TransAlpine goes West

An opportunity to take a train journey which I could not afford for myself presented itself. I snatched it as I love the comfort of train travel (so long as it's not standing-room-only at commuter time).

The TranzAlpine scenic tourist rain runs from Christchurch to Greymouth, or Greymouth to Christchurch as a one-way trip. It is quite expensive at NZ$239 + but the trip covers 223 kilometres (139 miles) one-way and takes just under 5 hours, providing a very relaxing and interesting experience. 

The open-air viewing carriage allows keen photographers to take photos without the glare of windows but be warned, it is feverishly windy, hang on tight and initially you'll be scrabbling for a viewing spot before other passengers get blase and disappear back to more comfortable carriages.

The weather wasn't warm so I didn't avail myself of a chance to step out at a brief stop and it was a shame there was almost no snow. It must be a marvellous scene in early Spring travelling through the Great Divide and its majestic peaks. You'll see a variety of landscapes and land-use along the way.

Passengers are supplied with headphones to listen to an informative commentary as they roll along. I learned a few things about the history of the Canterbury Plains which are the most changed natural environment in NZ. It was bad enough with the sheep and wheat in the past but now it's all irrigation pivots and intensive dairy farming which I find distressing. The amount of potable artesian water being vomitted onto fields was shocking.

I got on the train at the Rolleston station but most passengers would get on at Christchurch. There are stewards to assist.

The refreshments car has very nice leather armchairs - a very civilised way to travel across the Southern Alps. Hot drinks and snacks can be purchased and service is good.

Along the way there are short stops at Springfield and Arthur's Pass. You'll travel past Otira, entering the 8km long tunnel, pass by Lake Brunner before arriving at Greymouth on the West Coast, where the train slows to cross mid-town traffic as it pulls into the station. 

The only down-side to the train trip was having 5 louty adolscent males in the same carriage constantly making a noise and showing no interest at all in the views outside. They obviously weren't paying for themselves and they spoiled the experience for those of us forced to share a carriage with them. 

Once you arrive at Greymouth you collect your luggage from the train and can then organise West Coast site-seeing and a rental car should you choose. The Speights Ale House provided a quality lunch though their dinner was less satisfying. After doing a spot of tourism we made our way to Hanmer Springs for a soak in the pools and an overnight stay before driving the rental to Christchurch via the Waipara vineyards - a short tasting at Greystones.

Exciting news from Hobbiton

 I'm back for a third visit to Hobbiton. Each time I enjoy it - entering that part of the imagination that is the Shire, Middle Earth (New Zealand). This year I was guiding a French national around the country and he loves anything Middle-Earth. Well, so do I and I knew big things were 'a-foot' in Hobbiton.

The ultimate experience of a hobbit hole begins 01 December this year (2023). Sssshhhttt! they are building hobbit holes of which you can tour the insides. Yes, folks, the Shire can now present a hobbit bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, pantry etc. You can be sure it will look like the films because the original illustrators and concept designers of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies - John Howe and Alan Lee have designed it all. Utterly Cool!! If, like me, you have already visisted Hobbiton, you will just have to save up and go again because being inside a hole on Bagshot Row is a must-do.

While we were there we could see the construction teams hard at work trying to meet the opening deadline. Many members of these teams had worked on the constuction of Hobbiton in the past, especially when the set was made permanent for the Hobbit movies. From what I could see, the new furnished holes run right through this hill from front to back meaning there shoud be plenty of light inside. They are also building a working chimney. The hill being used is beside the Party Field.

Future tours will last two and a half hours in duration, allowing plenty of time to explore the intricate and detailed interiors of a Hobbit Hole, wander the gardens and fields and some extra time to relax at The Green Dragon Inn where you can choose from a number of free beverages. I usually choose Cider but have never succeeded in finishing one because the tour guide always whips us away before I can finish my drink. The site brews its own ales, cider and ginger beer.

