Port Chalmers

Maybe it’s the sea air which helps them think, maybe it is the view which disappears off into a far horizon and the world of tomorrow, but Port Chalmers is one community whose residence has an over abundance of creative talent and the ability to think out side the square. It is small rural port town with more charm than the rural setting of an Inspector Morse TV drama. The old Māori name for Port Chalmers was 'Potakere' or 'Pou-takere' which may have indicated a hill where a tuahu, or altar stood. 'Koputai' is a later name and refers to an incident in which the tide rose and beached canoes were set adrift.







Port Chalmers was also the name of a ship which sailed between England, Australia and NZ at the beginning of the 20th century that was torpedoed in mid-October 1940 and sunk, with some crew surviving 14 days at sea on the lifeboat during Operation Pedestal, the final effort to re-supply Malta during the Battle of Crete. Many historians believe that it had not been for Pedestal Malta could have fallen permanently into the Germans hands and the out come of WWII would have been drastically different .Crete is a critical battle in NZ military history which resulted in 2180 NZ soldiers being captured and 761 been killed this included those lost on the Port Chalmers who in turn were amongst the 130 New Zealand merchant seafarers killed (and the 140 taken prisoner) during the war.


The battle began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany launched an airborne invasion of Crete under the code-name Operation Mercury. On the first day of the invasion the Germans encountered stiff resistance from Commonwealth Soldiers and Greek resistance fighters. Up on hill 107 Kiwi’s were successfully defending an air strip critical to the Germans invasion plans sadly Allied commanders failed to grasp the situation and the airfield was lost when via miscommunication the order was given mistakenly for the kiwis to withdraw. The level of resistance given by the kiwis is best seen from a German intelligence report which concluded, during the battle, that they were up against an elite unit of snipers. A conclusion reached by the number of Germans being killed by headshots up on hill 107. Though in fact the majority of 107’s defenders were not even infantry but engineers who prior to the war had mostly come from the small rural towns, like the ones up and down the Coast were out door pursuits including pig hunting and rabbit shooting are common.


Today the feats of the Merchant Navy during the war make up just a small sliver of the displays on exhibit at Port Chalmers Maritime Museum. Largely a community project the Museum is not super sophisticated but if your interested in things of a nautical nature then you are sure to find the Museums’ collection to be of great interest such as the 18 foot Great white shark caught in Port Chalmers about 1900 ( a close rival to the twenty foot plus K2). In turn the Port is a wealth of local knowledge regarding NZ early maritime history and early settlement and first contact with the native Maori brought about by the early seal and whale trade NZ which attracted adventurers entrepreneurs and even the occasional .runaway convict from Australia. Interaction between European and early Maori was mixed and while some first encounters went smoothly and led to further trade and friendship in other cases European first comer were promptly knocked on the head.



More often than not the cause of grief originated from a combination of the Maori sense of Utu (some times referred to as revenge but justice would probably be amore suited description of this Maori phase), miscommunication and cultural differences. Such is the case in relation to Whareakeake also known as Murdering Beach which is located 10 minutes From Port Chalmers nestled between Haywards Beach and Long Beach in an area popular with Surfers (and the playground of Hare Hill Horse Treks). On December 12, 1817, the brig Sophia anchored in Otago Harbour. Landing at Whareakeake Sophia’s captain ***Kelly began to bargain with the Maoris for a supply of potatoes via a Lascar (Indian) sailor, who was living with the savages and acted as interpreter. At frist all seemed to e well and the natives thronged round the seamen and acted friendly until there was a yell, and the Maori rushed the whites killing two instantly. In response Kelly cut his way thru the mob using a bill-hook as a weapon and made for his long boat on each. Looking back, he saw his brother-in-law, Tucker struggling with the crowd cried out to Kelly “for God's sake don't leave me!" when he was knocked down in the surf, and hacked to death. The survivors mostly all wounded regained their ship only to find themselves involved in a pitch battle upon the brigs decks Kelly drawing his men at formed them into a solid body and using their large sealing-knives beat back the invaders slaying sixteen warriors in the process and cleared the decks. The next day the crew, now down to fourteen men would have to repulse a scond boarding made from canoes in which they Maori Chief Karaka was slain. Emboldened by the Chief death the crew of the Sophia launched a raiding party on Christmas eve in which the rest of the tribes canoes were destroyed where they lay on the beach. Taking Christmas off the men of Sophia waited until Boxing day when Kelly burnt the main Pa and then they sailed away. It is not entirely clear what motivated the conflict at Murdering Beach but it is said that Kelly’s brother in law Tucker stolen a baked head from a an Otago based Maori tribe before hand or that alternatively the a Maori had ben shot by earlier whaling crew and the Maori believing all Pakhehas came from the same tribe had sought to gain utu in return for this conflict.






