To contemplate how far modern practices have come in the last 150 years – yet how
essentially our needs as a community have remained unchanged – look no further than Twentymans Funeral Services in Grahamstown, Thames.

​Twentymans is the oldest surviving funeral home in New Zealand, of which owner and Managing Director Adrian Catran is extremely proud. 

A descendant of tin miners from Cornwall, Adrian has his own long association with Grahamstown. It follows the arrival of the six Catran brothers from the small town of Ludvgan in Cornwall, England, to seek gold in the newly established township on ‘the Thames’.

Living a few streets from where Adrian now lives and runs his funeral directing business, the brothers feature in the occasional newspaper report of the time for their noisy shenanigans after evenings in the town’s busy hotels.
Men had arrived in their thousands in the months following the Thames goldfield proclamation on 1 August 1867.

It was a life where hardship and opportunity were encountered in equal measure and miners were no pushovers. They suffered miserable conditions in the cold, muddy hills that had been stripped of their magnificent cloak of kauri forest and they endured it with patronage at one of the numerous hotels that sprang up.

The realisation of riches in the Coromandel had a huge impact not only on the landscape and Maori population, but on Auckland, which was in the throes of a depression at the time.

This was one of the richest goldfields ever discovered. But in the hillsides rising as a backdrop to the Firth, it was hard quartz rock that held the precious metal in its embrace and it required heavy machinery rather than pick and shovel to release it.
Within a few short years the haphazard miner’s shacks were replaced with Victorian houses built of kauri, and companies had overtaken the small mining claims.

Mills were constructed with giant metal ‘stampers’ to crush the ore, working day and night with no respect for the sabbath. Laws were swiftly enacted to try to safeguard the population from the most dangerous of the practices, such as the risk of being crushed to death by a stray giant boulder that had been blasted from the hills above the town.  
This was clearly a land of opportunity for an established undertaker.

By 1868, William Twentyman had set up his building contracting and undertaking business in Owen St, Grahamstown. He hired horse and carriage from Mr White on Pollen St - whose stables were situated on the corner of Kirkwood and Cochrane Streets - for deliveries to the cemetery.

Shortland Cemetery is where William and his wife Mary Jane Twentyman were buried; Mary having died on 1 May 1888 aged 42, followed by her husband William less than five months later, aged 47.

The business carried on under the management of their sons Robert and William and the sawmilling and building department of Twentymans closed down only in 1976. Twentymans stayed in the Twentyman family until the early 1990s, and Adrian kept the Twentymans’ name when he bought it in 1993.

Adrian renovated the home on Pollen St that serves as family meeting room and casket room for Twentymans, so that families have somewhere homely and comfortable to meet and discuss their needs for funerals.

The tastefully decorated historic Thames home is the shopfront of the business, while the rear of the building houses a mortuary where the dead are cared for; housed, embalmed, dressed and made up prior to their funeral and burial or cremation.

And this is where the historical merges with the 21st Century, for Twentymans is not only the oldest surviving funeral home in New Zealand, but among its most innovative.

The business has chapels in Whitianga, Paeroa and Whangamata and many are surprised to realise what other facilities lie behind the seemingly unchanged cottage on Pollen St Thames. At the rear of the building is an office for staff, a roomy secure garage for the numerous Twentymans vehicles, an award-winning eco-chapel, with seating for 200 and provision for another 60-80 outside.

From its audio and video booth, friends and family worldwide can view the funeral service taking place by accessing a password-controlled live stream on the Twentymans’ website www.twentymans.co.nz.

Across the road from the chapel on the service lane off Queen St, the former Judd’s Foundry – where huge lighthouses and other Industrial machinery were built - has been restored by Adrian with the aim of housing a small cremator to serve the Coromandel Peninsula community.

Currently families must drive to Hamilton or Auckland to see their loved ones cremated, which means that funerals held on the east coast of the Coromandel must be conducted
earlier in the day and the families face a lengthy journey on one of the most emotional days of their lives.

Twentymans’ chose to apply for a Certificate of Compliance to establish a cremator that would sit inside this restored warehouse building on its large commercial site.

It cost Adrian $40,000 to successfully achieve a Certificate of Compliance – disappointing particularly when a planning consultant engaged by TCDC had given it the go-ahead initially.

Adrian wants the crematorium to cater to human as well as pet cremations, and anticipates just 170 cremations per year would be performed, amounting to 21 working days of operation.

