Parihaka Day, 2015
It has been a beautiful, cool, sunny day in Taranaki.
The Len Lye Centre is showing the film of The Children of Parihaka to celebrate Parihaka Day, which remembers the Parihaka Incident of 5 November 1881. So I walked along to the 11 am session.
The new little cinema at the Len Lye was only a third full, which was disappointing.
This film is an account of a tour by the Kura Kaupapa Maori from Parihaka of the sites where men who were arrested and imprisoned without trial in 1881 were kept locked up, some of them for 19 years, and all in a way we would regard as unconstitutional. Certainly there was no Habeas Corpus for them, inspite of the promise in the Treaty.
The children visited the prisons at Mt Cook in Wellington, Addington and Lyttelton Harbour in Christchurch, and Dunedin. They saw roads, stone walls, causeways, stop-banks and harbour works that had been built by the Parihaka prisoners, and graves where they had been buried.
What was not included was the treatment of the Parihaka leaders, Tohu and Te Whiti, who were kept under house arrest in Nelson, far from their families and from any other prisoners in the South Island.
Every New Zealander should know this story thoroughly; this film is one way into it. I hope the apology from the Government planned next year will include some real action to make the apology meaningful, such as 5 November being declared Parihaka Day.
The children visited the prisons at Mt Cook in Wellington, Addington and Lyttelton Harbour in Christchurch, and Dunedin. They saw roads, stone walls, causeways, stop-banks and harbour works that had been built by the Parihaka prisoners, and graves where they had been buried.
What was not included was the treatment of the Parihaka leaders, Tohu and Te Whiti, who were kept under house arrest in Nelson, far from their families and from any other prisoners in the South Island.
Every New Zealander should know this story thoroughly; this film is one way into it. I hope the apology from the Government planned next year will include some real action to make the apology meaningful, such as 5 November being declared Parihaka Day.
Garden Festival
This week is the Taranaki Garden Spectacular, so we visited two gardens in the afternoon. Both were in Waitara, along the road that leads to the school where our grandchildren go.
We had visited both before, with Ruby, so this time we took an old friend of 95, who coped with the walking and the getting in and out of the car as well as I did.
As we learned during our visits, this is the last year for both gardens. The first is a cottage garden with masses of colourful flowers backed by beautiful rhododendrons and roses and fully grown trees behind that. There are corners with hostas, and corners with ceramic art, a vegetable patch, several water features. One whole area around the swimming pool featured flowers and furniture in bright primary colours: yellow, blue and red.
The second garden was similar in size, and featured collected items of old farming equipment, fewer flowers and more greenery, again lots of mature trees, a maple studded Japanese garden, a red phone booth and letter-box, several old street signs, and a museum shed or two filled with more agricultural implements like scythes, seed-drills, horse-collars, cross-cut saws and so on.
The gardener was Pat Wood, a former colleague of mine at Friends Plus; they plan to stop the garden openings after this year.
Turkish cuisine
In the evening a friend visiting from England took us to dinner at a local Turkish restaurant for meze and iskanders, chicken and lamb.
The food was superb and the conversation interesting and varied. Our friend has a son and daughter-in-law in Turkey, and has recently visited Oregon, so there was plenty to discuss.
What a variety of cultural experiences for one bright Spring day!
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