Heritage et AL

This week marks Vaiaso o te Gana Tuvalu, or Tuvalu Language Week , for 2015. This year’s theme is "Tau gana ko tou iloga/ Language is your identity”. This provides an excellent opportunity to focus on some images relating to Tuvalu in our heritage collections from  Local History Online . Ref: Pacifica Arts Centre, Tuvalu traditional dance performance, 14 November 2013, West Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries, PAC-PLAF-2013-D-096. The Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs has compiled a list of events for the week and ask that you follow their Facebook page for updates during the week. Ref: Pacifica Arts Centre, Mama Teuke at the Pacifica Living Arts Festival, 1 November 2005, West Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries, PAC-PLAF-2005-D-002.

The Auckland Heritage Festival is about to begin again. The region wide festival starts this Saturday, 26 September, and runs for the subsequent two weeks until 11 October. This year’s theme is “The iwi, people, kōrero, and stories that shaped our region, Tāmaki Makaurau”. Ref: 2 015 Auckland Heritage Festival logo.

Friends of mine moved in to their new house recently, one of those established Ponsonby villas which has been done up with a garage put in. It has the same bones of its early 1900s self but with far less land than it would have originally been on. It is in St Mary's Road and it was an interesting exercise to explore the Auckland Council's Archive to see if the property was on its City of Auckland's 1908 map. A simple Google search of Auckland Council Archives takes you straight to their home page and clicking on Search the Archives takes you to the link to the map . There are two different ways to search the City of Auckland's 1908 map. One is by browsing ; the other is by doing a keyword search . Using the keyword search we typed in St Mary's Road and up came the portion of the map with that particular street in it. Once you have enlarged the map you will notice the blue pins. My friend's house on St Mary's Road has a blue pin, which we cl...

We are used to seeing newspapers with compelling news stories, and photographs, on the front covers. However, this is a fairly recent change for Auckland's daily newspapers. The now-ceased 'Auckland Star' newspaper only started featuring actual news, rather than public notices and the like, on the front page from 22 July 1946. Ref: excerpt from the Auckland Star, Volume LXXVII, No. 171, 22 July 1946, page 1.

The recent arrival of the new elephant Anjalee at Auckland Zoo provides an excuse to take a nostalgic look back at one of the Zoo’s previous much-loved elephants: Jamuna. Ref: Ron Clark, Elephant ride, February 1956, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1207-783. Many locals have fond memories of having had a ride on Jamuna as a child. During her lifetime, Jamuna is estimated to have given rides to three-quarters of a million people. 

This week Auckland Libraries are celebrating Uike 'o e Lea Faka-Tonga, Tongan Language Week with a range of events across our libraries . This year also marks the 50th year commemoration of Queen Sālote's death and Tonga's Coronation of King Tupou VI. As the theme for Tongan Language Week this year is "Fakakoloa Aotearoa 'aki 'a e faiva 'a e Tonga - Enriching Aotearoa New Zealand with Tongan arts" an appropriate way to pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of Queen Sālote’s passing is to highlight some of the music and poetry that she wrote. Ref: Clifton Firth, Queen Salote of Tonga, c1961, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 34-375.