In the future I will be able to drink any cider I like in my own time, as the kind marketing people gave us all our very own Prancing Pony mug as a thanks for coming over during construction.

I must confess I came away with a very small scale hobbit hole statue from the shop.  Who knows when I will ever get back but now there's a reason to come back for a fourth visit. And my international visitor loved his experience here.

No doubt Bilbo is taking a break while the noise of construction is going on. Bag End still looks good from the outside but the pipe is a recent addition. it is nice to see an enterprise actually improving the experience for its customers instead of resting on their laurels.

Here are artists's impressions of what the extended hobbit holes should look like completed.

For official news on this go to

https://www.hobbitontours.com/bagshot/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't call it FrenchFest

Let's set the context:  I'm a direct descendant of two of the original French settlers who arrived at Akaroa in 1840. Joseph and Magdeleine Libeau were professional gardeners from the area south of Nantes, France. They left Rochefort, France on the boat le Compte de Paris only to find they had arrived in a country now declared British. Despite what must have been an enormous shock and disappointment, they persevered through great deprivations and hardships, cleared the land for market gardening, vines, dairy farming, brickworks etc and prospered by their own hard work.

Naturally Akaroa holds an important place in my heart and in the personal histories of all the descendants of the French and German settlers who disembarked from the boat. For thirteen years The Libeau Descendants Society and the Comte de Paris Descendants Society re-enacted the landing on the beach at Akaroa to the delight of locals and tourists. It was simply and honestly done but success grew the event to where they needed help and that appears to have been our downfall.

These days it is called FrenchFest but on any other weekend you'd be hard-pressed to find much that was genuinely French about the place. It has become a charicature and a nice financial vehicle for certain festival organisers. Akaroa itself has a great little museum but there isn't that much there from the French and German settlers, there are less than a handful of French people living there, the shops don't bother to greet you with a Bonjour, the products have little of a French theme. I guess it is still a unique place and we descendants are very proud of our ancesters who were poor, mostly illiterate but hard-working people brave enough to launch themselves into an adventure 18,000 kms away. For most it was a one-way trip into the wilderness
.

The re-enactment has been hijacked by 'Hollywood' types who care little for authenticity but prefer cheap shots, obscenities and woke pandering to certain groups. Ego reigns supreme. Actors from Auckland are flown in to perform stupidities in a bloated script. Rehearsals are held for weeks in Akaroa, effectively excluding most descendants from participating except as finale decoration. The script is 54 pages long. The French settlers arrive on page 53. 

But hey, let's have sexual inuendo between Captain Cook and Joseph Banks, references to cellphones, pest-control characters in green Steve Irwin outfits, deliberately stupid references to sperm (laughed by reference to sperm whales), a Maori 'entrepreneur'  selling multiple maps of Banks Peninsula (since when did Maori have paper-making technology?), totally unnecessary musical interludes, a camp male Queen Victoria. This appalling script is presented to families expecting to hear history. I was told many folks left after an hour, disgusted at the amount of obscenities used. In the end the duration of the play was 2 hours in freezing weather. When the descendants used to do it the duration was around 40 minutes.

The script is audibly insulting to Maori (yet Onuku Maori seem to go along with it). I wrote to the organisers requesting that they remove offensive lines from past scripts that were upsetting to Compte de Paris descendants. Nope still there. I had some lines to say but was never given the script before the final rehearsal. Hmm. It was stressful to have to cram an hour before.

The script describes our French ancestors - "These immigrants are all of the lowest order. I had to go around the pubs and taverns of Rochefort..... men and women reluctantly agree to the adventure."

In fact the venture was scarcely advertised because the French were scared of tipping off the British to the departure of the boat of colonists. The emigrants knew life was hard in post-Napoleonic France - crops failing due to phylloxera, high infant mortality and so they bravely sought to better themselves in a country none of them understood. The settlement was a hard-sell because information had to be kept secret and no-one knew anything about the bottom end of the planet. 