In general however the Maori and the Whalers learned to respect the hardy quality of each other and integration came easily so that most whalers had their Maori wife who kept a clean home on the insistence of her ‘husband’ partly through the seaman's instinct for tidiness and partly out of a desire to show the ‘civilized’ nature of European society. In turn many took service as oarsmen, and even bought and equipped boats for themselves. However the booming trade between Whalers and settlers was not always encouraging in that the introduction of the musket had devastating effect on the Maori and from 1818 to 1838 NZ was a place of carnage that has never been seen thankfully in this land before or since. It has been estimated that at this time a fourth of the Maori race was cut down prematurely by musket fire. The principal currency used by the Maori for this trade was the shrunk and baked heads of their enemies. Traditionally the heads belonged to chief and it was considered to be a great honour to be tattoo on the face before been clubbed on the head and decapitated where upon the body was of course eaten. Later on however as the need for muskets grew (on the principal if you did not have one you were a dead man) common slaves were used however this has a draw back as after undergoing the highly painful tattooing process some of the slaves had the nerves to run off with their own heads. In response a more merciful method was some time employed were the victim was clubbed an then tattooed however such work was easily detected by the connoisseur of such grisly collections which were very popular back in the “civilized” society of Europe.


Today Murdering Beach continues to offer up proof of early Maori European contact in the form of archeological artifacts such as the discovery of a Captain James Cook Resolution Medal which was commissioned by NZ most famous navigator as gifts that were to be given to chief as sign of favour though Cook himself was not above shooting natives if he believed that European law had ben transgressed. Other with even less scrupables would use the pretext of offence to carry off Maori men and women to sea who were forced to carry out indentured labour in the South Sea or were sold to another tribe a phase known as Black Birding. The most notorious of these was Captain William Henry Hayes, of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. other wise known as "Bully" Hayes a man stood over six foot and weighed more than 200 pounds. Hayes exploits in the Pacific are legendary and include his role as a gun runner, womanizer, his habit of stealing other ships, crew, equipment (and even cargo), to his sticky end where it said his body was thrown to the sharks among the lagoons of the Marshall Group in 1877.
 
Hayes however is best known as a notorious black birder (slaver) a crime that authorities first began to suspect Hayes was involved in when inspecting one of his ships they found ships guns pointed into a hull found to contain manacles. In another case which roused suspicion it is said that Hayes chased by a navy ship decided to sink his own ship rather than reveal the secret of his cargo which many suspect to have been Pacific Island slaves. Hayes was alone for Blackbirding and press ganging (the custom of recruiting sailors by force) was common in the 1800’s and to this day the former bar the Tunnel Hotel contains a trapdoor leading to a tunnel where manacles can be found bolted to the wall a grim reminder that every port town has it dark secrets. There is certainly no doubting Hayes capacity for violence, Hayes having once killed two men (one with a single punch) during an attempted mutiny. Like wise it is no surprise to hear that Hayes was widely suspect of piracy (in fact Hayes is often called the ‘Last Pirate’) the irony being that Hayes had also served in the Imperial Chinese navy acting as mercenary pirate hunter and commander of a Chinese Imperial gunboat. Hayes work for Imperial China made him quite rich (one tabloid writer claiming with out proof that Hayes had a fortune of $250,000 in gold and silver coins buried on a Pacific Island). For during this period he amassed small fortune through a combination of blackmail, intimidation and genuine acts of daring. Hayes it must be said was no coward and armed with a badge his raids on pirate nests were quite daring and very lucrative as well. Hayes career as a pirate hunter finally however came to an end when merchants managed to convince the authorities that Hayes represented an even bigger terror on the high seas than the pirates did. In the 1850’s Hayes brought his ship the Cincinnati to Port Chalmers along with the Buckingham’s (Rosie and Brothers George *** and ***), a trope of entertainers heading to the goldfields of Central Otago. After the Cincinatti was condemned by port authorities Hayes like wise headed in the direction of the goldfields by which time it was clear that Rosie was pregnant. By early March, Rosie was been referred to in newspapers as the wife of Captain Hayes who typical to form already had at less one wife.
 
