stokes Valley road, past the row of shops, past the last bus stop, and just before the road ends in a cul-de-sac, is a yellow AA road sign which reads “Buddhist Monastery.” It points up Rakau Grove, a short road up a hill which dead-ends at a giant wooden gate. This is Bodhinyanarama, The Garden of Enlightened Knowing.
I walked through the massive wooden gate and up the graveled hill, where I found two men building a set of dirt-and-log stairs up a bush-covered hill. One of the men had a shaved head, and was wearing golden-colored robes and sandals. The other had on jeans, a T-shirt, and gumboots. The monk – I later learned his name was Sucinno – suggested I walk further up the hill to see the stupa, or reliquary, which will be completed in the spring. Donors have given relics and treasures to be enshrined in the stupa to help them and others along the path to Enlightenment.
Donations to Bodhinyanarama are generous, and are by no means limited to special projects like the stupa. The monks are not allowed to cook food or to take anything which is not freely given; in exchange for the laity’s support in worldly things (clothing, shelter, and food), the monks offer guidance along the path of the Buddha. It is part of the Buddha’s design for an ideal society, with interdependence between laity and monks and nuns.
Without this web of support, which comes from many Asians in and around Wellington as well as a growing number of New Zealanders, the monks would literally starve to death, if they didn't die of exposure first. Some segments of the Asian community are large enough that they have a day each week where just that segment offers food to the monks. Others come in small groups or just with family members to offer food once every so often, or on special occasions such as weddings or funerals.
The monastery hosts retreats and classes on meditation, Buddhism, and other spiritual activities. All are welcome at these events, though often spaces are limited so advance reservations are needed. This is just one sign of the scale of interest in Buddhism in New Zealand.
Once a month, a monk travels to Auckland to meet with people at the Buddhist center there. There is a retreat center in the Coromandel peninsula, and there are other meditation centers in various places in New Zealand, from Wellington to Dunedin to Queenstown.
These places give the monks an opportunity to teach New Zealanders about Buddhism. In Thailand, where Sucinno had been a monk for 14 years, the society was very accepting and understanding of Buddhism and what it means to be a monk. Here, he said, his work is a lot more about explaining Buddhism and monkhood to New Zealanders, than it is pursuing the Buddha’s path. But he will remain a monk for the forseeable future, he says; his work as a monk is not finished.
Some of the people at the events have been raised as Buddhists; others have learned about Buddhism through travels, friends, or in other ways. Still others know little or nothing about Buddhism, but are interested in learning more. The library and the monks are excellent resources for New Zealanders’ spiritual explorations.
© 1999 Jeff Inglis
Jeff Inglis is a U.S.-based freelance journalist exploring small communities in New Zealand for his master’s degree in journalism.
Those interested in visiting or staying at Bodhinyanarama should contact the Guest Monk at: Bodhinyanarama, 17 Rakau Grove, Stokes Valley, Wellington; Tel 04-563-7193; Fax 04-563-5125; Email
Captions:
1. The center of Bodhinyanarama, the Garden of Enlightened Knowledge. You can see the bell tower, the sala (chanting and mediation building), and the Buddha image. The hills at the rear are covered in native bush, threaded with walking trails for those in search of natural peace.
2. Prayer flags flutter in breezes, adding color to a natural, subdued-color landscape.
3. The bell rings to announce morning and evening chanting and meditation. It does not have a clapper but is rung by striking it with a wooden mallet from the outside. Its deep resonance seems to come from another world.
Also, in response to Email questions for further information:
To: "Larson, Virginia"
From: Jeff Inglis
Subject: Re: monks
Hello!
At 13:58 +1000 7/19/99, Larson, Virginia wrote:
Just a few questions I'm hoping you can provide answers to:
How many Buddhists are there in NZ?
In the 1996 Census, there were 28,131 people who identified themselves as Buddhist. In 1991 there were 12,765 such people. In 1996 Buddhists were 0.82 percent of the population, as compared with 0.39 percent in 1991.
Are there any figures showing growth in those describing themselves as
Buddhists?
Between 1991 and 1996 (the latest census data the NZ government has), the number of Buddhists was up by 15,366, the largest gain of any religious identification in NZ except "Christians" and those with no religion.
We probably need a brief description of Buddhism - eg when it was founded,
based on principles of..., where practised?
Buddhism was taught by the Buddha, Siddhartha Gotama, a real historical person, founded just over 2000 years ago in northern India. The Buddha teaches Four Noble Truths: the existence of suffering, the causes of suffering, the relief of suffering, and freedom from suffering. The main principles are: do no harm to anyone, take nothing that is not given freely, right thought, right act, right word. The Buddha encourages people to see things for what they truly are, rather than through lenses of attachment, involvement, or other confusing viewpoints. The ultimate stage is Enlightenment, Nibbana (in Pali, the language the Buddha spoke), or Nirvana (the Sanskrit word), which is basically defined as seeing all things for what they truly are.
How many monks live at Bodhinyanarama?
At the moment, 4 and one postulant (the stage before becoming a novice, or newly-ordained monk). This changes somewhat, but it usually fluctuates between 3 and 6 unless there is a major event (such as a dedication of a new building) when many more monks and others would arrive, but would only be visitors. As at all Buddhist monasteries, nuns are welcome to visit or to live there as well. There are no nuns there now, and to my knowledge, nuns have only visited Bodhinyanarama.
Roughly, what's the cost of attending a retreat? Or do you pay "in kind"?
It's all by donation, though for longer stays and retreats they will ask you to donate to help cover the cost of lodging and food, as well as some of the expenses of the teacher. It ends up being very inexpensive, generally: the retreats I saw advertised were anywhere between 50 and 150 dollars, for 3-14 day retreats.
Does someone like Sucinno come to NZ for a short period and return to
Thailand - or do the "NZ" monks live here permanently?
Some do each. In Sucinno's case, he is in NZ only from February to November of this year. In other cases, like the abbot, Sugato, he is in NZ indefinitely, though he may go on trips back to Thailand to meet with other monks or do other things.
I'm assuming your description of Sucinno and the other man suggests that
followers not only provide food and money?, but occasional manpower at the
centre?
Yes. Those who stay there do a chore in the morning (like cleaning windows) before breakfast, and then do work (like building the stairs, or sorting food or running errands) in the morning between breakfast and the main meal.
Let me know if you need more information or clarification!
Jeff
Addison Independent, Middlebury, Vermont, USA
Journal E,
Albert Town
Filenames with asterisks next to them are images which were shown in the interviews during which the audio was recorded - it might be interesting to pair up the audio with the pictures. After the caption are listed the audio filenames which relate to that image. Maps are included to give you a sense of where Albert Town is.