“There is a need for a cremator here. This is not about a big money spinner – I won’t see any return on the costs of this in my lifetime – but for families that wish to have their loved ones cremated close to home, it’s a loss,” he says.

In New Zealand, more than 60 per cent of families now choose cremation after someone has died. “For us, that figure is 70 per cent,” says Adrian. This is still well below Japan, where cremation occurs after 99 per cent of deaths.

He is buoyed by comments on the Twentymans facebook page following his decision to appeal, such as: “I hope that you succeed in providing that extra level of care for the Thames community!”, “I certainly hope people will watch it and trust that Twentymans have the town’s best interests at heart - Go Adrian!” and “There would be less smoke and pollution from the crematorium than Judds Foundry on the original site of the proposed crematorium in the era!”.

Preparing the deceased for burial is always going to be a community need. There are numerous options being trialled worldwide, though each has its critics. Resomation - in which a deceased is treated with heat, chemicals and water before being cremulated into ashes; composting - in a ‘pod’ with compost material added until compost is formed months later; and freezing the body before reducing to ashes.

Modern cremation techniques ensure there is no residue or odours, and the cremator is a unit about the size of the modern residential laundry.

“We will stand by our customers and our commitment to keeping local businesses employed with our service,” says Adrian. “Many people don’t want to discuss the disposal of their body when they die, hence cremation or burial are the principle options and have been for decades. There is a need for a cremator here. This is not about a big money spinner – I won’t see any return on the costs of this in my lifetime – but we are doing this for families that wish to have their loved ones cremated close to home.”
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• Article by Hook & Arrow www.hookandarrow.co.nz for Twentymans.

 

Dave Rastovich returned to his birthplace in New Zealand’s largest city to complete an epic 350km lone paddle on a surfboard. Dave is among those raising awareness of the plight of the world’s rarest dolphin. Alison Smith was on the beach at Piha to greet him.

Near Port Waikato just south of Auckland, David Rastovich had been paddling in no wind for four hours, an exhausting mechanical movement toward journey’s end, when the sound of short, delicate breathing woke him from the trance of monotony.

A pod of eight Maui dolphins – a seventh of the planet’s remaining population – had appeared at his side. As if keeping vigil over this lone human in an increasingly treacherous stretch of ocean, for 35 minutes they rode the bow of Rastovich’s board, darting off to play in nearby waves before returning to him.

He later said: “These dolphins are so amazing.  They take short, delicate little breaths and they’re really fun. I’ve paddled alongside Blue Whales, and they’ll breathe and let off great clouds of water into the sky. They’re so different to the big whales. They’re cute, and so gentle.”

As Dave approached Manukau Harbour off the coast of Auckland, unruly 6-8ft waves crashed toward him from north and south in raw, chaotic power. “I’ve surfed some big waves but you really appreciate just how powerful this coast is,” he recalled. “hese dolphins were like little seeds squeezed out of your hand, going off to surf the waves and then coming straight back over to me.

“It was incredible that this creature that has been so harmed by us still had the trust to be by me. I just feel so privileged to have met these dolphins, and the first thing that came to my mind was apologies. I said, ‘I’m so sorry, you have lost your families, your aunties and uncles’. Here I was with eight of them – a seventh of their entire population – and yet they were still somehow so trusting of a human that they came up and surfed with me.”

As quickly as they came, the world’s smallest, rarest dolphin then disappeared. “This was their zone. It was chaotic out there, and that was where they turned back. The waters on this coast are the equivalent of any Tahitian or Hawaiian water, and these dolphins should be left alone to it. To be there with them was easily one of the most amazing days of my life.”

Unlike previous paddles undertaken in waters off America, Dave wanted no-one alongside him in the treacherous coast and completed much of the journey alone.

In the safe harbours of coastal communities along the way, however, he was joined by surfers, children and supporters mobilising action against an expected application to the New Zealand Government for the annual dredging of 50 million tonnes of sand for iron ore.

Little is known about the cumulative effect of this dredging but it’s certain that with the top 10m layer of the seabed being effectively vacuumed up, nothing will be left alive. The entire west coast from Wanganui to Cape Reinga is under either a prospecting or exploration permit for iron sand. This happens to be a stretch of coast that’s home to the world’s rarest and smallest dolphin – the Maui’s Dolphin, or Popoto.
 
With fewer than 15 breeding females, Maui dolphins are among the rarest and most endangered of all mammals.

Researchers claim fishing has progressively decimated numbers from around 1800 individuals in the 1970s to just 50, and the death of more than one individual every 10-23 years will have devastating consequences for the entire population.