Yet all was not well for while the Buckingham family played in the Provincial Hotel on one side of the main street Bully Hayes set up his own Hotel (initially called the United States Hotel) the Prince of Wales, and offered rival entertainment advertised by using a Bellman employed to walk up and down the street ringing a bell and shouting message. On Wednesday April 29, the contest between rival hotels bellman seems to have got out of hand when the Provincial Bell Man Jimmy Lungs went up against Hayes Bellman a man called Griffith's a professional sportsman who professional sport included running arm wrestling and ratting (a sports which involved dogs and presumably Griffith's biting rats to death). Yet this was one sport where Griffith could be beaten and by mid day Griffith's was weakening and unable to compete with Jimmy Lungs, When Griffith collapsed Hayes employed another who fresh voiced was able to initially shout down Jimmy Lungs. However Jimmy punctuating his public broadcast with remarks about his upstart stayed true and soon the replacement flagged as well leaving Jimmy Lungs triumphant on the field of battle and smiling until Hayes had him arrested on a charge of spreading false statements about the Prince of Wales. Now the upcoming trial was the talk of the town and the Buckingham's brothers determined to push their advantage took matters a stage further commissioning a one act farce lampooning the affair that was to be opened at the Provincial under the title the "Barbarous Barber of the Lather and the Shave." It is said that the play spotlighted that Bully had allegedly been caught cheating at cards in the California Goldfields and as a summary punishment had an ear cut off. The story like much of the myths surrounding Bully need to be treated with caution. For one thing Hayes seemed to have no animosity for Buckingham brothers or at less George Buckingham when in mid 1864, George Buckingham joined Hayes and Rosie on Hayes’s latest schooner, the Black Diamond when the boat was struck by a sudden squall and capsized drowning George Rosie the maid and Hayes baby daughter. Hayes it is said had at first held both the baby on one shoulder and with his other arm supporting Rosie had tried to swim for the shore but in the end was unable to save his wife and daughter who like George was lost to the sea forever.





Perhaps in relation to the history of the Port Chalmers only one person has more notoriety than Hayes and that would be David Gray who made the town of Aramoana a wrd suynomos with mass murder when on November 13 1990 Gray went of a shooting rampage and killed Rewa Bryson, Chris Cole, Vic Crimp, Jim Dickson, Jasmine Holden, Gary Holden, Tim Jamieson, Vanessa Percy, Dion Percy, Ross Percy, Alec Tali, Leo Wilson and Sergeant Stewart Guthrie. In a single day Aramoana’s national reputation as a community that had pulled together to defeat multinational greed had literally been blown away. For ever more Aramoana would have an international reputation associated with mass murder a reputation recently reinforced by the making of the movie Out of the Blue by NZ Director Robert Sarkies (also the director of the NZ Cult movie on student life in Dunedin known as Scarfies’). Locally Out of the Blue met with mixed feelings with a number of Aramoana’s residents, many of whom were in Aromona on the day of the shooting. (Note if visiting Aramoana DON’T! ask the locals where Grays house can be found it won’t be appreciated).







The common misconception is that Gray’s crime was sparked by his obsession with war books. Yet while Gray’s ultra violent fantasy world was symptomatic, it does not address why his fantasy became reality. Evidence now suggests mental illness, which psychiatric services and the police were made aware of, but which they failed to act upon. Dr Julia Faed, formerly of Otago Medical School, is quoted in Senior Sergeant Bill O’Brien’s (police sanctioned) history of the shootings saying that Gray “probably” suffered from schizophrenia. Faed is however quick to stress that psychiatric services can’t be blamed, stating Gray “had no previous history of mental illness” a statement which is incorrect. For the psychiatric autopsy written by a Professor Paul E Mullens, a specialist in shooting rampages, who lived in the “immediate vicinity” of Aramoana, was based of statements taken from Grays friends, family and neighbors who all indicated they had thought that something was increasingly wrong (specifically his increasingly unkempt appearance and dwindling circle of friends) with Gray’s mental health. Indeed his parents were sufficiently concerned to the point they took Gray to see a psychiatrist who in turn scheduled Gray a series of appointments. However Gray never turned up and no checks were ever made by officials to assess why, or to make sure that Gray posed no danger to himself or others which he clearly was. True Gray had no previous criminal record but he had become known to the police when nine month’s before when a bookshop employee called the police fearing Gray was going to kill him. Similar out burst took place in a bank and at a dairy while the following post can be found on the website chat room The Army Rumour Service www.arse.co.uk) “In NZ we had the Aramoana massacre by David Gray…….I knew this man personally through the local gun shop I had worked in for years. He was a known borderline nutcase, who was forever coming into the shop and saying strange and downright questionable things, he was reported to the local arms officer on several occasions, and nothing was acted on“.


















