The Big Bulls Hit Blog: June 2015

Giant Wetas on the side of the Art Gallery!

Like virtually anyone who ever lives anywhere I've utterly failed to visit my local area as a tourist. I know where the local supermarket is, the bowling alley, the paintball arena. In my first few weeks I did make something of an effort to visit the local Manawatu Gorge, the mountain ranges, and see the Tasman sea. This weekend, however, I finally made it to the cultural quarter of Palmerston North!

Palmerston North AKA "Palmy" sits between the flat, windy, cow-infested plains of the south-west, and the long chain of mountains forming the backbone of New Zealand's north island. Out beyond these plains is the luke warm Tasman sea, with long flat beaches and enough drift wood for semi-regular evenings of fire and swimming with mates. Within the forest-bound mountains are a labyrinth of tracks old and new, with huts one can cheaply stay in to make for a long weekend amongst the trees. Dividing this mountain chain in two is the great Manawatu river, eroding the rock as fast as the earth can force it up- resulting in this being the only river to flow through a mountain range in the world! Along this Manawatu Gorge are the rail line and a road, which occasionally succumb to rock slides from the surrounding, growing, mountains. At the edges of the gorge, often high above it, run the gorge walk, 10km of forests and look outs, as well as the vast wind turbine farm, turning the regions meteorological flatulence into green energy.

Between this great river, the Rangitikei river, and the Whanganui river lay the flat plains, where the original colonists decided to fell trees, and thus created a space for agriculture to thrive. This took far longer and far more time than one would think. The land was wet, in parts boggy, and the soil quality could be poor. There were originally no worm in New Zealand- yet with their introduction they quickly spread, turning over and composting the forest waste, allowing a more rich, consistent, soil to be created. Colonists where lured by land companies to the far side of the world, looking for cheap farms and space. Rivers flooded, farms were washed away, people came and went. Eventually, however, the rivers were tamed, forests removed, and the farms sprang up.

In the east Palmy grew with this development of the colony. There were roads, factories, and an air field built. But what really puts Palmy on the map from this age is one Mr Charles John Munro. CJ Munro was from Nelson and, after attending school in England, brought rugby to the Kiwis in Nelson and Wellington. "The Sport that shaped a Nation" as the museum puts it. The New Zealand Rugby Museum is in Palmerston North because that is where CJ Munro eventually lived and died. He now stands outside the museum, ironclad and carrying a ball in the most gentlemanly fashion.

The museum remembers many things, and is mostly filled with old shirts, caps, and magazines. However, this is a very basic over view of New Zealand Rugby History.

Like most Polynesians, Maori are big guys. Built like a brick s**thouse, in old english. They are also capable of being very hard workers- a number joined the Royal Navy during initial contact and the officers had only good reports. Sometime later Maori volunteered to create a battalion for the first world war. The Europeans didn't ask for this- they discouraged it viewing the war as caused by Europeans, and thus to be fought and resolved by Europeans. Despite this the Maori eventually made it to Gallipoli and proceeded to scare the crap out of the poor little Turks.

Anyway... with both the native and colonial populations being filled with strong, hard working, men, prepared to duke it out at the end of the day, New Zealand found itself a crucible of egg-tossing genius. And right from the beginning the Kiwis took the world by storm. I won't go through every game & tour, but there was Australia, South Africa and England- and they won nearly every game. They introduced a new, faster, form of the game to the old, slow, European circuit. At one time they were using a different formation of scrum to other nations, which was more effective- to the point that it was declared cheating, and made illegal.

Significant efforts were made during the wars as well, with large games being organised during the First World War between the various British Armed Forces and our allies. It was after the wars, however, that relations with a previous ally was strained, and is viewed by many New Zealand historians as one of the founding movements of the independent nation. During the years of apartheid in South Africa New Zealand was asked to select its teams on a racial base. This effected both tours by the Springboks to NZ, and by the All Blacks to SA. This resulted in two major events for New Zealand. Firstly, after dominating the sport for so long, they suddenly started to struggle, bringing home defeats. Secondly, and more importantly, in 1969 HART was set up- Halt all racist tours. "No Maori, No Tour". The Springbok tour of NZ in 1981 was the time of greatest protest. After decades of petitions and protests the people spoke with force and in numbers. Threats were made, games cancelled, and the All Blacks, as well as provincial teams struggled to perform. Only in 2/3 of the National games, and against the NZ Maori team, were the South African's held to account. Whilst some Kiwis wanted to keep politics out of sport, and simply have a nice game of rugby, the protesters carried on.

