Rangitoto Island

One of the delights of writing my books is the excuse it gives for visiting interesting places. I hadn't been to Rangitoto Island for many years, but when a character decided to go on an outing there in my work-in-progress, I decided it was high time I paid the island a visit.

Rangitoto Island is a familiar sight to anyone who's visited Auckland. The island is roughly circular, so it looks the same from all directions. It's a relatively young volcano, last erupting a mere 500 or so years ago.

We took the ferry over one morning, and set out to climb to the 260-metre (850 feet) summit.

The dominant species of Rangitoto's forest cover is pohutukawa, sometimes called the New Zealand Christmas Tree for its profusion of red flowers at Christmastime (we were there just a little too early for its flowering). Pohutukawa and other species are gradually covering the island, especially since the major pest eradication of recent decades, but there are still large areas of bare lava flow:

Those fields of jagged lava make it all the more impressive to see how vegetation takes hold, survives, and eventually thrives in this challenging environment.

Looking into the crater from the summit:

We walked around the crater, with fine views in all directions:

On our descent, we took a short detour to the lava caves. These were formed when the outside of lava flows cooled while the contents kept moving, leaving hollow tubes:

We made a more leisurely day of this lovely outing than the energetic young visitors of my work-in-progress, but enjoyed it just as much as they did.

Moving the Rob Roy Hotel

Since 1886, the Rob Roy Hotel (more recently known as the Birdcage) has stood in the Auckland suburb of Freemans Bay. While much of the Victorian fabric of the city has been demolished, the Rob Roy has survived. When it was found to be in the path of a planned motorway tunnel, the decision was made to move the building forty metres up the hill out of the way—and then move it back when construction has finished.

This has been quite an undertaking. Old brick buildings don't particularly like being moved. Steel rods were inserted through the bricks, reinforced concrete applied to the rear wall, and carbon fibre strips inserted in the chimney to provide seismic strengthening. A heavily reinforced concrete track with a Teflon surface was built. Then, very slowly and carefully, and watched by thousands of people, the move of this 740-tonne building by two 30-tonne hydraulic rams began.

Before the move (click for larger pictures):



After the first day:



A time-lapse video of the move:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=W10FGmgrTq8

The hotel will stay in its new position for about six months, while the tunnel is finished. In the meantime, those concrete tracks have been broken up—quite an undertaking, as they were full of reinforcing rods.

Freemans Bay was a busy industrial area when the Rob Roy was built, with ship builders, sawmills, glassworks—and a brass foundry. Those of you who have read A Second Chance might remember a character who owned a small brass foundry; this is the area where I've placed his foundry, and the Rob Roy would have been his "local". While he's a fairly abstemious man, I'm sure that on at least one occasion he sat in the bar of the Rob Roy and raised a glass in honour of a certain young lady.

Memorial to the Suffragists

In 1993, the centennial of New Zealand women gaining the suffrage, a memorial was set up in central Auckland.



It's a bright and cheerful affair done in coloured tiles, but opinions are widely divided on this memorial. Many in the artistic community would like to see it go, and recently it's become something of an issue in this year's upcoming mayoral election.

I've no wish to engage in political or artistic debate on its merits, but I'll miss this memorial if it does disappear. Perhaps it is more of the craft shop than the art gallery, to paraphrase one commentator, but to me that's part of its charm. It speaks to me of the lesser-known heroines of the suffrage movement, hanging up their aprons, pinning on their hats, and letting the mending wait for an hour or two while they went out to meetings. The women who spent hours collecting signatures for pro-suffrage petitions. Who somehow found the energy, with all the other demands on them, to support the cause that meant so much to them.

This week marks the anniversary of the third and final suffrage petition's being presented to Parliament. It was a massive undertaking, with 32,000 signatures - a substantial proportion of the adult female population of the time. The petition forms were joined into a 300-yard long bundle that was ceremoniously unrolled in the House. Two months later, a new Electoral Act came into law. All adult women now had the right to vote.

This week in New Zealand history: Mark Twain's visit

In 1895, Mark Twain spent a month in New Zealand, as part of the year-long lecture tour he made to pay off his debts. He travelled the country, encountering such unexpected events as dogs being brought to his show in the South Island town of Timaru. On the 21st of November he arrived in Auckland, and performed his "At Home" in the city's Opera House to a packed audience. Those attending had paid 1/- (in the Pit), 2/6 (Stalls), or the princely sum of four shillings for seats in the Dress Circle. No dogs were in attendance.

As a supporter of women's suffrage, Twain was particularly impressed that New Zealand women had had the vote for two years by the time of his visit. From his account of the tour, Following the Equator:

In the New Zealand law occurs this: "The word person wherever it occurs throughout the Act includes woman."

That is promotion, you see. By that enlargement of the word, the matron with the garnered wisdom and experience of fifty years becomes at one jump the political equal of her callow kid of twenty-one.

Writing about real people

Although I use historical settings, I've studiously avoided using real, historical characters in my works. Over the years I've read and enjoyed many books that do portray real people, but I have an aversion to doing it myself that almost borders on fear. I'd hate to "get it wrong".

Recently I was blog-browsing, following links from one to the next, as you do, until I was so many link-layers in that I can't now remember whose blog it was or how I got there. I do remember that the blog quoted an author whose opinion on the subject helped me crystalise my own: what I feel most unwilling to do is use a real person as a point-of-view character. I simply don't feel comfortable thinking someone else's thoughts for them, when the person is not one of those characters living within that chaotic place I call my mind.

It's good that I've got that straight at last, because it's become increasingly clear to me that in my current work-in-progress I need to include a real, historical figure: the real, historical headmaster of an Auckland school. Oh, I could manipulate matters to avoid this. I could use a different name, but the headmaster at the time was a fairly well-known figure, and the school in question has a building named after him. I could scurry further from the issue and use an imaginary school, but anyone who's at all familiar with Auckland in the early 20th century would know what school I'm referring to. So I've taken the plunge, and am using the real Mr Tibbs (a name I'd hardly dare invent) for a short scene on enrolment day.

I'm fortunate enough to have read the memoirs, retrieved for me from the distant basement stacks of the library, of a man born just a few months after my point-of-view character for these scenes, and who went to this very school. He recorded his memories of his own enrolment day, so I can put words in Mr Tibbs' mouth that he is on record as having said. I've daringly added a few words of my own invention, but I don't think they will have the gentleman turning in his grave. And I've stayed steadfastly out of his head.