scholarly journals The Vanishing Acheron House of Refuge. A Case of "Frontier Chaos"?

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 28-40
Author(s):  
Clare Kelly
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Chaos Theory ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
The South ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Settler Society ◽  
House Of Refuge

The Acheron House of Refuge built between 1863 and 1864 near the junction of the Guide River with the Acheron River in the South Island high country was one of a chain of accommodation houses on the Inland Stock Route between Nelson and Canterbury. In 1865 the Nelson Provincial Engineer John Blackett wrote to the Nelson Provincial Government that he feared "the entire destruction of the house without the possibility of it being prevented" and blamed "the character of some of the travellers who pass this road." By the end of 1865, it was destroyed without trace. This paper considers incidents of lawlessness at the accommodation houses in the mid 1860s and the brief existence of the Acheron House of Refuge. It questions whether its demise was the result of "frontier chaos," a term which was first used by historian Miles Fairburn in 1989 to describe how rapid frontier expansion in New Zealand had scattered settlers and engendered transience, loneliness and lawlessness. Using settler diaries, letters and manuscripts this paper considers Fairburn's "frontier chaos" theory. It examines his assertions that in the New Zealand settler world prior to 1890 "seldom ... were goods and services exchanged," and that an atomised New Zealand settler society had "no institutions ... to facilitate mixing and meeting" (Fairburn "Local Community or Atomised Society?" pp 169-170,192,195,206,217). This paper concludes that incidents of lawlessness at the accommodation houses were linked to the South Island gold rushes, were short term and often the result of ill-prepared men desperate to survive in an unforgiving climate. At the accommodation houses on the Nelson to Canterbury Inland Stock Route travellers, keepers and neighbours shared an unwritten code of reciprocity. These accommodation houses formed the unofficial nuclei of small, loose-knit high country communities.

The 2014 South Napa earthquake and its relevance for New Zealand

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Galloway ◽  
Jason M. Ingham
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Earthquake Engineering ◽  
Structural Damage ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Unreinforced Masonry ◽  
Seismic Retrofitting ◽  
The South ◽  
Wine Production ◽  
Loma Prieta Earthquake ◽  
The City

The South Napa earthquake occurred on Sunday, 24 August 2014 at 3.20 am local time at a depth of 10.7 km, having MW 6.0 and causing significant damage to unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings in the City of Napa and generating strong ground shaking in a region well known for its wine production. Parallels exist between the damage in past New Zealand earthquakes, particularly to unreinforced masonry buildings, and the disruption in the Marlborough region following the recent 2013 MW 6.5 Seddon earthquake. Furthermore, the event was the largest to have occurred in Northern California since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake 25 years earlier, and hence was an important event for the local community of earthquake researchers and professionals regarding the use of a physical and virtual clearinghouse for data archiving of damage observations. Because numerous URM buildings in the City of Napa had been retrofitted, there was significant interest regarding the observed performance of different retrofitting methods. Following a brief overview of the earthquake affected area and previous earthquakes to have caused damage in the Napa Valley region, details are provided regarding the characteristics of the 2014 South Napa earthquake, the response to the earthquake including placarding procedures and barricading, and more specific details of observed building and non-structural damage. Aspects of business continuity following the South Napa earthquake are also considered. One conclusion is that in general the seismic retrofitting of URM buildings in the Napa region proved to be very successful, and provides an important benchmark as New Zealand begins to more actively undertake seismic assessment and retrofitting of its earthquake prone building stock. It is also concluded that there are sufficient similarities between New Zealand and California, and a rich network of contacts that has developed following the hosting of many US visitors to New Zealand in conjunction with the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes, that it is sensible for the New Zealand earthquake engineering community to maintain a close focus on ongoing earthquake preparedness and mitigation methods used and being developed in USA, and particularly in California.

Evolutionary Biogeography of New Zealand

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamish G. Spencer ◽  
Nicolas J. Rawlence
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Glacial Refugia ◽  
Oceanic Islands ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
The World ◽  
A Chain ◽  
High Level

Ever since the first western scientists visited Aotearoa New Zealand, biologists have been fascinated by the relationships of New Zealand’s biota to that of the rest of the world. (Aotearoa is the usual Māori name for New Zealand; increasingly, the combination Aotearoa New Zealand is also used to refer to the country.) The presence of notable vertebrates (e.g., tuatara), together with a high level of endemism among plants and invertebrates, was clearly a consequence of the islands’ long geological isolation. However, some elements showed clear affinities with taxa elsewhere—Australia and South America, most prominently. Explaining the evolutionary history of this biodiversity was (and is) an attractive driver for much scientific research. Leading vicariance biogeographer Gareth Nelson even claimed that, from a biogeographic standpoint, New Zealand’s biota was the most important in the world: “Explain New Zealand and the world falls into place around it.” Biologist Jared Diamond described New Zealand’s biodiversity as “the nearest approach to life on another planet.” Part of the reason for New Zealand providing so many biogeographic puzzles and exemplars lies in its active geology, a consequence of its position across the boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates. Unlike most oceanic islands, New Zealand comprises continental crust, remnants of the now largely submerged continent of Zealandia, which extended beyond present-day New Caledonia to the north, Campbell Island to the south, and Chatham Island to the east. In addition, New Zealand has periodically been subject to marine transgressions of varying degree. This geological history has been conducive to in situ geographical speciation, which has made a major contribution to the current levels of biodiversity, with some groups (e.g., punctid landsnails) remarkably speciose. In addition, the fluctuations in sea level have resulted in an excellent marine fossil record (especially in the Cenozoic era). Quaternary ice ages rapidly changed the New Zealand landscape, repeatedly isolating plants and animals in glacial refugia. Finally, the late arrival of humans in Aotearoa New Zealand resulted in widespread extinctions and biological turnover events. New Zealand’s biodiversity is enhanced by its geographical and consequent climatic range. It consists of a chain of islands extending over ~2800 km, from the subtropical Kermadec Islands in the north, via the three main temperate islands (North, South and Stewart Islands) to a number of subantarctic islands (Snares, Auckland, Bounty, Antipodes and Campbell Islands) in the south, as well as the Chatham Islands in the east. The politically Australian subantarctic Macquarie Island is often also considered biogeographically neozelanic. Various debates in biogeography, most notably the disputes between the dispersalist school and the vicariance-panbiogeographers, have cited New Zealand examples and, indeed, involved New Zealand scientists. Obviously, the arguments for and against so called “Oligocene drowning”—whether or not all of proto-New Zealand was submersed ~27 million years ago (mya)—involved New Zealand scientists and examples. More generally, the resolution of this latter debate illustrated how to evaluate dispersalist and vicariance hypotheses using modern techniques and integrative approaches.

Literary Histories

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva-Marie Kröller
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Literary History ◽  
English Language ◽  
South Pacific ◽  
The South ◽  
Cultural Elite ◽  
Historical Methodology ◽  
Literary Histories

This chapter discusses national literary histories in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific and summarises the book's main findings regarding the construction and revision of narratives of national identity since 1950. In colonial and postcolonial cultures, literary history is often based on a paradox that says much about their evolving sense of collective identity, but perhaps even more about the strains within it. The chapter considers the complications typical of postcolonial literary history by focusing on the conflict between collective celebration and its refutation. It examines three issues relating to the histories of English-language fiction in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific: problems of chronology and beginnings, with a special emphasis on Indigenous peoples; the role of the cultural elite and the history wars in the Australian context; and the influence of postcolonial networks on historical methodology.

Nowcasting global trade in goods and services

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Fernando Cantú-Bazaldúa
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Dynamic Factor ◽  
Timely Manner ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Dynamic Factor Models ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
World Economic

World economic aggregates are compiled infrequently and released after considerable lags. There are, however, many potentially relevant series released in a timely manner and at a higher frequency that could provide significant information about the evolution of global aggregates. The challenge is then to extract the relevant information from this multitude of indicators and combine it to track the real-time evolution of the target variables. We develop a methodology based on dynamic factor models adapted for variables with heterogeneous frequencies, ragged ends and missing data. We apply this methodology to nowcast global trade in goods in goods and services. In addition to monitoring these variables in real time, this method can also be used to obtain short-term forecasts based on the most up-to-date values of the underlying indicators.

scholarly journals Exploring the Role of Family and School as Spaces for 1.5 Generation South Korean’s Adjustment and Identity Negotiation in New Zealand: A Qualitative Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 4408
Author(s):  
Su Yeon Roh ◽  
Ik Young Chang
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Identity Negotiation ◽  
Identity Status ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
The South ◽  
1.5 Generation ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Family ◽  
Home And School ◽  
At Home

To date, the majority of research on migrant identity negotiation and adjustment has primarily focused on adults. However, identity- and adjustment-related issues linked with global migration are not only related to those who have recently arrived, but are also relevant for their subsequent descendants. Consequently, there is increasing recognition by that as a particular group, the “1.5 generation” who were born in their home country but came to new countries in early childhood and were educated there. This research, therefore, investigates 1.5 generation South Koreans’ adjustment and identity status in New Zealand. More specifically, this study explores two vital social spaces—family and school—which play a pivotal role in modulating 1.5 generation’s identity and adjustment in New Zealand. Drawing upon in-depth interviewing with twenty-five 1.5 generation Korean-New Zealanders, this paper reveals that there are two different experiences at home and school; (1) the family is argued to serve as a key space where the South Korean 1.5 generation confirms and retains their ethnic identity through experiences and embodiments of South Korean traditional values, but (2) school is almost the only space where the South Korean 1.5 generation in New Zealand can acquire the cultural tools of mainstream society through interaction with English speaking local peers and adults. Within this space, the South Korean 1.5 generation experiences the transformation of an ethnic sense of identity which is strongly constructed at home via the family. Overall, the paper discusses that 1.5 generation South Koreans experience a complex and contradictory process in negotiating their identity and adjusting into New Zealand through different involvement at home and school.

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