House Hunting

We're having another weekend of house-hunting so I thought I'd introduce readers to some of the more traditional forms of the Kiwi home.

One of the earliest examples of Pakeha architecture is the settler's cottage. This is Acacia Cottage, dating back to 1841 when it was built in the centre of Auckland. It's the oldest surviving house in the city and is now situated in Cornwall Park.



As settlers became more established, more comfortable villas were built. This is another very early example at the Treaty Grounds in Waitangi, home to the then Governor, James Busby, from 1833.



Increases in leisure time and disposable incomes resulted in holiday homes - the Kiwi bach. Built by the beach, baches (short for "bachelor") were very basic, the bathroom was a long drop and a sponge bath and most cooking was done outside. Rangitoto Island is home to a number of baches which have been carefully preserved - one restored bach recently won a UNESCO Heritage award.



Nowadays liberal planning rules mean that nearly anything goes. During my trip to Great Barrier Island in 2004, I was particularly taken by this space-age house, built by the architect Greg Noble as his own home using some of the latest materials.

Earth Hour

New Zealand was the first country in the world to mark Earth Hour tonight.

In Auckland, the Sky Tower was plunged into darkness, visible only when the red aircraft safety lights illuminated every few seconds.



We turned off the lights in our flat and watched Children of Men, an apocalyptic vision of earth in 2027 and a salutary warning.

Autumn in Auckland II

One of the last blooms of summer in Albert Park - hibiscus, a subtropical flowering bush and a symbolic image throughout the Pacific...

Old Wellington

Another trip to Wellington this week but this time I managed to take a stroll in daylight hours and happened across this century-old Kauri-wood church on Willis Street, St John's in the City:

Number Eight Wire

We already had some idea about the "make do and mend" culture that prevails over here in New Zealand. It's known as the "number eight wire mentality" - named after the gauge of fencing wire which Kiwis consider most useful for DIY jobs. This Kiwi ingenuity is cited as contributing to New Zealand's burgeoning film industry, progress in stem cell research and the World's Fastest Indian.

So far so good. But we hadn't counted on this attitude being applied to our fridge/freezer. We have a brand new apartment in the CBD with a brand new shiny stainless steel fridge/freezer. The thing has now failed three times and has been fixed twice. In London, we would have secured a new appliance by now but instead we have a loan fridge whilst the original machine has gone off for repair. Madness! But at least I have ice in the interim.

Autumn in Auckland

March is officially the first month of autumn in New Zealand. The temperatures have slipped down from the high 20s to the low 20s and the days are growing noticeably shorter. But most of the trees are mostly evergreen so there aren't many autumn colours and the skies are still bright blue.

Here's the Sky Tower and the Metropolis Hotel from the edge of Albert Park early one March morning.

Cultural Differences

New Zealanders generally get very upset when mistaken for Australians so I was amused to find a St Patrick's Day Street Festival in Auckland today where they were playing the Proclaimers.

Cooking Kumara

Originating in South America and introduced first into Polynesia and then New Zealand, kumara (sweet potatoes) are a staple food in the traditional Maori diet. The kumara were farmed by Maori tribes who used tamed seagulls to control caterpillars and then stored over winter in pits, the remnants of which can still be seen around old tribal sites.


There are now three main varieties of kumara grown commercially in New Zealand - all of them introduced after European settlement and much bigger than the ones once eaten by Maori. The vegetable is still very popular here with cafes and restaurants offering kumara fries, kumara rosti, mashed kumara... Despite his New Zealand passport, James hates kumara. So whilst he's away in Wellington, I've stocked up on red, gold and orange kumara in order to make a delicious kumara gratin. Mmm...

Art in Auckland

Wellingtonians dismiss Auckland as brash, rushed and uncultured. So whilst James was in the capital visiting his uncles, I thought I'd take the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Auckland art scene.

First on the list was the Real Art Roadshow, a truck parked in an uninspiring car park surrounded by municipal buildings. The truck travels around the country introducing school pupils to the works of local artists.

I thought that the teenagers visiting the gallery would be quite taken by Martin Basher's bitterly entitled I'm the only hell my mother ever raised, depicting a disco ball strung across a clearing in a pine forest. My firm favourite though was Neil Frazer's Deep Freeze, a vivid oil painting of a glacier. Luckily, the works weren't for sale.

Next up was a trip to the Auckland Art Gallery where I went to see In Shifting Light, an exhibition of local landscapes.

Landscape painting in New Zealand started as a way of mapping the new colony but has diversified significantly over the last 150 years. The curator hadn't limited himself to physical landscapes either, with some works representing the spiritual and political landscape. Another room explored landscapes captured in low light including a Victorian painting of the Waitemata Harbour at night - reportedly an unusual piece in colonial art.

There's also plenty of art out on the streets in Auckland. Nearly all the junction boxes are painted with a range of designs and a much loved mural protesting against French nuclear testing in the Pacific has recently been revamped in Karangahape Road.