During the Landings play on the beach on the Saturday of FrenchFest there were instances of actors used in place of settler descendants where the real descendant got just one word to say "just" and that person even lives in Akaroa. Do we feel sidelined? Hurt? Disrespected? Hell yes!

For the second time in a row I was obliged to wear a truly laughable costume. Despite sending my measurements to organisers the jacket didn't fit though I suppose it was an improvement on the blanket around my shoulders in 2019. I told the costume person that I was 'now known as the torn blanket wrapped around her head woman. What have you got for me this year?' Hey, a cut off strip of old cardigan, complete with half a pocket, to wrap around my head. I told her my ancestor would have had a bonnet. She disagreed and said they would have been too dirty and too poor to have had a bonnet. My daughter was obliged to wear an old fur coat turned inside out. It literally fell apart before her eyes but she was told that made it more authentic and the arrivals would have been very scruffy. She just makes it up on the fly. The whole thing is degrading but you can't argue against the force of personality of this woman and her husband, who has no respect for true history, respect for the characters and no talent at all in writing a script. 

I listened to the despairing comments of fellow descendants who knew more about the hijacking of Akaroa than I did, over the weekend. They are not heard. They have literally been shouted down. No wonder they no longer want to be involved in the re-enactment which is now a farce.

I would rather they called the event AkaroaFest, not FrenchFest as there is no respect for history and the French theme is mostly pseudo. The French character of Akaroa is dying under a thousand cuts. The Saturday evening cabaret cost $79 per person with no food included and I have read several negative comments on Facebook about the lack of Frenchness and the disorganisation. I couldn't afford to go. Such events are now priced out of many people's pockets.

I made an effort to attend the Brocante on the Sunday morning. This is a French tradition whereby old stuff, occasionally antiques, is put up for sale. I came away with a little piece of French history which seems authentic. An old plate illustrated with King Louis-Philippe. He was the last king of France and who signed the agreement to send my ancestors to establish a French colony in the South Island of NZ. 

Few people would have appreciated the significance of that plate (or it wouldn't have been up for sale for $20) particularly over FrenchFest weekend but it's safe with me. I was pleased to meet the French Ambassador but there was no time to chat.

In short, there is little that is French now about Akaroa except the cultural appropriation required for FrenchFest. The play on the beach is insulting and hurtful and just a huge ego trip for the two people organising it. If I ever travel to Akaroa to attend FrenchFest in future I shall wear a more authentic style costume but I will not take part in the farce on the beach.

I would like to thank Black Cat Cruises for giving some of the descendants who came to Akaroa for the weekend a free 30 min cruise around the harbour. Someone appreciated us.

Photos show: On the beach, on the beach wth my daughter Laura, on the beach with Gaetan acting as my husband, Laura and I making the most of the adventure, the recreation ground, Laura with Steve Lelievre (another descendant) after our cruise around the harbour, British flag flying at the Britomart monument at Green Point.

Danger of irresponsible amateurs

 For months I have been suffering significant consequences from a session with an egotistical masseuse. I bitterly regret ever having met the woman but I wasn't to know massage could end so badly at the hands of someone so full of themselves.

It started well enough with a voucher for a massage from a kind friend who also used this woman's services. I therefore started from a position of trust. All went well the first time though there was one odd part to the visit which I will relate because there is considerable misinformation on the 'benefits' out there.

It started with an ionic foot bath detox. That was new to me and with some past medical training I couldn't for the life of me work out how it could anatomically work. You put your feet in a basin of water that has electrodes in it connected to a machine that controls a current. Salt is added to the water and you wait 30 minutes for toxins to be eliminated through pores in your feet? During that time the water starts to change to a brown/yellow colour and then some scum appears with dark bits. Hmm... that's interesting. 

I was informed that each colour that appears means a particular toxin has been eliminated from my body ie heavy metals etc. There was a brochure beside me, I read it and asked how exactly it worked. "I have no idea. I don't really understand those things," she said. So she's doing stuff she doesn't understand to another human being. I wasn't convinced so did some internet research. In amongst all the well-being/spa bumph I found results of such equipment tests. Yep. Bullshit. The colour comes from the rust on the electrodes which degrade over time.

