Yesterday morning (I’m writing this on Thursday), I was driven to Picton, detouring through the famous Marlborough wine region (vineyard below), famous for Sauvignon Blancs. But I also saw some Pinot grapes on the vines.

The ferry from South to North Island, and vice versa, goes between only two ports: Picton and Wellington (New Zealand’s capital). There are two boat lines; I took the Interislander Ferry. The distance traveled is 93 km (58 mi); the voyage lasts a tad over three hours; and it takes a long time to leave the Queen Charlotte Sound, passing mist-clad mountains:

Still not in the open sea after nearly an hour: leaving the Sound:

It was too misty to see much as we approached Wellington, but this is what the Interislander Ferry looks like. It takes cars and lorries, too, but that’s expensive.

The ferry was very large and had good food and so-so internet. It also showed rugby games on Sky TV. Note the silver fern emblem on the side.

After arriving in Wellington, the New Zealand Humanists had drinks with me in a local pub, and then we repaired to the President’s house (Sara Passmore), where one of the Humanists, Gaylene Middleton, had spent a long time making a lovely (and New Zealandish) dinner for everyone.

We had roast leg of local lamb (cut up below), Yorkshire pudding, salad, and beetroot. “Pudding” (I’m not sure if that’s what they call it here) was fresh mixed berries with whipped cream and ice cream, washed down with your choice of beer, red or white wine, or cider. Many thanks to Gaylene for laboring over the tasty dinner and Sara for helping and providing the venue:

Mini-puds (right)! They were good.

Sara Passmore is renowned for playing the musical saw, which I’d never heard before. She plays very well, bowing the straight end, holding the saw between her legs and vibrating it, and bending the tip to and fro. It sounds very eerie, like a theramin. I tried it today when she wasn’t at home, and, like everyone save Sara who tried it last night, I was horrible at it.

Here’s Sara playing one of her three saws (one is electric!)

This morning I spent a few engrossing hours at Wellington’s famous Te Papa Museum, which has collections of natural history, geology, and especially anthropology, concentrating on the Maori.

There was also a special exhibit on the disastrous (for the ANZAC forces) Gallipoli Invasion, partly sponsored and created by the Weta Workshop, itself made famous for creating costumes and props for Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movie series. Jackson, a Kiwi, lives in Wellington.

There were eight models of soldiers who participated in this WWI campaign, which killed over 2800 Kiwis. Each soldier was modeled 2.4 times life size, so when you see this:

It’s actually this big (I’m told these very realistic models are products of the Weta Workshop):

The Gallipoli campaign lasted between April 25, 1915, and January 9, 1916; the initial April date is celebrated throughout New Zealand as ANZAC Day. The Turks, commanded by Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s first President), inflicted a resounding drubbing on the Allies, and their victory is said to have been pivotal in giving Turks their consciousness as a nation.

Here’s a Maxim machine gun used by the Kiwis. Four of them died manning this weapon, and the gun was hit four times by Turkish fire. You can see a bullet nick on the front edge of the barrel.

Below is a letter written from Egypt by a Gallipoli survivor to his daughter, but he was later killed in Egypt and never made it home. You can see the heartbreaking notation at the bottom of the letter by the daughter:

He is dead now
Daddy is dead now

Below were the only messages that Gallipoli soldiers were allowed to send to relatives and loved ones in New Zealand. They just filled in the blanks (second photo), and clearly weren’t allowed to say anything that would distress the folks at home.

The most interesting exhibit was about the Maori and the European settlers, divided into separate sections of the Museum’s third floor.

The following three photos show how forested New Zealand was before the Maori arrived from Polynesia about 1280 AD. The first European to reach New Zealand was the Dutch captain Abel Tasman in 1642, who left in a hurry after three of his sailors were killed by Maori in a misunderstanding. It was not for another 127 years that another European visited: Captain James Cook. Regular visitors from Europe didn’t come till the end of the 18th century when whaling and settlement began.

When Europeans arrived, Maori had already deforested much of the island, and Europeans denuded much of the rest. The first picture shows the pre-human situation, when about 85% of the land was forested, and the rest unsuitable for trees because of altitude and climate:

What the Maori did:

And then Europeans:

Both Maori and European also drove many of the unique native species extinct, especially after European introduction of weasels, stoats, and the Australian brush-tailed possum. But Maori also ate the moas into extinction and knocked back many native birds for their feathers and meat (there were no mammals to hunt save bats).

