Lawrence

WORDS: MICHELE HOLLIS • IMAGERY: DONNA RENFREW

After decades of prejudice, neglect and denial, projects such as those at the Lawrence Chinese Graves Historic Area are preserving the historical fabric and dignity of the area’s Chinese heritage

Adrienne Shaw was nine years old when she discovered her Chinese ancestry.

That was in the days when local fruiterers sold their produce street to street like Mr Whippy, and children such as Adrienne and her siblings roamed their neighbourhoods making their own fun.

“We weren’t thieves,” says Adrienne, but on this particular day, she says, they succumbed to the temptation of a bunch of bananas swinging jauntily from the back of a fruiterer’s van.

“He came up the hill, banged on our door, and said, ‘Your little brats of kids have taken my bananas. Where’s my 35 cents?’

“So Mum finds 35 cents, meets us in the kitchen and says, ‘What do you mean by stealing those bananas?’

“And we say, ‘Oh, he’s only a Chinaman, a Ching Chong Chinaman!’ And she says, ‘You can’t say that – you’ve got Chinese in you!’.”

Adrienne is a fifth-generation descendant of Chau Chu Taai (also known as Chow Tie) and Grace Kerr, who met, married and lived at the Lawrence Chinese Camp on Tuapeka Flat – boggy land on the outskirts of the town of Lawrence – and whose European residents had excluded Chinese goldminers.

Chau ran the slaughterhouse and butchery there; Grace was a barmaid at the Chinese Empire Hotel, the camp’s grandest building and watering hole.

In its heyday, the camp, which is now a Category 1 historic place, was home to some 500 Chinese goldminers and supporting businesses. The community operated almost solely on Chinese terms, ostracised as it was by its European neighbours in Lawrence.

Adrienne’s father never wanted to talk about his Chinese ancestry, but Adrienne, now a grandmother, is working tirelessly on projects that preserve the historical fabric and dignity of Lawrence’s Chinese heritage.

The Lawrence Chinese Graves Historic Area covers parts of the Lawrence Cemetery in Gabriel Street, which was established in 1866. Around 170 Chinese men, one European woman and several “half-caste” children were buried in the cemetery’s “Chinese section”, mostly in unmarked graves, and there are a few Chinese graves in the European denominational sections.

Some of the deceased were exhumed and transported to China for reburial; many of them were aboard the SS Ventnor when it sank off the Hokianga coast in 1902.

In designating the historic area in 2004, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga stated that the Lawrence Chinese Graves

A family memorial awaits unveiling during Labour Day weekend in 2021.

The first Chinese ANZAC memorial in Australasia was also unveiled. “represent the often unwritten and untraceable histories of individual miners who came to New Zealand to seek their fortune in the goldfields. These graves represent the life and death of a community, as well as of its individual members represented by the headstones”.

The limestone headstones were crumbling, smashed by vandals and crunched by mowers. Marshalled by the indefatigable Adrienne since 2019, camp descendants have restored existing headstones and added memorials for those whose final resting places are unknown.

While she enjoys the peace of the cemetery, Adrienne eschews an emotional reading of her involvement with the place.

“I’m very matter of fact,” she says. “I pick projects that are relevant. I’m a finisher.”

The largest project to date has been the restoration of the mausoleum for Sam Chew Lain and his Scottish wife Amelia Newbiggins Chew Lain (née Peacock). The tomb occupies a prominent position in the Presbyterian section of the cemetery.

Sam was Hakka Cantonese and arrived in New Zealand as a goldminer aged about 20. He became a hotelier, learnt to speak fluent English, joined the Presbyterian Church, and was even admitted to the Masonic Lodge St George.

Contrary to the lone Chinese goldminer stereotype, Sam was one of only a few astute Chinese businessmen who gained respect from European colonials as well as their countrymen. He died in 1903. The tomb (pictured page 10, restored) is the most noticeable gravesite in the cemetery.

“It draws your eye as soon as you approach the cemetery,” says Sarah Gallagher, Heritage Assessment Advisor Otago Southland Region for Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

“That his peers in the Masonic Lodge St George ensured it was built according to his instructions shows the esteem in which he was held, and his ability to cross the cultural divide.”

Sam Chew Lain’s tomb was designed by prominent architect JA Burnside in Gothic style and built of plaster-cast concrete with stained-glass windows, a slate roof, corner pinnacles and buttresses, an east-facing entrance and an iron gate.

Adrienne believes that as a Gothic mausoleum for a Chinese man and Scottish woman, it is unique.

The tomb probably began to deteriorate “fairly quickly” after it was built, due to inherent problems with drainage from the roofs, says Robin Miller of Origin Consultants, who was the expert heritage advisor for the LOCATION

Lawrence is situated 92km southwest of Dunedin on State Highway 8.

restoration. In recent decades the slate roof had collapsed, the roof pinnacles had fallen down, the four gables had been left unrestrained and leaning, the windows had been broken and the tomb gate was missing.

“There was very little left of the tomb, and we didn’t have many old photographs to use,” says Robin, so detective work was required. For instance, tiny shards of glass found in putty around the windows enabled restorers to deduce the original green, amber and blue colours of the cast-iron-framed lights.

