Here and There – New Zealand
I am not really clear why I have spent so little time in New Zealand. Just across the Tasman Sea, some 2,000 kms from Melbourne, it is, apart from Papua New Guinea and the Melanesian Islands, our closest neighbour. As another part of the former British Empire, it is also an English-speaking country, and, I have to admit, more English than England in many ways! It is a stunningly beautiful country, with mountains, glaciers, hot springs, beautiful beaches. You would think it would be the place I would go to most often when wanting to travel overseas, but compared to places like Hong Kong, Singapore, or Malaysia, I have hardly ever been there, just a few times in forty years. On a small number of occasions it was a stopover for a trip from Australia to the west coast of the USA, and I think the only reason we would be in Christchurch was because we were flying with Air New Zealand. Apart from stopovers, there were at least two real visits, which I’ll come to in a minute.
But, first, why so seldom? Is it a matter of perceptions? It’s not a nice characteristic, but Australians tend to disparage New Zealand. It’s a country with just over 5m people, and 26m sheep, its lowest in 70 years and down from the grand total of 70m in the 1980s. Five sheep for every person. It’s a feature that has led to all sorts of unfortunate jokes, as well as a national desire to triumph over New Zealand in every possible way. As in so many other respects, we decide to criticise most determinedly those who are most similar. I suppose my defence has to be that if I was going to travel overseas, I wanted to go to better known places (hence those visits to the US over the years), or for work (which largely focussed on SE Asia). Looking back, it almost appears to be a case of avoidance, and I’m embarrassed.
Enough apologies. I have been to New Zealand for at least a couple of real visits. These were two very different experiences, both from many years ago, and both stick in my mind. Perhaps they will explain how I see the country. The first time I was there for a substantial visit, I was part of a group from the National Trust of Victoria. I think the trip might have been described as ‘international liaison’, and we did have some meetings with local heritage groups. At the same time, we had the opportunity to go the northern part of the North Island, enjoying a brief holiday as well as seeing some of the more famous Māori landmarks. Our travels began in Wellington, and from there travelled north to Whanganui, Hamilton, Auckland, Bay of Islands, and even right up to Cape Reinga. As far as I can see the only thing, we missed out on was Cambridge, and that was only a few miles away from Hamilton!
Time for an important disclosure. I went to Hamilton at the wrong time. When I was there, travelling up northwards on the North Island, it was for an overnight stay. However, Peter Jackson hadn’t arrived, Hobbiton didn’t exist, and frankly, Hamilton was a boring place. Now I read visitors can go to the Hobbiton Movie Set near Hamilton. There’s only one of the cinema sets that remains intact from the filming sessions, comprising some of the Hobbit homes as they appeared in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Apparently, the decision to establish The Shire near Hamilton was because of the visual character of the Alexander family sheep farm. Who would have known? Today you can take a tour, see the remaining Hobbit homes, and also learn about the filming, go on trips to see some of the other locations, as well as appreciate the ingenious use of perspectives to make the visually great look truly spectacular. Will I go there now? It is tempting, but it’s not on my current plans.
Further north, I did get to see several famous tourist sights, including Te Puia within the historic Te Whakarewarewa Geothermal Valley. With some small bits of my geologist past still in my mind, I did enjoy seeing the geyser Rotorua, along with the associated and very smelly mud pools, hot springs and silica formations. Naturally enough, these geothermal wonders were accompanied by various other tourist delights, combined with the national schools of wood carving, weaving, stone and bone carving. Te Arawa are the local tribe of this area who have shared these treasures with visitors for over 170 years and proudly continue that tradition today. However, I just liked the mud and steam.
An interesting visit, but our eventual destination on that trip was Bay of Islands. Waitangi occupies a headland draped in lawns and bush. This is New Zealand’s most significant historic site, as it was here, on 6 February 1840, following prolonged and at times less than cordial discussions, 43 Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the British Crown. It was a start, and the Treaty was eventually agreed by over 500 chiefs. It was the birthplace of modern New Zealand.