South Africa had been part of the British Empire. Originally it was seen as a necessary part of the brotherhood of colonies to be on good terms, politically and socially. It was therefore New Zealand's duty, as part of the Commonwealth to play Rugby against South Africa. It is therefore deemed the for most event of New Zealand's independence that as a people they declared that they would no longer play their national sport against South Africa. When, four years later, the New Zealand Rugby Union proposed a tour of South Africa, they were sued by two layers who declared that such a tour would break the society's constitution, and the tour was prevented by a High Court Injunction.

These events are viewed as helping establish the modern, independent, moral, state of New Zealand.

It is also argued that this break in tradition gave NZ the confidence to turn further from its traditional old allies, resulting in the work done between 1984-1987 which resulted in NZ becoming a Nuclear Free Zone. This broke certain treaties that NZ had with the USA and prevented any Nuclear-powered vessel or nuclear waste from being brought near the islands.

With Maori back permanently in the All Blacks they continued to beat the snot out of much of the world, winning the 1987 World Cup, and many after that.

"Except when the English turn up." "Yeh, whatever." "Well, we'll see what happens at the World Cup this year."

So, that's a short history of New Zealand's Rugby History.
A sport where big men & women throw around an egg.

You know what else was big and involved eggs?

DINOSAURS
(a seamless link!)

Until relatively recently it was thought NZ didn't have any dinosaurs. The majority of the present landmass is less than 65 million years old, and prior to that had spent many millions of years drifting out in the deep blue. Recent work by amateur paleontologists, however, has shown that NZ was awash with these proto-birds, long before the island was conquered by modern birds.

This has lead to me being fortunate enough to bump into the touring dinosaur exhibits, just as Jurassic World is about to come out.

As well as the dinosaurs, though much later, NZ was ruled by the birds. The Museum has a skeleton of the ancient Moa- the largest non-dino bird to ever exist, some species reaching 3.6m(12feet) in height. A bird which had completely lost its wings (not even a scrap of bone to suggest it ever had more than 2 limbs) and lived on a diet of NZ flora, right up until the time humans came to live upon a diet of NZ fauna.

Model of a Moa in the museum reception area- the little one is about 4ft, the big one was about 10ft

Prior to human immigration the only predator of the moa was the Haast's Eagle, the world's largest ever eagle, with a wing span of up to 3m. Both disappeared as hungry humans hunted their way through the giant Moa and foraged for the vulnerable moa eggs. Within an estimated 160 years of man's arrival the Moa was extinct (other than a few reports of the smaller species reported in the most remote locations up until the late 19th century). The Haast's Eagle died out soon after the Moa.

Moa Skeleton, with a size comparison for this species

After that white people arrived and proceeded to further demolish the native abundance of avian-dominated wildlife, aided by their cats, dogs, guns, axes, saws, chainsaws, explosives, deer, cows, sheep, horses, goats, possums, stoats, weasels, worms...etc. (Mixed sources saw the Maori brought the rats, mice & some of the pigs) Thankfully this was minimised by the formation of a number of large national parks around unfarmable mountain land and sacred Maori sites, now mostly managed by the Department of Conservation. The rest of the country was bought from local Maori by large companies (at a "fair" price- so starts 150+ years of arguments), divided up, then sold to a mixture of willing and desperate immigrants.

Part of a governmental agreement with these land companies was for only families to be sold these land plots. The concept was that a family would stay and work the land, whereas single men could be simply buying up land to sell later at a better price. When the inspectors did finally make it to my local region of the Manawatu they found much of the land had been sold to single men. The companies informed the inspectors that there were no families to take the land, and the men informed the inspectors that "we are perfectly willing to get married, if but the ladies were available". At some stage immigration laws changed to a proto-type "points system", such that women were favoured to men- men only allowed in if married, or if they had unmarried sisters who would be coming with them.

And thus we have the Dairy Plains of the South-West of Today (also see my Taranaki entry)

Finally, some extra pictures

I think this is "Manaia, a spiritual guardian and carrier of supernatural powers. Traditional depictions include the head of a bird, body of a man, and tail of a fish. Provider and protector over the sky, earth, and sea. Likened to a bird sitting on your shoulder, looking after one's spirit, and guiding the spirit where it is supposed to go when the time comes."