However, no harm done. The next couple of massages, though sometimes painful did no harm and may have done a small amount of good. Then she went away on a retreat to learn lomi lomi massage. When next I saw her she wasn't interested in doing the usual massage. She insisted on doing this new one."You might find this quite sensual", she said. Well no. She was digging her elbow into me while climbing onto my back. She performed a very 'pointed' deep massage on my intestines, following them around. She then decided to do a chest massage. "I won't be too hard", she assured me as it is obvious I have had open heart surgery. Well it was rather heavy and I was  so glad when she stopped.

Lying on my back I found my knees bent up and being rotated in extreme rotations while she leaned on them. It wasn't massage, it was more physiotherapy. I am not young and was desperately hoping nothing would go wrong. At the time I thought I had gotten away with it but there was nothing healthy or sensual about any of it. I told her I found the massage painful and not at all sensual.

Two hours later the consequences started to arrive. The leger lists those, some have been suffered for 5 months and cost both me and taxpayers a lot of money.

• Significant bowel infection/diverticulitis
• Chronic sternal pain from open heart surgery wires where previously there had been no pain
• Increased back pain
• No improvement with shoulder pain
  
• Hip problems whereas I had never had so much as a twinge from them -Diminutive anterosuperior labrum with tearing extending into fraying of the superior labrum with adjacent synovitis.
• Possible mild hip tendinosis straight head rectus femoris.
• mild hip trochanteric bursal oedema/ bursitis
• Likely chronic hip ischiofemoral impingement

 I expect to have to have hip steroid infiltrations in future.

This person has no official massage qualifications nor has she physiotherapy qualifications to my knowledge. She is, I believe, not registered with any professional organisation but has run a successful business doing massage and also yoga classes etc On the surface it all looks good. Good until things go badly wrong and you notice trendy bullshit scams in evidence. She has no medical knowledge at all and seems not to understand consequences for doing certain things because she sees the skin and not the problems that may exist underneath.

I sent her an email to let her know what had happened and asked her to go back to previous forms of massage. She wrote back and said she had cancelled all my future appoinments and not to come back. No real remorse at all. She washed her hands of me. This made me feel worse.

Both my GP and the initial physiotherapist asked me if I would like to lodge an official complaint. To Whom? I asked, there is no governing body for the unregistered. This has cost me a lot of money and nearly 5 months of multiple sources of pain. I nearly ended up in A & E.

ACC does not pay GP costs, nor all imaging costs nor all physiotherapy costs. It does pay a fair bit of specialist costs, thank goodness. I am still in a lot of pain with ongoing treatment. I may also need to get the stainless steel wires around my sternum removed to eliminate pain I hadn't had from them previously.

It is worth noting that I was having regular massages in Auckland between 2000 and 2010. I never had any problems. In fact massages worked really well in tandem with the professional belly-dancing I was doing much of that time.  This amateur masseuse had gone on a retreat to learn lomi lomi massage supposedly originating from Hawaii but in my opinion what she was doing was not reasonable massage.

She had never asked me to fill out a questionnaire on past and current health issues, as a professional would. Just looking at someone's body exterior is not a responsible healthcare strategy.

FYI:  Hawaiian, 'lomi lomi' translates to 'rub rub' - and this is exactly what a lomi lomi massage involves. Using long, deep strokes, the massage therapist will use their hands and forearms to relax your muscles and promote blood circulation throughout your body.Overall, Lomi Lomi Hawaiian massage is more passive and relaxed than Thai massage and more general than Reiki; it involves calming smooth therapeutic touching with gentle pressure.

https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/foot-detox

 

Life finds a way

 

I have now been officially discharged from cardiac clinic followup to my open heart surgeries. The cardiologist told me he doesn't need to see me until I turn 75 years old. I was stunned. 