Other historical comments:
MaxeneDot.MOV
RaeAlecSherwin.MOV (Alec was Dot’s husband)
Moira-LongBeforeWanaka.MOV
A Walk with Dot
by Jeff Inglis
Hard by where the Albert Town bridge carries State Highway 6 across the mighty Clutha River, in 1863, Henry Ferris Norman set up the first licensed ferry across the Clutha. It immediately became a stopping point for travelers and locals alike. When there was nothing but remote farms and stations, and then gold mining settlements, Albert Town was the key to the region. The early settlers were well-known for their hospitality and willingness to help solve any problem they could.
Two of Henry Norman’s granddaughters still live in Albert Town; one has stayed here for all her 92 years, while the other left for 30 years and has come home again. Dot, the 92-year-old, can’t see to read and can only hear you if you raise your voice to talk to her. But every day she walks out her back gate, shutting it carefully behind her – you can almost hear her mother, long dead, calling after her, “Step lively, Dot!” Her sister’s house is one of her many destinations as she walks through the town which has grown up here during her lifetime.
When Dot was born, her brother was 7. He will shortly see his third century, and the family will gather at his home in Sydney, Australia to celebrate. He is too old to come home now, too old to make the long plane flight and long drive afterward.
So Dot’s blind eyes and deaf ears must serve them both. Their youngest sister, Ida, is 87 and as vivacious as she ever was. But it was Dot who was in the song sung around this area for many years, Dot Norman who took the wheel of a boat in a storm and piloted it safely across a windswept and tossing lake, and Dot Sherwin who buried her husband, Alec, not so long ago now.
And yet she still hangs her washing to dry on the same line in the back yard, where her mother hung hers, and where her grandmother hung hers. It could well be the same posts holding up the line, but the new white rope is definitely newer than the hand-woven flax that first hung next to the hedge.
48.jpg - Laundry hangs on the line behind Dot’s house and the old building.
Today Dot leaves her yard and walks...
08.jpg - The old building, formerly a pub, school, and post office. Dot’s house is next door.
58.jpg - The doorstep to the old school building, now used by students at the Wanaka Primary School.
61.jpg - The old school building, which has moved nearly 50 kilometers total since it was built in Albert Town.
Just next door to Dot’s house is all that remains of the building her grandparents built in 1863. It was called the Albert Hotel, after Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert. The name plaque on Dot’s house says “Albert House.” The building was moved from across the river in the mid-1860s to its present site.
This building has been a pub, a school, and a post office – the pub and the school at the same time. When the people here built a separate school building, they built it to last. When the government decided to move the area’s school to Wanaka, 5 kilometers away, the building went too. Then it moved back out past Albert Town, to Hawea, when that town opened a school. Now it is back in Wanaka, part of the primary school there. One of Albert Town’s newest school-age children, Henry Dickey, goes to school with Glenn Templeton and lives in the house Glenn’s father Garry gew up in.
*07.jpg - The riverfront in Albert Town. Mt. Maude and the Grand View Range are across the Clutha River from the sign, which talks about the early history of Albert Town. The sign is located near the site of the ferry and punt crossing. IdaMtns.MOV/ IdaNoticeBoard.MOV/ RaeSign.MOV/ MoiraGrandeur.MOV/ MoiraRiverfront.MOV/
The riverbank, as are all riverbanks in New Zealand, is a public park. There are picnic tables and a sign talking about the history of Albert Town. There’s not much of a path here, but people walk along the bank alone, with other people, and with their dogs. Here, and many other places, Dot walks.
51.jpg - The lagoon and the mountains. MaxeneLagoon.MOV/
53.jpg - A wading bird waits for lunch on Dean’s Bank. MoiraSwimmingHole.MOV/
Up the road is Templeton & Son, the garage, still owned by a Templeton four generations on (with the fifth generation, school-age Glenn, tinkering with something in the back of the shop). Though long outnumbered by the garages in the area’s new hub, Wanaka, Garry Templeton still helps local farmers and does custom metalworking jobs for local contractors and for the skifields.
Garry lives next door and doesn’t much hold it against farmers and locals who wake him up at strange hours to do emergency repair work. It’s the visitors, he says, who really get him riled. “I’ve got no time for tourists,” Garry grins. “They always want it done now, and I’ve always got a pile of cars in already. It’s the locals are my bread and butter.”
50.jpg - Modern machine equipment stands outside Templeton’s, in front of the wheel-making round used when wheels were made of wood and metal.
*52.jpg - Templeton’s Garage, where there are always different cars parked inside and out. MoiraTempletons.MOV/MaxeneTempletons.MOV/
There are other people, people who don’t live here, but are just as attached to Albert Town and the Clutha River.
In the summer, the campground across the Clutha from Albert Town – deserted all winter – fills with holiday makers. Extended families gather from all over New Zealand to relax in each others’ company. Sometimes the groups get so big that they have to move to another part of the campground, better sized to accommodate the thriving mob.
One family has perfected the art of summer holidaying by the Clutha. They have a generator, a water pump, a water tank on a scaffold, a wood-fire water heater, and a shower tent. They even run a washing machine in the campground. The kids have a waterslide set right on the riverbank so they go sliding down into the cool, swift-moving waters.
This extended-family group and their friends have been holidaying in the Albert Town reserve for twenty years or more. Some of the group don’t come anymore; ashes of two of them are scattered in the reserve, and a tree and an inscribed rock in the corner of the old, disused historic graveyard speaks of the memory of those two and three others as well, who came to this place in the summer but are here no more.
The five names fit neatly on one stone. They are clearly connected in spirit to this place, and to the people who gather here to build their temporary village for the summer, but are only distantly related by blood and marriage:
William Simpson Cunningham is the father-in-law of Stewart Findlay Richardson, whose daughter married Aileen Eleanor Baker’s son. Stewart is also the paternal grandfather of Jeremy Alan Richardson, whose maternal grandfather is William Seddon King.
It is not the first memorial to these people in this place. The survivors have planted trees before, but they kept dying. They hope this new one lives, and have placed a sign next to the tree which asks passers-by to water the tree when they stop to look.
The townspeople may yet adopt this new tree (planted there at Christmas 1998) as part of their history, though none but two knew of its meaning and only a few more of its presence.
30.jpg - The stone placed by summer holidaymakers in the Albert Town reserve and campground, in memory of members of their extended family who have died during the years the family has been summering in Albert Town. RaeHeadstone.MOV/
*31.jpg - The monument area, including the small Blue Mountain conifer and water bottles for watering the new tree. RaeHeadstone.MOV/
It’s early, and Dot is out walking...
64.jpg - The morning fog sits heavy over Albert Town, at the confluence of the Clutha and Hawea rivers.
67.jpg - This building has seen many morning like this one. IdaOldBldg.MOV/
The cold morning fog lifts off Albert Town, climbing over Mount Iron and up to the sky. The town is lucky today: Sometimes the fog stays for days.
Like the fog, water in Albert Town is ever-present. Two powerful rivers flow together here, the Clutha and the Hawea, beginning the chain of confluences which power Central Otago’s electric appliances and drive the largest volume of any river in New Zealand.
