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Home / New Zealand

<i>Philippa Stevenson:</i> From chooks to Riff Raff and Francis Drake

9 Jun, 2004 08:28 AM4 mins to read

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COMMENT

I've hit the century.

This is the 100th Stevenson's Country and it is a year today since I first started competing for your attention among the deluge that is 21st century news and information.

It's my party so I'll reminisce if I want to - over what you have told me.

No matter
where I've roamed, what subject I've dreamed up, who I've talked to, someone, somewhere, knows more, different or better, did it years ago - been there done that.

The emails have piled up from New Zealand and overseas.

There was the New Zealander raising a young family in Bermuda who checks the Herald online most weekdays to keep up with home, and the young American mother of two studying to be a social worker who has everything ever written or broadcast about murdered child Delcelia Witika.

"You hear about child abuse every day but nothing has ever touched me quite like her story did. I can't imagine the horror that beautiful little girl must have endured. I even have a picture of her on my computer at work.

"I guess it's odd to feel so much for a child you never knew but it's my little tribute to her. It seems like nobody really cared about her in life or in death and that just isn't right."

From Scotland, grandparents left behind by a daughter's family emigration here were keen to let me know that they would still fulfil their role via the internet.

"We may be thousands of miles away from them, but we still intend to speak to them live and even read them bedtime stories. We may be 'grandies' but we are still with it when it comes to keeping in touch." Pity about those hugs, though.

From England, Rocky Horror Picture Show creator Richard O'Brien rebuked me as "mean-spirited" and a prude for backing late historian Michael King's suggestion that Frank Sargeson would be better immortalised by a statue in Hamilton before O'Brien's character Riff Raff.

O'Brien needs a history lesson or two. I've had a few.

I tried speed bowls and idly gave keen bowler Sir Francis Drake's 1588 quote that despite the Armada's approach he had time to "finish the game and to thrash the Spaniards, too". A reader explained why.

"The fact is that it was low tide and impossible for him to take the English fleet out of harbour for another eight hours."

Covering even older history, and trying to be a bit descriptive, I suggested that 20,000 years ago the river that flowed through the Hinuera Valley would have been flanked by impenetrable forest. Not so.

"At that time," said a professor of such things, "all our pollen records from cores from lakes and bogs in the region show that the landscape was dominated by shrub-grassland with only tiny patches of forest (mainly beech) here and there.

"It wasn't until around 17,500 calendar years ago that forest returned to cover the Waikato region."

I was luckier checking out new uses for old dairy factories and another reader was well ahead.

"For some years I've been collecting ephemera linked to the former dairy companies and photographing old dairy company buildings. One of the most photogenic is the castellated former Kaitaia Dairy Company building at Awanui, now housing a swamp kauri extraction enterprise. What we amateur industrial archaeologists really need is a guide book to the sites of these rural icons." Good thought.

Some people like to read between my lines.

"I guess you must be in Auckland because we Aucklanders are noted for our sense of humour."

Actually, I live in the Waikato, where we also have a sense of humour. The column "Hamilton like an onion" had far-flung cowbell ringers cheering, as did thoughts on the delightful homeliness of Hamilton Airport.

Plans to cull the Albany hens have re-ignited that fowl story. My theory that chickens cross the road to set up roost in lay-byes was a relief to a recently arrived and tormented Aussie.

He says: "Two questions have continued to puzzle me: what is the difference between a ruck and a maul, and what is it with the chooks?

"To the first, I usually get a mumbled, 'it's got something to do with where the ball is ... ' To the second, no answer. You are, at last, someone who is prepared to ask the hard questions and provide answers."

That's me. Leaving no litter unturned.

I look forward to entering my second century, and hearing from you.

* Email Philippa Stevenson

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