It turns out that my last echocardiogram had shown that my heart has remodelled itself back to how it should have been. With my new tissue valve in my heart, my heart has healed istself to become normal, perhaps for the first time in my life. Physical changes in my left ventricle which had occured due to my heart working much too hard to make up for my leaking mitral valve have reversed back to normal. My ejection fraction (measurement of heart efficiency) is now excellent. My blood pressure is well controlled. As a bonus my cardiologist told me I could come off my blood pressure meds as they would have been next to pointless given my good condition. He agreed that I was a success story. My careful lifestyle has really paid off for me. What had been a perilous time during and after two heart surgeries last year and several unpleasant later events, with careful medication and a healthy lifestyle I've healed myself.

As the cardiologist had agreed to take me off blood pressure meds I asked about the aspirin. I explained that there is now discussion amongst health professionals overseas suggesting that life-long aspirin medication may not have any measurable positive effects. What did he think about that? Yes, he agreed that was new thinking and in my case I could decide if I wanted to take a medicine that may have no positive effect on me at all. Taking aspirin doesn't give any bad effects other than bleeding prolongation if the patient has any surgery, accidents, bruising. I told the cardiologist that, given my age, it would be simpler to eliminate anything that could be detrimental in future interventions. He was comfortable with that. Woo hoo! No heart meds at all now. 

 

I had chosen a tissue valve for my replacement heart mitral valve rather than a mechanical one as I did not want to be chained to Warfarin for the rest of my life because that would have neccessitated life-long blood testing, possibly diet control and risks of bleeding in accidents, or surgeries (occurances more likely as one gets older). I wanted to live my life as naturally as possible and I have now succeeded in that 100% where my heart is concerned. Plucky little heart - I felt immense gratitude and I also thanked the medical personnel who had helped and listened to me. In the back of my mind I also thanked myself for sticking to my guns against unnecessary medications and doctors who had not listened (which have caused issues in the past).

I'd like to explain what and how this awesome turn of condition happened through reverse cardiac remodelling.

Cardiac remodeling can be described as a physiologic and pathologic condition that may occur after myocardial infarction (MI), pressure overload (aortic stenosis, hypertension), inflammatory heart muscle disease (myocarditis), idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy or volume overload (valvular regurgitation ). I had the latter condition where my valve never closed properly and so much of the blood it pumped from the left atrium to the left ventrical flowed back to the atrium. It made me very tired with reduced exercise tolerance, palpitations and eventually important shortness of breath.

Cardiac remodeling is a process in which the heart adapts to changing conditions, with the ultimate goal of maintaining ideal pump function primarily by altering the tissue, thereby modifying the above parameters  

Cardiac remodeling comprises changes in ventricular volume as well as the thickness and shape of the myocardial wall. With optimised treatment, such remodeling can be reversed, causing gradual improvement in cardiac function and consequently improved prognosis.

Predictors for this improvement were absence of diabetes, history of hypertension, and treatment with beta-blockers; treatment with beta-blockers increased the chance of reversal by 3.4 times

A number of medical therapies have been shown to promote reverse remodeling with restoration of a more normal ventricular shape, reduction in Left Ventricular volumes and mass, as well as an improvement in LV Ejection Fraction.  ACE inhibitors prevent ventricular dilation and promote small increases in ejection fraction, but reduction in ventricular diameter and increase in ejection fraction are more significant with beta-blockers as they lighten the load on the healing heart.

The drugs used to treat Heart Failure, particularly beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, and ARBs, promote reverse remodeling. Patients who present reverse remodeling during treatment have better outcomes and lower mortality than those who do not present it. In my case, I was on a beta-blocker and an ARB. I got off them asap as they create other problems but initially they were important. It is worth noting that while I did have congestive heart failure until recently, I did NOT have clogged arteries and lung problems as a result of an unhealthy lifestyle. So what can we do to minimise heart problems and how can we speed up healing after cardiac surgery?

