Leaves From My Sketchbooks. 67. Oast House, Valleyfield, Tasmania

It came as quite a surprise to find a building like this in this part of the world. Oast houses are associated in my mind with Kent and with an artist called Rowland Hilder whose forté was Kentish rural landscapes complete with oast houses, plough furrows and winter elm trees with flocks of rooks flying about them

I must say I enjoyed doing this open air sketch but the perspective of the circular brickwork extended me and I'm still not sure that I got it quite right.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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Leaves From My Sketchbooks. 31. Houses Above Barga, Tuscany

My feet were dangling over a steep fall as I sat on the side of the narrow road and sketched this view of houses looking out over Barga with Monte Pania in the background.

I heard shuffling footsteps but didn't turn round. Heavy breathing and the pungent whiff of smoker's shag. Then the footsteps shuffled off as a grumbly old voice said 'Buon lavoro, signor.'

That's 'good work' in Italian! I called after him, 'Grazie!' He waved his stick jauntily and shuffled some more.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz    www.don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

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Leaves From My Sketchbooks. 30. The Walls of Barga, Tuscany

 Late afternoon I was sitting on a bench overlooking Barga’s Parco Kennedy. To the right tall houses form the curtain wall of the centro storico. I wondered how many chamber pots had been emptied out of those windows? I lost myself as I drew them, remotely aware of an audience of two small boys.

These little sketches don’t take long. I made a mental note of colour so that I might add a little oil-pastel resist and watercolour wash later then I snapped the sketchbook shut while at the same time acknowledging at last the presence of my audience with ‘Allora: buona sera, signori’. 

They fell over each other to get away.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz    www.don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
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New Zealand Odyssey: A Farm Barn on Speargrass Flat, Central Otago

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, 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 old stone farm barn was at Speargrass Flat, between Arrowtown and Queenstown in Central Otago. It looked like this in the late 1980s, a huge area of corrugated iron in various stages of repair covering stout schist walls that looked as if they would last forever. 

In the twenty of more years since then parts of Speargrass Flat have become among the most expensive bits of real estate in New Zealand with an international golf course, time share apartments and 'Homes and Gardens' homes and gardens that would even make dents in the bank accounts of Wall Street financiers!

I'm pleased to say that the original of this watercolour hangs in the sitting room of an old friend who seems to love it.

 © DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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New Zealand Odyssey: The Door of the Old Uruwhenua Schoolhouse

'New Zealand Odyssey', published in 1989 by Heinemann, was authored by me, 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.

When working on illustrations for 'New Zealand Odyssey' I was always delighted when the opportunity came to play with textures. The old Uruwhenua school house was nothing much to look at but its door was a fine mix of flaking colour and stressed dilapidation. How long before I did this drawing the school closed I don't know but I'll bet a large number of cats, rats and possums used that convenient hole on many later occasions.

I gave the original drawing to a friend in Sydney.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

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My Books: Open 7 Days

I wanted to record, in watercolours, the old colonial stores that had served New Zealand communities for many years. But I was almost too late and had to extend this collection to include some colourful local corner dairies, many of which are run as family businesses.

Stores that sold everything to closely knit, local populations were killed off by the motor car, good roads and supermarkets. But there were a few left when I toured New Zealand seeking them, and I think I got most of them in this collection which was published by Random Century.

'Open 7 Days' has been out of print for many years but copies can still be found at ABE books, TradeMe, E Bay and many second hand bookshops.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

My Books: Country Churches of New Zealand

 

I must confess right at the start that I am not religious. This book is all about small church architecture. But while writing and illustrating it I was impressed by the dedication and faith of the people who almost put church before home and family in their drive to erect houses of worship. Some of these churches date to the very earliest years of settlement of New Zealand by European - mainly British - immigrants.

Published by New Holland, the book has been out of print for a year or two although you might still find a copy in the odd bookshop. Other options are ABE Books, Amazon.com, TradeMe and EBay. Don't ask me for a copy, they've all gone!

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Open 7 Days 1. Cover & Introduction

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.

INTRODUCTION

I was very nearly too late with this book. I wanted to preserve, as at late 1990, a selection of typical New Zealand general stores, freeze-framed like insects in amber. I had it in mind that there would still be left enough of those grand emporia, remnants of lusty colonial beginnings, to comprise an informally historical monograph.

I found instead the last stages of the devastation of rural and provincial society that was brought about by the free market policies of recent government, the ‘Crash of 87′ and three years of consequent tremors.

To be fair, these recent events were only the final blows. The real decline had begun many years before when the long comfort of an assured British market for our primary production gradually disintegrated.
With my wife, I visited practically all of the stores in this book during October and November 1990. I wanted to gather them all up in as short a space of time as possible; almost as if I had taken a snapshot on one given day. This is important because they are in a constant state of change and may not now be as they were when I called. Some were in the middle of repainting, some had relatively new owners and some were up for sale.

