Clive Fugill
A BUSHMAN’S SON
For me, it will have to be the tōtara. I don’t do any of the bigger carving now because my hands are not as good as they used to be, but I do a lot of smaller works, such as paddles and waka huia (feather boxes), and I use mostly tōtara. We have kauri, but tōtara is better to carve. It is soft and durable; it has an oily texture, which helps when you are cutting through it with a chisel, and it polishes well.
I learnt about timber very early. My dad was a bushman – he’d been practically brought up in the forest. He would bring native timber home for firewood and I would sit in the woodshed with a pocket knife and start carving.
When I was about 11, my parents gave me a set of carving chisels and some books. There was a spare section close to where we lived and I would walk through on my way home from school and pick up old fence posts lying there, tōtara ones. I’d cut the ends off with a handsaw, then cut them into rough blocks using Dad’s old axe head and strip the timber and start carving.
I used to make souvenirs for Paradise Valley Springs – it was good pocket money. At high school, I wasn’t very academic, but I was always good at art – if there were any art prizes around, I would usually get them. In 1967, I was in the first intake of carvers at the Māori Arts and Crafts Institute. I was 18. I learnt very quickly it wasn’t just about carving – you needed to know about the culture. I took te reo at school and I was passionate about Māori history and then archaeology.
My father was supportive, being an old bushman. When he finished in forestry, he went into other jobs, but we’d take him out to the bush every now and again – he got a bit homesick for the forest. Before he passed away, I used to sit down with him and talk about the different trees. He had a lot of knowledge – I recorded some of it. Those old bushmen – after they came out of the forest, they always had this huge affection for it.
The central North Island volcanic soil isn’t very good for pasture because it lacks some trace elements, but it is great for podocarps, which have fungi in their roots to help out. The greatest podocarp forest in the world grew there, established after the Taupō eruption about 1800 years ago. Pureora and Minginui are the remnants, possibly the nuclei of a potential “Tōtara National Park”. The area not only has the greatest expanse of mature tōtara forest left standing, but also the largest tōtara tree of all – Pouakani.
Pouakani is estimated to be at least 1000 years old, with a trunk 3.9m in diameter.
Several features of tōtara enable trees such as Pouakani to survive for hundreds of years. The most important is the resin in the wood and bark, which is strongly antifungal and antibacterial, so when an old tōtara gets damaged in a storm, the open wounds heal without infection.
Another important factor in longevity is the ability of the tree to regrow the canopy from branches. Currently Pouakani has several of these “reiterations” arising from the storm-shattered remains of the former trunk. They are fed by new wood below them creating a fluted trunk, a feature of old trees.
The anchor roots of an old tree can snake across the ground far beyond the edge of the canopy above. They continually form feeding roots from the underside so the soil is saturated with roots and other trees are discouraged.
As Pouakani has aged, it has built up a thick bark, a coat of light, strong, waterproof, warm and disease-resistant armour that protects the vital living cylinder of growing tissue beneath. It also protects the tree from kākā, which otherwise could rip the bark off to expose the resinous food beneath. And it protects the tree from drought, which is always a potential threat in the freedraining volcanic (or elsewhere, alluvial) soil.
For all these reasons, Pouakani is a sacred shrine to New Zealand’s greatest tree, the tōtara. When I stand beneath it, I marvel that this creature has stood in this one place for 1000 years, with moa and eagle, huge storms and long droughts, enduring, healing its wounds, spreading its seeds, a reflection of ancient Gondwana. I listen with reverence to the wind in the branches, an endless tale of acceptance and identity.
So, my bro’s first-born was a boy named Te Rangihau, followed by a girl named Wairingiringi, then another boy named Maaka, and his fourth, also a boy, Tumanako. My bro’s name is Gordon Toi. These days, he’s an acclaimed multi-discipline artist and founder of House of Natives.
I was 21 when I met Gordon as an actor on the set of The Piano, my first feature film. We worked on many others: Desperate Remedies, Rapanui and Kahu and Maia to name a few. Besides movies, we had many adventures together. During holidays we trained in Mau Rakau (Maori weaponry) with Mita Mohi, alongside his son, Pat Mohi, on Mokoia Island for at least a decade, and that work also took us into schools and prisons. We even travelled through Europe once to find mokomokai (preserved tattooed Māori heads) being sold as “artefacts” in Paris.
Over the years, I witnessed Gordon carve wharenui and fashion hei tiki out of stone, and adorn entire whānau with tā moko. We have seen each other’s relationships fail and flourish and supported one another through births and deaths of our most loved ones. When I say we’re bros, it runs deep – deep enough to challenge the notion of blood being thicker than water. As well that may be, but water has a purity to it.
Of all the adventures we had there is a ritual he shared with me after each of his children were born. We would travel north from his home in Mangere Bridge, taking with us the whenua (placenta) of each child to the whenua (land) of his Ngāpuhi bloodline, where his family name of Toi is renowned. Toi Te Huatahi. Toi Kai Rakau.
We would stay in Ōpononi with his grandmother, who was of another time and made of pure love, so she could ask us about our adventures. Then, after we ate and his kuia shared a few adventures of her own, we would continue our journey on foot, trekking inland from the homestead near the ocean.
Following a stream bordered with fruit trees and flush with watercress and tuna (eel), we would ascend the valley deep into the pristine native forest, Te Wao Nui O Tane. There, we had tūi as guides through nikau groves as piwakawaka flitted among the lush under-canopy of mamaku ferns. We arrived at a particular kauri tree where kererū perched as guardians.
There, we would bury each whenua (placenta) inside the whenua (land) at the base of this kauri. My bro would offer what karakia he had. Once, accompanied by a storm complete with rolling thunder and lightning, we gave our best haka in dedication to the atua. This ancient ritual connects life with life through the tree’s roots holding deep unto Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) with limbs pushing upward towards Ranginui (Sky Father). We did this to connect his children to his ancestors through this tree that stood there long ago and will remain for many future generations. This family tree.
Ka Tū Te Kauri, Ka Tū tonu Te Whānau Ora hoki. (Ngahere is forest, as opposed to a single tree.)
One of the trees I find most fascinating is tutu, Coriaria arborea, New Zealand’s deadliest native plant. Its seductive purple fruit are sweet and delicious, and dangle like clusters of grapes along walking tracks and waterways. Although the fruit is edible, every other part of the plant, including the tiny black seeds inside the fruit, contains a potent neurotoxin. Even a small amount will send someone into a foaming neuromuscular spasm; a secret early Europeans were unfortunate to discover. People have died after making tutu beer and tutu pies and failing to remove the seeds. Beekeepers need to watch out for the plant as well – if bees collect honeydew from the plant, it can poison an entire batch of honey.
The plant also affects animals – huge numbers of sheep and cattle have died after eating it. The very first sheep released into New Zealand by Captain Cook, in Queen Charlotte Sound in 1773, survived only a few days before being poisoned by tutu.
The plant has even claimed the lives of circus elephants allowed outside to graze on tutu leaves. And yet, despite the danger, tutu has been an important food resource. Māori carefully extracted a sweet juice from tutu berries, which was consumed in massive quantities or mixed with seaweed to make jelly. European missionaries were fond of the juice as well, and distilled it into a delicious red wine. Tutu also had an important role to play in rongoā – traditional Māori healing. The leaves and shoots were made into lotions to treat cuts, bruises and sores, and it is still used today as an ointment for treating sprains and broken bones.