7 powerful ways you can strengthen your heart

1. Get moving. Your heart is a muscle and, as with any muscle, exercise is what strengthens it. I walked a lot after my surgeries and I still work out in the hydrotherapy pool at Selwyn Aquatic Centre
2. Quit smoking or vaping or better yet - don't start
3. Lose weight. Most of the cardiac patients in the wards with me and in waiting rooms were all over-weight and most suffered diabetes as a result - so avoidable
   
4. Eat heart-healthy foods. I grow a lot of my own so my body gets the best range of minerals and vitamins with limited contaminants
5. Don't forget the dark chocolate but only in moderation
   
6. Don't stress... easier said than done when negative events cascade
7. Eliminate 'toxic' people from your life and only bother with those folks who love you for who you are.

Am I out of the woods now? I'd like to hope so, at least until my tissue valve needs to be replaced. I might  have to have surgery in future to remove the stainless steel wires that were holding my chest together while my sternum grew itself back together as they have become irritable but that's minor compared to the long-term good news I have recently received.

Take care of your hearts dear Readers and they will take care of YOU!.

Photo credit :  https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-cardiac-remodeling-1746198

  

Council bullshit continues to grow

A discarded copy of The Press lay on a bench seat in a café in Hanmer Springs. The front page story leaped out at me, given my past career in Communications and PR.

‘Communications overload’ it announced and was referring to the number of communications staff at Christchurch City Council and Ecan. I’ve had first-hand experience with both organisations.

The article informed readers that Environment Canterbury has 56.6 full-time positions in its communications and engagement group. My jaw dropped. It went on to say that Christchurch City Council has 44 positions. I felt anger that so many such positions were being paid for by ratepayers and that the work they do is, as the article suggested, ‘smoke and mirrors’ rather than substance or a service to their ratepayers. They do not measure how successful they have been so they cannot be held accountable for lacklustre performance.

I once worked on a very short term contract for CCC. I was crushed by a toxic culture where initiative was punished, innovation was ignored or discouraged. It was all about image control yet they really had no idea how to make a positive difference in the communities they are supposed to serve. There are some good individuals working at each of these organisations but they can’t make a difference because the system will not allow it. Inertia is boss. On the other hand, you don’t need so much image control if you are actually doing good stuff honestly. Everything is naturally in alignment and many ratepayers become supportive if they can smell ‘authenticity’.

The article by journalist Keiller MacDuff pointed out that a great way of measuring effectiveness is the degree of voter turnout, which, at just 36%, is appalling. In 2018 CCC asked me for a copy of my innovative and effective Waitakere City Council communications campaign to increase voter turnout in 2007. My campaign was a mixture of tried and true activities but 60% of my campaign focussed on fresh, innovative ways to engage with voters and to help new residents to engage in the election process. I increased voter turnout slightly.  Other, smaller district councils such as Rotorua and Kapiti asked me if they could use some of my ideas. Everywhere else turnouts went down. The Minister for Ethnic Affairs wrote a letter to me congratulating me on my methods and results. The Public Relations Institute conferred on my campaign and evaluation of it a status of finalist in the annual PR awards. WCC wanted to use my expertise again with an increased budget but, sadly, that never happened as WCC and other Auckland councils were destroyed in the creation of the monstrous Supercity.

What did CCC do with the copy of my campaign (my and WCC’s intellectual property) that I generously (with permission from Auckland Council) gave them? Nothing, clearly!

 I was actively dissuaded by a supervisor from attending joint meetings with Ecan on a joint partnership project even though I had originally been told to participate as a CC reresentative? Ecan representatives were more than happy with my contributions so what was the problem. Was I becoming too 'friendly', effective perhaps? It seemed to me CCC had no intention of cooperating even if it was a legitimate partnership.