It is on the banks of the Hawea River, just upstream of the confluence, that land is set aside for the area’s Maori people, the Ngai Tahu, to use as a campground for most of the year. This area, called a nohoanga site, is one of several sites in the area used by Maori for camping and gathering food on trips from the east coast to the greenstone-guarding glens of the west coast.
Soon, perhaps, there will be a new resupply site, not just for Ngai Tahu, but for all travelers and residents in the region. Alison and Bruce Hebbard, great-grandchildren of early residents of Albert Town, are planning to build a tavern just south of the bridge over the Clutha.
*41.jpg - Logan Hebbard watches his son, Bruce, clear the land where Logan and his wife will build their new home in Albert Town.
42.jpg - Logan Hebbard watches his son, Bruce, clear the land where Logan and his wife will build their new home in Albert Town.
43.jpg - Bruce Hebbard and his mother share a laugh on a sunny afternoon.
*33.jpg - From left, Alison and Bruce Hebbard and Rae Benfell try to figure out how to work Alison and Bruce’s new digital camera while clearing land where the Hebbards’ parents will build a home, on the lot next to the Benfells’ house. MaxeneATGrowth.MOV/ MaxenePub.MOV
But even as it restores significant waypoint status to Albert Town, the tavern has the potential to change Albert Town. When the tavern is built, it will provide a never-before-had social space in town where everyone can gather at any time. It will also have a shop (for that forgotten bottle of milk or extra loaf of bread) and a takeaway/restaurant. No longer will Albert Town’s residents have to drive all the way to Wanaka to remedy a moment’s inattention at the supermarket.
There are some arrangements still to be made, though. The Hebbards are negotiating with Transit New Zealand over the location of a sight line restriction on the property. Transit may have to buy the land under restriction, though their latest offering price is for less than one-fifth of what the land could sell for on the open market. Or Transit could ask the Queenstown Lakes District Council for a zoning change to prevent buildings and trees in that area of the section.
The traffic negotiations and the request for a smaller, cheaper building than the one they originally proposed have held up the final go-ahead. Worse, the delays mean more delays: There is a time limit on development and subdivision of the property. So the Hebbards have applied for an extension to that time limit, too, which means more paperwork and more waiting.
The Hebbards don’t know when it will all get finished. “We don’t like setting deadlines when we don’t know if we’ll be in a position to make it,” Bruce confesses, clearly frustrated at the bureaucratic process.
They have sympathy among the community. “The bureaucracy those people have put up with is absolutely disgusting,” lamented Dot’s sister Ida Darling.
Bruce’s sister and business partner, Alison, says it’s been a long haul. “We’ve been four years on this and just spending money the whole time.”
Bruce points out that, in addition to money, they have lost some of the original hope for the project: “When we first bought this land, Wanaka was booming.” Rather than being early birds in the local real estate market, Bruce and Alison must continue to wait to develop their property. But still they have high goals: “It’ll probably take Albert Town to another level,” Bruce said.
The residents are impatient too; this is a departure from the usual negative reaction of small towns to change. Ralph’s wife, Ethel Templeton, said, “It would be very good for the area to have something like that.”
This favorable reaction from newcomers and old-timers alike is not just because the people building the tavern are locals; it is because Albert Town’s people see it as a growing, changing area which still has lots of opportunity for future projects. They refuse to see Albert Town as a dying place past its use-by date; instead, they are fighting and hoping to keep it alive and thriving.
It is almost as if Dot is walking a beat, making sure her town is still there, still changing in the right ways, and as if she still hears the voices and sounds of her youth, when horses and wagons were the only traffic here and the only people who could expect to make it to the West Coast needed a wagonload of supplies and at least a week of good weather.
*39.jpg - The road counter on Dale Street, placed there by the district council to count the traffic on the road prior to paving it. IdaRoads.MOV/RaeRoadCounter.MOV/ MaxeneRoads.MOV/ MoiraRoadCounter.MOV
Year-round, though, Albert Town is a surprisingly mixed-age town, with residents from newborn to their nineties. This is not always the case with small towns, which sometimes lose young residents. But Albert Town manages to attract the twenty- and thirty-something set with cheaper housing than nearby Wanaka. There are an increasing number of lifestyle sections in Albert Town, attracting retirees and affluent families seeking a relaxed place to live. Others come in search of peace and quiet, a place away from the madness the world can sometimes become.
Among those gathered on a crisp, cold evening in Thyme Cottage on Gunn Road are some of the Upper Clutha region’s highest gurus of the “New Age” return to the inner self, to the earth, and to the soul. Greg is an organic gardener, Paul the wholefoods store owner, and Steve teaches courses on better eating; the others practice and take part in this way of life, working for a better world in so many dimensions at once.
We speak of creative impulses and cycles, sometimes talking over each other in the enthusiasm to communicate ideas just realized and never before verbalized. We talk about our lives, our experiences, our frustrations and fears, but at the same time we are all aware on another level as well: Some of the comments are about the nature of the conversation itself and about how wonderful it is to be in a room with so many energized people.
In the end, we emerge from the room into the wide, wide world of starlit darkness. We huddle into our cars as our headlights split the black night. We speed home, tired but awake.
*24.jpg - Members of the community decide whether to have a Christmas party, during the mid-winter potluck in June.
*25.jpg - Moira Fleming, right, answers questions posed by Henry Dickey, who is just about to turn 5.
The community association gathers twice a year, and the size of the gatherings is growing. Many newer residents are being drawn because their friends and neighbors are long-time town residents, so they feel comfortable in these groups. On weekends, there is the small-town neighborly help with various household and outdoor tasks. And there are informal gatherings, too: On the winter’s solstice, Rae and Ngaire Benfell host an outdoor barbecue after dark for some of their neighbors, as “something crazy once a year,” as Ngaire puts it.
Soon there will be a place purpose-built for get-togethers of all types; the living-room and back-garden gatherings will continue but will be broadened by contact with others in town, at the new tavern.
*44.jpg - Peter Cross (front, in multi-colored jersey) and Harry Dickey repair a broken shed Peter wants to put up in his yard.
The people in Albert Town share concerns about the future of the town and services and amenities there. Most of them love living there, and have chosen to live there for any number of reasons, preferring Albert Town to other places they could have lived and worked.
Garry Templeton, who grew up here and is raising his children here, thinks “there’s nowhere better to live.” Relative newcomer Moira Fleming, who has been here for ten years, agrees. “The people who live in Albert Town love living in Albert Town,” she enthused.
Amenities and services (most especially road sealing, sewage treatment, and speed limits) are issues of concern in Albert Town. As local government priorities change and as national governments change policies and regulations, Albert Town is caught in some of the resulting turmoil. But the community association is keeping Albert Town’s interests very much in the discussions the Queenstown Lakes District Council has about funding and resource allocation.
Part of the discussions are tainted by the past. Ten years after refusing to levy an additional rate on themselves to fund road sealing, Albert Town’s residents now clamor for sealing more than anything else. Traffic levels are not sufficient to get funding from the government or the council, so the frustration builds. The council, on the one hand, is working hard to avoid making unwise investments in infrastructure; the town residents, on the other, know they are next in line to have roads sealed and are impatient with their wait.