The Treaty and a rapprochement between the indigenous Māoris and the British weren’t an easy achievement. Today much of this is summarised in the visitor centre, the modern Te Kongahu Museum of Waitangi, which hadn’t been build (or even planned) when I was there. However, there were plenty of places where I found out about the place of the Treaty in the past, present and the future hopes of Aotearoa New Zealand. They provided a warts-and-all look at the early interactions between Māori and Europeans, a series of the events leading up to the treaty’s signing, with the long litany of treaty breaches by the Crown, the wars and land confiscations that followed, and the protest movement that led to the current process of redress for historic injustices. Many taonga (treasures) associated with Waitangi were previously scattered around NZ. Now the museum is the repository for a number of key historical items. One room is devoted to facsimiles of all the key documents, while another screens a short film dramatising the events of the initial treaty signing.
Though it sounds unlikely, the Treaty House was shipped over as a kit, sent from Australia and erected in 1834. It was intended as the four-room home of the official British Resident James Busby. It’s now preserved as a memorial and museum containing displays about the house and the people who lived here. Just across the lawn, the magnificently detailed meeting house Te Whare Rünanga sits. It was completed in 1940 to mark the centenary of the treaty. Its detailed carvings represent the major Māori tribes, and it is the location for visitors to see cultural performances. These start with a haka pöwhiri (challenge and welcome) outside, and then continue inside with waiata (songs) and haka (more dramatic war dances).
In some ways, equally impressive was the 35 m long, 6-tonne waku taua (war design canoe), Ngätokimatawhaorua, also built for the centenary. An accompanying photographic exhibit details shows it creation from gigantic kauri logs. It is, quite simply, an extraordinary object.
I travelled further north, to Cape Reinga. In the Northland region, the walk to the lighthouse offers what are correctly described as incredible panoramic views of where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet. I was told that on a clear day you might be lucky enough to see the Three Kings Islands on the distant horizon. I wasn’t that lucky! It’s a site steeped in Māori tradition. Cape Reinga is seen as the end of the road in both a literal and imaginative sense. It is the end of State Highway 1. However, in Māori tradition, the spirits of the dead depart the world from this place, making it the most sacred site in Aotearoa.
Contrary to expectation, Cape Reinga isn’t actually the northernmost point of the country; that honour belongs to the inaccessible Surville Cliffs, which can be spotted to the right in the distance. In fact, it’s much closer to the westernmost point, Cape Maria van Diemen, immediately to the left, improbably close by, as New Zealand is rather like a boomerang in shape, curving away to the west. Did I linger on, enjoying the view? No I didn’t, because it Cape Reinga is a magical part of the world, of which the views play only a small part.
While New Zealand isn’t immune to tensions and troubles derived from its past, it makes an interesting contrast to Australia. Its history before settlement is well documented, celebrated and has become integral to the country. While there are some ethnic tensions and challenges, you have the sense the Māori ‘belong’ in a way that indigenous Australian aborigines still do not in many Australian eyes. Australian has a long way to go.
I am sure there are many reasons for the difference, but the stronger political organisation of the Māori peoples, together with the establishment of a Treaty back in the 19th Century certainly helped. Key to this is the fact the Māori were themselves relatively recent immigrants, Polynesian settlers arriving in canoes during the 14th Century. It seems likely there was no indigenous human population before then, unlike the Aboriginal people in Australia who have been in in Australian since 50,000 BC, and possibly much earlier. Moreover these Polynesian immigrants brought with them a system of chiefs, and a political system that embraced the independent but related groups across the whole of the country.
In Australia, the British dealt with hundreds of apparently disconnected small groups. Contact between groups was limited, and there was only a very loose sense of their comprising one ‘people’. In contrast and based on what we know today, it seems likely the Polynesian settlers initially lived in small tribal groups, with a rich culture shared between the groups, and strong traditions of warfare. The arrival of Europeans from the early 1800s had a major effect on these early communities and helped the local Māori groups become better linked among themselves.
