The dark ride

Tawhiti Museum's latest addition will knock your socks off, Helen Harvey finds.

Taranaki Daily News

At the back of Tawhiti Museum, there is an entranceway into the side of a hill. Inside, a dim, narrow, pathway winds its way down to a river, where boats are waiting to take visitors deeper into the darkness.

The unsuspecting visitors make their way through the caverns not realising that at any moment, the ghost of Dicky Barrett could make an appearance.

Appearances, though, can be deceiving. The hill is actually a building. Nothing goes downhill or underground and the ghost - well, you decide.

The $1 million Traders and Whalers exhibition, which opened this week, was funded in partnership with the South Taranaki District Council. Traders and Whalers is unashamedly entertaining, Tawhiti Museum owner Nigel Ogle says. That includes the ghost of Dicky Barrett, which appears in the caverns on the way to the boat ride.

"It sets out to grab the attention of its visitors - takes them into an environment that is both stimulating and challenging - but never loses sight of why we make that effort."

That effort by the museum near Hawera is to tell the story of Taranaki's maritime history. The interpretation corridor at the end of the ride explains the history behind the exhibition.

Taranaki hasn't always been about paddocks and cows, Mr Ogle says.

Once upon a time, it was all about the sea.

"Life was very different."

But the stories aren't very well known. Children can name some of the LA Lakers, but don't know who Dicky Barrett was.

"That worries me."

There is a global culture created by the internet, DVDs, television and movies - and local culture will always take second place to that, he says.

"I'm trying to redress that balance, trying to say our stories are just as good as anyone else's and just as exciting. You're living in the middle of it. You can go to these places."

Children should be able to look at Moturoa Island from their window or as they drive past and think, Dicky Barrett used to live there.

Barrett and members of Te Atiawa lived on Moturoa and Saddleback Islands when they came back from Wellington, where they had moved after a major battle with Waikato.

The Northern tribes had come down in the early 1830s and while Te Atiawa won the battle at Otaka Pa, where the coolstores are now, there was terrific loss of life, he says.

"They got through that by the skin of their teeth and only because they had ships' cannons to help defend the pa. After that, Waikato knew what they were up against and would have come back better prepared."

So the locals cleared off to Wellington, rather than wait around for a repeat Waikato performance.

The battle where Te Atiawa, along with Barrett and his former captain Jacky Love, defended the pa is showcased on the boat ride in the exhibition. As the boat sails past the pa, the sound of the cannon reverberates, melding in with gunfire and shouting. Waikato are on the other side of the little river, shooting through the flax.

Flax was one of the reasons for the fight. It was also one of the reasons the traders were in New Zealand. Maori traded flax for muskets and there was a massive arms race among New Zealand iwi during the early 1800s. They also traded potatoes and pork, but flax dominated.

"[At that time], they reckon 90 per cent of exports from Australia to New Zealand were armaments."

 

Most of that was muskets or related items, like gunpowder and lead.

The arrival of the musket had an enormous effect on intertribal wars, Mr Ogle says.

"It was like putting all the tribes in a paper bag and shaking them up and tipping them out. They were displaced. They were annihilated in some places. It was such a difficult time, such conflict."

Love, with his first mate Barrett, came to New Zealand specifically to trade muskets. On their second trip, they set up a trading base and excluded all other traders. They locked up the flax trade on the Taranaki coast for years.

The fibre from flax was used, among other things, to make rope. Maori women would spend their time stripping the green leaf off the flax to leave the fibre - the muka - and got fed up with it, Mr Ogle says. But without muskets, they couldn't survive.

Waikato wanted muskets as well and Taranaki was known for its good fibre and good workers. At the battle of Otaka Pa, Waikato was sent packing with the help of the cannons.

"The warriors wouldn't have been up against cannon before. It had a ball of nails, broken pottery, chain - anything broken was put in a canvas bag."

After the battle, which lasted three weeks, Te Atiawa and the traders went to Wellington, wary of Waikato's promise to return.

Love, Barrett and nine sailors married into Te Atiawa and worked with the tribe in every way - building, gardening, trading and defence. Barrett became a whaler in the Marlborough Sounds and did some translating work for Edward J Wakefield's New Zealand Company in Wellington. Barrett and Te Atiawa, minus Love, who had died, came back in 1840. Still worried about the possibility of Waikato returning, Barrett built his house and storehouse on Moturoa Island.

Mr Ogle gave Wellington's Weta Workshop photos of the actual caverns on Moturoa Island to work from. Weta constructed the walls and ceiling in the boat area of the ride. The ragged-looking pillars look exactly like those on the island.

Weta made the cliff faces, Mr Ogle says, which are cast from lumps of cliff face from around the Wellington region.

"[Academy Award winner Richard] Taylor was really generous over the whole thing."

He gave lots of advice and directed Mr Ogle to new materials to make muskets and other components from.

Mr Taylor told Mr Ogle the type of boat ride he was making was called a "dark ride". The boats sail on 250,000 litres of water that was pumped in by a local fire brigade.

"And rainwater goes in regularly. We keep topping it up. It evaporates."

There is no commentary as visitors glide along in their little boat, Mr Ogle says.

"We want them to look and listen and experience the environment they are in."

The sea hisses as sailors hand down muskets over the side of a sailing ship to Maori in a waka. Women fix eeling nets while making disparaging comments in te reo about the fat visitors in the tin waka who are staring at them as they glide by.

And voices can be heard as Maori and Pakeha trade their goods. Attention is paid to every detail, from the earring in the whaler's ear and another figure's missing teeth to the sound of the birds.

"It's a way of telling a story. It's kind of what I was doing anyway - environment, figures and sound. But it is stepping it up to a new level - making a total environment that you're in. You don't walk through. You don't go at your own pace. You are under the control of the person in the boat."

The whole Traders and Whalers complex is about 1000 square metres and there are between 50 and 60 life-size figures. Mr Ogle has lost count of the exact number, as some have been added and some removed.

He saw similar rides overseas - there is one in Nottingham about Robin Hood - and thought, We can do that.

"The maritime theme just leant itself perfectly . . . That very early period of European/Maori contact in Taranaki isn't very well covered and not well understood or taught in schools. They are wonderful stories and they need to be told. So we thought, Let's see if we can use technology from overseas."

Initially, Mr Ogle thought he could fund the project himself, but soon realised how much it was going to cost. In 2006, the South Taranaki District Council's long- term plan offered private/public partnerships. So he built a scale model to show the councillors what Traders and Whalers would look like. The council agreed to fund half the project in November 2006. Any profits will go to a charitable trust and will be used for labour costs and to fund two booklets: one on how the early musket wars changed Taranaki and the other on Traders and Whalers.

The complex was built from the model. It took two-and-a-half years to complete, including making all the life-size figures and all the extra components. It is hard to source artefacts from that era, so Mr Ogle had to make replicas.

A builder was employed full time for 19 months, Mr Ogle says.

"The builder would go over and measure the model and multiply everything by 32."

So the finished product looks like it did in his head when he started out on this journey four years ago.

Now it's over, Mr Ogle feels satisfaction and relief.

"It was a real mental challenge. My head has been in this project day and night. Yesterday and the day before, I didn't go to the workshop for the first time in years. I went to town. I went to the beach for a walk. I haven't been able to do that. There is a real sense of satisfaction seeing it finally come to fruition and looking like how I always pictured it."

The displays are not just designed for children, but he is always aware of trying to sell history to children.

"As museums, we have to do our jobs better. We're competing against DVDs, so we have to have more of a wow factor. It's not easy, but it's possible."