The separation between the people on each side of the river may subside with time, if the tavern gets built soon. Also set to fall is the separation between neighbors and between those on opposite sides of State Highway 6, which bisects the town. The fences on the “new,” western side of Albert Town are higher and thicker. There are also more of them than there are on the “older” side, where the lowered barriers cultivate a stronger sense of neighborhood. Part of this, too, is that the members of Albert Town’s older families (the ones who have been here the longest) live on the east side of the highway, if they’re still in town at all.
It’s not the only hope for Albert Town; Stan Kane, of the local historical society, noted Templeton’s importance: “The blacksmith has always been the keystone of Albert Town.” But soon, perhaps, there will be another rock around which the community can gather. Moira Fleming puts it directly: “The tavern is a wee hope sign for lots of things.”
*04.jpg - Looking down Kingston Street, towards the old building. MoiraSealingKingstonSt.MOV/
*06.jpg - Looking across an empty section (on Kingston Street) towards the poplars and the Cardrona River. IdaPhyllisonsection.MOV/ MoiraTerracing.MOV
Audio segment transcripts: (just the segments submitted to Journal E – fuller transcripts are found in Appendix 2)
MaxeneDot.MOV
“Whenever I think of Dot I remember a poem – or a song – somebody wrote for Dot. Did Ida tell you that one? She had to skipper the boat, yeah. ‘Cause Ida gave me a booklet one time of just some history and some stories and that and I skimmed through it, you know, the families, and then there was this song ‘Dot’ and then you look at frail Dot sort of, huh, you know. I can imagine Ida, you know, being at her vitality now, doing something like that, but Dot’s just so quiet and fragile-looking.” –Maxene Cranston
RaeAlecSherwin.MOV
“She must have been a great old place. It’s a pity that – there’s an old fella that lived in that street. I can’t think of his name now. He’s an old guy and he just died about, oh, it’d be a year, I suppose. And he’d lived here since God knows when and he could actually remember the punts working across the rivers and he was an interesting old fella. It would have been a good year, probably, since he died. We met him one night we had a Christmas do down at the hall, and I was talking to him for a long time. He was a good old fella.” –Rae Benfell
Moira-LongBeforeWanaka.MOV
“Long before there was a Wanaka, there was a Wanaka Station, right in Albert Town.” –Moira Fleming
IdaMts.MOV
“Hey! It’s the, it’s the, yes, that’s the Clutha River, Mount Maude in the background, Mount Maude there on the left-hand side and the other one is what they call Grand View over there, that one down there, that’s Grand View. That’s where the first pioneers came up over that mountain there and they looked down over this here and they said, ‘What a grand view,’ and that’s how it stuck and that’s the name of it, that’s the highest point over there is Grand View. And that was the very early pioneers way back in 1850.” –Ida Darling
IdaNoticeBoard.MOV
“And the notice board, here, of course, gives you a little bit of the history of the early part of the pioneers coming here through this district and it’s all about them written up on there, particularly about my grandfather and my family, they’re all on that board, which is very interesting to me.” –Ida Darling
RaeSign.MOV
“Is that the new whatsit, is it? I haven’t actually been down to see that yet. I’ve been past it, but I haven’t actually stopped and had a look at that yet.” –Rae Benfell
MoiraGrandeur.MOV
“Isn’t there a grandeur about the surroundings? I think it’s wonderful.” –Moira Fleming
MoiraRiverfront.MOV
“That’s quite a lovely photograph, really. The human invasion into that scene is as unobtrusive as we can get it because the picnic seats, we felt, or viewing seats, were essential. We had– we had nothing. It was a really derelict part of the riverbank and we wanted it developed and that has come about with funding through the authority. The plaque was erected by the Historic Places Trust and the Albert Town Community Association assisted them with a little bit of finance, putting the frame in and having it there. It was put together with the assistance of the Department of Conservation who have similar plaques on their walks so that it was very– a very viable thing for them to go to DoC and say ‘How do we do this?’ and ‘Who does it?’ and they went right through the same process to get that plaque there. It’s gone through the same process as the DoC signs so in that way – the framework isn’t quite the same as DoC’s – it’s gone through the same process and it, it will have a similar look to the DoC things which gives a little key to everything that’s around about, it was giving them information about the area. That was positioned close to where the punt used to come across the river, so it has a historical significance in its positioning. Not far from there, the punt operated and it carried cattle and vehicles of all kinds, horse-coaches, cars when cars arrived, people, lots of animals. At one time they did ford the river but it was way up past where the punt is, away round the corner where there’s a big – still a big shoal. If the river’s low, it’s possible to walk across there and it was right in front of what was called the Wanaka Station.” –Moira Fleming
MaxeneLagoon.MOV
“Ah, now, if you saw those in autumn. Did you see those poplars in autumn? You missed something very special. That’s the lagoon, yeah. We went ice skating there once, two – two winters ago? That last winter that, or the one before that, it was, we had such hard hard frosts that the lagoon, the whole lake, actually froze and a family down the road had heaps of ice skates and we went ice skating and you just sort of ice skate all around the trees and everything like that. It was just fantastic. Yeah, it’d be nice, but it hasn’t iced over since then. And the autumn is just fantastic there, just those trees, it’s just beautiful.” –Maxene Cranston
MoiraSwimmingHole.MOV
“If you– if you walk along the low terrace on this side of the river, right at the end of the terrace you can look across the river and see the bar and on this side is the traditional Albert Town swimming hole, because it’s an eddy that comes right round behind the bar, a very very safe swimming hole. Everybody swims there in the summer. Everybody!” –Moira Fleming
MoiraTempletons.MOV
“Oh well, um, Templeton and Son, the garage and engineering shop, has been there a very very long time. It’s had alterations done to it. Historic Places have an old photograph of the first little shed that was there that the grandfather of the boy who is running the business now, from Pembroke as it was. He actually started up business in Pembroke but he shifted to this riverside site and it’s of great value to the farming community in the area. They have their machinery fixed by Templeton and Son, and they’re also a petrol outlet for the residents of Albert Town, so it’s a very good facility for our town.” –Moira Fleming
MaxeneTempletons.MOV
“Oh, Templetons! I go there all the time. I just started going there for the petrol and, but always car servicing and stuff like that, it’s great. Yeah, the most interesting workshop. You go in there, they’ve got all that junk everywhere it’s just fascinating, yeah. All right. Yeah, we go there. Trustworthy person.” –Maxene Cranston
RaeHeadstone.MOV
“There’s the old headstone. Earlier on, the ones that were involved with that, they just camped right, virtually their caravan backs onto that.” –Rae Benfell
MaxeneATGrowth.MOV