While the Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840 established British law and government, it could not prevent warfare in the 1840s and 1860s as Māori defended their lands and local authority. After the wars Māori lost land through confiscation and sale, mostly to British settlers. The contrast between the two countries was fateful. The British took over Australia, crushing any local resistance, and effectively denying the Aboriginal peoples any sense of ‘ownership’. The British were dominant in New Zealand, too, but in this case, they had to meet with and organise their differences with a strong local community.
If this visit to New Zealand was to offer interesting comparisons with the situation in Australia, another visit provided quite a contrast. On this occasion, I was working, mainly in the South Island, with an international company, and I was part of a group visiting agrichemical and natural gas sites. This wasn’t about culture, nor was it about politics. This was business. My role was as a training executive for the company, and I was being asked to look at workplace improvements and the impact of new technologies.
We could have been in one of many other countries across the globe. Inside the gates, we were in company territory. The embedded culture was a company culture. The management was traditional bureaucratic systems. Our ‘leader’ was the local representative of the Head Office chief executive. Once we entered the plant, we had left New Zealand to all intents and purposes. It was – and would still be – a strange transition.
To get to the plant, we had flown the Christchurch, and then taken a second flight in a small private airline aircraft. We flew over largely unoccupied land, a little north of the snow laden ski fields of the South Island and ended up in a small town’s airport on the flood plain of one of the many rivers running west across the landscape. I kept wishing we were in a helicopter and could hop down to have a look at the mountains, gorges, valleys and forests we flew over. Instead, by the time we arrived at the plant, it was as if that world didn’t really exist. Perhaps it was a vast set created for another New Zealand cinema epic, a company succession drama, perhaps. For some of my colleagues, all that differentiated this plant from others was that it took a long time to get there!
Looking back at those two visits offers a telling contrast. In one case, I was able to see the beauty of the country, and, more importantly, engage in understanding some of the unique history and resulting culture of Aotearoa/New Zealand. I could compare and contrast New Zealand with Australia and appreciate the impact of history on the two places, and how events over the preceding decades- similar in some ways, and very different in others – had shaped the contemporary countries. In the other case, it was as if I hadn’t travelled at all. What I saw was the ‘universal’ company culture, the way the business ran its operations, managed its staff, and designed its operations. I could have been in a plant in France, the USA or Malaysia. Only different weather and the odd glimpse of houses and people outside the company premises would have given me any insight as to where I was.
This is one reason why writing about ‘here and there’ makes relatively little sense for the employees of major corporations. They are never ‘there’. They are stuck inside the company’s world, with brief moments of transition. If I had been asked by my partner what New Zealand was like based on this visit, I would have been stuck, except for being able to describe some of the physical geography and the weather! In fact, I bought a couple of gifts at Christchurch Airport on my return. Evidence of where I had been? I suppose so. A window into New Zealand? Certainly not.
Work visits like that one convinced me of two things. First, if I wanted to travel, I should keep business as far away from other activities as I could. Equally important, even if I was travelling for work, I should go to only one or two places, and make sure I stayed away from the corporate offices, and also make sure I spent some time absorbing where I was. Would that enhance my business effectiveness? In some (probably small) ways, it did. I would better appreciate the overall culture in which business was being conducted, and why issues to do with family, bribery, place and corruption had a different meaning and application to those same issues ‘back home’. In a different way, and far more important, spending time in another place helped me retain my sense of our common humanity, seeing so many people like me, and yet people so different in how they talked about and perceived their world. Good international company staff do that, learning about diversity and culture: many, probably most, are simply living in their familiar world wherever they are.
Living in Australia, we are in a privileged position (in many senses, of course). Specifically, what I mean is that we are lucky in having another remnant of the Empire close by. We should spend time there, learn about what is similar and what is different, and ask ourselves why this is so. New Zealand is both like Australia, and unlike it. The similarities are important. The differences are critical. They offer a window into how societies work, why they follow different paths, how they confront and succeed or fail at dealing with difference. I have often quoted the line that the most important we learn from travelling is seeing ourselves more clearly: in seeing ourselves in the mirror of difference, we also have to opportunity to turn that set of insights into identifying what needs to change, into improving how we live with others, and how we can and should do better.
