Wellington Anniversary is celebrated on the closest Monday to 22 January, the date on which the first European settler ship to Wellington – the Aurora – arrived in the harbour in 1840, carrying 148 emigrants and 21 crew. This followed the hastily arranged sale of land in the area by Te Atiawa iwi to the (English) New Zealand Company after their advance party arrived on the Tory on 20 September 1839. Notably before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. (Read my earlier blog on how that initial Wellington settlement was ruled by a Committee.)
This Saturday past, I was welcoming people ashore, in both te reo and English, to Matiu, the island in the middle of the harbour returned to local iwi Taranaki Whānui ki Te Upoko o Te Ika in 2009 as part of a Treaty settlement.
On Sunday afternoon I was conversing in Dutch and English at the Dutch Club at Avalon House, and learnt the distinction between Hollandse (mainstream ‘proper’ Dutch, to some), and Brabantse (my father’s dialect, from the South). Fifty to sixty years after their arrival, there is still gentle rivalry between those of my father’s generation who emigrated here from different parts of the Netherlands. For some, parochialism never dies.
Then on Monday afternoon, I participated in a murder mystery over a well-catered lunch, set in 1899 Victorian England at the invitation of the (fictitious) George Sweet, Earl of Coddingham. A splendid, if somewhat disturbing affair. All in fun.
And with the sun shining strongly all through the weekend, twice I was able to cool down at the end of the day in the relatively warm waters of Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
All reflective of the nature of the place where I live, Aotearoa New Zealand, where many of us are still finding our place here. Expressed in this poem written several Governor-Generals ago:
Kauri and Bricks
In a quiet corner, outside
the Great War Exhibition
grows a small kauri
twice my height.
It’s outta place here, ya’ know.
It’s natural habitat
north of Auckland.
But marauding humans
have fossicked around
long enough
to plant
this one here, that one there,
mixing it all up.
No plant knows now
where it’s supposed to be.
*
Through the trees,
I spy
the layered brickwork
of the old Police Barracks.
A bastion of Britain,
in this farthest-flung outpost of Empire.
The National Anthem strains
through the trees:
“God defend New Zealand”,
before the Last Post
sounds for the Last Time
for Governor-General Mateparae.
This quiet corner of the globe
is a mix-and-match
half-gallon, 750 ml
townhouse and quarter-acre
pavlova and pizza
less-than-perfect paradise.
Kes Young