The criteria for selection were varied and unscientific. I wanted to have a fair geographical spread, and for a store to be chosen it had to have all or some of these attributes:
• ‘Character’ and attractiveness to my eye as a watercolour illustrator.
• Some historical significance.
• A wide range of goods.
• If possible, to be open seven days (some were not).
• To play a part in the affairs of its community.

It was, I thought, more likely that I would find my stores in rural towns than in cities. Historically, cities were large enough to allow the development of retailers such as drapers, clothiers, milliners, grocers, footwear stores, hardware merchants and other specialists; country towns, with smaller populations, fostered generalists, selling everything from hatpins to cooking ranges, loose biscuits to sheep pellets. But I found that there is little difference now between town and country. Everywhere in New Zealand, from the suburbs of Auckland to the marginal townships of Westland, there are the ubiquitous seven-day dairies and ’superettes’; all, to a greater or lesser degree, serving their neighbours with the same will and doggedness as the large general stores of yesterday.

Their customers probably have less loyalty. Widespread ownership of reliable transport, coupled with excellent roads, has encouraged rural families to make weekly, or even monthly, bulk-buying trips to urban and suburban supermarkets and shopping malls, where choice is wider and the prices cheaper. The remains of derelict Te Pohue Store, which lies to one side of State Highway 5 between Taupo and Hawke’s Bay, prove the point. I asked the local publican where the residents of the township now buy their groceries, and he told me they drive to the supermarket in Napier – forty-seven kilometres away.

Individualism, one of the most endearing of New Zealanders’ qualities, was once outstanding in the local storekeeper. Today they are still ready with an opinion about everything from social welfare to perestroika, but most, despite retaining proprietorship, have given in to the benefits of the collective power of central buying, financial aid and advertising provided by groups such as Four Square and A1. Total capitulation results in a repaint of the store’s exterior to comply with the lettering styles and colours of the corporate design manual; thus, with a sense of having been there many times before, I found, so often on my search, old stones and plankings resplendent in Four Square yellow, green and orange. Neat, bright, but conformist and lacking variety.

Less ashamedly and greatly more aggressively, the Coca-Cola people have seduced a number of retailers into going red and white from doorstep to ventilator, cunningly camouflaging numerous little histories and, no doubt, sending many a long-dead, striped-aproned storekeeper spinning six feet deep in the local cemetery!

Colour is an enlivening feature of almost all general stores, and it’s largely provided by merchandising signs and posters. Indeed, a store without posters is as dull as a magazine without advertisements. In late 1990 the advertising signs most widespread were Tip Top’s ‘Realicecreamier’ and Coca-Cola. The cigarette companies’ sales reps were indulging in a flurry of activity pending the government’s ‘lion-tamer’s whip’ bannng of tobacco advertising. The last few brands of cigarettes to be displayed will be Rothmans King Size, Benson and Hedges, Pall Mall, Winfield, John Brandon, Peter Jackson and Pacific 30s; and while I’m sure other products’ posters (like those grotesque Teenage Ninj’a Turtles) will maintain the kaleidoscopic gaiety of retail shop windows, they’ll never quite be the same again.
We covered the country in detail, and there were many wild goose chases. The longest was when a storekeeper in Taranaki told me of an old store at Tokaanu and we made a long, gruelling cross-country trip on Route 40 through Taumarunui only to find nothing remotely resembling a general store. It had died, as so many have, in the four or five years since that New Plymouth storekeeper had last visited. In the course of that trip we passed through Ohura and drove reflectively along a wide, dual main street where more buildings were closed down than were open. You could almost hear the chuckle of the woodworms as they chewed their way through two old stores, a butcher’s shop and a deserted bank, whose imposing façade would once have assured the townsfolk that they and their money would be safe for a thousand years.

There were other disappointments, such as two magnificent deserted stores at Waipiro Bay, on East Cape, one of which was so recently closed that its paintwork was fresh; Donovan’s Store at Okarito, where, although the shop was closed down, we had the honour of passing the time of day with Booker Award winner Keri Hulme; and the old Matakanui Store in Central Otago, squarely built of mud bricks, now in course of restoration, but only a memory as a general store.

The most original of all the operational stores was Langfords at Bainham. I heaved a sigh of relief when, sixteen kilometres south of Collingwood, along a cul-de-sac that ends at the Heaphy Track, I found that this diversion was certainly no wild-goose chase! Langfords is the important pivot upon which ‘Open 7 Days’ turns from present to past.

