Rotorua - Maoriana

I've been very busy at work again, hence the lack of posts.  It's no excuse, though - plenty of other busy people manage to update their blogs on a regular basis (and in the case of Jim Purky run a miniatures company as well!).  But the truth is I've picked up a paintbrush just once during the past 3 weeks; and that's pretty unprecedented for me.  I have some units reasonably close to completion, but they are likely to take a while.  So in the meantime, I'm going to post some pics from my recent trip to New Zealand which may be of use to anyone else who's dabbled in the Maori/NZ/Land Wars of the mid 19th century.

I'm going to have two posts about the days we spent in Rotorua.  This is a city about 2.5 hours drive south of Auckland, near the Bay of Plenty on the east coast of North Island.  It is famous for its lakes, volcanoes and "geothermal activity" - the small of sulphur rather hangs over the place.  One of the area's volcanoes, Mount Tarawera, erupted in 1886, destroying the Maori village of Te Wairoa and a pair of natural wonders called the Pink and White Terraces, and killing over 100 people.  There are still bubbling hot springs and geysers all over the place.  Rotorua has always been a Maori-populated area and its tourist attractions are centred on geothermal parks and Maori culture.  In this post I want to discuss some Maori items and the next post will look at Kiwi fauna and flora.  The idea is that these posts might be informative for modelling terrain for the NZ Wars.

The thermal springs park we visited was Whakarewarewa, which is the site of the Maori pa of Te Puia.  Maori first inhabited this site in the 14th century and the fortress of Te Puia was apparently never captured in battle.  The park has some replica Maori homes which are shown below.  These should be pretty easy to model, I'd have thought, also the carvings could be tricky.  

 

 

 

To protect food supplies from marauding animals (and, presumably, marauding humans), Maori kept them in raised hutches like this one.

Food availability was a problem for Maori.  Fish, eels and suchlike were reasonably abundant in the country's lakes and surrounding seas, but otherwise the remote islands of New Zealand had none of the foodstuffs that we take for granted.  Things like livestock and potatoes only arrived with the first Europeans.  The Maori are thought to have hunted the flightless moa birds to extinction, and once that supply of meat was gone the Maori were in trouble.  One theory behind Maori ritual cannibalism, in which victors in battle ate the vanquished (and kept prisoners as future meat supplies), is that such behaviour was the natural consequence of the Maori literally having nothing to eat. 

Birds were also on the menu, and the Maori would ensnare them using wooden troughs which were filled with water to tempt thirsty birds.  A couple of examples are shown below.  The kaka parrot was another important food source and the Maori had an ingenious way of trapping them.  Pet kaka would be taken into forest and used as lures, as their cries would attract other kaka.  Maori would place snares and artificial perches into the tree canopies so that when the wild parrots arrived their legs would be caught in the snares.

Finally, in the Domain Museum in Auckland I found a model of a Maori pa that's worth showing here.  I'm afraid I failed to take notes, but the rather rudimentary defences suggest it's a pre-1820s.  It has a vegetable garden - I believe these were quite common and if you're modelling a pa it would be a nice tough to include an allotment nearby.

Auckland

As a coda to my Flagstaff War posts I thought I would post about the other military exhibits I saw in NZ in February. I first visited the Auckland War Memorial Museum a couple of years ago but I forgot my camera. This time I had a morning to spend wandering around whilst the Kiwi caught up with friends in the park outside. The top floor of the museum is concerned with the country's military history, from the 1820s to modern deployments. The quality of the displays is very high and there are also research areas which have always been busy when I have visited. someone asked about the model of Ruapekapeka I featured in an earlier post. That model is in this museum.

Some WW1 propaganda stuff:



The NZ Mounted Rifles in Palestine and a Hotchkiss machine gun:



"Pelorus Jack" was the mascot of HMS New Zealand during WW1. The ship was built by New Zealand for service in the Royal Navy in defence of the Empire, and was present at Jutland. Unfortunately Pelorus Jack fell down the forward funnel one day and was declared dead from the navy on 24 April 1916. His will requested that his successor be "a bull pup of honest parentage, clean habits and moral tendencies." His will further requested that "no Dachshund or other dog of Teutonic extraction" be allowed on board". On the right is a WW1 4.5 inch howitzer.




Two exhibits from the WW2 Crete display. On the right are "Cretan winged daggers".




