Travelling light – a cultural journey through the Shaky Isles

I’ve been to Aotearoa New Zealand only twice before – once on a brief stop in Auckland on the way to Tahiti in 2014 and then on a longer trip around the North Island at the end of 2016. On the first trip my fellow traveller was in New Zealand because she wanted to visit Tahiti, whereas I was in Tahiti because I wanted to visit New Zealand. On the second visit in 2016, we had planned to continue on to the South Island – till it became clear this would be biting off more than we could chew. A driving journey on two islands was one island too many. Then, almost seven years later, including three years of global pandemic, ducking and weaving to avoid the virus, our 2016 trip was finally about to resume. New Zealand is close to Australia but for the last few years it has been far away. At times during our visit I had to stop and remind myself that we were really there.

From my experience as far as Aotearoa New Zealand is concerned, it seems Australians fall into two groups – those who have been there and want to go back and those who would like to go there. I’ve long had a sense of the significance of New Zealand for our region and our own country. New Zealand is much more connected to the Pacific than Australia. The fact the North island has been described as the largest Polynesian island in the Pacific is possibly part of the reason. It’s only an accident of history that the two islands that make up New Zealand are one country – conceivably they could just as easily have been two. How different that could have been.

Art wall in Britomart, the old transformed dockland area of Auckland.

I’ve said before that Australians used to joke that going to New Zealand was like travelling back to the 1950s. That might be true in some respects, but in other ways it’s like travelling to a country Australia might want to become sometime in the future.

Absent without leave - ocean crossing in an (almost) post-pandemic world

I’ve been a little out of touch with what’s been happening in the world of Australian creativity and culture because for all of February and early March this year I was visiting Aotearoa New Zealand, on a journey that originally started in November 2016 and was then resumed over six years later. While I was away the Labor Government announced its new National Cultural Policy and soon after I arrived back I received bad news of a loss from the tight group of friends and colleagues who had helped form my cultural world-view so many decades earlier – when we spoke the language of community, the language of culture and the language of changing the world for the better.

All at sea in a floating library
I started my trip in a floating library, that is on a Viking cruise from Sydney to Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Viking ships are full of quiet corners crammed with books, a welcome way to pass time at sea – when not in a Scandinavian spa and sauna and pool unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. The cruise was originally a river cruise from Amsterdam up the Rhine to Basel in 2020, before the world went to shit. It was meant to follow my first ever cruise – from London to the furthest point North in Norway, way above the Arctic Circle, then down to beautiful Bergen. As the global pandemic rolled on, this follow up voyage was postponed several times and finally converted to a cruise to New Zealand when Viking started to operate in Southern waters. It was certainly a superb way to travel to New Zealand.

 

From the time when everyone played in a garage band and was famous amongst a few people they knew for all of five minutes. Of course we wrote our own songs. In our day jobs we were even more serious.

In an inspired move on the way to Melbourne I had booked the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. I walked off the ship and headed into the city to see it. It was popular and packed and I wore my face mask throughout, but it was excellent and not-to-be-missed.

Driveway Dawn Services – reclaiming remembrance

I usually pass Anzac Day quietly, as befits remembrance. I try to avoid the flag waving and the speeches and the politicians – difficult as that is during an election. However, the day touches on so many issues that affect the future of Australia, that it always makes me think about where we have come from and where we are going. Lest we forget – or be doomed to repeat.

As Anzac day comes to an end for another year, I was thrilled to see the way communities have been reclaiming what has increasingly become a huge remembrance industry, beloved by politicians – especially in the middle of an election. Driveway Dawn Services, a short-term response to the global pandemic, could easily have slipped into history, once the pandemic changed shape. Fortunately they seem to have become part of a continuing history, taking the heart of remembrance back to families, friends and communities, where it all began.

Family connections
Anzac Day always makes me remember my five uncles, who all went to war to fight for a democratic way of life they believed in. They all served in World War 2 – on convoys to Russia, aboard motor torpedo boats in the Adriatic and in the air above Germany. Copying his big brothers, my father tried to join up too, but he was too young and his father refused to sign the papers – thankfully, or I might not be here.

The red poppies of Flanders

Most of my uncles were decorated, some more than once. One uncle was a navigator on the Lancaster bombers that fire-bombed Dresden. My mother-in-law was staying with relatives on the outskirts of Dresden that night and watched as the city burned. My uncle was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross twice. He used to joke that the casualties amongst bomber crew were so dire that they awarded medals to anyone who survived – though I’m sure they weren’t awarded for just turning up. Astoundingly, they all survived – when so many did not, including many they knew personally.

History all around us – the long term practical impact of cultural research

Cultural research has long term impacts in terms of our developing body of knowledge which stretch far into the future. Researchers are finding stories in our major cultural collections that were never envisaged by those originally assembling them – a process that will continue long into the future. The collections of our major cultural institutions are becoming increasingly accessible to the very people the collections are drawn from and reflect. In the process they are generating greater understanding about some of the major contemporary issues we face.

