Sunday, 23 July 2017

"The Power of Words - " Getting the message out there"

Moon rising over Whakahau ( Slipper Island from shore Pauanui - photo Chris Ball 2017

Must be the very cold and stormy winter, being experienced at the moment in New Zealand, leading to many being indoors. It seems many new forms of the written word are finding their way to the Internet or about to be launched on the Coromandel Peninsula.
 
 Internet has become a great media to convey creative ideas, history, about a place to the people of Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand, the World. Via websites, blogs, messages via Facebook or Twitter or Instagram.  With one push of the button the written word, photographs and videos are up there on the Internet, conveying to all about this special place we know - Coromandel Peninsula.   Have enjoyed writing this blog and Chris contributing photographs since 2013.
 
A  space of quiet and moment of history now between storms on Tairua Surf beach - photo Chris Ball 2017

From early days of European settlement, New Zealand has always been "getting the message out there," with the latest in printing and publishing technology - back then,  in those early days of the 1800's, when there was no internet. Back when it was printing presses and newspapers.
 
William Colenso
 
 There arrived at the Bay of Islands Northland back on 30 December 1930 , one printer - William Colenso - sent to be in charge of a Stanhope  Printing Press, also landed on arrival at Paihia. According to Hill in 1900, Colenso produced the first book in this newly established colony. Evidently there was great excitement exhibited on the part of maori helping to bring the heavy press ashore when told it was ta pukapuka (a book-press, or book-making machine). Early attempts  on 17 February 1835 for the Church Missionary Society were  first copies of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Philippians, translated into Maori by the Rev. William Williams. The first book to be printed was 5000 copies of  a Māori New Testament in 1836 and 1837. First newspapers appeared  around 1840 with the New Zealand Gazette, first issue published in London 21 April 1939, along with a second issue published in Wellington  18 April 1840. The New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette published at Kororareka ( Russell) from June to December 1840. Kororareka was the first capital of New Zealand before Auckland.

 
In those early days of European settlement 1840 - 1870  newspapers from overseas in Australia were eagerly awaited for by those early  settlers. Henderson and Macfarlane circular saw shipping line were renown for bringing copies of the latest from Sydney and Melbourne, supplementing news in the "colony " of New Zealand.
 
Furling the sails in Port of Auckland - photo Chris Ball 2017

Books were expensive to print  back then. In those early years, paper came from overseas. A few enterprising settlers, explorers and or missionaries who had means, published accounts of early New Zealand . Amongst those well-known merchant Polack and settler William Swainson. Several bookseller/ stationers set up business in the growing city of Auckland. By 1870 when the Province of Auckland was also being settled, there were the well-known firms of  George Chapman , Edward Wayte and Upton and Company. The book sellers advertised lists of  newly imported books in the newspapers of the day - amongst them - The New Zealander, Daily Southern Cross and The New Zealand Herald.

Daily Southern Cross   18 February 1865  Page 6 courtesy Papers Past , National Library, New Zealand


George T Chapman published a New Zealand  Almanac for Leap year in 1860. All sorts of interesting information for the settlers of the time - sections  included were a coasting directory and signals and Auckland Street Directory - useful for readers.
 
The Thames Miners Guide printed by W C Wilson ( newspaper proprietor) and sold for the proprietors  by Edward Wayte of Queen Street, Auckland in 1868 provided a valuable information book for the miners of the newly opened Thames Goldfield.  Included was a map of the Karaka block, Thames Goldfields drawn by Daniel Manders Beere CE. Beere  was a Gold fields surveyor and who  a renowned engineer surveyor with Auckland Provincial railways in the 1800's and an early photographer. 
 
 Edward Wayte also produced a Thames  illustrated  mining map which identified various early buildings and businesses of this then growing gold mining town. In 1863 William Chisholm Wilson left the partnership with Williamson of the newspaper The New Zealand to found and publish the New Zealand Herald. He was joined by Alfred  Horton who was co-owner with William Wilkinson ( my god mother's grandfather ) of one of the Coromandel Peninsula and Thames first newspapers in April 1868 - The Thames Advertiser.
 

John Henry Upton and William Gorrie of Upton and Co -
 stationers  booksellers and music sellers
 In 1867 W B Upton and Co published a 3rd edition of Robert Maunsell's  " Grammar of the New Zealand language." Maunsell , another New Zealand missionary who back then had conducted many services from Coromandel to Te Awamutu. Although William Brown Upton of Upton and Co died in 1870,  his brother John Henry Upton and brother in law William Gorrie  continued business as Upton and Co - booksellers, stationers and music sellers and became well known for the artist exhibitions in their establishment, including that of John Barr Clarke Hoyte, a drawing master at the Church of England Grammar School and in 1969  the Auckland College and Grammar School. J B C Hoyte is said to have exhibited his water colours at Upton & Co in 1869. Hoyte  has left us with paintings portraying early New Zealand landscapes, amongst them of Coromandel and Thames area on the Coromandel Peninsula.
 
 
Hoyte, John Barr Clark, 1835-1913. [Hoyte, John Barr Clark, 1835-1913] :[Gold mining near Kopu. ca 1868]. Ref: C-052-009. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23111225  courtesy - please do not copy image.

 Now in 2017 it is the age of Internet - the era of blogs, web sites, email newsletters and learning online - bringing news of new events. Newspapers such as Hauraki Herald, Coastal News, Coromandel Chronicle and Mercury Bay Informer - continue keeping us up with the Peninsula happenings. The latest in tourism, events and new businesses.
Recently launched online  is the website of Tairua I Site: https://www.tairua.co.nz/


First Year on the Thames Goldfield 1867 -1868 - Meghan Hawkes, author,  with a Thames 150th Anniversary project:


 - keeping us up to date with events then and now.
 An opportunity in July to meet with two new reps from the Tairua Pauanui valley on the He Mana Toi Trust, Coromandel Arts and Creative Industries Advisory Board:


Also bringing those early books of the 1800's into 2017, technolgy has many  now online digitally, bringing a Part of the Past New Zealand history to our place.

From James MacIntosh Bell ,The Wilds of Maoriland , MacMillan and Co. , London 1914 on Archive Org.
https://archive.org/details/wildsofmaoriland00bell

Reference:
 


 
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