Photoprint for Sale: Sunset Over North Head Of Hokianga Harbour, Northland, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

Prints For Sale: Rawene Four Square Store (C1988)

This print is identical to my original drawing that appeared in my book 'New Zealand Odyssey'.

Size of image is approx. 18 cm x 30 cm .

Price is $NZ 49.00 inc. p and p in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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New Zealand Odyssey: Rawene Hardware

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

I find this sort of subject irresistible. The weatherboards are distorted, there is an almost complete absence of rectangles, and the site must have caused the builders so many problems that they might be considered sculptors rather than constructors!

The street on the left is flat and runs by the waterside of the Hokianga Harbour, the hill on the other side is so steep that it takes a lot to imagine where the ground floor actually is. I drew it in about 1987; I'm not sure that the building still exists.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz

New Zealand Odyssey: The Four Square Store at Rawene

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

This watercolour was done from the vehicle ramp that gives access to the car ferry to Kohukohu on the Hokianga Harbour. It was a fascinating collage of corrugated iron, its roof a patchwork, and that odd panel on the green wall between the window and that hideous Four Square man - was it once a door, or another window?

As for the ugly man himself: he's a symbol that appears on Four Square grocery stores throughout New Zealand. His very grotesqueness has made him 'iconic'. Indeed, one of this country's most fashionable artists, Dick Frizzell, has made as much use of him as Andy Warhol did of the Campbell's Soup tin.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz

New Zealand Odyssey: Masonic Hall, Kohukohu

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

In the late-ish 1980s Kohukohu, on the northern shore of the Hokianga Harbour, had a tired and remote feel about it, coupled with an almost tropical air of bush-growth fecundity. Old buildings were falling apart and one had the impression that if the hamlet were not the terminus of the Rawene to Kohukohu car ferry the town would have died years ago after having exhausted its surrounding kauri forests.

The masonic hall looked a bit rickety (very appealing) and was evidence of the self-importance local businessmen and dignitaries might have imbued themselves with in the nineteenth century.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz

New Zealand Odyssey: Urupa, Mangamuka

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by Don Donovan (who did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

I found this cameo near the inland waters of the Hokianga Harbour, western Northland. Urupa is Maori for cemetery and in the corner of this one was this rusty tin shed, an oil drum and some lovely carvings of traditional tongue-protruding heads with paua shell eyes.

I have never been quite sure why they might have been there, they looked to me like interior pilasters from Maori meeting houses. Perhaps they were on their way to decorate a building somewhere in Mangamuka for they would certainly not have served as grave markers.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz

New Zealand Odyssey: Omanaia

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, Don Donovan (I did the text and illustrations) and Euan Sarginson, who did the photography and design. In this series of blog posts, I will publish some of my drawings.

The first illustration was of this 1884 Maori Methodist church on a hill near a village school in Northland not far from Rawene on the Hokianga Harbour. A simple, colonial style porch and nave building, at the time I illustrated it (C1986) it was well-used but looking tired.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Open 7 Days 2. Broadwood Store

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

 BROADWOOD STORE

Main Road, Broadwood, Northland
Proprietors: John and Maureen Baine

The town’s original name, Mangonui-o-Wae, conflicted with Mangonui on the northern coast. So in 1894, six years after the district was first settled, the postal authorities renamed it after the first sawn-timber dwelling in the neighbourhood, the home of Arthur Glass: ‘Broadwood’.

In those days household supplies were bought in, by cart or dray, from Kohukohu on the Hokianga Harbour, durables having been ordered months in advance by mail from Auckland’s big-city trading companies like Farmers’.

Ces Wallace, with Jim Dodds as manager, opened the first store in 1909, then Dodds took over until 1918, when he sold to Percy Edwards, who in 1922 built the present Broadwood Store. It’s a large and handsome building, foursquare (in more ways than its affiliation), and can truly be described as a country general store, combining grocery, hardware and farm supplies with postal services and dissemination of neighbourhood information by way of a magnificent noticeboard.

John and Maureen Baine bought the store in 1974 because they felt their children would benefit from a country environment. The children are grown and gone now, but the Baines are so much part of Broadwood that there’s no reason for them to leave. Their attachment to the district shows up in such things as their involvement with the North Hokianga A and P Association, whose programme for the 77th Broadwood Annual Show lists John Baine as president and Maureen as assistant show secretary.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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N.Z. House & Cottage 21. Beach Road, Kohukohu

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century.
I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

BEACH ROAD, KOHUKOHU.

There’s sometimes a sub-tropical feel about Kohukohu; a tangible, scented humidity upon which tui songs toll from the surrounding hills: there’s a sound of running water from overgrown runnels and the shadowed sides of fence posts are padded with emerald mosses. It would not take nature long to reclaim the town.

Indeed, when I first saw Kohukohu thirty-five years ago, my impression was of neglect. Rotting timbers peeled off old houses whose mildewed windows were cracked and broken, and road seal crumbled. It seemed that apart from being the northern terminal of the Hokianga Ferry all its glory was in a past when its harbour bay bustled with the scream of milling kauri and a latter day dairy factory flourished until its closure in 1957.

But I have seen Kohukohu re-born. The colour has come back to its face. They say it’s because of newcomers with different ways of living; they’ve brought their children with them and increased the population, and they’ve seen the potential that lies in the recovery of distressed villas and cottages.

The Beach Road house - a residence expressing a certain social eminence - was built in 1889 by Fred Halliwell (who also owned Kohukohu’s first motor car in 1907). In the 1920s it was occupied by the manager of the Rangiora Timber Company, after whom came a train of owners: McArthur, a dentist; J.H.A. Skipper, printer and publisher of the Hokianga Star (who ran it as a boarding house); Doctors Rule and Alexander (in the late thirties); the Methodists; then farmer Brian Gundry, followed in the 1980s by Sue and Alan Clarkson, he a veterinary surgeon.

It’s had coats of many colours, some more controversial than others, no doubt. Not to worry, it’s the structure that matters, not its colour, and its fresh, pink coat offered an opportunity for me to use some of the rarer pigments in my paint box.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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N.Z. House & Cottage 2.

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century. 

I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

1997 INTRODUCTION

This is a personal collection of houses and cottages that I have gathered over recent years when travelling around the country looking for various ‘paintable’ buildings, subjects ranging from country pubs and general stores through courthouses and churches to grand mansions and simple cabins.

There’s no ’scheme’ to the book. It is not organized in any way other than to present visual variety, page by page. What all of the subjects have in common, I daresay, is that in their lifetimes they have been cherished by at least some of their occupants. It is that emotional attachment which makes a house a home and many of the privately owned properties on the following pages are cherished to this day; proof of that lies in the enthusiasm with which their owners have supplied me with information.

Other properties of such historical significance that they are now protected by institutions such as the New Zealand Historic Places Trust are no less cared for even though their rooms may be little other than museums; it is only regrettable that for want of resources not all worthy relics may be preserved and so the country is dotted with once-loved derelicts such as the house near Brightwater that is the tailpiece of this book.

Marketing psychologists say that the human race’s only needs are a blanket, a piece of meat and a cave. These are essential to survival: all else is luxury to a greater or lesser degree. When we walked out of our caves and started to fashion our shelters we added a cultural dimension - architecture - and with it came love and pride of home.

Clendon House

I’m certain that when James Reddy Clendon built his simple house on the cliffs of the southern Hokianga Harbour at Rawene he lavished as much love upon it as did the owners of grander mansions like Thomas Marsden’s Isel House near Nelson or Allan Kerr Taylor’s Alberton. Shelter was fundamental but beyond that, shape, space, proportion, utility, decoration, ‘atmosphere’ and layout of the grounds and gardens presented opportunities for creative planning of domestic comforts to mind and body. I’m thankful for that for I doubt that I could raise much excitement over making watercolour illustrations of caves.

With one or two exceptions the subjects are discrete houses or cottages, but I’ve also found some multiple dwellings of interest such as Dunedin’s classical terrace of town houses in Stuart Street, and a charming, mirror-image brace of workmen’s cottages in George Street.

Mokai

There’s also the fascinating row of timber mill houses, built around 1903, bordering the remains of a village green at Mokai, north of Taupo: they’re virtually all that’s left of a town which, in its heyday, had a billiards saloon, race track, dance hall and sly grog shop - sly because of prohibition. Smoke still rises from the chimneys of the houses but the Mokai Mill closed over forty years ago.

The same type of dwelling has always been built by large corporations or government agencies whose industries and work forces have been large enough to warrant it; although not illustrated in this book, one thinks of timber-town houses in Tokoroa; workers’ cottages at the cement town of Portland or around various electricity power stations, and that fine range of New Zealand Railways’ designs erected all over the country, many of which have disappeared while those remaining are fast becoming collectors’ items to be restored with affection.
The big mansions are impressive (and suggest that despite current fashionable ‘have-and-have-nots’ debates the spectrum of social status was far greater in the early days of European settlement than now) but I’m even more awed by the simple shelters of the pioneers.

The Cuddy, Awatere Valley
 

A good example is the ‘Cuddy’ built in the 1850s below Mt. Gladstone, a peak in the Inland Kaikouras overlooking the remote Awatere Valley. A long, winding, dusty drive from the Marlborough coast to get there today, the difficulty of access and the lengthy isolations of the mid-nineteenth century are almost unimaginable. Despite that, it is not hard to picture the welcoming cosiness of the Cuddy’s tiny living room with a crackling fire inside and forty-five centimetres of cob wall keeping its occupants safe from the wintry blizzard.

Patersons Accommodation House

A similar haven would have been Paterson’s Cottage, a cob-walled, shingled accommodation house built in 1872 for travellers in the Waitaki/Hakataramea area. It looks forlorn these days isolated in a paddock off the highway, but to a tired, rain-sodden 1890s drover the yellow light spilling from its windows would have promised paradise even though he might have had to share the ripe atmosphere of the loft with several others.

It’s interesting to observe that many of the old cob cottages of the pioneers may be found close by the gracious houses now occupied by their descendants. It rather argues that their forebears were by no means privileged, they earned their success through sweated perseverance. Couched on a peaceful hill and surrounded by periwinkle, the cottage at the romantically named Glens of Tekoa near Culverden is one such, but the best example is another ‘Cuddy’, this one at Waimate in South Canterbury which was built by the Studholmes in 1854 and is still in the family. It’s such an unbelievably picturesque cottage of snowgrass thatch and totara slab surrounded by English country garden flowers and green baize lawn that I was diffident about painting it - it’s almost too pretty.

I make no apology for the accidental emphasis on Akaroa. I could do a whole book on that pleasant little town which, it seems to me, has the highest concentration of picturesque cottages in the land. It’s a town that has been ‘discovered’ in the last twenty years and many of the houses, which had gone past their best, have been rescued and restored by locals and Cantabrians both for permanent dwellings and holiday homes. The town exudes a fierce pride and, it seems, a daily dedication to becoming more and more Gallic, knowing that its French colonial origins make it unique; but so far it has, thankfully, resisted the temptation to exploit tourism to the point where, as has happened in Queenstown, the old enchantment is obliterated.

There are no baches or cribs in this book. They epitomise a unique and irresistibly attractive side to the New Zealand character but they are, in general, a class apart from the serious family dwelling. While, I know, some people live in them full time and some of them are quite elaborate, they are quintessentially holiday homes inextricably linked to long days of seaside sunlight, sand in the cracks between the floor boards, bush flies buzzing behind flimsy net curtains and the heavy aroma of barbecued chops hanging over the bay at twilight. They might be the subject of another book …

And there is nothing modern here: the future will identify the treasures of today but it’s hard to pick what’s going to become a classic. Will tomorrow’s exemplars be gaunt, white, factory-chimneyed fibreglass ‘eccentricities’ or some of the status-symbolic, porte-cochered mini-mansions of Auckland’s North Shore sub-divisons - who can tell? I certainly can’t. Besides, on the houses and cottages I paint there’s a patina that can only come from age. I hope you’ll enjoy sharing it with me.

Don Donovan. Albany 1997

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Country Churches of NZ 6. Our Lady of the Assumption, Motukaraka, Northland

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops.
The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

OUR LADY OF THE ASSUMPTION, MOTUKARAKA

Of all the many churches of the northern Hokianga district the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Motukaraka is the most prominent. From the busier southern side of the harbour you see it beckoning across the water like a gleaming spire of many-towered Camelot.

Built in 1910 by H. A. Williams of nearby Kohukohu, it is thought to have been designed by Thomas Mahoney, architect of so many Catholic churches, convents and schools in the Auckland diocese. Its grandness speaks of the spirited! competition for souls that took place among different Christian denominations in the north. It even has a copy of a 1678 Bartolomé Murillo painting of the Immaculate Conception above the altar (the original hangs in the Louvre, Paris).

A caretaker told me that a man who once fell from the spire and bounced off a shoulder of the tower, hit the ground but was unharmed. Of such miracles are legends made.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
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