“Yeah, I never usually sort of get involved with the um, like they have community meetings and little market days and stuff like that there, but sort of I never actually. I think Terry used to get involved with the community sort of things but we don’t now. If they decided to do some major changes and stuff like that – Terry’s a lot more active, actually, in political type things if anything comes up, but Albert Town is changing so, it’s, um – and we’re planning on moving because it’s getting busier. Yeah, it’s becoming a desired place to live, and I want to live in a lot more space like what we had, because all the baches are being sold and younger couples are moving in and people who – elderly people are sort of, it’s, there was, like, I think a whole era of elderly people in at one time and they’re actually dying off and of course young people are buying their houses once again, you know, and living in them, not just – it’s not a holiday place anymore, that’s, um, yeah, a lot of people living there. So now that we have neighbors on every side it’s just a little bit noisier and that nice big reserve across the road from us is, has been sold, which we thought it never would, 15 acres, and of course we built upstairs to get a better view of that and the river and, um, yeah, so, probably in a couple of years that’s going to be, I think that’s going to be eight sections but still, no, we don’t want people to look out at that. And then when they open the back and seal it all, it’s just going to be traffic, buzz buzz, and no, that’s not what we, um, it’s not very enhancing.” –Maxene Cranston
MaxenePub.MOV
“It’s going to be really strange having that there, but that’s taken a long time in coming, too. But it’ll happen, and it’ll happen all very quickly and all at the same time, yeah, so hopefully we won’t be there (laughs). But it has been great, just being, I mean I’ve only been out there four years, and Terry’s been there ten, and it’s just been, yeah, it’s a beautiful place, but yes, a lot noisier, yeah, too noisy, yeah.” –Maxene Cranston
IdaRoads.MOV
“Oh yes, of course, because they won’t give us sealed roads up there but they had a road counter across to see. They didn’t put it on in the holiday time when we’ve got more people here though. They’ve put it down when there weren’t very many people about so they’d say there’s not enough people there to warrant sealing that road. That’s why that would be down.” –Ida Darling
RaeRoadCounter.MOV
“What the hell have we got here? That’s the counter, that’s the road counter. Is that round in Alison Avenue? Yeah, that’s Brian’s trailer. That’s the trailer we borrowed this morning, that’s Brian’s trailer. It’s right outside their place. That’s useless anyway. Well, they don’t take any notice of it. See, we’re trying, they’re trying to get that road sealed and Queenstown Lakes District County mob, they’re the one to do it, and they’re bringing up every excuse they can. So they put a counter there just before Easter. And of course before Easter there’s no one around and the very few, well, we did our best, we drove over it a half-dozen times each, you know, and that, but then, immediately before Easter, before all the cribbers come up, they took it away. So it was, it was duly noted, of course, I mean, that’s silly, wasn’t it there, and so they put it back again now but, soon school holidays they might that it away again.” –Rae Benfell
MaxeneRoads.MOV
“But it does, um, a lot of people go that way and sometimes I think people avoid it because of the potholes and that and you have to ring the council and tell them to come and grade the road. You have to do that a lot. And then they oil it, which is good for the dust but people get really pissed off with the oiling ‘cause it’s very smelly and it seeps into your lawn and it burns all your grass off and stuff like that, and it gets all over you.” –Maxene Cranston
MoiraRoadCounter.MOV
“What have we here? Road counter. Very occasionally, not on a regular basis, but very occasionally, they put road counters on our roads because we have a longstanding agitated debate with the authority to have the roads sealed and they insist that a certain traffic volume go over the road before they’ll look at the cost evaluation process that says whether it will be viable to seal the road. Of course we go backwards and forwards over them.” –Moira Fleming
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“You can see how they sealed our road down the middle, and a little further down the road you’d have seen the awful ditches they haven’t put the gutter in. So when the people build their house, they’ll have to put the bit of guttering in.” –Moira Fleming
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Ida Darling: “Oh this is along by Lagoon Avenue.”
Phyllis Spraule: “No, it’s over here. Right on top of the hill, isn’t it?”
Ida: “Up here? Looking down that way? Oh, and I didn’t even recognize it with the long grass!”
Phyllis: “I wouldn’t have either. See this house in the corner, the pink house.”
Ida: “Yes, that’s the pink house on the corner. Oh very good. A pity that it’s in the wintertime just the same, no leaves on, would have been very pretty with all those poplar trees with their autumn colors on, would have been lovely.”
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“Oh! My goodness. You can see here the difference in height through the terracing that’s taken place in the land formation. As you come in from Wanaka, you are on a, you have to drive up out of Wanaka onto a terrace and you’re on that terrace until you come down quite a dip in the road and then to get into lower Albert Town you come down another dip. We’re in a glacial valley.” –Moira Templeton
Upper Clutha Historical Society, Wanaka, New Zealand
For the Upper Clutha Historical Society:
Notes from the project on Albert Town done May-July 1999 by Jeff Inglis.
Some of the information in this document will be new, other of it will be well-known and well-documented. I must stress that I have gleaned this information from a variety of sources, including local history books by Irvine Roxburgh, and from conversations with a number of Albert Town residents and others familiar with the area’s history. These will generally be identified as sources in the text. I have uncovered no new historical documents, and have used the area’s historical records, maintained by Stan Kane, only minimally, during my search for the story behind the new monument in the cemetery. Apologies are in order for the disjointed nature of some of this; it is a compilation and semi-organization of notes I took during various interviews.
There is a monument in the Albert Town cemetery, in addition to the pioneers’ monument. The new monument is in the far right corner as you enter the cemeter through the gate. It is a small Blue Mountain conifer, no more than 8 inches high at present, with two signs. One sign is at eye level and reads, “Please water me if my bottle is dry for my family put me here to guard our lost members. Thanks.” The other sign is painted on a flat stone and is propped against the corner post of the cemetery fence. It reads, “In memory of those who should be here 25/12/98: Stewart Findlay Richardson, Aileen Eleanor Baker, William Seddon King, Jeremy Alan Richardson, William Simpson Cunningham.” Next to the stone are a walking stick, some full water bottles, some empty water bottles, and some Christmas-type ornaments around the tree, with bits of paper with the same five names on them.
A related item in the Albert Town campground and reserve is a small grave further around, along the campground track closest to State Highway 6. It is a fenced enclosure and has a marker which reads, “In memory of Jerermy Alan Richardson [sic] 12th March 1987.”
After some searching and asking, I was able to locate Rae and Ngaire Benfell, of 1 Frye Crescent, who knew the story behind these markers.
Many people seemed to know a small bit about the single fenced-off grave, which had been there for sometime. (It is reasonable to assume it has been there since1987, but I couldn’t determine that with certainty.) What was generally known about that grave was that a family was traveling through the area, and while they were staying at the campground their baby died, and was buried there.
This is not entirely true, and the related monument in the cemetery is part of the explanation.
It was a family who camp at the Albert Town campground, and have done so for some 20 years or more. It started as one family gathering in a crib in Albert Town, but as the children of that family married, their spouses and parents-in-law also joined the group and started camping. The children of those marriages also joined, as did their spouses and in-laws when the time came. The names on the stone are from several generations of this extended family.