In the absence of any depiction of the original, a new gate uses the old fixing points and attachment methods but is a contemporary interpretation.

Since the restoration, the nomination of Sam Chew Lain’s tomb as an historic place within the wider Lawrence Chinese Graves Historic Area has been accepted by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. This is just the start of a research and consultation process that can take several years.

In the meantime, there are plans for another reunion of descendants, following a successful get-together during Labour Day weekend in 2021.

After decades of prejudice, neglect and denial, the historical fabric and dignity of the area’s Chinese heritage is finally being recognised and preserved.

A NEW narrative WORDS: CLAIRE MCCALL

Ngārchitecture, wrongcrete, funology – Anthony Hoete loves linguistic playfulness.

His conversation is peppered with unique word mashups. “Words drive experimentation and conceptual engagement with a language and culture,” says the University of Auckland professor of architecture.

So it’s not surprising to hear that he dropped out of law school to study architecture when he found the regimentation of legalese too confining. That said, a significant career focus, rather than being on designing buildings per se, has been on crafting pathways.

One pathway he is involved in will see the repatriation to New Zealand in the not-too-distant future of the carvings of Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito. The spiritual home of this wharenui (whose identity is expressed as female) lies in the buried village of Te Wairoa, but she has spent much of her life on English soil, where she is located at National Trust property Clandon Park in Surrey. As it was for Anthony, who moved back to New Zealand in 2020 after more than half his lifetime in London, it is time to return.

Anthony (Ngāti Awa) grew up in the mill town of Kawerau in an environment he describes as “laid back”. Evidently self-driven, he obtained a Bachelor of Architecture (Honours) from the University of Auckland, then a master’s degree from The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London (UCL). He remained in the UK for 30 years, conducting research and receiving awards for his innovative architectural practice, WHAT_architecture (London).

During this tenure, he received a call from an associate professor of conservation at UCL, telling him about a wharenui in Surrey that needed work done on the roof. He immediately volunteered his services.

“I was the only Māori registered architect in the UK,” says Anthony. “I saw this as a way to keep my spiritual and cultural connections to New Zealand.”

That call was the start of a 14-year journey that began with fixing a roof but soon morphed into an exploration of the heritage of Hinemihi.

In the latter stages of that journey, from 2012 to 2020, Anthony was chair of Te Maru o Hinemihi – one of four project partners in the future developments of Hinemihi and a new marae at Clandon Park, working with Ngā Kohinga Whakairo o Hinemihi, the National Trust and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

The history of Hinemihi does not mould readily into the values of tikanga Māori. As Anthony explains: “She was commissioned by rangatira Aporo Te Wharekaniwha as a place to entertain tourists with song, dance and food.”

Carved by tohunga whakairo Wero Tāroi with the assistance of Tene Waitere (Ngāti Tarāwhai), Hinemihi was located at Te Wairoa near the famous Pink and White Terraces. In 1886 she gave shelter to people of the local hapū during the eruption of Mount Tarawera.

“She survived the trauma of a volcano but, six years later, was sold as a take-home trinket for Lord Onslow, the then governor of New Zealand,” says Anthony.

Disassembled into 23 carvings, “shopped and shipped”, Hinemihi was ultimately relocated to the grounds of Clandon Park, where she has been since World War I.

Working on this wharenui – first to repair the roof, then to restore carvings – exposed Anthony not only to a Māori diaspora (Ngāti Rānana) from multiple iwi but also to the wider Pacific community.

“Many Polynesians came to Hinemihi; it was an open and inclusive space.”

The next phase of the conservation mission might sound anathema to some, but it seemed natural to Anthony. Staying overnight is an integral part of a visit to a marae, and it was important to Ngāti Rānana.

“At one point we suggested a design proposal that installed a toilet inside Hinemihi. Whilst certainly not traditional, the pressures to preserve the surrounding landscape of Clandon Park would not permit the expansion of the whare footprint.”

Conservation, then, can mean less about the preservation of material and more about the intention to preserve the way a building was historically used, he argues.

“There is no precedent for the whare as an integrated marae building of wharenui, wharekai and wharepaku, but then Hinemihi is sited in unusual circumstances, divorced from her original tūrangawaewae.”

In 2017 Anthony shifted tack after hearing a Radio New Zealand interview with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga Chief Executive Andrew Coleman, in which he expressed his desire to see Hinemihi returned home. The carvings that made up her identity could be exchanged for new carvings.

“There was an ongoing desire for Hinemihi to have a sustained legacy at Clandon Park and a chance to foreground Māori culture through an open, consultative process,” he says.

Anthony proposed a three-point pānui that carved a way for new co-designed relationships with whare.

The making of replacement carvings throws up some questions. Who should design these when there is no whakapapa in Britain? Who should write the narratives?

“It’s a much wider, potentially more inclusive kaupapa and a fantastic opportunity for the ‘kō-design’ [his word] of a pan-tribal whare, the likes of which has not been seen.”

Here’s the thing: Anthony cannot talk about heritage divorced from invention. As a professor of architecture at the University of Auckland, he encourages students to look to the past – but project forward.