Recently I posted a notice about a forthcoming talk at the National Library of Australia by Paul Diamond, Curator, Māori, at the National Library of New Zealand. Paul has has been researching Australian, New Zealand and Pacific records in the collections of the National Library of Australia.

Curator Paul Diamond begins his talk in Te Reo Māori.

The talk turned out to be fascinating because there were so many overlapping topics and perspectives. The talk was being recorded, so hopefully the Library will make it available online for those who were unable to attend. While the talk was highly relevant to New Zealand and its history, it also alluded to some of the big contemporary issues affecting Australia.

Cross-Tasman collaboration
For a start a collaboration between the national libraries of two countries so interlinked was always going to be of interest. With the recent sister city relationship between the two capitals, Wellington and Canberra, already long-established partnerships are becoming much stronger.

Industries of the future help tell stories of the past – Weta at work in the shaky isles

After three weeks travelling round the North Island of New Zealand, I’ve had more time to reflect on the importance of the clean and clever industries of the future and the skilled knowledge workers who make them. In the capital, Wellington, instead of the traditional industries that once often dominated a town, like the railways or meatworks or the car plant or, in Tasmania, the Hydro Electricity Commission, there was Weta. It’s clear that the industries of the future can thrive in unexpected locations. Expertise, specialist skills and industry pockets can occur just about anywhere, as long as you have connectivity, talent and a framework of support that makes it possible. These skills which Weta depends on for its livelihood are also being used to tell important stories from the past.

I’ve just returned from a thoroughly enjoyable three week visit to the North Island of New Zealand. Despite landing only two days after a major 7.8 magnitude earthquake that produced long-lasting damage and thousands of aftershocks for several weeks afterwards, it was a country I felt very much at home in.

Design Canberra: a whole world out there – building global connection through the UNESCO Creative Cities Network

See main article, 'Designs on the future'

This is part of the article, 'Designs on the future – how Australia's designed city has global plans', about the annual Design Canberra festival and the plans for its future. The ultimate vision of Craft ACT for Canberra is to add another major annual event to Floriade, Enlighten and the Multicultural Festival, filling a gap between them and complementing them all.

The UNESCO Creative Cities Network was created in 2004 to promote cooperation between cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. The 116 cities which currently make up this network work together towards the common objective of placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans at the local level and cooperating actively at the international level. The Network covers seven creative fields: Crafts and Folk Arts; Media Arts; Film; Design; Gastronomy; Literature; and Music.

My nephew just got a job with Weta – the long road of the interconnected world

My nephew just got a job in Wellington New Zealand with Weta Digital, which makes the digital effects for Peter Jackson’s epics. Expertise, specialist skills and industry pockets can occur just about anywhere, as long as you have connectivity, talent and a framework of support that makes it possible. This is part of the new knowledge economy of the future, with its core of creative industries and its links to our cultural landscape. Increasingly the industries of the future are both clever and clean. At their heart are the developing creative industries which are based on the power of creativity and are a critical part of Australia’s future – innovative, in most cases centred on small business and closely linked to the profile of Australia as a clever country, both domestically and internationally. This is transforming the political landscape of Australia, challenging old political franchises and upping the stakes in the offerings department.

A while back, when my nephew connected with me on Linked In, I said, ‘this will give me far more street cred than it will ever give you.’ He’s a visual effects artist, one of the new internationally sought after labour aristocracy of the digital universe. He’s currently head of Visual Effects at Resin in Adelaide and has worked for Image Engine Design in Vancouver.

‘In the new digital industries of the future, work is international and workers travel the world looking for opportunities to develop their skills and expand their experience’

I don’t even understand exactly what he does but I know he’s described himself as a character rigger, someone who ensures that the figures in digital animations actually move as though they are real. He’s worked on Hollywood blockbusters like ‘Elysium’, the remake of ‘The Thing’ and ‘Battleship’. I’ve never seen any of them but ‘Elysium’ was made by the South African director of the quirky ‘District 9’, produced by Peter Jackson, which I haven’t seen either but it sounds cool.

Australia, the largest island, is just the start of the island kingdom of the Greater Pacific. Compared to the tiny isles further East, New Zealand rises from the ocean like a large lost world.

Nowadays he’s like so many of us, someone who manages other people to help them do better what he used to do and would still probably really like to do himself.

The neighbouring world of Weta Digital
Now he has got himself a job at Weta Digital. You may ask what Weta Digital is but when I heard the news, my response was ‘wow’. Weta Digital is part of a stable of companies, including Weta Workshop, and makes the digital effects for Peter Jackson’s epics. If you’ve seen ‘Lord of the Rings’ or the remake of ‘King Kong’ you’ve been watching Weta at work. It’s named after a New Zealand insect, supposedly one of the largest on the planet, reflecting I presume Peter Jackson’s fascination with all things insect – so strangely evident in ‘King Kong’.