Rae and Ngaire spoke of the small village they built in the campground, with a water tank, washing machine, a hot water heater, a pump from the river, beer tent for cooling and storing beer, and a waterslide for the kids from the riverbank out into the Clutha.
The family tree is this: (the tree is not complete; names on the stone marker are in italics)
William Simpson Cunningham had a daughter called Isabel. She married Stewart Findlay Richardson. They had four children. Yvonne married Errol Ludlow, whose mother is Aileen Eleanor Baker. (Aileen Baker had another son as well, Robert, who married a woman called Janice.) Alan married Anne-Marie King, whose father is William Seddon King. Alan and Anne-Marie’s baby son, Jeremy Alan Richardson, died while the family was in the campground. (Stephen married a woman called Blue; Ian married a woman called Veronica.)
William Seddon King was cremated and had 1/4 of his ashes scattered in the Albert Town campground; Jeremy Alan Richardson was also cremated, with all of his ashes scattered in the enclosure which is marked with his name.
(The above family tree information is from Yvonne, who lives in Dunedin. She spoke with me and with Rae and Ngaire about the marker and tree.)
The tree is not the first tree the family has planted in memory of these people; the other trees were planted at the other end of the campground, where they used to stay (until their group got too big and had to move to a location just adjoining the cemetery). But the other trees died for one reason or another; hence, the sign asking passers-by to water the tree.
Road names
upper Albert Town, west of SH6
Bernard Road - Bernard Gunn (owns a section at 34 Lagoon Ave.)
Tania Terrace - Bernard’s wife Tania
Lagoon Ave - the lagoon
Dale Street - a Gunn family name (Bernard Gunn’s mother’s maiden name, his nephew’s name, and others)
Alison Ave - the Alison family of Hawea and Hawea Flat, friends of Bernard Gunn’s mother, Annette Florence (Dale) Gunn
Wairau Road - the Gunns used to holiday near the Wairau River near Blenheim
Wilkin Place - Robert Wilkin, first settler of Albert Town
Frye Crescent - unknown
Gunn Road - the Gunn family
lower Albert Town, east of SH6
Kingston Street - named by the surveyor, John Connell of Ireland in 1863
Kinnibeg Street - unknown but of Irish origin
Arklow Street - County Arklow
Wicklow Terrace - County Wicklow
Carlow Street - County Carlow
Wexford Street - County Wexford
Templeton Street - the Templeton family
Newcastle, unsettled land across the Clutha from lower Albert Town
the town itself was originally called Newcastle, after a town in County Down in Ireland
Waterford Terrace - County Waterford
Dublin Street - Dublin, Ireland
Carnsore Street - Wexford Harbor, Ireland has a point called Carnsore Point
Tuscar Street - Wexford Harbor has a point called Tuskar Point
BITS AND PIECES
Albert Town was an important river-crossing point for gold miners, station owners, and others hoping to travel towards the Haast area and the West Coast.
Sandy Point was an offshoot of Albert Town, in that the first person to set up a ferry in Albert Town was unlicensed; Henry Ferris Norman secured the license and the other man went off to found Sandy Point.
In 1870 the Wanaka School opened in Albert Town.
In 1878 the railway began to head towards Albert Town, but never made it.
The West Coast highway opened in 1960.
Albert Town began as part of Robert Wilkin’s station. His name is now on Wilkin Place.
In the last week of September 1878, Albert Town suffered a huge flood.
Tourism has been a big business in the Albert Town area since 1800.
In Christmas 1984 there was a huge flood of 100-year volume.
There is lots of fishing in the Clutha. At Deans Bank there is brown and rainbow trout. At the moment, there is also a blue heron often seen at Deans Bank.
There is a proposal to allow jetboating from the outlet of Lake Wanaka to the Albert Town bridge, which is currently not allowed, though the proposal also note the preference of angling, non-powered boating, riverside walking, and picnicking.
East of State Highway 6 is the original Albert Town settlement area. West of SH6 is larger and more recent.
There is a no-build buffer around the oxidation ponds.
The signpost at the riverfront near the old building and Dot Sherwin’s house is near the location of the first punt across the Clutha.
The Lawsonia tree planted by the stone cottage where the Gunns lived was planted the day Bernard Gunn was born.
At 11 Bernard Road is a house with a large number of aerials and antennae.
On Dale Street or Lagoon Ave, there is a house with two very large satellite dishes in the back - they are visible from Alison Ave near the bottom of the hill.
There is a natural terracing in the land heading down towards the rivers.
The local iwi is Ngai Tahu, currently contactable at:
Te Runanga O Ngai Tahu
Te Wai Pounamu House
PO Box 13-046
Christchurch
03-366-4344
Moira Fleming, cnr Kinnibeg Street and Kingston Street.
She is secretary of the Albert Town community association, the group of Albert Town ratepayers. She was also a primary school teacher and first woman principal of the Wanaka School (in Wanaka). At one time she represented New Zealand at an OECD Council on Research, Education, and Innovation in Paris.
There is a lot of bureaucracy governing Albert Town, from the community association, to the Wanaka Community Board, to the Queenstown-Lakes District Council, to the Otago Regional Council. Also influencing Albert Town is the Wanaka Outlet Reserves Advisory Group, made up of representatives from the Department of Conservation, the Otago Regional Council, QLDC, the Wanaka Community Board, the Albert Town community association, Fish and Game, the anglers group, the walkers group, the Guardians of Lake Wanaka, the Wanaka Historical Society, and members of the local iwi.
Most of Albert Town is within a 500-year flood hazard line, available on the hazard register map from the QLDC office. This causes insurance rates to be higher than they should be, and property resale value to be lower.
Albert Town has a small micro-climate, with not much rain, good sun, frosts in winter which kill the bugs, and excellent soil.
In 1989 or 1990 there was a conversion of most of Albert Town to a centralized water and sewer system.
There are at present 264 ratepayers in Albert Town, who pay about $1000 per year in rates. The water and sewer system cost each ratepayer $4000 in a one-time payment in 1989-1990 and ongoing maintenance fees.
Templeton’s smithy and petrol is in its fourth generation of ownership by a Templeton.
Bruce and Alison Hebbard, a brother-and-sister pair who are children of a sister of Ralph Templeton, are planning to build a tavern on the empty section inside the curve of State Highway 6 as it passes Alison Avenue and Kingston Street.
When the rivers flood, they are high but don’t burst their banks. Instead, the water comes up through the porous ground.
Bruce and Alison Hebbard
their grandfather started Templetons in Albert Town in 1917; before that his father had a shop on Bullock Creek in Wanaka, which began in 1913.
They stopped counting when they got to 100 campervans and tents in Albert Town at New Year’s 1999.
There are 1965 cars on average past the site of their tavern each day.
They’ve been working on getting the sections subdivided and developed for 4 years now, and don’t appreciate the delays which the Resource Management Act has forced upon them.
