Captain Cook - Shaw Savill & Albion Line - Travel Poster, circa 1931

Shaw Savill & Albion Line Travel Poster, circa 1931

Poster depicting Captain James Cook with  Mt Egmont/Taranaki in background. The caption reads "Mt Egmont sighted by Captain Cook in 1770" (click on image for larger view).

Of course, local Maori had sighted Taranaki, their name for the mountain, quite some time before, thank you very much!

Presumably the shipping line was playing to the British pride in their explorers like Cook having sailed the deep blue seas and painted the map red with territory for the British Empire. Now (in 1931), the upwardly mobile - those still standing after two years of the Great Depression - could go see for themselves what Cook wrote about in his superb journals.

Personal note: Kuaka slogged his way to the top of Taranaki some years ago, got a mild case of altitude sickness - mild headache - for his troubles, and some great photos of the Shark's tooth & the crater - which have been "misplaced", naturally, in the intervening years.

Christchurch Cycling Craze #13 - A Taranaki Gate

Although this humorous, though dangerous, tale does not refer to events occurring in Christchurch, its cycle theme and expression of the New Zealand sense of humour is reason enough to squeeze it in under the rubric of the Cycling Craze:

"He was fond of cycling, and was more or less of a scorcher. He revelled in pace-making, and he boasted that no hill was too steep for him to take full tilt. One recent day, however while entering a Taranaki town, he altered his opinion about rushing down hills, for, instead of going round the corner at the bottom of a very steep descent, he went straight on and smashed through the window of a jeweller's shop. In due course he crawled out of the hospital and paid the jeweller a good round sum for damages.

"But, history has a way of repeating itself. It did in this case, anyway, and another cyclist entered the jeweller's shop by the window. Then it became apparent to the shopkeeper that it was time to take action. When a third window had been put in, an amused crowd stood outside and read this notice — "Cyclists are particularly requested to enter this establishment by the door."

New Zealand Free Lance, Volume VII, Issue 360, 25 May 1907, Page 12.

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tar·a·na·ki gate [ tàrrə nákee gàyt ] (plural tar·a·na·ki gates):

New Zealand roughly made gate: a serviceable but roughly constructed gate made using battens and wire.

A Little Economic Information is a Dangerous Thing - The Saveloy & Condensed Milk Conspiracy

Residents of Taranaki in the North Island are reported to be stockpiling cans of condensed milk and saveloys after a recent TV news report that Statistics New Zealand is to remove the items from the basket of goods & services priced to calculate the consumer price index used to measure inflation.

The Saveloy ---- Condensed milk

Lest anyone think Joe & Joanna Blow, the average Kiwi citizen, are well-versed in the methodology of economic statistics, attuned to the niceties of index numbers and the household expenditure survey, it appears that the news story has been twisted into a conspiracy story or urban myth that the government is about to ban the humble sav and can of condensed milk, one-time staples of low income Kiwis.

With a general election only just called last week for 8 November, what government in its right mind would contemplate such political suicide? Some would argue that the current Labour government has already done enough to harm itself without outlawing the sav & condensed milk.

All a horrible mix up in a dumbed-downed age, but a boon for supemarkets in places like Hawera in Taranaki that report sales up by a third in recent weeks.

For those not versed in Kiwi culinary delights, a saveloy is a type of pork sausage usually with a bright red skin, usually served boiled & wrapped in a slice of bread or deep fried in batter (not a health food). And condensed milk is milk that has had much water removed from and to which sugar has been added to yield a rather thick, sweet product that can last for years in a can. It's used to sweeten & whiten tea, in baking, or as a salad dressing. (Ugh!)

Incidentally, the sav and condensed milk would be unlikely meal mates, but no doubt there is some thrillseeker out there who enjoys them together. A sav is more typically dipped in tomato sauce (ketchup).