FM Page i Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM Mapping the Godzone FM Page ii Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM FM Page iii Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM Mapping the Godzone A Primer on New Zealand Literature and Culture William J. Schafer University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu FM Page iv Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM For Martha—little blue penguins, pukeko, tuatara & all © 1998 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 03 02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schafer, William John, 1937– Mapping the Godzone : a primer on New Zealand literature and culture / William J. Schafer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–8248–2016–9 (alk. paper) 1. New Zealand literature—History and criticism. 2. New Zealand— Civilization. I. Title. PR9624.3.S33 1998 820.9’993—dc21 98–10181 820.9’993—dc21 98–1CIP1 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources Designed by Jennifer Lum FM Page v Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM Their town, called Waimaru, was small as the world and halfway between the South Pole and the equator, that is, forty-five degrees exactly. There was a stone monu- ment just north of the town, to mark the spot, in gold lettering. —Traveller, the writing said, Stop here. You are now standing between the South Pole and the equator. What did it feel like to be standing at forty- five degrees? It felt no different. —Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry FM Page vi Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM FM Page vii Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM Contents Preface ix Fishing with Maui: Beginning the Voyage 1 1 Where on Earth Is Aotearoa? 14 2 Whalers, Sailors, Sealers 37 3 The Last Big Islands 56 4 Once Were Crusaders 93 5 The Bildungsroman at the End of the World 116 6 The Necessity of Ghosts: Aotearoa Gothic 137 7 Falling through the Hole in the Godzone 160 8 Aotearoa at the Movies 175 Bibliography 187 Index 191 vii FM Page viii Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM FM Page ix Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM Preface: Sailing to Aotearoa I wrote this book in a sustained burst of enthusiasm for New Zealand, its people, places, culture, and literature. My feelings came from read- ing and dreaming about New Zealand, followed by a five-month visit in 1995, during which my wife and I tried to see, understand, and absorb as much of this remarkable place as possible in the months from midwinter to early summer of the antipodean year. We traveled to New Zealand in a romantic, anachronistic fashion —sailing on a Blue Star Line container ship from Long Beach to Auckland, with an afternoon stop at Suva, Fiji. The experience of the huge, sullenly stable cargo ship, the vastness of the Pacific, calm seas, and the restful ennui of a two-week voyage with few enforced amen- ities or mandatory pleasures prepared us for landfall at the North Island. Nothing, not even the tourist brochures, travel guides, and video- taped glossies on the attractions of the land, prepared us for the diver- sity, the temperate climate (even in the midst of an unusually cold and protracted winter, by local standards), and the sheer physical beauty. We disembarked at Auckland, after sailing along the east coast of Northland and observing the diorama of small islands and coastal villages, took a taxi ride across the city from the harbor to the airport, and examined all the streets of simple, colorful villas and bungalows, the gardens glowing with flowers and fruits in midwinter. It was wet and chilly, like an average winter’s day on the mild south coast of England. Then we flew across Cook Strait, down the spine of the South Island, with the grandeur of the Southern Alps and Mount Cook under our wings as we turned across the Canterbury Plains and landed at Christchurch. The weather was colder, more a real winter of the mid- ix FM Page x Wednesday, October 10, 2001 4:38 PM x Preface western U.S. variety. We had left Los Angeles in early summer, as the heat and haze set in, and now we were in a land of ice and snow, however ephemeral. South of us was Antarctica. South were several species of New Zealand penguins—Little Blue, Yellow-eyed, Crested —and albatrosses that patrol the endless cold at the southern end of the earth. The last hop was down the coast, still southerly, to Dunedin, a Scots-settled city that was the first major nineteenth-century metrop- olis for New Zealand, capital of the early gold rushes, with Port Chalmers on the Otago Harbor where thousands of the earliest set- tlers disembarked. Whalers, I knew, had worked out of this long harbor, and at its very end, on Taiaroa Head overlooking the empty ocean, was the only mainland colony of the Royal Albatross, king of pelagic wanderers. We settled in Dunedin, a sprawling and friendly place of villas and bungalows, focused on the Octagon, a nexus of streets with names like Princes, Great King, and George, for “Dunedin” is the ancient Scots’ name for Edinburgh. On a chair atop a tall pedestal in the Octa- gon sits Robbie Burns, tutelary spirit of the Scots settlers, who included his nephew. We worked at the University of Otago, the oldest estab- lished university and the major medical center for the country. Dunedin is an archetypal university town, shaped by the schedule and culture of the Varsity, and in term time it fills with students from all over the country—from deep Southland, still sprawling pampas of sheep stations and forestry plantations, and from remote Northland, the old high-timber country and home of the earliest whalers and transient traders. The city rises on seven hills, like all classic-minded conurbations, the center a bowl, with the long harbor to the east and a beach coast rambling to the south. From Dunedin, my wife and I drove all around the South Island for several months, then spent a final two weeks in a circuit of the North Island. We avoided cities and aimed for mountains, lakes, beaches, small towns and hamlets, the empty backcountry of sheep stations, cattle farms, the revenants of the old lumbering days, deserted mining towns, the long wild west coast, the serrated and hilly country of the northern South Island, from Golden Bay east past Nelson and on to Marlborough. I read books and viewed films, talked with ordinary folks and