It took them 1 year to get the area rezoned from Public Open Space to Business. Their first plan was turned down by Transit New Zealand for inadequate parking. The QLDC engineer also said there was no sewage capacity, but did not say whether the incapacity was in the pipes, pumps, ponds, or elsewhere.
Transit moved SH6 inside the Hebbards’ property boundary, while widening the curve to make it safer. Transit also wanted a line of sight across the property to enhance safety for those turning onto SH6 from Alison Avenue. Transit is prepared to pay $17,000 for 1700 square meters. The minimum Albert Town building section is 800 square meters, which means Transit wants the equivalent of 2 sections, but want to pay far less than the average section rate in Albert Town, which is somewhere around $50-60,000.
Albert Town residents are in favor of the tavern, which will also have a shop, restaurant, and takeaway. Eventually it will also have a large meeting/dining room for group events.
The Hebbards are still awaiting approval of the one-story building plan they submitted in February 1999. Their parents will build a house across Alison Avenue from the tavern site. Fire regulations require that the Hebbards store 90,000 liters of water on site.
Businesses in Albert Town
Templeton’s garage
R. Collins, builder
Araucaria Architecture
B&B on Kinnibeg Street
other home businesses, artists, and artisans
Houses with names
Chaos Castle - Alison Avenue
Stone Broke - Kingston Street
The Poplars - Alison Avenue
Albert House - Wicklow Terrace (Dot Sherwin’s house)
Oregon House - Alison Ave.
Thyme Cottage - Gunn Road (Terry Drayton and Maxene Cranston)
Matt’s Place - Gunn Road
Wilkin Place Garden - Tania Terrace
Broughton Lodge - Alison Avenue
Country Cottage - Alison Avenue
Quail Cottage - cnr Tania Terrace and Bernard Road
Lagoon Lodge - Lagoon Ave
Cornflakes - Lagoon Ave
Nedlands - Lagoon Ave
Oregon Cottage - Lagoon Ave
Glen Lyon - Dale Street
Possum Lodge - Dale Street
Dunmill - Dale Street
Hyde Park - cnr Dale & Alison
Matau - Alison Ave
Sangro - Alison Ave (Dave Williamson)
Beshalva - SH6 next to Albert Town Lodge
Weardale - Arklow St
Ivy Cottage - Arklow St
Windsong - Wicklow Tce
Brown Trout - Wicklow Tce
Rafills’ Leadlight Schist - Kinnibeg St
Aurora House - Kinnibeg St
Kenmore - Wexford St
Alomot - Carlow St
Peter Barrow, president of the Wanaka Community Board
QLDC is growing faster than everywhere else in the South Island. Land prices are climbing as a result of this demand.
Ralph and Ethel Templeton, cnr Arklow Street and Kingston Street
Ethel is from Dunedin, Ralph used to run Templetons but his son Garry took over three and a half years ago.
His grandfather started the shop in Pembroke in 1889 - James Templeton. He then came out to Albert Town to be the puntman. He noticed a need for carters, wheelwrights, farriers, and smiths, and so opened a shop across the road from where the shop is now.
Ralph’s father took it over, and placed the first known ad for the business in the Cromwell Argus on 11 Aug 1913. He shifted the shop to the present site, and then went to war from 1914-1918, during which time James took it back over, which resulted in invoices being printed with Ralph’s father’s name, which was then crossed out and written in in its place was “James.” When Ralph’s father returned from the war, he took the shop back over. He made boats, with the help of a boatbuilder in Pembroke - 5 of them, 14 or 15 feet long, open boats. He had a copper steamer to bend the ribs, of 1” x 5/8” timber. He also had a tyring plate for putting metal tires on wheels - a big disc 6 feet in diameter and 1 and a quarter inches thick. It can still be seen on the riverbank opposite the shop. The water race for the shop went down where Kingston Street is now.
Ralph’s father made a water pump, a wheel in ther iver run by the current, which pumped water into the shop. He also attached a dynamo, so the town had electricity in 1939. The pump was killed by a log coming downstream. The wires held the wharf against the current.
The colors of paints Ralph’s father used were very bright reds and blues. He also had sign writers doing trim and fine designs on things he built, including sheep crates for trucks, one or two houses, using a sawmill on Mt. Barker.
There was a great avenue of trees up to the house, of Wellingtonia.
The sawmill shifted to Mt. Burke station and then to the Templeton workshop.
Ralph and his brother Dave worked with their father, from 1954 on, until Dave went farming around 1960. His father retired in 1966.
Before going home to work at the shop, Ralph went to high school in Dunedin and served as a fitter and turner in the army, returning in 1953.
In 1927 the shop became a McCormack Deering agent, and later this became an International Harvester franchise when the companies merged. The shop did smithing, horse shoeing, and tractor work for people from Makarora to the top of the Lindis to Omakau andQueenstown to Glenorchy. In 1963/64 the shop sold the International Harvester agency to a man in Cromwell, having deemed the required inventory maintenance unprofitable. After that, the business shrunk a bit, but has employed 3 people from then on.
The Rabbit Board contracted with Templetons to build a machine to clean, cut, and poison carrots for rabbit control. The shop also worked with the skifields from their beginnings, making specialized equipment and building supplies. The shop still has a good relationship with local builders.
Along the way, the shop has made chimney dampers and fire boxes, and repaired farm equipment, cars, trucks, and other motorized things.
When Treble Cone opened, they didn’t have much money, so they asked if they could pay in shares. Instead, Ralph bought shares and the company used the money to pay the business for the work. Ralph and Ethel still have shares in Treble Cone.
They also bought Cardrona shares, which they sold when Cardrona was taken over by an Australian company.
When the Waiorau Snow Farm opened, their contractor already had a relationship with Templetons, and they make snowplows, road sweepers, track rollers, and special equipment for the tire tests which happen at Cardrona.
The business also sees lots of local business, issuing Warrants of Fitness, doing repairs, selling petrol, and so on. Ralph said the shop’s best customers are people who own their own mills and need repairs and replacement parts.
Now Ralph is retired and plays golf on the weekends. His son Garry runs the place, and Garry’s son Glenn sometimes spends time in the shop.Garry’s brother Glenn plays rugby, and his brother Jim plays netball.
It used to be that the grocers and butcher would travel into Albert Town from Wanaka. Bill Ironside was one of these. Most Albert Town folks bought something from each of these traveling suppliers, to keep their businesses going.
The schools in the area started as station schools, and then the Wanaka School (in Albert Town), and then the Wanaka Primary school.
The Maze and Puzzle World are at what used to be the boundary of Vincent County, which meant that Albert Town was in the Otago education board region and Wanaka was in the Southland education board region.
When the hydro scheme started at Hawea, the schools began to condense and the Albert Town school building (then in Wanaka) went to Hawea for a time before returning to its location at the Wanaka Primary School in Wanaka.
Ralph was the youngest of 5 kids, two of whom went to high school in Wanaka, one in Waitaki, one in Cromwell, and Ralph in Dunedin.