Here’s one species that was driven to extinction by Europeans and Maori: it’s a female Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris). Last seen in 1907, it’s believed to have been driven extinct by deforestation, a desire for mounted specimens, and the male’s tail feathers, used to decorate European hats and to adorn high-ranking Maoris. Some biologists, including my recent host Don MacKay, think that the hui still survives in some remote valleys in the North Island.

Its beaks were made into watch fobs and the like! Oy!

Here’s a painting of the Huia with male in front and female behind. Note the pronounced dimorphism of the beak, identifying the specimen above as a female. According to Buller’s Birds of New Zealand (via Don MacKay),  this may denote dimorphism of niches, with males specializing on grubs from soft rotten wood and females probing for grubs in holes in harder wood.

Don found what was the main food of the huia in a woodpile by his house. It’s the fat “Huhu grub” of the beetle Prionoplus reticularis, much beloved by the Maori as a delicacy when roasted (Wikipedia notes that it’s supposed to taste like “buttered chicken”). Here’s a photo I took with a coin for scale; it shows about half the grub:

A Maori feather cloak:

Maori gaffes and fishhooks. They did not use metal, but made all their implements, weapons, and tools from bone, wood, and stone:

Pounamu, local jade (nephrite), also known as “greenstone”. It is very hard and was used by Maori for adzes, weapons, and jewelry. It’s still worn as jewelry by both Maoris and Kiwis:

Here are the remains of a very early Maori midden; I’ve put the key to the numbered items below the photo. Note that there are remnants of moa eggs and bones (#8, the big one, is a moa leg bone), and implements made from moa bones. The nine species of moa were hunted to extinction by the Maori by about 1400 AD. It took only about 100 years to wipe out millions of years of ratite evolution.

A kakapo, the world’s only flightless parrot (Strigops habroptilus). This is a rare stuffed specimen.

Wikipedia says that as of June of last year, there were 154 kakapo left; they are of course critically endangered and are living on island reserves. Recovery will be slow as they are infrequent breeders. The photo below shows one humorous and fruitless attempt to collect sperm (probably from Sirocco!) by letting the kea mate with a human wearing an “ejaculation helmet” on the head. I suppose we’ll hear jokes about giving head. . .

Maori pounamu war clubs:

A wooden war club:

A Maori war canoe, elaborately carved and very long. I show some of the carving at front and back (front is to right in first photo below):

Right above the front keel:

Inside:

The rear:

And my lunch: monkfish, thick-cut chips, and a nice glass of cider:

Yesterday Don MacKay and I were invited to a “sheep station” (the word “ranch” isn’t used here) to tag along with a bunch of American wine buyers visiting New Zealand to sample the local sauvignon blancs and pinots. Don and his wife Karen are long-time friends of the station’s owners, Paul and Muff Newton, and the Newton’s big station, which goes way up into the hills, is called Kaituna Ridges. While the link says it has 5000 Romney sheep, it’s more like 8000 after lambing season. There are about three sheep for every person in New Zealand (about 4 million people).

The wine buyers were given a visit to the station as lagniappe (and, I suppose, to give them a taste of local culture in hopes that they’d buy more wine!), but we were allowed to see the demonstrations too and even have tea and scones. It was two hours or so of great fun.

Here’s part of the station. Paul and Muff’s property, and the areas grazed by their Romney sheep, go way up into the hills. The anmals roam freely, eating the grass, and are collected by using a combination of a four-wheeled motorcycle and a passel of working sheepdogs.

It was warm yesterday, and sheep congregated in the shade:

There are about a half-dozen working dogs on the station. The black and white ones are the New Zealand equivalent of border collies: smart, active, and good at following whistled commands to round up sheep. Their legs are longer than border collies as they have to run long distances uphill, and have been bred for that. Care is taken not to overwork the dogs.

There are also a couple of larger brown dogs that not only chase the sheep, but are trained to bark, also on whistle command. The barking scares the bejeesus out of the sheep and make them run fast to the station or paddock. The combination of the barkers and “round-up” dogs make bringing the sheep in very efficient. And it has to be when you have 8,000 sheep!