A 25-pounder used at Cassino and the inner workings of a Spitfire:



Finally, Hugo conveys his thoughts on the exhibits and some Maori weapons:



On a side note, Blogger seems to be malfunctioning again and I can't leave comments on other blogs. From perusing other sites it appears that I'm not alone. So apologies to all those who have posted recently and on whose blogs I haven't posted comments - please blame Blogger.

A christening at the Temple

It was Hugo's christening yesterday, which gives me an excuse to post a couple of pictures of both the little fellow and the church and surroundings of the Temple in London. Nowadays, the Temple is best known as the collective noun for the Inner Temple and Middle Temple, two of England's four "Inns of Court" which, in practical terms, are collections of lawyers (specifically, barristers rather than solicitors). Lawyers set up shop in the area early in the 14th century, but the Temple began life as the English headquarters of the Knights Templar. Temple Church was consecrated in 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem in the presence of Henry II. The "Round Church", to which the rectangular Chancel was added some years later, was designed to be a replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulcre in Jerusalem. It was in the Round that Hugo was baptised and the church's Master (the priest of the church still bears the title of the head of the military order) explained how difficult it is for us today to imagine how people in the 12th century would have felt being in a near-replica of the place where Jesus was buried - it was the closest to being in Jerusalem that many would ever achieve. When the Templers fell in 1307 the Church and its adjoining monastic buildings were appropriated by King Edward II who then handed the Temple over to the Knights Hospitaller. The Hospitallers in turn rented out some of the area to the lawyers whose successors have remained ever since.





After the christening we stayed for the service of mattins and then held a reception for our guests in the rooms of Middle Temple Hall. The Hall was built between 1562 and 1573. It hosted the first performance of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" in 1602 and provides the dining rooms for members of the Middle Temple. After lunch we went out into the gardens to enjoy the sunshine and I found some displays of renaissance arms and armour at the foot of the main staircase.





We all had a most enjoyable time and it was a privilege to spend the day in such historic surroundings. The Temple Church in fact has a strong connection to my family, as my parents were married there and my brother and I were both christened in it as well. My father practiced in the Middle Temple for many years and is now a Bencher. Hugo did very well yesterday, although he didn't care much for his 100 year-old family christening gown and we had to remove him from the Church when he started blowing raspberries during the Lord's Prayer at mattins. I imagine I behaved in similar fashion when in the same church 37 years ago...


On the painting front, I'm pleased to say that the Carlists are finally finished and going through the basing process. The 108th Ligne has 5 companies completed and should be finished this week. Not sure what to do next - perhaps some French artillery. I'm feeling a bit of an itch to paint some more AWI British line, although that would necessitate an order to Messrs Perry.

Pisa

The whanau and I have just returned from a week in Tuscany. We spent a few days in Pisa and then a few more in a villa outside of the town of Lucca, which we shared with some of the Kiwi's friends. We had some lovely weather but also 3 days of heavy storms, the last of which caused a complete meltdown at Pisa aircraft as too many delayed planes arrived at once, producing scenes of chaos I haven't experienced since Athens airport in the mid-80s. Hugo attracted much attention from the bambino-loving Italians; one lunchtime he was passed around a resturant from one female admirer to another, which he much enjoyed being the awful flirt that he is. Whilst Lucca is a stunningly beautiful Tuscan town, I thought I would just post about Pisa as that is where we saw the most immediately "military" things. Pisa is not quite so appealing; it lacks the narrow cobbled streets and timelessness of Lucca.

Above are two photos of the famous "campo dei miracoli", where the leaning tower stands alongside the main cathedral, baptistry and other buildings. The tower is a bit like the London Assembly building (otherwise known as "the testicle") - to fully appreciate the lean you have to view it from a particular angle. The reason why the tower, and to a much lesser extent the other buildings, leans is the soggy mix of sand and silt on which they were built. The tower's final form was completed around 1350. Below are scenes from one of the sarcophagi in the "Camposanto", another building in the campo which is essentially a cloistered cemetary. No dates seemed to be provided for any of the stone objects in this building, but the guidebooks refer to "late Roman" sarcophagi and that seems to fit the bill for this one and its Romans v barbarians relief work.



The campo's museums have some interesting things. On the left is the "Pisa Cross", allegedly carried by the First Crusade's Pisan contingent. On the right are the cathedral's original bronze doors, made in 1180 and which depict the life of Christ in their various panels.



The city's walls date to the thirteenth century. Below are a view of the Fortezza Vecchia, which used to guard Pisa's harbour (long silted up) and a section of wall with one of the gates.



