Disasters and Dissent
Tarawera 1886
Professor Bickerton
Bill's wife 1951
Soldiering in the Sandhills (W.W.2)
An exploration of some significant moments in New Zealand history.
"Tarawera" and "The Reluctant Soldier" are told in the third person. "Bill's Wife" is told in the first person.
Themes include:
natural events
tapu,
Industrial relations
pacifism ....
Tarawera and the Pink and White Terraces 1886
The Pink and White Terraces were famous.
Tourists came from all over the world to see them. They said they were "too beautiful for this world".
Old Tuhoto predicted disaster.
Some people saw a ghostly canoe.
Then came the terrible night when Tarawera erupted. Three villages were buried under the ash and the Pink and White Terraces disappeared.
Professor Bickerton
Katarzyna Gierszewski and Anna Kiesanowski, Polish, Catholic and living in Marshland, have no real interest in Science.
The new Professor who demonstrates electricity at the opening of the new wing of the Museum lives in a very different world, a world that they neither understands nor trust..
What is their reaction when the professor becomes a neighbour, sets up a free love commune and pleasure gardens?
Bill's Wife 1951
The two women are sisters.
One is married to a farmer, the other to a watersider.
The two men were comrades in the war but they are now divided by industrial politics.
The whole country is divided by the lockout and the Emergency regulations.
This story was written for the commemoration of the 1951 Lockout/Strike, held in Blackball in 2001.
Soldiering in the Sandhills 1939-45
The young man has everything going for him when war breaks out.
He joins the Home Guard and discovers he does not want to be a soldier.
He is distracted by a family of mice that takes up residence in his rifle.
This is a story that explores attitudes
to war.
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