Haere Mai - Maori Theme - Travel Poster - circa 1920s

Haere Mai! Maori theme travel poster from the 1920s

Now if we all got off the grid and used geothermal cooking we might  be able to keep the lake levels higher and abate global warming at the same time. Cooking times may vary.

The Tree Fern - Poster - circa 1930s

The Tree Fern - Poster - circa 1930s

 

Actually, I'm not sure this is a travel poster but nothing says "New Zealand" like a tree fern!

Fly Fishing in New Zealand - M A Poulton - 1936 - Travel Poster

Fly Fishing in New Zealand - M A Poulton - 1936 - Travel Poster, Government Tourist Department.

Click on picture for larger image

Fly Fishing in New Zealand - L C Mitchell, artist - 1935

Woman Fly Fishing in New Zealand - L C Mitchell, artist - 1935, book cover

The Southern Lakes - Lake Wanaka - New Zealand Railways Travel Poster - 1930s

The Southern Lakes, Lake Wanaka, New Zealand Railway,s Travel Poster - 1930s

Fiordland - New Zealand Railways Poster - circa 1930s

Fiordland - New Zealand Railways Poster - circa 1930s

click on image for larger view

Timaru For Me And You - travel poster - circa 1930s

Timaru For Me And You - travel poster - circa 1930s

Go get the skis, we're off to Caroline Bay one more time. Might need the wet suits as we head into March. Swim between the flags! Oh, don't bother, the lifeguards will have left by now.

Franz Josef Glacier - South Westland - Travel Poster - circa 1930s

 

 Franz Josef Glacier, South Westland, Travel Poster, circa 1930s

Visit the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers before global warming melts them both away. 

Some fond memories of this part of the country come to mind. One, participation in an environmental protection conference at Fox or Franz in the 70s to protect the native beech forest from logging. It is of some personal satisfaction to know that eventually some of it did get protected. Small individual efforts by many can cumulatively result in progress. Is there still time for the same with respect to countering global warming?

Another memory: staying at one of the hotels like the one pictured above in the dying days of the Government's Tourist Hotel Corporation. It was quaintly 1950s or 60s in decor in the late 1980s, not by conscious design but benign indifference. Somehow it was like walking into one of these travel posters. A way of living the past.

Technically, the scene pictured above is from a travel brochure rather than a travel poster.

Cattle Droving, South Westland - Travel poster - circa 1930s

 

 Travel poster, Cattle Droving, South Westland, artist Marcus King, circa 1930s

Cattle droving on a fine South Westland day as the Herefords cross a frigid, glacial-fed river.

No, Jayne: not South West Island which would be Tasmania, right? And we'll have none of yer Drover's Run, McLeod's Daughters stuff on this side of the Tazzie, thank you very much! ;)

Union Airways Travel Poster - Main Trunk New Zealand - mid 1930s

 

Union Airways travel poster, circa mid 1930s

Union Airways, a subsidiary of the Union Steamship Company, commenced operation on the Main Trunk Route - which left Auckland out off the main trunk! Non-Aucklanders will be appreciative of this, no doubt. Just desserts and all that. Apparently, it was considered that the express rail service on the North Island Main Trunk line meant that air transport could not compete effectively with rail. How wrong they were in the long run. 

Union Steamship, the Southern Octopus as it has been called, extended its tentacles out to regional routes as well but within a relatively few years it was clear that a shipping line had no comparative advantage in operating an air service.

De Havilland airliner Karoro (gull) being loaded at Palmerston North airport, circa 4 November 1936.

  

De Havilland DH86 Express biplane, Kotuku, circa 1939, possibly at Rongotai, Wellington (according to Turnbull library, but I'm not convinced!)

Creasture Comforts...

Interior of an aircraft possibly a De Havilland Express in the 1930s.

New Zealand For Your Next Holiday - Maori Girl - Travel Poster - circa 1927-29

 

New Zealand travel poster circa 1927-1929

Why not weave a nice harakeke (flax) kete on your next holiday? Indeed, why not travel to New Zealand to do so? C'mon you spuds, off the couch, pack a bag, leave the game consoles & 'puters behind, forego the extreme sports, and get in some mahi raranga (art of basket weaving).

You can start with the disposable dinner plates. Yes, throwaways, but 100% recyclable! No need to drag from place to place for the busy traveler. And so much less expensive than a nice carved wooden bowl.

New Zealand - Wonderland of the Pacific - Travel Poster - circa 1930s

Wonderland of the Pacific, Travel poster, circa 1930s

Then there is the exploitation of Maoritanga and womanhood in the travel poster. More difficult in the 2010s for the "Madmen" (Madison Avenue men for those not acquainted with the TV series) to appropriate these cultural territories, not that they don't try. Any nominations for the equivalent of Madison Avenue in the New Zealand context of 1930s or today?

Surprisingly this young wahine with bared right shoulder enticing the tourist to come see all the "wonders" including her good self prominently in the foreground is untroubled to have a geyser erupting (Freudian reference here?) a fraction to her right while her toes are nicely being boiled or perchance just warmed in the hot pool to her left. Yes, you art buffs, I lack "perspective".

Sheep Droving in New Zealand - Travel Poster - circa 1930s

 

Sheep Droving in New Zealand - Travel Poster - Marcus King - circa 1930s

What gallery of New Zealand travel posters would be complete without a picture of white fluffies sans dags ambling along a country road or bounding across a pasture as a rambunctious hunteraway or a stealthy eye dog steers them towards some unseen gateway or set of yards?

In this Marcus King poster, electric power pylons string out down the valley showcasing the expanding role of hydro power dams in the southern lakes and rivers region of the South Island. So, the engineers - nationbuilders that they were - also get a look in.

The Marlborough Sounds - Travel Poster - circa 1930s

 

The Marlborough Sounds, northern Southern Island, travel poster, circa 1930s

Well cleared of the native bush by the turn of the twentieth century, the Marlborough Sounds had taken on the golden brown & yellow tones that we know today. In the Government Tourist Department's poster above, a Cook Strait ferry can be seen heading down one of the sounds. A bush remnant stands in foreground with the archetypal fern ground cover.

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.

Whanganui River - The Rhine of Maoriland - Travel Poster, circa 1930

Shaw Savill Shipping Line travel poster for the Whanganui River, circa 1930

Billed as "The Rhine of Maoriland" by the tourist moguls, the Whanganui river was a much traveled waterway reached by steamer from the western coastline of the North Island into the interior, up into edges of the King Country. The steamer varied in size as the river became shallower and narrower, with a houseboat providing one of the tourist accommodations part way up the river. By the time the travel poster above was produced around 1930, the days of water borne tourism were numbered with roads opening up the interior, tourists could now be transported more readily by motor coach.

The following scenic postcards date from the early 1900s, capturing some of the images of Maori life on the river. The wahine with a camera motif was a trademark for a series of cards produced for the tourist trade as well as for pakeha New Zealanders to mail "Home" to show just how exotic was this place they had emigrated to.

 

Whanganui River near Atene, postcard, 1910c

 

Whanganui River scene, circa 1910, postcard

Sportsman's Paradise - Travel Poster - circa 1925-30

Sportsman's Paradise - Travel Poster  - circa 1925-30

 

For heaven's sake, these days just take a picture, don't catch the big game fish! Successive generations and industrial fishing have plundered enough. Look but don't touch!

Travel Poster - Skiing at Tongariro National Park in the 1930s

 

Travel Poster, by Marcus King, 1930s

And over she goes, Trev...... (with apologies to Fred Dagg, aka John Clarke).

Skiing in the central North Island as it was romanticised in the 1930s travel poster.

I keep forgetting to remind everyone that clicking on the pic will give you a larger view of the image. So, consider yerself reminded!

Chateau Tongariro - Best Reached By Rail - Travel Poster, circa 1932

Chateau Tongariro, National Park, Central North Island, travel poster, circa 1932.

Up for some volcanic activity, some winter sport? 

Why not check into the Chateau Tongariro at National Park, in the central North Island for some seismic, vog and other volcanic fun? See the three mountains, active volcanoes: Mt Tongariro, Mt Ruapehu (ejects frequent lahars), and Mt Ngauruhoe, which last erupted in 1975. Three stalwarts of the Pacific Ring of Fire, get a front seat view.

"Best reached by rail" in 1932...

Rotorua - New Zealand's Thermal Wonderland - Travel Poster, 1930s

Rotorua and a view of the hot springs baths in New Zealand's Thermal Wonderland. Travel poster.

Rotorua, the destination for generations of tourists over 130 or more years. A view of the bath house and the hot spring pool at Rotorua. Don't worry about the rotten egg smell from the sulphur emitted into the air by the thermal springs in and around Rotorua. You won't notice it at all after a few days...