Gray would sadly overshadow Aramoana true legacy its place in history as the head quarters for one of the most successful nonviolent protests to ever been fought and won by a small community going up against a multinational with deep pockets and much political clout The heart of this fascinating story is captured in another film Chris Pryor’s documentary, ‘There is No Smelter’ (avalible on DVD ), which records the history of this David and Goliath epic. In one scene of Pryor’s film morning sun rises over the horizon staining clouds bright pink, birds hover over lapping waves, as across the harbor you can see the hills are blanketed in thick snow. You can easily imagine the clean sea air as salt fills your nostrils, where minus smog and traffic jams, anxiety simply slips away. This is the landscape which former deputy mayor and nursery owner, Bill Christie minutes before on the video would describe as “a useless bit of land.” A similar view held by senior National MP Warren Cooper who approached men like Christie and Mayor Clifford Skegg’s with the idea of setting up an aluminum smelter in Aramoana. Other business groups and local authorities also developed an interest in the smelter such as the Otago Harbour Board, who owned much of the “surplus” land at Aramoana. In many cases support was given without public consultation with “many influential individuals” having been represented “in more than one organisation.” Born in the 1970s the smelter concept was one the ‘Think Big’ project launched by National Prime Minister Robert (‘Piggy’) Muldoon’s during his attempts to industrialise NZ to increase NZ’s economic clout. ‘Think Big’ proved a white elephant that ended up been heavily subsidised by the NZ tax payer.


Broken into several branches, protest groups campaigned according to talents and their support base. Groups such as Save Aramoana Campaign (SAC) took a nonhierarchical, open democratic approach using “innovative and creative” methods to generate publicity, action, and raise funds. SAC’s spectacular stunts proved amazingly effective with non violent gimmicks like the “Traveling Embassy” receiving massive amounts of media coverage. Another example of the SAC’s creativity was the “Independent State of Aramoana” whose “stamps” and “passports” sold poorly until Warren Cooper complained they could not be used as legal tender (at which point sales took off like a sky rocket). SAC also undertook research, producing publications, “scientific and otherwise”. Another group CREEDNZ (Campaign for Rational Economic and Environmental Development in New Zealand) fought the smelter through the courts and raised funds for legal actions. By acting independently, CREEDNZ insured that financial damage to the other groups would be minimized in the event that the group lost its legal fight.







The combined result of this community effort is best summed up by Claire Carey, a Traveling Embassy volunteer “in the aftermath of the Springbok tour the political climate had changed. There was now a more apparent hostility to people deemed protestors. I was being interviewed by a radio journalist about our likelihood of success. I could tell from the radio journalist’s face that she thought I was rather naive. Twenty minutes after recording that interview a telephone call came through to tell us some stunning news. Alusuisse, one of the smelter partners, had just announced its withdrawal. In effect, the proposal was now a dead duck.” The Dunedin City Council subsequently recommended that Aramoana come under Department of Conservation control and 1998 the area was gazetted as an ‘ecological area’. Aramoana’s future was secure, the smelter will never be, so that future generations can enjoy, for many years to come, a piece of land which rather than being “useless” is living testimony to how a community which works together can control its own fate, a definition of true power if ever there was one






Today major comparison can be had between the Smelter protest and the current $NZ180 million (which some experts believe well end up costing more than $380million) new rugby Stadium - which is been planned for Dunedin City. Both projects have polarized Dunedin citizens. Some (for example Sir Cliff Skeggs) argue that the stadium is the kind of ‘Think big project’ Dunedin needs if the city of Dunedin is not to fiscally wither and die. Others say the timing is wrong and Dunedin a costal city, at the end of the sparsely populated South Island, needs to concentrate on self sufficiency in light of rising gas prices’ and climate change. Others go further and suggest the city is being manipulated by old families who having made their money want to invest in “vanity” projects while ignoring the city best assets the very talent and creativity of its people. Notably during the Smelter protest it would be the talent of the cities artistic community, who using their skills as painters, sculptures, jewelers, musicians, which came to represent a fifth column for the protest movement. Art became a powerful forum for “directly confronting social and political issues” while at the same it raised funds as well.






As a result, the Aramoana protests ignited “a distinguished legacy” that includes a significant number of highly sought after art-works by such artists as Derek Ball, Chris Booth, Shaun Burdon, Andrew Drummond, Di French, Ralph Hotere, Cilla McQueen, Russell Moses, Peter Nicholls, Joanna Paul, and Marilynn McFarlane demonstrate. Backed by passionate volunteers, and highly educated professionals, the group bit by bit began to show that their environmental and economic concerns were backed up by well researched facts. Long known the home of one of NZ’s leading artists Ralph Hotere, (whose work can be seen at the Carey’s Bay historic Hotel) Port Chalmers has attracted a host successful painters, sculptors, fashion designers, and chic galleries like the Craft Banker Renaissance and the Port Gallery. Recently the Port has also been experiencing a boom in café culture as well, ranging from the ever popular Port Royale Café, the well received Car Port café, a recent pizzeria installed at the Tall Poppy and the current revamp of Carey’s Bay Hotel which is also famous for it annual art auction.