Let’s put this communications bloat and accountability in perspective - at Waitakere (a major West Auckland Council before it was dissolved) we had ten (yes 10 including management) staff on our communications and engagement team. We had an open and innovative mindset and we were in sync with environmental principles. New ideas were welcomed. Our ratepayers were often proud of our efforts and enjoyed getting involved in our projects. How many councils can you say that about these days. We were NZ’s first and only EcoCity.

I was, among other things, responsible for encouraging ratepayers to use a lot less drinking water by changing their behaviour. Reduce water demand by 25% by 2025 despite an increasing population. That’s a big call but we knew we would not need to spend heaps of money on new water infrastructure or drown parts of our environment just to create another dam if folks could understand and change their water behaviours. We supported residents’ efforts in many practical ways such as rebates for raintanks and solar waterheating. We did not dissuade people from doing the right sustainable things. And it was working. By the end of 2010 we were on track to meet our goal. And then all that measurable good work was murdered and Watercare took over everything.

I shook my head in dismay and anger to see an article revealing such ridiculous staff numbers employed to do stuff-all but make all the negative stuff and lack of advancement invisible. The journalist was right.

These bloated teams are apparently necessary to provide information on council services and events, elections and emergency responses. I call BULLSHIT!! We at WCC did it all more effectively with 10 staff.

I am a Three Waters specialist in communications. I have taught at tertiary level how to put together effective environment campaigns involving water and energy, to students completing Water Technology degrees at the Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. 

I was good at what I did but these days in NZ I am unemployable by any organisation because I get good things done and help ratepayers feel good about Council and themselves in fresh 'unthinkable' ways. I have international experience in sustainability and Three Waters but I am not welcome here. But hey, let’s employ heaps of people with less passion, experience, honesty, creativity to pour out spin, on their average salaries of $98,000 - $119,000. I earned half that.

Wouldn’t YOU be pissed?

Photos: a fraction of the extensive workspace for the communications team at CCC, Choice, the spokesperson for my elections campaign, Splash, my spokesperson for Three Waters, Eco Day via WCC stand.

Relearning a Maori lost art

How did Maori find their way to New Zealand? Theories abound: blown off course? Bunny-hopping from one known island to another island? Relying on ocean currents? Celestial navigation?

Whatever the means, the knowledge became lost because Maori had no written language. When knowledge is passed on like Chinese Whispers it loses precision and interest wanes. How could Maori relearn the navigation arts that they had lost? They went to Mau Piailug. 

 The Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug (1932-2010) was originally from the Carolinian islands. He learned the traditional navigation techniques, which had been preserved after other traditional techniques had been forgotten (due partly to the remoteness of the Carolinian Islands). In the 1970s, Mau shared his knowledge with members of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. This led to a revival of the practices of traditional Polynesian navigation techniques, and provided anthropologists with a greater understanding of the history of the Polynesian and Micronesian peoples.

The Pacific was the last great region to be explored. It is estimated that migration took place between 3000 BC to 1000 AD. New Zealand may have been the last landfall. Explorers used multi-hulled boats guided by experts in celestial navigation. Those techniques were verbally passed on through the generations. Everything had to be memorised. Among the 'tools' memorised was the star compass.

Through constant observation, navigators were able to detect changes in the speed of their canoes, their heading, and the time of day or night. Polynesian navigators employed a wide range of techniques including the use of the stars, the movement of ocean currents and wave patterns, even the patterns of bioluminescence that indicated the direction in which islands were located, the air and sea interference patterns caused by islands and atolls, the flight of birds, the winds and the weather. There is currently no evidence of historic Polynesian navigators using navigational devices on board vessels, such as some Vikings used in the northern hemisphere.

To see a Star Compass example in New Zealand today you need to visit Napier. There are 32 pou each 3.5m high in a 30 metre circle. They show the rising and setting points of the Sun and Moon, planets and stars as memorised. While daylight with a bright sunny day could help navigators, it was the night sky that gave the most accurate directions. The Compass has a central stone with elaborately carved pou indicating East, North, South and West.

It's a peaceful spot looking out to sea. For more information on Polynesian navigation go to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation