A Cultural-Historical Reading of Patricia Grace’s . Judith Dell Panny

Witi Ihimaera’s use of nineteenth century Maori prophets’ oral narratives in and . Julia Calvert

Since its first publication in 1986, by Witi Ihimaera has been classed as one of the most political novels to date written by a Maori writer. Mark Williams, in his essay “”, calls the novel “politically engaged”, “angry”, and “antagonistic” (118). The novel spans over 150 years of Pakeha occupation of New Zealand and weaves a complex variety of literary styles and sources together. Much attention has been given to the way these conflicting stylistic tendencies add or detract from the overall success of the novel but there is one strand in particular that has not been looked at in any depth. The oral narratives relating to Te Kooti and Rua Kenana which Ihimaera threads through and its sequel, , are used by the author to make some of the strongest political comments to be found in the two novels.

and continue the nineteenth century tradition of resistance to Pakeha land domination by incorporating and extending oral narratives surrounding the lives of Te Kooti and Rua Kenana. Ihimaera outlines the historical and legal right of his semi-fictional characters

Parallels can be drawn between the figure of the matriarch and Ihimaera’s own grandmother Teria Pere. They bear the same relation to Wi Pere and share minor, but significant details. Among the preparatory material for , draft Land Court Records show the name of Ihimaera’s mother “Julia Keelan”. These references to his mother and grandmother compiled with similar whakapapa links between himself and Wi Pere, and the narrator Tamatea and Wi Pere, suggest that in the two novels discussed here Ihimaera is telling the “story” of his own tribal lands. The boundaries of his family land given in the Turnbull lecture are frequently repeated in the course of and .

to the land in question and adds a weight of (syncretic) existential ties to their claim by creative use of the existing narratives. The novels form part of the ongoing political campaign by tribes on the East Coast, including Rongowhakaata and Te Whanau A Kai, Ihimaera’s own tribes, to have land which was confiscated during and after the Land Wars returned to its rightful, Maori owners.

Rongowhakaata and Whanau-A-Kai land claims date back to 1869. Periodic protests and petitions have been made to the governmentconcerning this land and these events compromise the main “action” of the two novels.

Ihimaera connects his fictional characters to Te Kooti and Rua Kenana principally through the narrative of the diamond of Te Kooti.

In the Maori narratives of Te Kooti and Rua Kenana specific mountains take on particular significance. It is believed that Te Kooti hid a diamond on the sacred mountains of each of the tribes who had sheltered him during the war with the colonial government.

Not all accounts of the diamond state that Te Kooti placed it on the mountain himself. Some narratives tell of the diamond always being there; Te Kooti is believed to have just covered it up so it could not be found. See Binney p.508. Other accounts, such as the one above, state that Te Kooti gave it to other people to place there.

Rua Kenana, who claimed to be Te Kooti’s successor, is recorded as ascending to the top of Maunga Pohatu. Here, the diamond of Te Kooti was revealed to him. The character Tamatea, in Ihimaera’s novels, also sees the “diamond of Te Kooti” whilst on the top of a mountain – Maunga Haumia ( 293).

There are many oral narratives concerning Te Kooti’s diamond. In her article “”, Judith Binney includes a conversation with Ned Brown and Heni Brown, held at Whatatutu, 14 February 1982. The Browns offer information concerning Te Kooti and the diamond. Ned Brown’s grandfather went to see Te Kooti in 1878 to ask him what would happen to his family’s land. After a short while Te Kooti said to him, “I’ll give you something – he mauri. He mauri mo te whenua”. Ned Brown goes on to explain that Te Kooti’s words were “pertaining to some powers unknown to us”, that would protect the grandfather’s rights to the land (19). Ned Brown continues:

So my grandfather never talked about this thing. But I hear a lot of others – outsiders – talking about it. ‘Cos it is believed that it was part of the diamond that Te Kooti used – to go through the dense bush at Te Wera. And those that followed him saw it. It was in the form of a lamb: the diamond. Some say that it is a portion, or part of it broken off from that, and given to my grandfather to bring back and plant it on Maungahaumi[a]. That is the mauri, to hold and preserve the family in the years to come. It was told to Te Hira’s father, old Pera Uetuku Tamanui. Te Kooti said to him, “You can sell the rest of Mangatu, but don’t ever sell the mountain. Hold the mountain. Because that mountain in days to come, well, your great-great-grandchildren will have a footing. It’s better that than having no land.” (20)

As Binney notes, this story establishes the family’s relationship both to the prophet and the land. Te Kooti bestowed his protection upon the family and in this telling the diamond, which is symbolic of this protection, is identified with the sacrificial Lamb of God. The multitude of meanings invested in the diamond reflect the hybrid nature of the Ringatu church founded by Te Kooti. Binney writes (1987: 20):

It is not only an image of hidden wealth, or power to be recovered in “the days to come”. It recreates the quintessential image for the Maori world, Te Ao Marama, the world of light and knowledge, and it specifically asserts through its biblical reference the salvation of the people in the “days to come”.

As diamonds are not found naturally in New Zealand the origin of the diamond remains uncertain. Binney identifies several imaginative sources; these include the possibility that the North American legend of the diamond hidden in the land, which had been retold by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1851 as “”, may have circulated and been adapted either by Te Kooti or his followers. Alternatively, the narrative of the Maori culture hero Tawhaki, who is believed to have brought back the first whatu kura, precious stones, used in the East Coast to “seal scholars” knowledge may be cited as a source for the “diamond”. Some narratives state that scholars had to search for tiny stones, usually white or red, and then swallow them to seal their knowledge (Binney, 1999: 229). In some whare wananga (Maori schools of learning) a stone was used to keep the rhythm of the sacred teachings e.g., karakia, whakapapa, to aid memory and to seal the knowledge in the student’s mind. Binney continues to explain how in exile on Wharekauri in 1868, “Te Kooti set the prisoners a riddle to resolve before their escape: how to eat a small white stone that he said had been revealed to him. The solution, to pound the stone and share it, bonded the prisoners and sealed their grasp of the escape plan” (1999: 229). The diamond is therefore symbolic of land, knowledge and solidarity: three key aspects of the Ringatu movement.

Rua Kenana, according to Iharaira (Israelite) narratives is recorded as ascending to the summit of his mother’s tribal mountain, Maunga Pohatu. Whilst at the summit the diamond of Te Kooti is said to have been revealed to him:

This bright stone remains covered and protected by Te Kooti’s shawl (horo), just as Tane’s younger brother covered the bright stars with his mats (whara), before he gave the stars to Tane to create the skies [...]. In the Tuhoe narrative, Rua is the last to have seen the diamond on the mountain. It is sometimes said to be hidden within one of the three strangely coloured lakes on the mountain’s plateau, and in some versions the diamond was revealed to Rua by Whaitiri, the grandmother of Tawhaki, who is also ancestress of the Tuhoe people. In all versions, Rua encountered Whaitiri on the mountain’s summit. She is described, at first, as disguised in rags, but revealing herself to be like “an angel”, possessing wings, and as “more or less Rua’s sister [...]. (Binney, 1999: 228-229)

This is one telling of the story but there are several local variations. In her article “” Binney contrasts Te Puhi Tatu’s version (daughter in law of Pinepine, Rua’s first wife) and Heta Rua’s. In both narratives Whaitiri is present but in the former Christ is also present with his “sister” (“yuahine”), Whaitiri, on the mountain top (25).

In , Artemis and Tamatea ascend Maunga Haumia. It is on the summit of this mountain that Artemis, Tamatea’s grandmother, “uncovered” the diamond. By looking on the precious stone Tamatea glimpses a world beyond his own:

I saw into the geological structures of the earth, and the diamond sparkling structure of the mountains, Maunga Pohatu, Munga Haumia and of Paparatu, were one and the same with the gleaming cellular structure of my body (293).

In this section of Ihimaera draws a number of parallels between Tamatea, Rua, Te Kooti and Tawhaki. The matriarch in her relation to Tamatea and her love of opera is aligned with Tawhaki’s grandmother, “Whaitiri”, who appears in the guise of an “angel” singing “ageless music” ( 294). Further parallels between the elision of Maunga Pohatu and Maunga Haumia establish Artemis and Tamatea in the myth cycle of the diamond of Te Kooti. By being prefigured in Rua and Whaitiri, just as Tawhaki prefigured Te Kooti, their mana is presented as equal to that of their spiritual ancestors. Ihimaera leaves his readers with no doubt as to the power of the mana at stake in and .

In keeping with the religious blending of the prophetic movements, Ihimaera includes references to Christianity in the revelation of the diamond to Tamatea. In the Judeo-Christian theological conception of the world, mountains are viewed as marking the meeting place of heaven and earth. It is on the “mountain of God” that Moses’ destiny was told to him and it is also here that God revealed the Covenant to him. Likewise, Tamatea undergoes a spiritual awakening on top of a mountain.

When Tamatea receives the diamond he claims to have seen “the pillars of the sky” ( 292) which evoke the images of the “pillar of cloud” and the “pillar of fire” which guided Moses out of Egypt towards the land of Canaan. Furthermore, Tamatea has “looked into the faces of the gods” and not been blinded ( 294), just as Moses looked upon God whilst on the summit of the “mountain of God” (Exodus 33:20-23). Ihimaera appears to be implying that, like Moses, and like Te Kooti and Rua Kenana, Tamatea shares a special relationship with his gods. Tamatea’s crusade to have the land returned to its Maori owners is therefore made to appear divinely endorsed.