Ralph’s dad had a petrol pump, wih kerosene tins and was supplied by Plume Petrol. He later changed to Europa Oil, which was bought by BP after many years. BP feared the petrol storage tanks would start leaking into the river, and it already owned the BP in Wanaka. So it cut Templeton’s out. Ralph built a huge concrete box which would go around the tanks. When the concrete was ready, he started digging. Almost immediately, a county inspector showed up. The other 8 men left immediately, not wanting to see what would happen. BP wanted him to get the tanks out but would not give a guarantee of safe repair of the station’s forecourt after the excavation. A friend of Ralph’s had a connection to Mobil, and was able to get new tanks and a petrol-supply contract for Templeton’s. Ralph dug up the old tanks and put them on the riverbank, and buried the new Mobil tanks in the concrete box. BP asked where the old tanks were, and hit the ceiling when Ralph told them they were out on the riverbank. They sent a man over to de-gas and plug them (though Ralph had already done this). For putting the new tanks in, Ralph needed a resource consent. He had trouble, despite being the only place in New Zealand where the storage tanks were encased in concrete. He had to get an “authorized petrol pump installer” to do the work. Ralph asked where he could sit the exam to become one. The council couldn’t tell him where to do it; nor could they find the regulations for doing the work. So Ralph he just went ahead and did the installation. Mobil said they’d supply fuel and look after the pumps. Later, the council faxed Ralph the regulations, which used up half a roll of fax paper!
This type of activity by BP was typical - people rang Ralph from all over the country to find out what he did and how. Ralph gives most of the credit to his friend up the road, with the connection to Mobil.
Harry and Jude Dickey
live in the house next to Ralph and Ethel Templeton, the house in which Ralph and Ethel raised their family.
Garry Templeton
runs Templeton’s now
has 3 full-time and 2 part-time workers, all either Wanaka or Albert Town residents
He worked at the garage 18 years before taking it over not quite 4 years ago
He lives next door and sometimes gets bothered by folks wanting petrol or repairs, but not very often. He says he has no time for impatient tourists.
Lis Bartlett, principal at Wanaka Primary School
The Albert Town school building is used for special needs teaching. The school trustees have taken over the maintenance of the building, because the Ministry of Education won’t take care of it. So the money comes out of the school’s general operating budget. If necessary, Lis said, the board would fundraise to preserve the building. The school has between 20 and 30 students from Albert Town - 22 on the bus and others get dropped off at the school.
The Mirror, Invercargill, New Zealand
TAVERN
On the banks of the Hawea River, just upstream of Albert Town, there is a nohoanga site, an area traditionally used by local Maori for camping and gathering food on trips from the east coast to the greenstone-guarding glens of the west coast.
Soon, perhaps, there will be a new resupply site, not just for Ngai Tahu, but for all travelers and residents in the region. Alison and Bruce Hebbard, great-grandchildren of early residents of Albert Town, are planning to build a tavern just south of the bridge over the Clutha.
But even as it could restore significant waypoint status to Albert Town, the proposed new stopping point has the potential to change Albert Town. It will provide a never-before-had social space in town where everyone can gather at any time. With a shop and takeaway/restaurant, no longer will Albert Town’s residents have to drive all the way to Wanaka to remedy a moment’s inattention at the supermarket.
But the Hebbards are negotiating with Transit New Zealand over the location of a traffic sight line restriction on the property.
The traffic negotiations and the request for a smaller, cheaper building than the one they originally proposed have held up the council’s final go-ahead. Worse, the delays mean more delays: There is a time limit on development and subdivision of the property. The Hebbards have applied for an extension, which means more paperwork and more waiting.
“We don’t like setting deadlines when we don’t know if we’ll be in a position to make it,” Bruce confessed, clearly frustrated at the process.
They have sympathy among the community. “The bureaucracy those people have put up with is absolutely disgusting,” lamented Ida Darling, the one of three surviving grandchildren of the first Albert Town ferryman.
But soon, perhaps, there will be another rock around which the community can gather. Moira Fleming puts it directly: “The tavern is a wee hope sign for lots of things.”
Pressure on AT from Wanaka expansion
Albert Town is under construction. Rather, it is under reconstruction, after years of being the center of the district, losing a popularity battle with Wanaka, and now as a cushion for the burgeoning town 5 kilometers down the road.
Some people in Albert Town work in Wanaka but prefer to live away from town; others have lived their all their lives, or grew up in Albert Town and have come back years later. Unusually for a small town, most of them approve of efforts to help Albert Town progress and develop.
This favorable reaction from newcomers and old-timers alike is because Albert Town’s people see it as a growing, changing area which still has lots of opportunity for future projects.
Young families live here because the property prices are lower than Wanaka, though the work is mostly in Wanaka. Others have home businesses, and a very few are employed by the one storefront business in town, Templeton’s Garage. Retirees live here, again because the prices are lower – as much as 20% lower than similar properties in Wanaka, according to local real estate agent Bonnie Grimmett. And people of all ages seek the relaxed lifestyle, where neighbors help one another on weekend projects, where kids can drive 4-wheel motorbikes around town without concern, and where strange cats – much less new people in town – are immediately noticed by everyone.
And yet the sections are still for sale, the homes are still being built, and the new people in town keep coming, family by family. Sooner rather than later, the unsealed roads will have enough traffic on them to be sealed by the council. Sooner rather than later the sewage ponds will need to be expanded or made more efficient.
This is not to mention the holiday makers, either, who can expand Albert Town’s population by as much as 200% over the peak summer holidays. They must be catered for as well. The bed-and-breakfast at the end of upper Kinnibeg Street is a start, as is the Albert Town Lodge. More is to come, for certain, and Albert Town will continue to change and grow. What will the next generation think of these changes?
Appendix 4: Notes for other journalists bound for New Zealand
New Zealand is a great place for journalists to work, personally and professionally. Obviously, because people live, work, and play in New Zealand, journalism is here. But New Zealand lends itself especially well to certain types of work. Here I will offer a few ideas for other journalists’ projects.
Broadcasters can work in radio or television with national stations or the many local and regional stations. In radio, many of these are iwi stations, owned and run by Maori tribes. Others are civil or commercial stations. Al Morrison, New Zealand National Radio’s political editor, is a Mizzou alumnus. In television there are also independent studios and TV companies as well as very competitive local television stations in the main centers, Auckland, Wellington, and particularly Christchurch.
Agriculture is a primary part of the New Zealand economy; every publication has some tie to it, creating a perfect opportunity for agricultural journalists of all persuasions to find a niche in which to work.
The natural world is also a major focus of New Zealand society, in many forms: natural resource policy, conservation, sustainable development of industries from tourism to fishing, as well as biodiversity and biosecurity issues not found in the vastness of the United States. Environmental journalists will find many viewpoints and issues ready for reporting, as well as appropriate contradictions for commentary and investigation.
And, finally, if you’re heading to New Zealand, drop me an Email before you go; I’ll be happy to help in any way I can!