Lastly, some militaria from the Palazzon Reale, a grand house that belonged to the various ruling families of Pisa. The lack of exhibit information here was even more frustrating that in the Campsanto. I have no idea when the drums below date to or whether they are ceremonial or were carried in battle. Ditto for the suits of armour and costumes. I assume they are 16th or 17th century but have no further clarity than that. Pisa has a "push of war" event that dates back to the late 16th century called the "Gioco del Ponte" or "Joust of the Bridge", in which teams from either side of the River Arno that runs through the city competed for control of one of its bridges. It may be that the drums belong to various teams in that event rather than any "proper" military units. That said, I would certainly incorporate some of the motifs into drums for Italian Wars units...





On the waragming front I have just finished Eureka Miniatures' 18th century musicians and have started work on my first full Carlist unit for the FCW. More Sudan is also in the pipeline.

Vienna

Vienna is a glorious place that exudes wealth, opulence and power. In a way it is even grander than Rome, because its historic buildings are not in ruins and, quite frankly, are better laid out. The Kiwi and I took advantage of yesterday's UK bank holiday to spend 3 days wandering around the Innere Stadt, eating apple strudel and drinking wines made out of Rotgipfler and other bizarre-sounding local grapes. You can't escape the sense of fin de siecle culture - the buskers play Strauss waltzes, the locals all look like Sigmund Freud and even the trams look as if they date back to the 1880s. As can be seen from the statues above, the Viennese appreciate their country's military heroes: one cannot imagine the city's mayor suggesting that some statues be taken down on the basis that no one knows who the subjects are and, in any event, they were imperialist warmongers (as happened several years ago in London). Vienna is a city of which its inhabitants are clearly very proud and is one of those places, like Prague, which makes you feel that you are standing in the heart of Europe and maybe even the world.


Unfortunately I missed a visit the army museum - it was a little way out of the centre of town and we just ran out of time (moral: always do what you want to do most on the first day). I also passed on climbing the 383 stairs up to the bell tower of St Stephen's Cathedral, which would have provided a view out to the Wienerwald, through which the Imperial and Polish relief armies came to raise the Ottomans' siege of Vienna in 1683. So regrettably I have little to show in the way of militaria from this visit.


However, we did visit the main Roman ruins and the museums in the Hapsburgs' main palace complex, which hold artefacts and regalia dating back to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. The Roman's built a large military camp, sufficient for 6,000 men, on the site of Vienna's centre and named it Vindobona. It was here that Marcus Aurelius died in 180 (before the start of the first fight at the Colosseum in the film "Gladiator", one of the gladiators tells Russell Crowe that he was "with [him] at Vindobona" - I've always wondered what that meant). There was a large Celtic settlement nearby, but the local civilian population moved into the camp during the 3rd and 4th centuries. Vienna's Roman remains are very scarce, but the largest section is of the foundations of what is believed to be an officer's house. Below is the main section, which shows the hypocaust, and some artefacts:





Other items that may be of interest are some imperial regalia from the early days of the Holy Roman Empire. I thought these outfits might be useful reference for painting 11th century Byzantine commanders:







Finally, of particular interest to me, given a fledgling new period that I've started working on...., is a cabinet containing an alleged fragment of the True Cross (on the right) and part of the Holy Lance (on the left). In the middle is the Imperial Cross, which dates from around 1025. This is hollow, and used to contain the other two relics. In the 14th century, Charles IV removed the fragment of the True Cross and set it in the gold frame that you see here. Charles IV, who clearly needed a religious money-spinner, also added the golden overlay on to the Holy Lance in order to safeguard the pin in the lance's centre, which is regarded as a nail from Christ's cross. The lance was supposedly given to Charlemagne by Pope Hadrian I. I'm sure this particular artefact was loaned to Keanu Reeves for use in the film "Constantine".... On the right is the cradle of Napoleon's only legitimate son, the King of Rome, who war born by Marie Louise, the daughter of Emperor Francis II. This unfortunate, doomed chap only lived to be 21, and probably didn't even remember the extravagent elegance of his cot.



I also took lots of photos of grey horses, but I'll save those for another day when they may appear in conjunction with some painted cavalry. Talking of painting, I fear that Prince Rupert's Foot have taken longer than anticipated to base, but some more Carlist War British Legion infantry and a regiment of British AWI foot are near to completion.