Paul with one of his dogs, which he secured between his legs.

Muff did a swell demonstration, using a small plastic whistle, whose sound carries great distances, to call in a bunch of sheep. Someone asked her how many calls she could make, and she had no idea, but they can make a dog do anything. Further, the calls are dog-specific: they can be issuing commands to three dogs at a time, all working a group of sheep, and each dog knows which command is for him. I have no idea how this is done, but it does work, as you can see:

The sheep were collected from a great distance and brought to us in a compact pack. The whistle tells each dog whether to run round the flock clockwise or counterclockwise. This is an amazing demonstration of human/animal mutualism, though what the dogs get out of it I’m not sure! (It’s exercising their genetic imperative.) It’s impressive to watch how a dog can corral a lone sheep that escapes the pack and bring it back to the group.

Cornered!

We were then treated to a demonstration of sheep shearing by Paul, who began life as a shearer.  Each shearer, and they hire six during shearing season, brings his own moccasins (to avoid injuring the sheep, as you hold them with your feet), as well as his own shearing head to cleave the wool.

The sheep come in through a door one at a time and, I must say, are handled rather roughly. Time is of the essence as there are so many sheep. A good shearer can do a sheep in about 2.5 minutes, but there are contests and records, which includes over 600 sheep shorn by one man in 8 hours, or about one sheep every 48 seconds! It’s hard work, and professional shearers go from station to station, moving between New Zealand and Australia.

It begins:

Shearing:

The flank:

Front leg and belly:

Under the head:

Done! A denuded sheep (a thin layer of wool is left):

The wool from one sheep:

A close-up: the wool from these sheep is curly, forming little spirals:

Muff spins the wool into thread and then knits it into lovely caps and scarves. Sometimes she makes a thread of wool mixed with possum fur, which makes for a very soft fabric.

Some sheep, like Merinos, which have very fine wool, are shorn with shears. Here are instructions for taking care of your shears:

Havelock, the nearest large town to the MacKay’s house, is famous as the Green Mussel Capital of the WORLD. New Zealand green-lipped mussels (Perna canicula) are farmed in the nearby bays but processed in Havelock. The local tourist office has three friendly green mussels in front. ‘

Green-lipped mussels are large (not as large as the ones below!) and delicious.

Here I am in front of the town sign:

We went out for a mussel dinner on Tuesday night. This is the best place to get them, and also has a good selection of local craft beer. Here are Karen and Don, with all of us ready to tuck in:

We started with a dozen fancy Bluff oysters, just coming into season.

Don had a dozen slightly broiled mussels with four different toppings. See how large they are?

Here’s my dinner: a dozen green-lips steamed with wine and butter, served with fries, garlic mayo, and a good brew. They were terrific, and a dozen were enough for dinner after the oyster starter. The green lips are clearly visible.

A male mussel (females are orange as they have roe). It’s a substantial bite.

Each New Zealand town has a monument to its young men who died in World Wars I and II, many in Gallipoli. In World War I, the Kiwis fought together with the Aussies in the ANZAC alliance: the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.

Havelock has two famous sons, both of whom left New Zealand to make their names in science. One is William Pickering, an aerospace engineer who, in the U.S., designed guidance systems for both ballistic missiles and spacecraft. He’s commemorated near the war memorial.

The other, more famous, is Ernest Rutherford, the physicist who won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry. His achievements were many and legendary; here’s a precis from Wikipedia:

In early work, Rutherford discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the nuclear transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation. This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 “for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances”, for which he is the first Canadian and Oceanian Nobel laureate, and remains the only laureate born in the South Island.

Rutherford moved in 1907 to the Victoria University of Manchester (today University of Manchester) in the UK, where he and Thomas Royds proved that alpha radiation is helium nuclei. Rutherford performed his most famous work after he became a Nobel laureate. In 1911, although he could not prove that it was positive or negative, he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus, and thereby pioneered the Rutherford model of the atom, through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering by the gold foil experiment of Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden. He conducted research that led to the first “splitting” of the atom in 1917 in a nuclear reaction between nitrogen and alpha particles, in which he also discovered (and named) the proton.