A whale of a find, walking over fire, and a live duet
The most likely part of the Southland coast for whale strandings is Mason Bay on Rakiura/Stewart Island. Pods of pilot whales and individual dolphins, sperm whales, humpback whales and various beaked whales have stranded alive or been cast ashore dead at Mason Bay.
One of the more interesting strandings there was in 1933. Two whales of an unknown species were found by Arthur Traill and George Leask, and the skull and teeth of one of the whales were saved.
In 1939, Jack Sorensen, the director of the Southland Museum, heard of it and reported: “Mr Traill and I then went to Leask’s Bay to view the skull, but it had been removed from its usual resting-place. Some person had thrown it off the end of the small wharf and it was lying in some ten feet of water.
“It was secured with a long boat-hook and Mr Traill kindly presented it, together with four teeth which he had saved, to the Southland Museum.”
The skull was from the first recorded Tasmacetus shepherdi. A few months after the initial discovery, another specimen was found on the south Taranaki coast and this was described and named in honour of museum curator George Shepherd of Whanganui.
If the Stewart Island discoverers had made their whale known to science earlier, it might perhaps have been Traill’s whale instead of Shepherd’s whale.
Firewalk with us
Southland’s first firewalk was held in the Gala St Reserve in Invercargill in August 1996, when 275 people crossed the glowing embers barefoot.
The following year, 229 people walked through the fire pit.
There are claims that firewalking involves the supernatural, but good old physics comes to the rescue.
Although the charcoal is hot, it is a poor conductor of heat, unlike metal. The short time that a bare foot is in contact with the ember is insufficient for the skin to be burnt.
The rules are simple – don’t stop, don’t run and don’t panic. Still, it’s not something to try at home without taking sound advice.
Live radio duet
What was possibly the first live duet on radio in Southland was sung by Vi Webb and Garfield Todd on 4YZ. The song was The West, a Nest and You Dear, a popular waltz tune dating from 1923.
I have dreamed a dream And I have schemed a scheme And I have built my castles in the air. Dreams may come and go But the sweetest dream I know Still lingers with me from the long ago. The west, a nest and you dear Oh what a dream t’would be A cozy little cottage Beside the western sea And who knows someday maybe My dreams will all come true A cradle and a baby The west, a nest and you.
Todd left New Zealand in 1934 and served as the prime minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1953 to 1958, later opposing Ian Smith, the Unilateral Declaration of Independence and white minority rule. He died in Bulawayo in 2002.