A land apart
Writers and royals, adventurers and celebrities, locals and visitors have had different takes on Aotearoa New Zealand. Redmer Yska and Listener writers look through the archives.
Writers and royals, adventurers and celebrities, locals and visitors: there’s no end to the different perspectives on Aotearoa New Zealand. Redmer Yska looks through the archives.
“When that first ship came to Whitianga I was afraid of the goblins in her and would not go near the ship till some of our warriors had been on board … the supreme leader talked to us boys … his appearance was noble, and hence we children liked him and he gave a nail to me.” Te Horeta aka Te Taniwha, account of meeting James Cook in 1769. “We were all full of hope and anxiety to see what had been represented to us as a sort of earthly paradise … I was doomed to witness those very beings who were cheering and shouting as they left the land of their nativity, cast – as it were – upon a barren, dreary and inhospitable shore.”
New settler Alexander Marjoribanks, Port Nicholson, 1840. “The countenances of all the males were rubbed with the red kokowai that had been powdered fine and mixed with oil … Many had also enriched the crimson stains with broad bands of blue earth (parakawahia) that encircled the eyes like spectacles …” Trader Joel Polack, Hokianga, 1830s. “Before we came to an anchor in Ship Cove we descried a canoe … [It was] a small and frail vessel, and contained eight men. They were clothed in coarse mats, and some of them were painted with red ochre … they lashed their canoe to the main-chain, and jumping on deck with the greatest confidence, shook hands with us, and then squatted down.” Naturalist Ernest Dieffenbach, Fiordland, 1839. “… truly the early settlers in a new colony do become extraordinary beings, somewhat, I imagine, of the Kentucky style, half horse, half alligator, with a touch of earthquake …” Diarist Sarah Mathew, Auckland, 1841. “We anchored opposite the town, or rather the straggling village of Auckland, which at first sight has by no means a prepossessing appearance; an effect that is unluckily confirmed on a closer inspection.” W Tyrone Power, soldier, 1846. “Wellington remains in the memory as imperial only in the manner of artificial dressiness in everything. Your numerous gentlemen wearing long-faced hats, kid gloves and other fashionable attire … You bear away the palm of supremacy at the metropolis for leeches, drones and parasites, feeding on the public revenue.” The Evening Post quotes a visitor, 1870. “It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch.” American writer Mark Twain, 1895. “One of the few un-English and imperfectly civilised habits here is that they seldom dress for dinner.”
Lord Lyttelton, 1867. “I felt it to be desirable to keep so far as might be an atmosphere of polish among the young men … people so easily sank in those days into rude habits and rough demeanour … So we assembled in evening attire … and made ourselves agreeable according to our lights and behaved ‘pretty’ …” Sarah Selwyn, Anglican bishop’s wife, 1892. “… the New Zealanders are an easy-going race, moral but gay, lacking in puritan pugnacity, with perhaps just a suspicion of the Polynesian!”
Social reformer Beatrice Webb, 1898.
“At Invercargill, I felt exactly as I might have felt on getting out of a railway in some small
English town, and by the time I had reached the inn, and gone through the customary battle as to bedrooms, a tub of cold water, and supper, all the feeling of mystery was gone.” English novelist Anthony Trollope, 1873. “I thought it an uncommonly pleasant place, although it smells like Hades.” Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, Volcanic Plateau, 1934. “One gets the impression that young people as a group are not only less accepted and admired than in the United States, but that they are also actively disliked by many adults.” Fulbright scholar David Ausubel, 1957. “Once back in their homeland, Kupe was asked many questions about the land of the long white cloud. And so the stories of discovery and adventure were shared with the people of Hawaiki – stories of giant trees, mountain ranges, rivers full of fish and greenstone, and forests full of birds, some standing taller than a man …” Wiremu Grace, Kupe’s Travels Around Aotearoa. “Class hatred … is very rare in New Zealand, where the working man has retained a certain curious innate admiration for money and for the man who lives in the grand style.” French academic André Siegfried, 1914. “My room has a window overlooking what appears to be a precipice. There is certainly no light out there. The moon came out, a tiny scythe unable to brighten the night. It looks just as lost and lonesome as I.” Colombo Plan student Trinh Khanh Tuoc, Wellington, 1961. “Nice, too, at Waitomo, to find the Queen’s head on the bedroom doorknob as a reminder that she slept here one New Year’s Eve.”
Columnist Susan Graham, 1962. “I was reflecting on how shocking it was that 123 years after the Treaty of Waitangi, there was not one Māori in the room. I think this is a reflection on your society.” Governor-General Bernard Fergusson, 1963. “It was then, in 1953, that we really visited New Zealand for the first time … the greenest land I have ever seen …”
US President Richard Nixon, 1969. “Auckland began as the sweepings of Sydney. Even now it has many of the characteristics of an Australia for beginners … essentially a main street surrounded by thirty square miles of rectangular boxes …” Author Austin Mitchell in The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise 1972. “Back in Christchurch, I sat in my hotel room, staring at my feet. I watched a New Zealand version of This Is Your Life, paying tribute to a middleaged Māori singer, and when the man wept openly at seeing his family traipse into the studio, I became so depressed I drank most of the minibar.” US travel writer Paul Theroux, The Happy Isles of Oceania, 1992. “… every person, when he or she is young, dreams of finding some enchanted place, of beautiful mountains and breathtaking coastline and