Ihimaera retells the story of Rua and Te Kooti’s diamond in (129-132). In this version Ihimaera conflates several narrative discourses: Iharaira narratives which in themselves blend Maori mythology and Christianity, are interspersed with folklore and allusions to the Arthurian legend.

This is not the only reference to the Arthurian legend – see (418). The lifting of the mate at the end of the novel is compared to the coming of the spring to the wasteland. This suggests the epic nature of the tale and alludes to the cycle of death and resurrection which is evident in both the Christian and Maori perceptionof the world. Christ was “reborn”, as were the prophets. The mauri of the land in the Place of the Willows is also representative of this cyclical view of life.

Here is an extract:

And when he saw the diamond, Rua knew that there was no going back to his old life. For this was the same diamond that Te Kooti had spoken about. It was the diamond that sometimes allowed itself to be seen and sometimes hid itself. Sometimes, sailors would see it like a beacon shining from Maungapohatu like a star. “What’s that?” a sailor might ask. “Why that is Te Kooti’s diamond”, would be the answer. Often, a ship would become so fascinated by the glorious light that it would sail toward the siren star. But the closer it got the further away the star shone until, with a wink, it would disappear.

From that time forth, Rua knew he was the one. The diamond was like the sword in the stone. It was like the star that announced the birth of Christ at Bethlehem.

Then Gabriel left, and in his place a Maori woman appeared from out of the mist. Her long black hair gleamed in the first shafts of the sunlight. She was dressed in rags. But when she took off her rags Rua and Pinepine saw her glowing wings and knew she was also an angel. (129-130)

The imagery of the diamond appearing like a star drawing in sailors from the sea derives from an oral narrative identified by Binney in , told by Heta Rua, Rua’s son (p.508). Again, we see the process of spiritual rebirth, the acknowledgment that the life of the chosen one will never be the same again. The presence of Whaitiri is also described. However, the inclusion of popular legend and the reference to the European Arthurian saga illustrate how myth narratives are interpreted according to the present times. Such eclectic use of sources may also reflect upon Rua’s own borrowings from international events reported in the .

Rua Kenana was a regular reader of the . The walls of his home and surrounding buildings at Maai were papered with the photographic images taken from the magazine. Binney identifies how Rua rekindled the stories of Te Kooti’s diamond in 1905, and suggests that his intended purpose to use the diamond (which he had somehow in his own possession) to buy back New Zealand from King Edward in 1906, was based upon the case of the Cullinan diamond reported in the magazine in January of 1905. The South African Cullinan diamond, or “God’s Stone” as it was called by the Boers, after much public discussion and parliamentary debate, was offered, in 1907, to King Edward VII as a statement of Boer loyalty. Binney notes how Rua appears to have pre-empted this decision and in his pilgrimage to Gisborne in 1906 planned, likewise, to give the diamond to the King. However, Rua’s “gift” was intended to “buy back” the land “given” to the Crown in 1840. The impetus behind Rua’s actions was claimed by him to be a revelation received on the 12th April 1906:

On that day it was revealed; on June 25th I will ascend the throne, the King will arrive at Turanga [Gisborne]. (Binney 1999: 231)

The King never arrived, and although some of Rua’s followers reinterpreted the prophecy as indicating that Rua himself was the King, others in Poverty Bay began to lose faith in him.

Judith Binney explains how the narratives which grew up around Te Kooti and Rua Kenana were “brought forth to help make sense of their political decisions and to guide the choices they make” (1999: 235). She goes on to explain that the stories were told to “evaluate contemporary political, spiritual and cultural problems in the light of the people’s past experiences (1999: 235). In and , Ihimaera incorporates some of the principal narratives that surround the lives of the prophets into his own story about the Mahana clan for similar reasons. He takes the old narratives and couches them in a late twentieth century context.

The narratives about the diamond of Te Kooti are concerned with the retention of spiritual and cultural integrity, leadership and the land. Whoever holds the diamond of Te Kooti is charged with the responsibility of protecting tribal land. In and the diamond passes from Artemis to Tamatea. Both these characters interpret their possession of the diamond as a sign not only to protect the tribal land that remains but to continue the political fight begun by Te Kooti and Wi Pere in the 1860s to have confiscated land returned to their people.

The history of the area in question in the two novels is given, if in a fractured manner, by Ihimaera during the course of the narrative action. For much of the information on land confiscation Ihimaera has used J. B. Mackay’s and Keith Sorrenson’s entry on “” in the .

Mackay’s text has been extensively used by Ihimaera in the section on Te Kooti in Act Two of . In Act Three (238-244) Ihimaera uses Mackay’s chapter entitled “” (305-309) alongside Sorrenson’s essay. Ihimaera’s failure to acknowledge Sorrenson as a source sparked controversy – see “” by Andrew Johnston, , 26 Nov. 1989:1.

The acres of Maori land which Tamatea informs the Prime Minister at the end of were “taken in error”, refer to a real section of land which entered the Crown’s hands after the Land Wars of the 1860s. Tamatea is referring to the 26,161 acres of land deemed by the Crown Commission in 1920 to have been wrongly taken by the government after the Hau hau uprisings in 1869.

See Julia Calvert “” PhD Thesis (48-52) for a more detailed account of the area in question.

Since 1869 there have been numerous protests and commissions into the confiscation. Several petitions were filed by the Whanau-A-Kai in 1925,’26,’27,’29,’30. Whanau-A-Kai and Rongowhakaata land grievances remain to this day. They stand alongside numerous other land claims currently being made to the Waitangi Tribunal.

In both and characters from Te Whanau-A-Kai, petition the government for land which has not been rightfully returned nor adequately compensated for (244; 356). This is why the matriarch takes her “ope” to the Wellington hui – to demand that the Prime Minister “finally settle the account and return the land to its rightful owners” ( 244). Tamatea, likewise, nearly thirty years later petitions the government for exactly the same reason.

Tamatea is placed within a line of leaders who fight for the return of their land – the diamond works to symbolize their historical and spiritual connection. At the end of the two novels the “diamond of Te Kooti” passes out of Tamatea’s hands to the runanga (tribal committees), ( 417). The kaupapa of this body remains the same as before: to reclaim ancestral lands, “always to fight and keep on fighting until it is done, generation after generation” ( 418). Likewise, it is to this purpose that Ihimaera’s novels are dedicated.

and illustrate the constant theme of Ihimaera’s work to interpret and reinterpret the world from a Maori perspective by using the past as a guide to the future. By incorporating the narratives which surround the lives of Te Kooti and Rua Kenana into the two novels, he demonstrates how fiction writing by contemporary Maori authors contributes to the historical narrative of political protest against Maori land alienation.

"A Straight Steal": "" and Maurice Gee's . Vivien van Rij

“,” first published in 1936 and since then frequently anthologised, is one of New Zealand’s best-loved stories. It made a significant contribution to the reputation of its author, Frank Sargeson, who following Katherine Mansfield’s death was considered to be New Zealand’s most important writer of short fiction. Narrated by the middle-aged Freddy Coleman, the story tells how old Mrs Crawley, bent double from years of poverty and toil, sits night after night in the local shelter shed. She is waiting for the last bus and the return of her long-absent son, Joe, who never returns. Coleman wonders if Joe is in gaol or has escaped to America. He recalls how even during his own (and Joe's) childhood, Mrs Crawley was a pitiful figure who had been abandoned by her husband. Clad in a man's old hat and coat, she would scavenge for pipis, mussels, and kauri gum on the beach near her tumble down bach. She had three daughters as well as Joe, but Joe (whom she nursed past infancy) was her favorite child.

was first published in 1994. It is one of ten novels for children by distinguished New Zealand novelist, Maurice Gee, who combines writing for children with writing for adults. went on to receive several awards and international acclaim, and because of its violent subject matter it was also the subject of much debate. However, in spite of the attention given to this novel, a connection to the Sargeson story has gone unnoticed. As Geehimself has pointed out in a recent interview, Sargeson's story is the source of his portrayal in of old Mrs Muskie, the widowed mother of Herbert (the eponymous "fat man"). The reader learns how every weekday she walks into town, spends a quarter hour shopping, and waits for ten minutes on the railway station platform for the arrival of the train from Auckland – only (after scanning the passengers) to go home again. She dreams always of the return of Herbert who thirteen years earlier went to America and became a gangster. Herbert Muskie has two sisters and a brother, but during childhood it was he who was his mother's favorite, a fact that is underlined after her death when he asks his wife Bette to sing "Old Fashioned Mother" (112):

How well I remember in years long gone by, Together we sat, she and I, More like two old sweethearts than mother and son, In days long since gone with a sigh . . .

Gee has described his borrowing from Sargeson as "a straight steal", and the similarities between his story of Mrs Muskie and Sargeson's "" are indeed obvious. Each mother seeks to embellish an empty existence by imagining her son's return. Particularly interesting is the way that both Sargeson and Geedepict a lover-like relationship between mother and son and, through the use of a first person narrator who is intrusive yet not directly engaged in the action, create a narrative distance between it and the reader.

Further similarities are also interesting. Although Sargeson leaves the plot details uncertain whilst Gee’s narrator reveals far more, each son is obviously of dubious repute. Joe has a possibly criminal career whilst Herbert is a thief and worse. He returns home secretly and steals his mother’s jewels. He then stages for his mother a heroic return by train before going on to murder her. At the same time, Sargeson’s narrator is a fully defined character who is fallible whilst Gee’s narrator is enigmatic and authoritative, but both narrators modify the stories.

To explain: Sargeson's Coleman is a character in the story. Driven by personal curiosity, he learns from the bus-driver that Joe has not visited his mother for years. The knowledge causes him to realise that his own “affairs of the heart” have been “petty and mean” but this is an insight that is then undercut by his contempt for the young people around him. Coleman’s final reflection that Mrs Crawley's love for her son is "a terrible thing" and also "so beautiful" (51) therefore seems to be an attempt to gain self importance through vicariously participating in the tragedy. Ironically it emphasises by contrast his detachment and real pettiness, and how very tragic Mrs Crawley’s life has been.

Gee's narrator has an intimate knowledge of the thoughts and feelings of Colin (the child protagonist and hero of the story). This suggests that the narrator could be an older version of Colin and perhaps also a version of Gee. Indeed, Gee has frequently acknowledged the use in his writing for children of autobiographical material and has drawn extensively on his boyhood in Henderson, Auckland, for settings, characters, and events. However, the narrator refers to Colin in the third person and thus seems enigmatic and more authoritative. The narrator is therefore able to distance juvenile readers from the unpleasant subject matter by stepping in and reassuring them that this is after all just a story: “One more chapter will finish our story. A night and a day and it was over – Colin, Verna, Lauie and the rest were free of the fat man. He nearly dragged them under but not quite” (119). As in the Sargeson story, the distance between the narrator and the “affair” between mother and son emphasises the tragedy of their lives.

Significantly, when Gee's narrator (like Coleman) learns from another character of the son's staged return (a non-return in the Sargeson version), that other character turns out to be a "Mrs Sargent." Given Gee's debt to Sargeson at this very point, the name seems to be a coded acknowledgement. Indeed, Mrs Sargent may be a version of Sargeson – Certainly she is a storyteller, although her sentimentality contrasts to Sargeson, the clear-sighted author. Also interesting is the fact that where Gee draws on Sargeson and attributes the material to a character that brings him closer to Sargeson's method, he does not move out. We are still aware of the self-conscious narrator who is registering that this is a story (74):

It was, Mrs Sargent said, the loveliest thing she'd ever seen, it made her cry. It went like this:

Herbert Muskie and Grandpa Potter drove out to Sunnyvale Station – just a little hut it was on the near side of the creek, with Sunnyvale painted over the door – and Herbert Muskie waited there while Grandpa drove the Buick back to Loomis. Mrs Muskie came into town not long after that, keeping to her timetable – grocer, butcher, station – and when the three o'clock train pulled in from Auckland she stood up as she always did and watched to see who stepped down from the carriages. When it was Herbert Muskie, grinning, easy, with a cigarette in his mouth and his hat tipped on the back of his head, she let out a shriek. She almost fell over – did a sideways stagger and held herself up against a goods trolley standing there.

Herbert Muskie ground his cigarette out with the toe of this shoe and went up to her and said, 'Here I am, Mum. I've come home,' and he took her in his arms (Mrs Sargent wipes her eye) and kissed her so her hat tipped backwards at the same angle as his. Then he led her down the ramp to his waiting car.

Sargeson and Gee writing fifty-eight years apart, with one acknowledging a debt to the other, have concerns that are the same – the human condition within the setting of the Depression in New Zealand. It is their skilful handling of what could be perceived as dubious subject matter that makes both stories deeply moving.

Address at the launch of , August 28, 1992. Elizabeth Alley

[Editorial note: the material that follows is reproduced from an address given by Elizabeth Alley at the launch of the first edition of — Judith Dell Panny’s study of Janet Frame’s fiction. That book has subsequently been revised and the second edition was published in 2002. As the opening sentences make clear, Elizabeth Alley was a victim of inclement weather, and the address had to be delivered in absentia. What makes it of particular interest, though, and accounts for its reproduction here, is its inclusion of the text of a letter from Janet Frame, in which Frame recalls her sometimes ‘bruising encounters’ with critics, and records by contrast the ‘amazed gratitude’ with which she read and responded to this particular account of her work.]

Hello everyone. This is Elizabeth Alley speaking to you from Wellington. It's certainly the most bizarre book launch that I've ever not attended. I'm really sorry that the elements have beaten me and that I'm marooned in Wellington, but I'm pleased that technology has allowed the event to go ahead as planned, thanks to the co-operation of my good Dunedin colleague John Clark, who has undertaken to get this message to you tonight. I hope that you will have a good evening and a successful book launch. I wish I were there to share it with you. I hope your numbers have not been too sadly diminished.

I was both delighted and disconcerted to be asked by Dell Panny and Daphne Brasell to launch Dell's book on the fiction of Janet Frame — delighted because it's always a pleasure to welcome a new book into the world, especially when it's one that illuminates and celebrates the work of such a writer as Frame, but a little disconcerted, too, at the thought of speaking to an audience that includes so many scholars and critics and analysts of Frame's work, people whose response to her fiction has differed somewhat from my much more pragmatic journalistic one.

I thought a personal message from Janet to bring to this occasion might be in order. When I asked her what she felt about the fact of a weekend conference on her work, she answered, "Incredible!" and then added, and don't hold your breath, "Tell them I wish everyone well."

A few months ago I had the honour to receive on her behalf her honorary degree from the University of Waikato. When, in attempting to formulate my own response, I asked her what she'd have said, had she been there at the ceremony, her reply was, "Oh just, 'Thank you very much'." For a writer for whom words are the instruments of magic, she's certainly got the spare response down to a fine art, and largely, as we all know, reserves the magic for the written word.

Again, when I spoke with her about the real reason for this gathering, to launch Dell Panny's book , her reply on the telephone was similarly monosyllabic, but in the mail a day or so later came a typically thoughtful note, which I'd like to read to you. She says:

"I've often felt so misunderstood. I am always so amazed when people write from the receiving end of my work and say what they do. Some comments are pertinent, but many are strange, and any academic discussion seems like another world to me, being on the originating end. I have not always read essays on my writing. Often I've declined with fury or perplexity or a sense of disbelief or an unwillingness to accept what I know is the truth.

Those early bruising encounters with the critics who described as "unreadable in the worst sense" or, on the other hand, "a work of genius", were both unnecessarily condemning and fulsome. But I have grown up since then, and, over the years, there have been more perceptive, penetrating reviews, with, in some cases, understanding and imagination beyond anything I might ever have hoped to have.

Judith Dell Panny's book, , [she goes on] as a result of extensive reading and scholarship, arouses in me a feeling of amazed gratitude. So often the author complains, with justification, that her books are not even properly read by the critic, but Dell's book is different. It has a new and original perspective and approaches the work from angles that I hope will help others to find their way through my fiction in ways that are rewarding and enjoyable. That is really, ultimately all I want.

I thank Dell for noting that, far from being a random explosion or outburst, my books are the result of patterning and purpose. Patterns are my absorption - and my everlasting love and hate of and struggle with the words that compose the pattern. Many thanks to anyone who reads my writing and especially to Dell for spending time and brain and insight in thinking and writing her thoughts and opinions."

And that's the end of her letter.

It seems to me that one of the crosses that Janet Frame has had to bear and has perhaps even chosen to carry, is what might be seen as the gaps that she feels exist between writer and critic and reader. The extent of the gaps, of course, depends on one's own approach to the work. There's little if any dissent or confusion about the magic of the language, "the language that is all we have for the delicacy and truth of telling, the words that are the sole heroes and heroines of fiction", to quote from .

But then there is also the personal archaeology and the journeys of self discovery, the chilling truth of her logic, her imaginative fantasy places and worlds of myth and modern day reality, the perilously fragile dividing line she draws between the worlds of sanity and "the bent hairpins of unreason", the dark recesses of the mind and the creative but shaded probings into the labyrinths of memory, which few of us are privileged to understand, except in our own unique, but often ill devised ways. These are the gaps, which I think Dell Panny's book will help to close.

What Frame has described as her kind of inward sun, that is, the bright imaginary light by which she sees things, has been further illuminated for us, her readers, by Dell's meticulous scholarship, her painstaking and infinitely caring reading of all of Janet Frame's major fiction, from to . A longish short story, "" about the nature of place, is tucked in alongside. And it is her approach to the work through the patternings she finds within it, the patternings which are of such supreme importance to Frame, that brings us beyond an exploration of the more obscure aspects of the work to find ourselves closer to that sometimes elusive centre.

Dell shows us that the weight of the centre, which is imperative to the ultimate understanding of Janet Frame, is inextricably linked to allegory, that 'speaking in other terms' to which Janet Frame has given a new and perhaps contemporaneous meaning. She has made it once more, though she'd abhor the term, fashionable or perhaps acceptable. In her skilful and detailed examination of each of the novels, Dell Panny reveals the clues that link the patterns of plot, situation, character or setting to either an earlier book or to myth, or to a documented sequence of events or an established idea.

In that all allegory involves concealment, Dell uncovers as many clues as are necessary to expose the irony and the humour, but still leaves sufficient space for each reader to make our own connections between images and ideas and to draw our own conclusions. She focuses our attention on the web-like network of complex motivations underlying the surface of the fiction. She adds substance to the shadows and to dream and light in ways that explain their recurrence as motifs in the fiction and shows how they fit into the picture of allegorical patterning.

This, for me, is the ultimate excitement of this book. It is a work full of ideas, which is appropriate for an exploration of the work of a novelist who has done perhaps more than any other to define the novel as a forum for ideas, that one commodity, dare I say, that remains elusive to some of our fiction writers.

Dell's work seduces her readers to a further closer reading of the Frame fiction with the purpose of plumbing the subtleties of the eternal patterns of allegory, which armed with the new knowledge her scholarship affords us will be an infinitely rewarding and enriching experience.