Here's a mural from the side of a downtown flyover featuring a Maori biker and his family (click on the image to see the whole picture):

Native Encounter

It was all happening at the zoo today.

At noon, we met the Indian elephants, Kashin and Burma, who obediently showed us their teeth, toes and tails and demonstrated their logging skills.

The highlight though was the native fauna encounter a few hours later. We were introduced to the tuatara, an endangered reptile from the prehistoric order Sphenodontia, and to the North Island kaka, a large forest parrot.

And then a fluffy brown Northland kiwi was released from its hidiing place under a tree trunk.

The kiwi is a nocturnal bird and so our new friend was rather sleepy but when she perked up, we were amazed at the speed at which she dashed towards worms, her beak bobbing up and down.

Here she is as she was waking up:


The population of the North Island brown kiwi stands at about 25,000 with 8000 of those living in Northland. About 90% of kiwi chicks die in their first six months, victims of dogs, cats and introduced wild mammals like the stoat and rat. The population is slowly being rebuilt thanks to breeding programmes. Eggs are incubated at the University of Victoria in Wellington and youngsters are homed on outlying island reserves. Pest free areas are also being created on the mainland in a bid to preserve the bird in its native habitat.

Gathering Clouds

Having dragged Skene to the supermarket and forced him to vacuum the flat, I completed the emasculation by taking him to see some contemporary dance at the Auckland Festival.

Gathering Clouds by the dance collective Black Grace is a response to claims made by economist Greg Clydesdale that Polynesians display “significant and enduring under achievement”. The creative director, Neil Ieremia, is reported as saying “I have always believed in the spirit of the Long White Cloud that embraces everyone equally. But after reading these claims and reviewing passages of my personal journey, I realise the Long White Cloud has become dark in places and it feels like a storm is brewing.”

The mix of traditional Samoan and contemporary dance was compelling but incomprehensible to us novices. The voiceover, however, informed us that the New Zealand government had initially welcomed Samoan migrants before changing its position in the mid 1960s. Overstayers were removed following dawn raids but little or no action was taken against British and American visitors whose visas had expired. Unjustly negative stereotypes of Samoan residents were created by the government actions and the Pacific communities grew resentful.

Here's a clip of one of Black Grace's earlier productions featuring elements of a traditional Samoan Fa'ataupati (slap dance):

Kiwano

One great thing about New Zealand is the variety and price of fresh fruit. Since arriving we've been eating kiwi berries (tiny kiwi fruit, fuzz-free, eaten like grapes), white peaches (very sweet) and mandarin oranges (I didn't realise they came without the tin).

The most unusual specimen yet though has to be the kiwano, also known as the African horned melon,the jelly melon, hedged gourd and English tomato. It's a native of the Kalahari region and "kiwano" is a trade name, used by New Zealand cultivators for export.



A little like a passionfruit or a pomegranate but with spikes, the kiwano is filled with seeds in jelly pouches. The fruit is eaten by spooning out the seeds, sucking off the jelly sac and then spitting out the seeds. This is a very time-consuming exercise and Wikihow recommends that it's done whilst watching television. We managed a whole episode of Life On Mars and still hadn't finished our respective halves. Luckily we found it sweet, like Fruit Gums, rather than bitter as many of these fruits are, but it was possibly more effort than it was worth!

Cooking Kuku

Kuku, a popular Maori food, is known to Pakeha as the green-lipped mussel. With a distinctive sheen to the shell, these molluscs are much bigger than the European variety and make a delicious kai - a traditional Maori meal.

I harvested our mussels from Foodtown, not yet having enough local knowledge to find them in the wild. Little did I know that cooking them was going to be just as adventurous as gathering them would have been...

Step 1 Store the mussels in a non-airtight container in the fridge so that they can breathe. Oops. I hadn't realised that they were still alive and left them in a plastic bag.

Step 2 Empty the mussels into a sink full of cold water. This was the moment of truth. If they were still alive (and therefore edible), they would open and shut in the water to expel sand and air from their shells. Success! Only one mussel had suffered a premature demise. The rest were a little sluggish but tap them hard enough and they would snap shut.

Step 3 Debeard the mussels. Easier said than done. Cue much grunting from Skene as he attempted to strip each creature of its byssus threads. Pull the wrong way and the mussel dies in agony. I didn't have the heart to even try.

Step 4 Scrub the mussels and remove all barnacles. Barnacles don't particularly taste good when they drop into the soup.

Step 5 Start cooking. We opted for fennel, cream and tomato with a dash of brandy. Amazingly the mussels opened up and tasted delicious. Check back here tomorrow to see if they've poisoned us...

Coast to Coast

We did the Coast to Coast Walk today - from the Pacific to the Tasman across one of the narrowest sections of the Auckland isthmus.

It was the first time for James but a repeat for me so rather than attempting to recreate the experience for any readers, I shall simply refer back to my 2004 blog entry on the subject.


One Tree Hill - not the highest point on the route but a good climb nevertheless.