Pūkākā – Marslands hill
Plan of Marsland Hill (Pukaka)
Description
Blueprint copy of Marsland Hill (Pukaka), New Plymouth. Showing old Barracks etc. during Military occupation from Jan. 1856 to Jan. 17th 1870. Roadways are overlay the Barracks. Includes insert showing old Pa fortifications previous to military occupation. Note ' From Mr F A Carrington's survey of 1841'.
Date: Undated
Scale: 1 chain to 3/4 inch. 4 chains to 1 inch (insert)
Size: 65cm x 56.5cm
Lithographer: Unknown.
Accession number: ARC2005-395
Source: Puke Ariki
I follow the signs which face the wrong way in a Bed knobs and Broomsticks cold war kind of trickery but I know better, colonisation is always slippery. The new kind, I mean, the old colonisation was far more obvious, a gun or a beating, not words and policy.
Past a small business up a narrow drive is a carpark with a sort of non-committal dog walker and a tradie on a break, van door open to let the light breeze carry The Rock radio station noise into the distance. The star observatory sits oddly in the distance, always looking up.
It’s almost 11.30 and the day is sunny and the breeze is welcome, I walk over to a large sign that extols the usual Council-crafted public knowledge, making sure that all information is fair and equal and above all, “neutral”. Woven into the text is some underlying narrative that reinforces confiscation. Firstly, that Māori squabbled over this pā, continuing the “always disagreeing” narrative. Secondly, the New Zealand Company makes an appearance, I’m always fascinated that they use the New Zealand name but somehow are always forgiven their atrocities like distant relatives who we don’t invite to dinner anymore. Designated as a cemetery that failed to take, the hill does host one interred B grade celebrity of their time. The resting place of Charles Armitage Brown.
The grave was marked by a slab of stone taken from the beach. However, it was obscured when the top of the hill was flattened to allow for the construction of the barracks during the New Zealand Wars. The centenary of John Keats's death aroused interest in finding Brown's grave and it was successfully relocated in March 1921 and marked by a stone inscribed, "Charles Armitage Brown. The friend of Keats.” It’s hard to find much about Brown’s poem but the buried story of forbidden lovers lives somewhere under the earth.
No, I didn’t skip over the New Zealand Wars, this was the headquarters of the Imperial Regiment stationed at Taranaki. Plans to destroy and consume the land were birthed and dissected here. Later setter immigrants would begin their new lives here until 1880 until the site was levelled.
The view to Paritutu and the mounga as well as the surrounding rivers and coast and islands just offshore, is breath-taking, but there are objects in the way.
I don’t mean the small stone which, though diminutive stands proudly on the spot, just behind the newer larger sign. Repeating a truncated version of the history, a sort of visual representation of the little pieces of knowledge I would retain. This rock is set in concrete as all good plaque rocks are, and bejewelled with an unsympathetic Heritage Trails sign. Still, the lichen is growing nicely and it seems content and purposeful.
No, I mean the Carillion bells erected by George Kibby in memory of his wife Mabel. The 37 bells are held in the air by great concrete posts, little bell striking gadgets are attached to each. The patina on the bronze surface is coming along nicely, only a couple more decades before they cleaned and polished again. They are played at regular intervals throughout the day but I do wonder if no one is there to hear them, do they still sound out of place?
From the bells, I swing like Quasimodo, to a broken memorial to the men who fell in action or died during the ‘Maori Wars’ [sic]. I say broken for more than one reason, broken letters, broken language, broken Carrara marble, broken perspective but also there was a statue of a solider atop the monument when it was first made.
Lord Plunket unveiled the memorial at a ceremony on Marsland Hill on 7 May 1909. The weather was ‘far from perfect’. However, by ‘good chance, the rain held off until the Governor had got half-way through his speech. Then a slight shower fell’.[1]
Some 80 years later, on Waitangi Day 1991, the figure on top of the memorial was smashed by protesters. It was not replaced and the plinth remains empty.
Today there was just a shirtless man sitting on the bench, he notices me taking photos, and tells me with great certainty,
“that’s wrong!”
“What is?” I reply,
“loyal Maoris, they weren’t loyal, Maoris aren’t loyal”, [sic]
(I stare back for a little too long, lost in the confused, old-timey racism)
“What?” was all I could muster before he grabbed his bike and walked away.
I forget that many don’t see the heavy double meaning of a New Zealand Wars memorial in a country groaning towards a better future.
I enjoy this broken monument, for being just that, a symbol of something broken, a little wound on a quiet hill that just won’t heal. Fancy marble and pleasing proportions but mostly I like its incongruity with the landscape, the singularity of its lopsided history, and the stupid little wrought iron fence that keeps people from getting too close to history lest it rubs off.
There is another memorial, a fountain to the Anglo-Boer War which no one really knows about but it was basically white people (British) fighting other white people (Afrikaners) in 1899 – 1902 in South Africa. The memorial is a fountain that was moved downtown and then back up the hill again to make way for progress. Its base is now filled with a singular species of ice plant, fitting, as they’re endemic to South Africa. The middle tier still holds water and reflects the bright sun onto the underbelly of the curved upper dish, the breeze that still blows changes ripple reflections.
And before I leave to go and check out the now closed New Plymouth Prison, I notice a brutalist inspired, most uncomfortable looking concrete bench, with a simple plaque, my last hope of contemporary redemption. My hopes were sadly dashed. The plaque reads,
In Memory of
BERNARD FORD ARIS
1887 – 1977
The Painter of
Mount Egmont
God, will that name never die?
There is however an empty space on the other side of the bench. A small smoothed space, exactly the same size as that of Bernard’s, for a plaque to one day be added. I may have to make an early memorial plaque for myself and place it here, why should strangers be the only ones to enjoy my memory? My plaque will say,
In memory of
ELLIOT COLLINS
1983 - 2083
Who never painted
Taranaki Mounga
[1] https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/marsland-hill-nz-wars-memorial