So I am of course really pleased and feel very privileged to be able to commend this book to you, albeit from afar. I'm especially pleased to be able to welcome a book that I know Janet Frame is personally so happy with. is a remarkable contribution to our literature and one that will hold its head high among all that has and will continue to be written about Janet Frame. I have warm pleasure in declaring it alive and well and truly in this world.

Theatre, culture and community. A review of . By John Smythe. Victoria University Press, 2004. A Review Article by Roger Robinson

I read in New York City, immersing myself in the story of what was for many years the lone professional theatre in a small community, while living in a huge community that has literally hundreds of professional theatres. In the weeks it took to move pleasurably through John Smythe’s 500-page narrative, I saw plays that ranged from the luridly high-tech 42nd Street tourist extravaganza , through a brilliant dramatization of in a dingy loft off 10th Avenue, an evening of five new one-acters in a new theatre dedicated to work by women playwrights, and the gay tragedy , to a minimal-budget in a fetidly hot West Side church with an audience of five (three after the interval – including me, for I couldn’t walk out on a production whose Malvolio was a dead ringer for Rob Muldoon).

You could go to the theatre every night in New York and still not see half of what is on offer. But the big-city/small town contrast is less clear-cut than it might seem. Some Off and Off-off Broadway venues would make the Star Boating Club or the old Harris Street Circa look lavishly appointed. I saw an inventive in a pokey basement in the Village that set us shuddering in our seats every few minutes when a subway train thundered past on the other side of a thin wall. In New York, as in Wellington, theatre is hard, dedicated work in usually unprepossessing conditions, for poor pay, demanding employers, and critical audiences, and with absolutely no guarantees, financial or otherwise. Most of the small New York groups I’ve supported would look with envy at the facilities and relatively loyal audiences enjoyed by Downstage and Circa. In one grimy venue (I was there for ) young actors were swabbing out the audience men’s room before going on.

I open with this digression in order to make a central point. No account of New York’s cultural life could omit its theatres. That has been true for over 100 years, and is still true. Even in this age when we’re assaulted by entertainment options that are more accessible, instant, and high-tech, theatres have kept an important cultural place. Yes, they still offer the same primitive entertainment of a few people walking about and talking in front of a lot of people who have to sit still and not talk. Yet however lumbering that process seems, it manages to stay on the beat of the changing pulse of culture. Theatres remain essential to the lifeblood of thought, ideas and discourse by which vigorous communities live. Perhaps they win that place simply because it takes some effort to attend, or because their entertainment is live, or their experience communal, or because their long tradition raises expectations – I don’t know.

In New York, that process derives from fifty or more professional dramas available at any one time. In Wellington, the capital city of a culturally developed nation, Downstage carried that mighty responsibility alone for thirteen years. Then Circa was created from its rib, as its helpmeet, complement, and contender, and now shares the work, as do Taki Rua and Bats on a much smaller scale. But that still only makes four, at best. Whatever your views on the current theatre scene in Wellington and New Zealand more widely, the historical achievement of Downstage is irrefutable. It was Downstage that took the initiative, laid down the policies, and won the audiences. It was Downstage that created locally-based professional theatre, sustained it, and made it essential to the community’s culture. It carried that weight alone for thirteen years. A pity Downstage has never yet produced , or it could say, Alone I did it.

Put it this way. If you see a poor production in New York you simply forget it by going to something better two nights later. Your friends will usually have seen different plays. You accept that you simply can’t see everything significant. In Wellington, each production is a talking point for weeks, and becomes part of the city’s permanent record – as this book vividly shows. We care more than New Yorkers care who’s in and who’s out. Directors come and go in smaller New York companies like English soccer managers, and nobody outside notices. But in Wellington, the wounds of some appointments and departures are still bleeding publicly decades later.

Only imagine Wellington in the 1970s and 1980s if the Downstage experiment had foundered. Having moved to the city in 1975, I can attest personally to Downstage’s importance to one life here (and I have never sought to be more than an obscure member of the audience, so have no vested interest). The 1970s, especially the last years of the decade, were a cultural spring in Wellington, and Downstage was a flourishing centre of that growth. Productions like Colin McColl’s of Brian McNeill’s , Mervyn Thompson’s of , and , and Anthony Taylor’s of seemed to affirm, with new Wellington books like Lauris Edmond’s , Alistair Te Ariki Campbell’s , Ian Wedde’s or Maurice Gee’s , that we were living in a true cultural capital. In retrospect they are all milestones in a remarkable era of development.

In the 1980s, though there was less sense of breaking new ground, Downstage achieved the equally important task of consolidating what had been gained, sustaining a professional quality that would have done any company theatre in the world proud. It’s even more difficult to pick a few, so again I excuse my choice as partly personal: Phillip Mann’s productions of , and Greg McGee’s ; George Webby’s of Renée’s ; and the vintage era of Colin McColl, with, among much else, , , and (at the onset of the 1990s) . That unforgettable production, still the best Ibsen I have seen anywhere in the world, is the one deservedly chosen for John Smythe’s front cover. (An alternative explanation for this choice could perhaps be that the image of Catherine Wilkin dandling her revolver is apt for a theatre that was about to try to blow its own brains out.)

Which brings me to the book. Books about theatres are usually not much more than glorified souvenir programmes. Their appeal is essentially nostalgic. Smythe has chosen to write something much more substantial, a genuine history, setting himself the unenviable task of telling the story of all the complex and often conflicting components of theatre – plans, bookings and cancellations, managing boards, artistic directors, actors, lights, sound, costumes, front of house, box office, audiences, reviews, cash-flow, cats, and much more. His book is basically a compelling narrative, production by production, director by director. The choice of play and stories behind each production, the making of each drama, the response of the reviewers, the real people who made Downstage their work, the percentage of seats sold in each season, these are the things at centre stage, for these are the reality of a medium whose business is unreality. Smythe’s narrative remains interesting even when you missed a particular production. When it deals with those that you saw and still remember, it’s positively gripping.

Excellent as narrative history, Smythe’s story does not go a lot beyond. He lets the meaning of the story largely speak for itself. With kiwi modesty and kiwi taciturnity, he never trumpets the theatre’s creative achievements, until a two-page epilogue. The kind of argument about communal culture that I sketched above is not part of the book’s scope. That is not a weakness, but it does leave room for some later, more interpretatively ambitious analysis of what Downstage did to change New Zealand’s thinking about the arts - our thinking about New Zealand drama, to start with.

Nor does Smythe speculate about Downstage’s contribution to the phenomenon (for that is what it is) of Wellington’s transformation since 1963 from a dingy and culturally irrelevant public-service puddle into a hotbed of varied and vigorous culture with a global reputation. It could be argued that Downstage initiated and led that transformation. Let’s just settle for a significant role, and await the book that analyses and affirms how it happened, and what it means.

So Smythe gives us a story, not an analysis. And it’s great reading – a rattling good yarn of thespian adventures, full of heroes and villains and unruly crews, voyages into the unknown, storms and near-wrecks, fight scenes and mutinies, mad domineering skippers, hated ones forced to walk the plank, and hordes of one-eyed accountants swarming up the rigging with calculators between their teeth. The book is a lively and often delightful chronicle of the colourful life (and death-defying escapes) of a fine theatre. To put it seriously, the narrative is a remarkable achievement in reconstructing, in such telling detail, events within what is, after all, a closed institution.

It is even more remarkable in the calm lucidity with which it summarizes the many debates and arguments and punch-ups that have inevitably scarred the theatre’s history. These are matters that, by the very nature of the people who work in theatre, were even at the time subject to histrionically rival interpretations. Smythe remains as objective and judicious as it is possible to be. If he tends sometimes to seem too discreet, too oblique (on the egregious censorship of Mervyn Thompson in 1984, for instance), that is in consequence of what seems a considered policy of eschewing the passionate hyperboles that enliven and bedevil most discourse about theatre.

Smythe is excellent on many phases of Downstage’s story – so excellent, that I must be very selective. He is excellent on its origins, the creation of four talented and versatile men in that era when creative kiwi initiative was beginning to turn New Zealand’s pasty cultural fifties into its pulsating seventies. Martyn Sanderson, Tim Eliott, Peter Bland and Harry Serensin - their story would make a great four-hander play, and Smythe tells it with insight and vigour. He is excellent also on the upsurge in the theatre’s commercial success and artistic importance under Mervyn Thompson, who probably more and certainly earlier than any other Downstage director understood what cultural vitality means and how the drama can promote it.

He is excellent on the vintage period under Colin McColl, and on the crisis that followed in the early 1990s, when the new official state religion of worship of the bottom line nearly killed the theatre’s spirit. He taught me a lot about the detailed financial realities of a theatre, and the policy pressures that can be applied by funding bodies supposedly serving the public interest.

He tells many good small stories, too, without ever resorting to insider thespian gossip. His anecdotes remind us (the audience) of those theatre moments that we all remember with most gleeful affection – ironically, moments when things went wrong, and we were reminded that we were witnessing a risky live performance. Peter Bland falls down a hole and breaks his crown, an unscripted Wellington policeman’s helmet rises demonically through the stage, a drunk or poisoned rat turns Hamlet’s killing of Polonius into high comedy, French revolutionaries clash with the audience and bottles and ribs get broken, cats walk on and off as theatre cats always do, actors perform brilliantly and behave badly, lines are forgotten and invented. And so on. It’s a page turner.

Smythe gives us great riches, and it is ungrateful to mention gaps. But it is the reviewer’s job. I’d like to see more space and credit given to the work of the selfless supporters and volunteers who sustain such a theatre and who have sometimes literally kept it alive – from politicians like Alan Highett to donors and volunteers like Constance Scott Kirkcaldie. They are more than important in the story of a theatre’s relation to its community. I’d like to see more recognition of the special relationship between this theatre and the university, one that has been sustained and creative (in the 1970s it gave Downstage informed and lasting audiences as well as board members as good as Don McKenzie and directors as good as Phillip Mann). I’d like to see more attention to the case for making Downstage a national theatre, as the discussion will rise again sooner or later. And I’d like to see more writing about drama as resonant, intelligent, and vital as some passages that are quoted here from Bruce Mason and Mervyn Thompson.

I have very few complaints, considering what an ambitious and complex task this book is. One is that it relies too heavily on inadequate reviews (Bruce Mason’s the shining exception). In discussing the various crises and public debates about theatre, Smythe also resorts too often to citing at length feeble thinking and worse writing from self-appointed experts, especially on . And there is an ill judged jab at the 1988 Katherine Mansfield centennial celebrations, which in fact were successful for international literary scholarship as well as local culture. If Wellington’s main theatre couldn’t make a buck out of the centenary of the city’s greatest writer, it has only itself to blame. Smythe quotes an uninformed sneer of the kind that he scrupulously avoids about theatre.

In almost every other way this is the best history of a theatre that I’ve read. It is engagingly written, scrupulously researched, enthrallingly informative, very well indexed, pleasingly designed, and amply and vividly illustrated. For, to adapt Alice in Wonderland, what’s the use of a theatre book without pictures in it? Theatre, after all, means Seeing Place.

Best of all, at the back of the book there is a comprehensive and detailed list of every Downstage production and event. That is alone worth the price. It is an archival resource that makes this book indispensable for any future work on New Zealand theatre, as well as irresistible dipping for Downstage fans.

And it is irresistible. Theatre would seem to be among the most ephemeral of art forms – as transient as cake making. By definition each performance is unique, each production irrecoverable. Yet perversely we find ourselves compelled to try to recall the best of them from the recesses of memory. I’m not an extreme theatre obsessive, but I keep and browse old programmes, good reviews, sometimes even ticket stubs (which I used to muse over surreptitiously during particularly tedious university committee meetings). John Smythe, as I have said, has made this book substantial and informative, much more than nostalgia. But there is still nostalgia in it, as there should be. For those who have lived for any time in Wellington since 1964, Downstage has been part of the formation of our minds, and of our community. This book helps to remind us how, and gives new life to the memories.

Reviewed by Gaylene Kendrick. . J. M. R. Owens. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2004.

In the , John Owens describes Richard Taylor as a missionary, naturalist and writer. On the surface he seems like just another missionary type, typical of the nineteenth century New Zealand story. He becomes more interesting perhaps because of the times within which he lived; pre Treaty through to post wars. More so, because he began his missionary career in the Far North and was involved at Waitangi with the historic signing of the Treaty. He also spent the majority of his life at Whanganui, arriving in 1843 with a young family in tow and remaining there until his death thirty years later. Whanganui was at this time an important part of the colonial story being a Wakefield settlement and situated at the crossroads of some major tribal groups. Furthermore the river was the main entrance to the interior and a major ‘highway’ for overland travel from Wellington to Auckland.

A scan of Taylor’s contemporaries confirms his importance to the New Zealand story. Octavius Hadfield, Bishop Selwyn, William Yates and the Reverends Williams to name a few from the Anglican world, he also knew some of the Catholic clergy although sectarian prejudice on his part did not encourage closeness. Furthermore, he entertained and knew personally New Zealand and Australian Governors, such as Hobson, Eyre, Gore Browne and Grey. With Governor FitzRoy, Taylor was none too impressed mostly because his time as Governor was spent negotiating between Maori and settlers firstly in the Wairau and then in the Far North. He therefore had no time to engage with the troubles besetting Whanganui that Taylor was grappling with. Taylor expected more of him and thus was doubly impressed with Governor Grey when his reaction to a call for peace in the Whanganui resulted in an immediate visit by the Governor and his wife. Donald McLean had become quite a close friend of the Taylor family during his time as Sub-Protector of Aboriginies in Taranaki and had travelled with Taylor on trips into the interior. However, Taylor blamed him for the outbreak of war in Taranaki in 1860 and his friendship with him waned after this time.

Taylor became friendly in later life with William Fox and he knew the Wakefields. Taylor visited and at times stayed with Te Heu Heu the great Ngati Tuwharetoa chief and Hone Heke of Nga Puhi whom he always held in fond regard. He was on personal terms with all of the great Whanganui chiefs, from Hoani Hipango, Te Anaua, Te Mawae, Pehi Turoa and Topine Te Mamaku. Taylor was on the periphery of the developing King Movement in the 1850s. He knew and had met many of the main players such as Tamihana Te Rauparaha, Wiremu Tamihana and had attended at least one of the Kohimarama meetings. In fact this book reads like a veritable Who’s Who of New Zealand in the nineteenth century.

Owens’ biography allows us to indulge in a fascination with this stubborn and sometimes narrow minded man as we read of his role in race relations both locally around the Whanganui River region and nationally. It might be a surprise to discover that the fortifying of Wanganui town may well have occurred at his behest; that the saving of the town and its settlers had as much to do with his work as that of local Putikiwaranui Māori who sponsored him. Indeed it was for his work with and commitment to local Māori that Taylor is remembered with much fondness. His personal mission to ‘civilise’ rather than ‘Christianise’ and his concern at keeping the peace led to considerable development of the local Māori economy, literacy and ultimately his role as mediator. His efforts in christianising Māori were also considerable although he had less success with the local Pākehā population.

Throughout the turbulence of the early settlement years of the Wanganui town and the developing years of the young nation, Richard Taylor kept an extensive diary reaching fourteen volumes. He published two books and it is as this reliable chronicler of events that Taylor inhabits a vital role as witness to the life and times of mid nineteenth century New Zealand.

John Owens’ book is as much about nineteenth century New Zealand. Indeed the two are inextricably entwined. Owens accepts the challenge to present both Taylor and history in this book and does a fine job. In fact I felt bereft when Taylor left New Zealand for the occasional visit to England and thus misses out on chunks of history in the making. This is not as bereft as I felt at the end of the book when Taylor succumbs to mortality in 1873 and we are left without a pilot to guide us through the remaining years of the century.

In addition to Taylor’s role as mediator, the book provides a chronological journey through his formative years in Britain, his move into missionary work, marriage and then immigration to New Zealand. It is packed with photographs and sketches of Taylor and his family, the places he visited and the people he knew. Some of them are familiar but many provide a fresh look at this interesting man and his life.

Owens’ work is largely based on Taylor’s own writings, but is amply augmented by the diary of his daughter Laura, and formal correspondence between government and church officials. There is also a personal connection made with descendants who provide oral testimony and who made available photographs and memorabilia; in particular the cousins Richard and Dr Richard Taylor who clearly made a great impression on Owens.

with its extensive research in New Zealand, Britain and Australia is a life’s work for Owens and is a work of considerable passion. As a Missionary Historian, Owens has long had a particular interest in events and people surrounding the church and its work in New Zealand. Whilst he does address Taylor’s short comings when he feels they should be mentioned, he never evaluates Taylor in an historical sense and we are left as readers trying to decide where this man fits into the big picture.

Taylor’s empathy and understanding with Māori is evident early on, and it is clear that he is held in considerable regard by Māori of the Whanganui. It may be though that Taylor has a bigger role in the colonisation of the Whanganui than has hitherto been acknowledged and a final conclusion on his place in time is yet to be made.

Nonetheless, this book satisfies the reader on many fronts and one is most certainly left with a sense of who the Reverend Richard Taylor was and why he did what he did. This is a book that takes its place comfortably on the shelves of 19th century New Zealand Histories and those focussed upon missionary work in the early contact period.

Reviewed by Andrew Little. A. C. Wilson. Wellington: Victoria University Press and the New Zealand Institute for International Affairs, 2004.

By 1950, the USSR was almost at its zenith. Its role alongside the allied forces at the end of World War II had won it a grudging and temporary reprieve from more hostile attention to its domestic apparatus and global intentions. In 1950 it was a world power politically, economically and intellectually.

Soviet history since October 1917, with its planned and command-driven economy (ironically the ultimate attempt at rational comprehensive decision making that underpins modern western business models today) combined with its physical size, its satellite states, and its scientific and technological advancements put this huge, single country in direct competition with the West.

By 1950 New Zealand, a nation of barely 2 million people and heavily dependent on agriculture and its principal customer the United Kingdom, seems unlikely to have been of much significance to the emerging super power. Dr A.C. Wilson’s comprehensive and highly readable account of New Zealand’s relationship with the Soviet Union reveals the relationship to be hardly one of insignificance or irrelevance. Indeed, for New Zealand the Soviet Union was an important and ever-growing export market. To illustrate, by the 1970’s the trade imbalance between the two countries was 37 to 1 in New Zealand’s favour.

The book focuses on the official (i. e. government to government) relationship. The real complexity in the relationship, however, was managing the tension created by the commercial need or desire to pursue important trade opportunities and the political need to appear to the electorate and allied states to regularly denounce the Soviet state and what it stood for. Dr Wilson’s account demonstrates the difficulty in trying to disentangle government relations from the commercial relationships and also person-to-person and other institutional relationships, principally within the trade union movement.

The New Zealand government played a critical role in fostering commercial relationships, mainly in dairy, wool and fisheries. Trade steadily grew throughout the period as indicated earlier. During the 1960’s, under Keith Holyoake’s premiership, “commercial openings were pursued more vigorously than before”.

New Zealand was part of the Western group of nations that feared or resented the growing power and influence of the USSR. After all, it represented a social and economic system and a set of values at odds with the arguably more market and freer West (ironically, during much of the time covered by the book the New Zealand economy was highly regulated and based on a high level of direct state involvement. Indeed, by the mid-1980’s, Labour Prime Minister David Lange described the New Zealand economy as having the efficiency “of a Polish shipyard”). In international fora, such as the UN General Assembly, the USSR unhesitatingly supported African and other states struggling to throw off the shackles of colonialism and to assert their independence. This invariably meant aligning against the West on many issues.

Dr Wilson carefully illustrates how successive New Zealand governments on the one hand happily promoted trade and a genuinely healthy diplomatic relationship, and on the other publicly talked up anti-Soviet rhetoric. Politicians of all hues were not immune from playing the anti-Soviet card when it suited. Whether it was National’s Sid Holland, Keith Holyoake or Rob Muldoon, or Labour’s Walter Nash, David Lange and to a lesser extent Norman Kirk and Bill Rowling, the principal role that anti-Soviet rhetoric played was to curry favour with allies and, domestically, to taint or marginalise organisations (usually trade unions, their leaders or political parties) aligned with Moscow. The height of anti-Soviet paranoia was probably evident in 1975 and the election campaign of that year with the famous Dancing Cossacks political advertising.

Perhaps the book treated a little too lightly the impact and influence of some of the non-government relationships, especially those conducted through trade unions. The influence of Soviet ideology at the time was significant and the extent of travel exchanges was also not insignificant. But then it is likely that the amount of official material (or at least disclosable material) on this aspect is small, so any oversight is understandable.

Often one way for countries of the west to demonstrate their bona fides to both the domestic audience and to allies was to put pressure on local Soviet diplomats. Although public allegations of spying were rare enough here, there were, nevertheless, some dramatic incidents. In 1962, Holyoake expelled two Soviet diplomats for spying. During Kirk’s leadership, there was the unedifying incident of the arrest and trial of Dr Bill Sutch on sedition charges.

Rob Muldoon famously expelled the Soviet Ambassador in 1980, allegedly for supplying funds to that Prime Minister’s bête noir, the Socialist Unity Party. Dr Wilson suggests the reason for this expulsion had less to do with the conveyance of funds to a political organisation and more to do with international anger at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and New Zealand’s decision not to join a trade boycott.

For David Lange, the anti-Soviet rhetoric provided a welcome counterpoint to the tensions created by his government’s anti-nuclear legislation and the concomitant pressure on the ANZUS relationship.

Dr Wilson’s account is an excellent chronological journey through the key turning points and issues of our relationship with this once powerful nation. He successfully weaves the political, diplomatic, commercial and private realms of the relationship for a very informative read.

Reviewed by Sarah Powell. Eds. Glynnis M. Cropp, Noel R. Watts, Roger D. J. Collins, and K. R. Howe. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005.

Designed to pay tribute to the remarkable life and work of John Dunmore, Professor Emeritus of French since 1984, presents fifteen essays written for the occasion by his New Zealand colleagues as well as contributions from scholars based in Australia, New Caledonia and his native France. With the exception of two anglocentric pieces, the articles each honour in some way this leading researcher’s primary interests in French explorations and encounters in New Zealand and the greater Pacific.

Glynnis Cropp’s introduction, a warm biographical account of Dunmore and his considerable achievements, is followed by a comprehensive, albeit non-exhaustive, inventory of his prolific publications.

Taking as his point of departure the discovery in Tasmania in 2003 of the site of an eighteenth-century garden, Edward Dukyer identifies Félix Delahaye, a member of D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition, as having established the plot in 1792 and then, retracing the gardener’s experiences in the Pacific, outlines his contribution to botanical knowledge.

Alan Frost’s fascinating study, “”, uncovers Captain Bligh’s abusive manipulation of his crew’s rations, here interpreted as an unorthodox punishment and indeed the catalyst of the infamous mutiny of the Bounty.

In the first of four French language essays, François Moreau adds his voice to O.H.K. Spate’s, amongst others, in highlighting the transformation of explorers’ raw, rough manuscripts into increasingly polished, ‘realistic’ and/or romantic literary narratives by armchair editors during the Enlightenment.

Christine Hemming then documents the ethnological value of Philibert Commerson’s extant notes and drawings as a ‘precious’ and ‘accurate’ record of Tahitian artefacts and pre-colonial customs. One of the reprinted plates featuring sketches of pirogues is also reproduced on the front cover, effectively evoking the ‘pacific journeys’ of the title.

Reiterating the well-known ‘extrême réserve’ of the Restauration régime (1815-1830) to support French activity in the Pacific, Christian Huetz de Lemps attributes many of the voyages undertaken during this period to the personal initiative of ambitious individuals. His essay resonates with the two preceding ones in alluding to, amongst other things, the contribution of published (doctored) accounts and drawings.

In “”, Hugh Laracy redresses the oversight of tributes to the late French océaniste by chronicling his personal life, rather than merely his productivity which, as the biographer also crucially highlights here, preserved the ‘knowability’ of the Pacific and recorded the French imperial/colonial enterprise there but did not ‘engage in criticisms’.

Jessie Munro’s slightly disjointed piece is a sad tale principally honouring Jean-Marie Grange who, recruited to New Zealand in 1861 from the Lyon-based Clercs de Saint Viateur, was left to die alone after an increasingly lonely and wretched existence, insufficiently supported by his superiors and by Bishop Pompallier.

Claiming that the role of Maori leadership is an ‘element missing’ from theories on the successful adoption of Christianity in New Zealand whilst acknowledging, paradoxically, ‘best known’ examples of indigenous missionary work, John Owens seeks to ‘redress the balance’ by examining the influence of Tauri, Hipangoand Aperahama in the Wanganui district.

In his broad survey of the little known interactions between French whalers (‘Ngati Wiwi’) and Maori, Peter Tremewan draws heavily on archival research to uncover, amongst other things, the identities of various deserters and crew members, and also to provide an appendix of Maori workers on French whaling ships.

The next essay also attends to the heretofore neglected topic of French whalers. Despite Ian Church narrowing his area of focus to Otago, there remains considerable overlap between the two essays and some duplication.

Continuing the French whaling theme, Christiane Mortelier’s highly engaging essay offers a very fine and original analysis of Jules Verne’s long misunderstood novel (1901).

Rosemary Arnoux tells the classic story of Tahiti in literary discourse, moving from Bougainville, Commerson and Moerenhout to the standard trio of Loti, Gauguin and Segalen. Her discussion of the latter, the most illuminating section, leads her to conclude on the many ‘complications’ of writing ethnographic fiction.

In “”, Raylene Ramsay adds to research suggesting possible readings of Forster’s eighteenth-century travelogues in light of postcolonial and feminist thought. Conjugating Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity with translation theory, she then presents an original examination of the re-writing and grafting of Kanak texts by (amateur) French ethnographers.

Sonia Faessel’s descriptive analysis of (2002) gives valuable insights into this complex, dialogical theatre production written conjointly by a European and a Kanak playwright.

The collection finishes with an accessible and absorbing account by botanist John Dawson of the research, past and present, conducted into New Caledonia’s rich endemic flora, ‘one of the most remarkable in the world’.

Beautifully organised to flow easily from one to another, the diverse range of essays in this attractively presented volume are a fitting homage to the doyen of Franco-Pacific studies. Dunmore’s innovative work in this field has paved the way for a new generation of scholars who will, amongst many others, enjoy and the contributions of the well-established academics whom he first inspired.

and Reviewed by Nicola Chapman. . Ed. Peter Whiteford. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005. . Eds. Jenny Bornholdt and Greg O’Brien. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005.

These otherwise two very different books have one important thing in common – both are part of the discussion, over time, between different people and cultures – about what it means to live, and create, in New Zealand.

Mary Ursula Bethell’s poetry and friendships contributed a lot to this discussion in the 1930s and 40s. Her fresh and thoughtful poetry describing her beloved garden and the Canterbury landscape is still anthologised, but few now are aware of her influence on others. Charles Brasch was very grateful to her. In 1946, when canvassing material for the first edition of (a project which had been strongly supported by Bethell) he wrote to John Schroder: ‘Miss Bethell was a friend – & guide & philosopher – to so many of the young & aspiring in so many fields, & also to others not so young, that any future social historian of this period will be bound to regard her as an important figure...’ (p. x). This book helps us to understand why.

Bethell’s lively letters are made still more accessible by Peter Whiteford’s helpful introduction, notes, bibliography and indexing. This book will be invaluable not only for those interested in Bethell’s poetry, but also in the developing work of writers, artists, and critics from the 1930s onwards, such as Toss Woollaston, Charles Brasch, Eric McCormick, Monte Holcroft and Rodney Kennedy.

The book, however, is more than a useful cultural record. It is powerful drama. Bethell was a complex person – a well-educated and cultured Victorian lady who devoted herself to social work; a devout Anglican who struggled for religious peace all her life; and a proclaimed Anglophile with a strong distaste for most common colonials but whose writings revel in the New Zealand landscape and who was kind to any needy or worthily aspiring person.

Few letters remain from Bethell’s life before she became a published poet in 1929. However those few still give a strong impression of the author’s early personality and era. They describe her life with the cultured Mayhew family in London, her education, and her social work, and give unusual glimpses of the Victorian age, such as when she describes her Swiss finishing school: ‘But enough of my teeth. I will turn to fleas…Scarcely a night passes that I do not have a grand hunt.’ (p. 10). The letters from her social work period show an agonised awareness of the clash between her idealism and her intolerance. She likes working with the underprivileged, but not her good Anglican sisters: ‘What is the use of trying to be a parish worker & love your parishioners when you hate your house companions to distraction…those tiresome untidy feckless old Greyladies...’ (p. 27).

The letters from 1929 onwards begin in a period of happiness and creativity. In 1924 Bethell had built a cottage on the Cashmere hills, Christchurch, and lived there with her dear friend Effie Pollen until Effie’s sudden death in 1934. As she explains to Eileen Duggan her poetry was written in that decade’s ‘burst of excitement – of joy.’ (p. 137). But after Effie’s death, she describes herself as a ‘tree struck by lightning – dead. I can think things, but not feel them – One must feel to write – All joy is lost.’ (p. 138).

Bethell completes only memorial poems after Effie’s death, but she writes many letters, especially to young men with artistic and literary ambitions. In encouraging their talents and spirituality, she advises, lends books, discusses issues, and is intensely, warmly, interested in their lives. The young John Summers is even advised on managing his sexuality: ‘Don’t listen to Strauss, Johnny, that’s bad, that’s weakening…always choose what is bracing…’ (p. 218). (In fairness to Bethell, Summers had been candid and lengthy on matters sexual and spiritual in his letters to her.)

If Bethell can be a tad over-maternal, she can also be open and vulnerable. One of the most interesting and moving letters is an autobiographical one written to Charles Brasch in England in 1941. Brasch had written ‘some of my generation have never known a stable world’ and Bethell responds with a fascinating autobiographical account of how she had responded to the great movements of her generation, her unhappy relationship with her mother, inner peace, the difficulties of pacifism during the current war, religious faith, and her awareness of social injustices gained from working in the slums ‘I remember the boys’ argument that Christianity was impossible for them because everyone outside their own families was an enemy (competing for their jobs)...’ (p. 255).

Bethell’s ongoing struggle for peace and relief from loneliness reaches a climax the year before she dies, when the marriage of her new young friend Kathleen Taylor brings ‘a shattering revelation of what I had missed in life...’ (p. 306). She records her mental anguish and physical pain in an astonishingly intimate set of diary-letters to the honeymooning couple. Her last few letters do show composure, although she almost seems to welcome the news of her terminal illness. She continues to write letters while she can – encouraging Brasch to return to New Zealand ‘Come back & do your best for this cut off little country’ (p. 336) – farewelling friends, advising on a new edition of her previous books, and working on a sequence of poems about her childhood by the River Ashley.

For much of her adult life, Bethell considered herself English, not a New Zealander. Yet in her writings, the River Ashley and Mt Grey are her river and her mountain, and the song of the riro her personal song of joy. She gave much to this country, and in return belonged more deeply to it than perhaps she realised.

The Colour of Distance is Janet Frame’s description of how distance can give insight into the familiar (in this case, Menton and Blenheim). It’s a good title, as many of the writers in the book seem to have rose tints on their insightful spectacles – for the New Zealanders especially, the warm light of Mediterranean France. And even the French writers, although perhaps less enamoured of the New Zealand climate, write in a playful or reflective holiday mode.

However, this book was compiled for a serious reason: to mark 60 years of diplomatic relations between France and New Zealand (1945 to 2005). All the material (journals, poems, excerpts from novels, photographs, comic strip), apart from the inescapable Katherine Mansfield pieces, comes from within that period. This time-frame, and the ongoing French connection of the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship in Menton, allows the editors to include excerpts from nearly all New Zealand’s best writers. Their detailed and erudite (if slightly indigestible) introduction puts the French/New Zealand relationship into a wider historical context, and manages to squeeze in many more relevant names and creative activities.

A serious raison d’être does require some serious writing: rugby (along with KM) is a recurring theme. One of the highlights of the collection for me was Denis Lalanne’s description of the 1961 rugby test between the All Blacks and the Tricolours in Wellington’s most fiendish weather. This is the most violent encounter in the book, apart from the 1985 one mentioned only by the editors, and is a lovely mixture of Gallic romanticism and humour. (For DownUnder humour, read Michael King’s description of an evening out with an ‘exaltedly inebriated’ Patrick White in a classy restaurant singing ‘chansons ethnique du Sud Pacifique’ – ‘Click go the Shears’ etc).

Other pieces are more meditative, such as Peter Bland’s poem for Louis Johnson:

‘ ‘Displacement,’ you wrote, ‘is a kind/of freedom…Let’s count ourselves lucky/we don’t belong!’ ’ (‘’, p. 193). Both rugby and self-awareness are in the excerpt from Lloyd Jones’ wonderful : ‘We liked the French/ We were surprised to discover that we liked the French/ We had an inkling that we were not supposed to/ …History. It felt good to work yourself into that old story.’ (pp. 73-4). Another meditative piece is Cilla McQueen’s beautifully evocative diary. Its celebration of life with Ralph Hotere and their daughter makes Katherine Mansfield’s lonely Menton Journal more poignant still: ‘Oh Life! Accept me – make me worthy – teach me…The leaves move in the garden, the sky is pale, and I catch myself weeping. It is hard – it is hard to make a good death…’ (December 1920, p. 173).

There are far fewer French writers than New Zealand ones represented here. This is not necessarily because the French have found New Zealand less glamorous than vice versa. The Menton sojourn has made it easier for many of the New Zealand writers to spend time in thought-provoking ‘displacement’. However, since 2002 the Randell Cottage Fellowship in Wellington has brought French writers to New Zealand and should secure ‘the future of this ongoing literary dialogue’ (p. 11). I particularly enjoyed Nadine Ribault’s touching, funny account of meeting Janet Frame (and discovering what Janet kept in her garden shed). If the contents of this book are only the fruits of the dialogue so far, we have much to look forward to.

Reviewed by Charles Mabbett. . Ed. Charles Ferrall, Paul Millar, and Keren Smith. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005.

About a year ago, a visiting Chinese expert on international relations made this comment about New Zealand: “Geographically, New Zealand is in the south, but economically it is in the north. From Europe’s perspective it is in the east, but politically it is in the west. So New Zealand is everywhere.”

The statement by Professor Shen Dingli, the deputy director of the Centre for American Studies at China’s Fudan University, encapsulates what is for him, New Zealand’s deliciously ambiguous and politically independent identity.

But how have Australians and New Zealanders viewed China, “both sweatshop and powerhouse for the global economy”, as described in , a collection of essays edited by Charles Ferrall, Paul Millar and Keren Smith?

One could say that geographically, China is to our north and west, while economically, it is in the north and the south, and politically, it is in the east. So China too is everywhere, especially as what was once the Far East is now very much the Near North.

All of which makes such a timely and relevant contribution to knowing more about our relationships with China and the Chinese at a time when the world is being reshaped by the juggernaut in our Asia-Pacific neighbourhood.

New Zealand and Australia have long struggled with the tension created by geography and history. Our dominant heritage is European but we are within a metaphorical stone’s throw of Asia.

The challenge facing New Zealand and Australia is one of coming to terms with our evolving national identities, to reflect the realities of trans-migration flows, changing ethnography and closer economic relations with Asian countries.

The essays in are a collection of riches, beginning with the migration of the first Chinese to both countries, as gold miners from the 1840s in Australia and the 1860s in New Zealand, and moving on to explore Australasian Chinese identity across media such as literature, film, fashion and music.

Despite considerable legislative and social hostility, the original Chinese sojourner communities were able to put down long lasting roots, becoming the original strand of what has since branched into a complex diasporic collection of people who are visibly Chinese but either born in Australasia or migrants from Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries.

The discrimination of Chinese in Australasia is discussed in Charles Ferrall’s opening essay “” in which he states “in Australasia no other social or ethnic group has been the object of such prolonged and intense vilification as the Chinese”.

That racism – and indeed, that directed towards other non-white minorities – is still very much in evidence in Australasia today, deeply rooted in the historic xenophobia that is searchingly examined in .

While there’s been growing but not wholehearted acceptance of Asian migrants in the move towards more pluralistic, multicultural societies (something that was made official policy in Australia during the Gough Whitlam years), it is as yet an unresolved tension in New Zealand. This contentious issue is masterfully explored by Tony Ballantyne in his chapter “”.

How fascinating it is to see writing that uses China as the prism through which to provoke a discourse on our identities as New Zealanders. Using Te Papa as a case in point, Ballantyne says “it celebrates biculturalism, but only by assimilating Asian migrants into the Pakeha past”.

“At the very moment when New Zealand championing free trade and calling for commitment to cementing ties with Asia, historians are still wedded to a vision of the past that erects cultural borders, insulating New Zealand from Asia and erasing Asians from the national imaginary”. This is fresh, powerful and controversial material.

The invisibility of the Chinese in New Zealand is also alluded to by Paul Millar in his essay “” At best Chinese are depicted as perplexing stereotypes that appear as a part of the local colour in the literature of Katherine Mansfield, and at worst, as the corrupters of little white girls in John A Lee’s . But, as Millar reveals, there’s little in our literature about a people that have been an integral part of New Zealand life for nearly 150 years.

