Heritage et AL

The Hokianga Harbour - Te Hokianga-nui-a-Kupe ("the place of Kupe's great return") - is the ancestral home of many Northern iwi, including Ngapuhi. By the 1830s it was also the heart of the New Zealand timber industry, with the small settlement of Kohukohu at its hub. C P Dawes. Ships at the Kauri Timber Company Wharf, Kohukohu. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 1572-208 . Kohukohu no longer resembles the bustling township it once was. But through the work of local photographer Charles Peet Dawes we can see for ourselves the people and communities of the Hokianga in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, before fire, cars and intensive farming changed the landscape completely. I mage: C P Dawes. Group portrait of the Te Puhi Maori group, the Otene family from Te Karaka, Hokianga. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 1142-D385 . C P Dawes. Kohukohu. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 1572-953 . ...

From 1955 to 1959, Aucklanders watched as a bridge gradually began to take shape across their harbour. The Waitematā, beautiful and usually so serene, was transformed into a stage for one of the largest and most complex construction projects in New Zealand’s history. Those on the quiet North Shore were particularly affected. Where residents of Northcote Point might once have looked over a tranquil harbour scene to the city on the opposite shore, their view now bustled with building activity. For those who lived in close proximity, excitement about the construction might quickly have worn off, but for plenty of Aucklanders, the project’s progress was a matter of ongoing fascination. In 1957, a watchman at the Northcote building site reported that as many as 50 sightseers would clamour to the area during weekends. Much larger numbers visited on the city side. Image: Jack Kirk. Aucklanders look on as the pick-a-back span is moved into place, 1958. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collectio...

In New Zealand in the 1880s, it was customary for women to wear gloves at all times when in public – at least, for Pākehā women of a certain social group. Men also wore gloves in public, but social expectations were somewhat more lax: as “Alice” wrote resentfully in the Otago Witness in 1891, “We dare not, as men do, go gloveless into the streets, although many would be only too delighted to have their hands free.” For women, glove fashions changed rapidly, and new trends for colours, lengths, and embellishments were published weekly. Clean, tidy gloves were important not only for reasons of fashion but also as a marker of respectability. The author of 'Woman’s World' in the New Zealand Herald reminded readers : “shoes and gloves are indicative of the character of the wearer, [and so] it is well to bestow a little extra care on them.” Holes, ripped seams, missing buttons, and dirty fingertips indicated a lack of virtue, and women who wore anything less than perfectly neat ...

The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) had far-reaching effects around the world for all the major European powers. Following last week's post about propaganda cartoons from the Russo-Japanese War, we take a look at some more political cartoons published in the  New Zealand Graphic  that reflect this. When the war began in February 1904, the Czar and his officials viewed it as an opportunity to divert the Russian people’s attention from their own domestic problems, instead focusing their patriotic loyalty on Czar Nicholas as their ‘Little Father.’ The officials complacently assumed that Russia would achieve easy victory over an insignificant Asian country in a small eastern war. However when the Russian defenders of Port Arthur surrendered to the Japanese in January 1905, things began to go awry. The significance of the Russo-Japanese War for the rest of the world was that for the first time in modern history an Asian country had defe ated a European power. Before the war Gre...