Heritage et AL

Keri Hulme’s masterpiece the bone people became the Auckland Writer’s Festival’s inaugural Great Kiwi Classic last year. The novel took 17 years to write and was rejected by every publisher in Australasia until the feminist collective SPIRAL brought it out in 1984 with a cover illustration by the author. The following year the bone people won the Booker Prize from a shortlist that included work by Peter Carey, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch.  Ref: the bone people, Cover, c1983, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 823 HUL. 

Recently I walked the Milford Track . Today it takes just three days of walking a well formed path. I am a tramper and I found it a challenge, so what was it like for the early pioneers? The first settler at Milford Sound was Donald Sutherland (1843/44-1919) who in 1880 discovered the Sutherland Falls. Ref: James Richardson/Burton Brothers, Milford Sound with the 'City of Milford', 1878-1880, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 4-930 Sutherland started building a track to allow visitors access to the falls but the rugged Fiordland coast made finding an overland route from Lake Te Anau essential. Ref: CW Sundstrum, Sutherland Falls, Milford Sounds, 1907, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19070228-15-3

One hundred and fifty years ago, New Zealand enjoyed its first professional opera performance at Dunedin’s Royal Princess Theatre – the country’s first purpose-built theatre. Dunedin had become home to the newly rich who were in need of some 'refined' culture, a sentiment echoed by those tired of the “limited sources of entertainment” offered by grog-shops and other equally seedy places on the Otago goldfields.  Ref: Poster for Princess Theatre, 31-62787, Sir George Grey Special Collections