“It is possible to respect the tikanga yet still innovate,” he says.

Jim Schuster – Pouarahi Traditional Arts at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Pakeke of Te Maru o Hinemihi and great-great-grandson of Tene Waitere – has worked for many years alongside Anthony on projects related to Hinemihi.

But his association with Anthony stretches back much further – to the late 1970s, when Jim was a teacher and Anthony a student at Kawerau Intermediate School. He recalls that Anthony’s ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking was evident at an early age.

“I would almost say he had an ‘off-the-wall’ approach to his schooling. He was one of those likeable, often rogue, students in a school of around 250 pupils,” says Jim.

“So you can imagine my reaction when the UCL professor Dean Sully brought us together, including [former Te Maru o Hinemihi chair] Alan Gallop, at a little pub in London to discuss restoration work on Hinemihi.”

Now Anthony is back in New Zealand, the pair are working together again on Tānewhirinaki – a wharenui that the Māori Built Heritage team at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga has been involved with over the years, along with its community.

Undoubtedly Anthony will bring his innovative thinking to his proposal for the reconstruction of Tānewhirinaki, which was built in the late 1800s by the Whakatōhea hapū Ngāti Ira.

No sooner had Anthony returned to New Zealand to take up his post at the university than he received an invitation to travel to the Bay of Plenty to see for himself this building that had been commissioned to restore the mana of a tribe that had lost their land to confiscation.

There was a certain sadness in viewing the remnants of this once-magnificent whare tūpuna stacked up in a garage (although, he points out, this was no fault of the hapū, who were providing robust protection).

When this project gets off the ground, thanks to the mahi of others such as Jeremy Treadwell, a senior lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland, Anthony’s team will use

ahikā: ‘home fires’, a reference to those maintaining continuous occupation of ancestral lands hapū: sub-tribe hapū mātaurangā: hapū knowledge kaupapa: project, initiative or principle kaupapa hapū: hapū project, or initiative mana whenua: those with tribal authority over land or territory by virtue of possession and/or occupation pānui: notice, advertisement pakeke: senior cultural advisor papakāinga: ancestral home pātaka: food storehouse pōwhiri: welcoming ceremony rangatira: chief te ao Māori: the Māori world tekoteko: the carved figure at the front apex of a whare tūpuna tikanga: cultural protocol, tradition tohunga whakairo: master carver tūrangawaewae: a place to stand, the place/s where people trace descent from, where they belong whakapapa: genealogical links wharekai: dining room, dining house wharenui: meeting house/s wharepaku: toilet/s whare tūpuna: ancestral house/s

This house was designed and built by my father and me, for my father, a man born and raised on Mōtītī Island – his tūrangawaewae. According to Wikipedia, Mōtītī Island has “18 homes occupied by 27 people”. In reality, it has 60-plus shelters that collectively serve as ahikā for those absent, who whakapapa to its two whare tūpuna: Te Hinga o te Rā and Tamatea ki te Huatahi.

This house is organised according to the two means of arrival. Pivoting sea and air doors bookend the plan layout. Living merely occurs between the two, such that this is a one-room house with a table, functioning as a wharekai, suspended from the ceiling by a hooked I-beam.

An independent pātaka space stores temporary guests and is accessed by a cliff stair. The house was deconstructed this summer as it was no longer fit for purpose. n

mīmiro, a building technique – specifically, a form of post-tensioning – that predates European arrival.

The use of the endangered methodology will result in a structure with a greater resilience to earthquakes. It means the rebuilt whare will have an arched form more akin to an upturned boat hull, and Anthony plans to document the process, but only with the hapū in partnership, in written word and on film – the first time it has been recorded other than orally.

“We will embrace hapū mātauranga to kō-design and build the whare. This process can kō-create a digital twin – a virtual whare – such that, in some way, hapū, if not others elsewhere in the world, might be able to engage in Tānewhirinaki at Opeke Marae.

“The complex issues that te ao Māori is encountering today through the unfolding of contemporary society might yield innovative kaupapa hapū research. Should or could, for example, we consider articulating the custom of pōwhiri digitally?”

This manifestation of terrestrial and celestial (digital) te ao Māori is articulated by Anthony, who encourages his students to transfer ancient knowledge respectfully into a contemporary context. This cannot be undertaken without mana whenua input.

As an honorary research scholar at UCL, Anthony specialises in ‘future heritage’, so he thinks about this stuff – a lot.

“At the moment, we are speculating on the future of whare – how Māori continuously adapt to work with the tools of the time and within dynamic social and environmental constructs,” he says.

“This kaupapa should then inform Māori housing, especially papakāinga.”

His prediction is that vertical papakāinga are coming – intergenerational apartments designed to be more responsive to Māori values but built at hitherto unseen densities. To complement more relaxed planning rules around intensive housing development, he says, we might speculate about urban-rooftop marae.

“Even though some tikanga say that no building should be higher than the tekoteko on the top of the whare, through conversation and kō-design we need to understand and discuss the underpinning traditions – and thus the scope for change.”

Anthony might just be on the cusp of the formation of yet another new word: ‘sky marae’ – an elevated built form anchored in solid ground but reaching for higher purpose.