Ouyang Yu’s exposition on the depiction of Chinese in fairly recent Australian writing such as Christopher Koch’s (1978), Blanche d’Alpuget’s (1981) and Bruce Grant’s (1980) gives us post-colonial examples that illustrate that in the modern Australian psyche, “the grand scheme of becoming part of Asia is fraught with uncertainties, problems and wishful thinking”.

There’s much to amuse in David Walker’s dissection of the way modern China is portrayed in popular fiction by bestselling American authors such as Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler and Stephen J Cannell. The selected examples are faithful to a long established literary tradition of Chinese arch villains, such as Sax Rohmer’s 1913 creation Dr Fu Manchu who was “a brilliant adversary but his Chinese counterparts in the American novels cited here are not the intellectual equal of the Americans”.

The counterculture also gets a nod in Timothy Kendall’s “”. An iconic 1970s comic superhero duo Iron Outlaw (equipped with a bucket head à la Ned Kelly) and Steel Sheila were parodies of Australian fears of Asian invasion. In , they confound the dastardly plans of Madam Loo and Warlord Nong to take over ‘Australoo’.

The concept for came from a passing conversation in a university corridor between Millar and Ferrall. The result is a collection bursting with challenging scholarship and iconoclastic perspectives. Why for example, as Peta Stephenson asks in “”, was Cathy Freeman’s Chinese heritage not celebrated in the Australian mainstream media in the same way as her Aboriginal ancestry when she won the 800 metre gold medal at the Sydney Olympics?

A Chinese proverb warns not to look for ivory in a dog’s mouth. That’s not the case here. addresses the historic shadow cast over the Chinese and their influence in Australasia. It also goes a considerable way to redressing obsolete perceptions of race in an era that will inexorably be – for better or worse - China’s century.

Reviewed by Christopher Butler. . Ed. Anthony L. Smith. Wellington: Victoria University Press and the New Zealand Institute for International Affairs, 2005.

Change in Southeast Asia and in New Zealand’s relations with it has been so rapid that it has been compressed within the personal experience of many individuals on both sides of the equation. That reality emerges clearly from the collection of essays contained in this book. In one respect its publication is timely, given that New Zealand last year commemorated the 30th anniversary of its dialogue relationship with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

In another respect the book is long overdue: as the chapter on Malaysia records, it was in 1972 that Norman Kirk noted: “For the first time, we are setting out to see things with our own eyes, to look at our relations with Asia from the point of view of a small and prosperous country which geography has placed in the Asia-Pacific region.” How often have similar sentiments been expressed in the intervening years by political and business leaders?

But the use of the Kirk quotation from that year is apposite. Narratives in several chapters make clear how important 1972 proved to be as a “tipping point” towards the beginning of autonomous and multifold relationships between New Zealand and the countries of Southeast Asia. It was the year in which New Zealand ended its military involvement in Vietnam, and the year in which Britain signalled not only its intention to withdraw its military presence from the region but also finalised its entry into the EEC. The weight of both new security and economic realities were thus added to those of geography.

The book contains overview chapters on New Zealand’s relationship with the region (Anthony Smith), as well as on defense dimensions (Ian McGibbon), issues of regional identity (Jim Rolfe), and the economic relationship (Gary Hawke). They are followed by individual chapters on relationships with Cambodia (Anthony Smith), East Timor (Stephen Hoadley), Indonesia (Michael Green), Malaysia (Mark Rolls), Myanmar (Guy Wilson-Roberts), the Philippines (Rhys Richards), Singapore (Gerald Hensley), Thailand (Anthony Smith) and Vietnam (Roberto Rabel).

The authors represent a distinguished line-up of academic ability and professional engagement, combining well particularly in the chapters by Gary Hawke, Michael Green and Gerald Hensley. Given that each chapter stands on its own, there is inevitably some overlap between them. But read as a whole, the book has cohesion and its occasional repetition of dates and events does little harm and at times is helpful in reinforcing the context. Anthony Smith has done well to discipline a potential morass of material.

The work is more about relations rather than relationships, and dates and structures tend naturally to dominate the narrative. Its emphasis is on the foundations and framing of the house, rather than its decoration and texture. There are hints at the latter in mentions of the personal associations formed through the Colombo Plan, the interaction of New Zealanders with regional counterparts in regional institutions and in aid and military contexts, and even the impact on New Zealand which Gerald Hensley notes of military families returning from Singapore.

That is not a criticism – engineering matters just as much as architecture. But it does perhaps point the way to another book which addresses in more depth the way in which personalities and relationships have profoundly influenced events. They have been a driver of the emergence of most Southeast Asian institutions (the influence of people connected with the ASEAN-ISIS network of think tanks is one example) and have been important too in New Zealand’s own connections – and even I suspect in the publication of this book.

Given the accelerating speed of events, not least New Zealand’s decision last year to accede to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and its presence at the first East Asian Summit, it will be important to ensure that another 30 years do not elapse before the production of a similar work. The next iteration could be an opportunity to include more interpretative and analytical comment, and an index would also be a welcome addition for anyone seeking to use it as a reference work.

All up, the book is definitely worth the time it takes to read (not a little at 391 richly factual and tightly laid-out pages), is usefully annotated, and is probably essential for anyone wanting a clear account of the development of New Zealand’s formal links with a region which has been important to its history and is now central to its future interests.

It is interesting, albeit a sobering reminder of the passage of the years, to read a book which parallels the span of your own lifetime. In the 1950s, I shared school experiences in the UK with sons of South East Asia from Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. In the 1960s, I was befriended by Thai, Malaysian and Vietnamese Colombo Plan students at Victoria University, and teetered on the cusp of military service in Vietnam. In the 1970s, I started four years of regular transits through Singapore, seeing on every visit vast changes to roads, buildings, welfare and services.

For a time in the 1980s, my working life revolved around the trade and economic implications of East Asia’s rising “Tigers” and the consolidating intricacies of ASEAN. In the 1990s, I saw at first hand the policy impacts of the “Asian Economic Crisis” from a vantage point within the APEC process. And after the turn of the millennium I became a regular visitor to the burgeoning and sophisticated cities of a region altered beyond recognition in the span of a single generation.

History, they say, is a great teacher and perhaps even the more so when an account of events enriches experience. This book does that.

. Reviewed by Bernie Napp. . Simon Nathan. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005.

My most vivid memory of Harold Wellman was on a geology field trip to Red Rocks on Wellington's south coast in 1983. Of what he said about the lavas, cherts and argillites, I remember little – I was too busy fishing an octopus out of a rock pool – but there was a presence about him that has made a lasting impression. We didn't know him really, he was an emeritus professor when we were students, but we knew who he was, one of the pioneers of plate tectonics in New Zealand. He had a paper-strewn desk in the Cotton Building, decorated with a large, sawn offcut of greenstone. Now his life is remembered in a well-crafted biography by geologist and writer, Simon Nathan.

Mr Wellman discovered the nature of the Alpine Fault – that North-West Nelson had been separated from Fiordland by 480km along the fault was a revolutionary notion in 1948. It came to him on a "wet Sunday afternoon" when he grabbed a pair of scissors, cut the geological map along the fault line and found that the two massifs of old rock made more sense when brought together.

Tanned and leathery, he was a character is many ways. In 1969 the geology department at Victoria University held a 60th birthday party for Harold Wellman, then an associate professor. On becoming somewhat merry, he and some students rolled a large boulder down Kelburn Parade. "Well, if you organise surprise parties you have to expect surprises," he told a consternated Prof Bob Clark. The incident was not out of character, Simon Nathan reports, nor did it do Harold Wellman any harm. Later that year he was invested with a "personal chair" and a salary to go with it.

is full of nuggets about Harold Wellman and his life, and if you sometimes have to dig for them, there are numerous maps, diagrams and photos for company through the 272 pages.

The early life of Harold Wellman holds a special fascination, and occupies the first part of the book. Told in the first person, this competently-edited memoir carries the old man's turn of phrase; it sings like a boiling billy in a makeshift hut, recalling a long bygone pioneer age in New Zealand. The Depression years saw him wandering West Coast beaches prospecting for gold in black sands and steep, shingly rivers, and surviving mainly on sausages and spuds, with the odd eel for variation. "To be self sufficient we had to carry more than we could in two normal backpacks. The answer was for each of us to use two large hemp sacks with half the load in front and half the load behind. When crossing rivers, we must have looked like kittens about to be drowned."

Harold Wellman had had to leave his surveying job in Auckland, which included resurveying the Napier region after the earthquake. Born in Devonport, England, and raised in the genteel and well-worn countryside of England's southwest, New Zealand was a wild place to be explored when he arrived as an 18-year-old, with his family in 1927.

Forty years later, Simon Nathan came into contact with Harold Wellman's work when posted with the New Zealand Geological survey to Greymouth. He came across several reports of Wellman's while compiling an oil exploration study. The contact with his work continued off and on over the years and eventually the author decided to document his achievements and what he was like as a person. In this, Simon Nathan has succeeded but a small note of caution is sounded.

Parts of the book are, perhaps, more suited to the geologist or geology student, to people who knew or know of Harold Wellman. That said, there is plenty for the general reader, insights into the mind and personality of an unusual man, a maverick almost, a hard-case drinker, field worker, devoted husband, a man of integrity, and a teacher and superviser of many students during his long career at Victoria University. There's a lot to be learned about his attitude to life as well – he was by Simon Nathan's and other accounts, a provocative man, the kind of person that you could not ignore, the kind of person who is well worth reading about.

If there is one regret on my part, it's not having had any personal contact with Harold Wellman when there was an opportunity, but this book goes a long way to building a bridge to a remarkable man.