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation estimate there are just 55 Maui dolphins over the age of one. Explains WWF Marine Advocate Milena Palka: “Maui's are in perilous waters; the number one threat to their survival is fishing with gillnets and trawling but now sandmining poses a new, looming threat on the horizon. We can’t lose a single one in the next 10 to 23 years. We need a unanimous message from the people that these dolphins are Taonga (treasures), they are important to them, they deserve to be here, and we must all act now to save them.”

The plight of this playful little dolphin has brought together people of all backgrounds and talents to oppose the mining of black sand on the west coast. The people all share a connection to the coast and a sense that allowing minimal economic benefit to drive a unique species of marine mammal to extinction would bring shame to New Zealand.

Among those supporting efforts to save the Maui dolphin is Jean-Michel Cousteau, whose Facebook page states: “New Zealand has one final chance to put this right. But it needs to act now and remove gillnets and trawl nets from the dolphins’ habitat immediately. Failure to do so means that New Zealand is wilfully allowing this unique cetacean species to become extinct. Such an act will not only damage the reputation of New Zealand’s fishing industry forever but destroy the country’s environmental reputation.”

Freesurfer David Rastovich is using his surfing profile, passion for environmental causes and oceanic skills to help this species balanced on the knife-edge of survival.

On the black sands of Piha, a crowd of 200 or so people were scanning the horizon for the lone surfer. As he appeared around Nun Rock, the deep whirring sound of a Maori traditional instrument and Maori call brought him to shore. The crowd whooped and cheered as Rasta landed and took a momentary pause with hand on his heart before speaking.

“This is very humbling for me. It’s a beautiful culture you belong to. Thank you for your warm aroha and hospitality. No-one on this trip wants seabed mining on this coast: farmers, fishermen, grommies, surfers – we want some sort of action. We’ve put faith in Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) to urge everyone to join their email list so you can oppose seabed mining when it comes up, but you have to make a lot of noise. The world is watching New Zealand right now.” - as published in the Tropicsurf Annual 2015.

Yesterday, after having had the honour of spending several hours with a man whose ancestors sailed here 1000 years ago, I captured this photo over Tairua river. There is a saying in the book I'm reading by Rev. Maori Marsden; Illumination is from above, a revelation gift from God. When it occurs, it acts as a catalyst integrating knowledge to produce wisdom. Will there be mauri - life force - left in this river if we carry on treating our earth as we do? This is the sort of question I ask when I consider the policies of those I can choose to vote for tomorrow, rather than asking 'what's in it for me?'. It would be so sad to think that on my generation's watch, a place with this kind of beauty could be reduced to a lifeless body of water.    

I'm absorbed right now in writing a 10 page feature about the district of Thames on the Coromandel NZ, and the town's 150 year celebration marking the day its goldfields were proclaimed open.

I've been called upon to write lots about heritage in recent years - probably because I love it. If you love researching something, you'll generally do a good job and get more of that kind of work. 

Thames has many great writers and historians, and their generous help is humbling.

I particularly enjoyed reading this post from David Wilton on The Treasury Thames website, about William Hall. Hall was a pharmacist with a passion for botany, and he was alarmed at the rate of deforestation taking place as thousands of miners swarmed the hills of the newly formed town, using ancient, towering kauri and other noble forest giants wantonly.

His arboretum on the hills of Thames is now a tiny sanctuary of tranquility amid suburbia.

Here's a snippet from David's story, on the Treasury site www.thetreasury.org.nz;

Hall was a pioneer conservationist in a colony, and at a time, when exploiting resources to gain economic advantage was considered to be of paramount importance.

That was the fundamental reason for European nations to seek remote colonies in the 18th and 19th centuries - to harvest resources for the Industrial Age, which was then well under way.

For an individual to advocate restraint, and protection of endangered species, was somewhat akin to heresy. However, that didn't seem to bother Hall. His Letter to the Editor of the Thames Star in 1883 was the first of many.

'It is much to be regretted that a well-organized arboretum for indigenous trees and shrubs has not been established in each of the great centres of population. The extensive, and frequently wanton, destruction of the native bush has been going on at such a pace that it will soon be difficult, if not impossible, to get sight of some of the rarer species. And, unfortunately, the planting of our beautiful New Zealand trees has not generally been adopted, perhaps from the mistaken idea that they are difficult of culture. Partly to disprove this, but principally because I had a great liking for the occupation, I some thirty years ago, began a plantation on a piece of land at Parawai, Thames. ... One object in making these plantations was to induce the visits of our rapidly disappearing native birds. The frequent visits of' the riro-riro, the piwakawaka, and the kotare, with occasional incursions of the ruru, the tui, and the pipiwharauroa, and still more rare appearance of the kaka, kukupa, kohoperoa, weka, and miromiro, have amply repaid my expectations. In conclusion, let me express a hope that these few cursory remarks may induce others to attempt the cultivation of our indigenous flora.'

Today the Thames branch of Forest and Bird continue Hall’s work at the William Hall Arboretum.

John and Mary Hall's grave is in Shortland Cemetery, Thames. It is probable that John planted the exotic trees near his wife’s grave after the death of Mary in 1898.
   

On the headland that anchors one end of my local beach, there’s a sign on a resident’s house that says “Pen-Yr-Angor”.

As a journalist I can’t give my opinion. As a blogger, I’m going to share with you something that arrived in my inbox and made me bash my keyboard in frustration. Here's what it said (anything in brackets is mine):

On 3 August 2017, the Decision-making Committee (of our Government’s so-called Environmental Protection Authority) granted consent subject to conditions for Trans-Tasman Resources Limited to extract and process iron sand within the South Taranaki Bight.

Here’s what’s going to happen now.

The Consent Holder will extract up to 12.5 million tonnes of seabed material per 3-month period, and 50 million tonnes of seabed material during any year for the term of these consents. That’s all the creatures that make up what’s known as benthic communities in that area of seafloor.

And here’s what I’ve read about them;

Macrofauna are important components of estuarine and coastal ecosystems, because they serve as critical links between a variety of primary producers and organic matter sources (e.g., phytoplankton, benthic microalgae and macroalgae, detritus) and economically, ecological, and recreationally important fish and crustaceans. They are important components of aquatic food webs and they affect transport and cycling of nutrients and toxicants.

Right.

I’ll come back to what’s expected to happen when this company, TTRL, has finished mining the seabed of its life (in order to get iron).

But here is what else the EPA’s decision acknowledged from experts.

There is a ‘whale pathway’ in the area to be mined.

This mining is going to take place in “an important whale nursery or feeding area where certain whale species visit at various times of year during their life span.”

Blue whale vocalisations have been detected on 89 per cent of days.

That’s not all. The Māui dolphin is one of the three most threatened small cetaceans in the world and it lives here.

The latest Māui dolphin population estimate reported by the Department of Conservation puts the population at 63 dolphins over the age of one.

For critically endangered species like the Māui dolphin, even very small effects can be biologically meaningful.

Professor Liz Slooten, who gave evidence to the hearing, considers that any noise pollution, including seismic surveys and mining, risks displacing the Māui dolphin into high risk areas – such as areas where commercial fishing takes place.

There is already overlap between Māui dolphins and fisheries in the area. She thinks it likely that this overlap, and its attendant risks, will be intensified due to habitat displacement caused by the mining area and its sediment plume.

All of the above came directly from the EPA’s decision report.

Sightings of the dolphin appear to be rare in the Sth Taranaki Bight (no surprises, when there are only an estimated 63 of them left) but there were seven sightings, with one occurring about 9 km inshore of the mining area and another about 55 km to the east near Whanganui. The furthest offshore was 49 km.

The fishing threat to Māui dolphins still exists, as three to four members of the species are killed per year (New Zealand wide). A sustainable level would be one dolphin every 10 to 23 years.

As pointed out by the EPA’s own Maori advisory committee, Ngā Kaihautū Tikanga Taiao, there was no bond mechanism demanded, or insurance cover towards environmental restoration, should something go wrong.

New jobs are unlikely to significantly reduce unemployment levels (from the independent Social Impact Assessment).

But back to what the EPA says should happen so that it’s all good to mine the seabed.

Five years following the completion of all seabed material extraction: “The Consent Holder shall be required to demonstrate that recovery of the macroinfauna benthic community at that location has occurred.”

This recovery is defined as when the macroinfauna communities at a specified location are within 15 per cent of the average pre-mining total abundance, biomass and species richness.

That sounds, well, not too bad right? But if annual monitoring shows that’s not likely to happen?

Get Consent Holder to highlight this to us at the EPA; find a duly qualified benthic ecology expert to tell the EPA possible reasons why recovery is not on track; and potential measures to ‘enhance’ it. Then explain how, as Consent Holders, they can demonstrate that recovery of the macroinfauna benthic community has occurred.”

Suck it and see, then.
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I'm posting this from Devonport in Auckland, where the kids and I have just returned from getting this close to the America's Cup homecoming parade. What a great shot I got huh? It was a different experience to the last America's Cup parade I was at, as a young reporter for the New Zealand Herald. I remember the atmosphere like it was yesterday; so many cheers, smiles, a rainbow of tape being thrown about and bags of rice being emptied from buildings on Queen St. Today it was pouring with rain when the main men came past, but the rain (according to Team NZ boss Grant Dalton) is a good omen. Sometimes I miss daily news - when you get to chase around the one person that everyone wants to speak to on the day. But today I had just as much fun doing that from the sidelines. It was a buzz to see the reaction of my two young sons - who have always lived in a coastal town of just 1600 people - as they stood wide-eyed in awe at the crowds and the atmosphere. Our local school in Tairua celebrates the value of "innovative and creative thinkers". So we wagged school for the day to celebrate some of the best examples of innovation and creative thinking that New Zealand has seen in a while. Go Team New Zealand.

I’ve taken the current State of Emergency status in our town today as a chance to torture myself with completing a tax return, which of course means I am cleaning the top of the kitchen cupboards.

It’s a delay tactic until alcohol can appear at my side at a socially acceptable hour.
On the plus side, I may at last be able to put my surname to my very own species of newly discovered Chytridiomycota (Google it). I’ll call it Kitchendetritus Smithsonii and become famous in academic circles, somewhere.

Meanwhile my children have piled up their mammoth collection of dirty clothes in my office, in a half-hearted attempt to prove that they have nothing to wear and need new clothes.

They’re now zombiefying themselves with WIFI, glancing up bleary-eyed only long enough to send a nerf bullet hurtling past my head.

My 15-year-old is on her way to a party through rising flood waters 10km from here. We drove through town past NZ Army trucks and Police vehicles as I ranted about her not appreciating the severity of the risk I was taking to get her to her sleep over.

Fortunately, she realised she’d forgotten to bring something. So I was able to U-turn the people mover in the driving rain and return home to hand over responsibility to my husband and his high wheelbase ute.

This is the third severe storm in four weeks (after a summer drought) and it’s getting a bit shit.

It’s what we should expect from climate change. Rising sea levels. More frequent extreme weather events – such as droughts (especially in the east of New Zealand) and floods. A change in rainfall patterns – with increased summer rainfall in the north and east of the North Island and increased winter rainfall in many parts of the South Island.

What are the effects of climate change on human health? A warmer climate is expected to increase the risk of illnesses and death from extreme heat and poor air quality. Climate change will likely increase the frequency and strength of extreme events (such as floods, droughts, and storms) that threaten human health and safety.

I am sometimes accused of being flippant but it’s only because my own personal safety has not been compromised a great deal so far (due to a well-built, new house and the decision to hand my teenager over to the spouse when essential travel was required).  

Health, however, may be a different story. The first glass of Sauvignon Blanc has been consumed, and it’s a little past 3pm on a Thursday.

Well I guess we could just deny it, enjoy the alcohol and go for a pleasant walk to the beach now couldn’t we Donald?
 
(Written for you in Kauai Laurel!)

It's a really enjoyable challenge to be working with imagery and only very limited space for words, like with this post for a funeral director for whom I'm working. Twentymans Funeral Directors are among those incredible professionals who look after our dead (and the grieving people left behind). It's a tough and thankless job sometimes. Thankyou to elemental environments in Thames for the lovely background image that I used here.

I suppose it’s no coincidence that I woke thinking of my friend Pete this morning. A year ago today we lost him – he, having given up on the world he inhabited and leaving those who loved him shocked and searching for answers.

There is a seat now for Pete at the edge of the point break where we all surfed with him, so Pete has a presence always in a place that he found peace. It is dark, solid, hand-carved wood, with knots and lines from the tree that once breathed life into a forest around it.

As I get older, I have lost more friends and acquaintances this way and talked to friends who have been scarred by such losses too. Later in the year the community I live in lost another Pete, one whose heart for conservation was bursting with a need to give and to help. It was such tragedy that nature could not help him, when he did so much for the natural world that so needed him.

When reporting the news, you learn that you are allowed only to type a simple phrase to describe the chaos that would have swirled inside this person, and the void they leave behind.

There were no suspicious circumstances.

That we should know how and when we will die, when we have no say in how and when we are born…

But then, death is never easy for those left behind and we can only wonder how it is for those gone.
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Today became an opportunity to dance in view of the wooden seat overlooking the sea, Pete’s seat.
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