All in all, I doubt if I missed too much, but I like to think that somewhere in some remote town there still flourishes an old general store staffed by earnest professionals with old fashioned values, treading ancient, creaking boards that whisper memories of miners and graziers. There in the cool, deep shadows the boxed shelves will offer patent medicines, preserves, shaving mugs and badger brushes. The match-lined walls will carry baked enamel advertisements for Bensdorp Cocoa, Radium polishes, Bycroft’s biscuits, Reckitt’s ‘blue’ and ‘Creamota Cream o’ the Oat - The National Breakfast’; and behind a wide counter, solid as a cathedral altar, fringed by bags of seed potatoes and biscuit tins, the storekeeper win smile, push up his sleeves and relish the idea of giving a little personal service.

Fifty-six stores were considered for Open 7 Days. I am indebted to all of their proprietors and managers, particularly those of the thirty-seven included in the book. The text descriptions about each store have been compiled from information they each sent to me. It was all of high quality, and I was pleased to hear that many of them thoroughly enjoyed researching the histories of their stores and localities.

In addition, I thank my wife, Pat, for her considerable help; and Random Century, mainly David Ling, for publishing such an unusual subject.

Don Donovan Albany, 1991
© DON DONOVAN (2012)
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The Good Old Kiwi Pub: Introduction

I wrote and illustrated ‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’. It was published in 1995. It’s a snapshot of some New Zealand pubs as they were 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.

Title page.

INTRODUCTION

There is a critical point at which Nature through gradual processes such as throttling creeper and encroaching lichen, blends with human artifact to produce Art. I like that. As an illustrator I take my delights from shape, texture, colour and the mildewy stains of dilapidation. Mottled brickwork, weathered timber, mossy masonry and rusted corrugated roofs enchant me. I paint and sketch tottering barns, old houses and crumbling public buildings adorned by all manner of public writing from graffiti to some surprisingly good or endearingly primitive examples of the sign-writer’s craft.

In the case of this book, I have found graphic satisfaction in a few of the hostelries and taverns that have survived - albeit scarred - the regional planner, the bulldozer, fire and that destructive process which breweries call ‘upgrading’. It is significant, I think, that nearly every pub I have illustrated is independently owned and owes the big breweries nothing. Independent publicans do not, as a rule, have the financial resources to ‘improve’ their premises by tearing down walls and fitting false façades, consequently their pubs remain more closely identifiable with their beginnings, and their old kauri beams and pine planks bend with the burden of their years to carry the stains of hospitality with ageing dignity. There used to be a poster in the London Underground for a famous brand of shoe polish (’Kiwi’?) which showed a pair of shining brogues above a slogan ‘They’re well-worn but they’ve worn well!’ That’s what I’m getting at.

There are only two city pubs in this book. The rest are country or provincial hotels and taverns. There’s a reason for that; I like to enjoy what I do and hanging around city streets isn’t one of them, I’m not that enamoured of metropolitan New Zealand. To me the best of this favoured country lies in its rural landscape and its country towns. There’s another reason: I’m a romantic. I like to picture what travel was like in this country in the early days and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how important country hotels were when the likes of Cobb & Co. were carrying travellers across a forbidding land of mountains, dense bush and the capricious, sometimes deadly streams that ran down and through them to the sea.

On one of my journeys in search of subjects for this and other works, I found myself overnight in Haast Township with the weather closing in fast. My work was done and all I then had to do was drive home to Auckland. Apart from food and fuel there was nothing to stop me travelling as far and as fast as freshness and the law would allow, so I drove from Haast to Picton in one day, crossed Cook Strait on the pre-dawn sailing next day and then directly to Auckland. The road was tar-sealed and uncluttered all the way and the journey was not only easy but entirely enjoyable. On my way I passed numerous old hotels or the sites of others long gone and reflected upon their role in the development of early New Zealand.

Derelict White Horse Hotel, Becks, Central Otago 

The journey I was making would, a hundred years ago, have been impossible. Indeed, it was not until November 1965 that there was a road connexion between Haast and Hokitika. Travel in the early days of European settlement was by sea between the major towns and apart from ancient Maori river routes and foot tracks, the development of inland routes was entirely a matter of short distance expediency, to link settlers with their nearest towns, to supply diggers on the goldfields or, perhaps, to facilitate movements of armed constabulary and militia from one garrison to another.

Once the demand for the movement of people and goods had grown sufficiently for roads wide enough for wheeled transport to be formed, a network of primitive routes would have been established. Any serious journey would have been a succession of relatively short day stages by horse or horse-drawn coach on rutted roads following, as far as possible (in order to maintain easy gradients) the contours of the land. There would have been few cuttings or tunnels, the tracks would have snaked appallingly around headlands and re-entrants, often teetering over terrifying precipices and crossing rocky fords. At unavoidably steep climbs or descents passengers might be asked to alight and, at best, walk behind the coach: at worst they would be obliged to assist, with groaning joints and bruised shoulders, slowly to rotate wheels slimy with mud and caramel clay. They might spend hours in rain or humid bush, attacked by sandflies and itching with grime, while a wheel was changed or the carriage was jacked up to replace a broken axle.

Little wonder that in those early days seaports had a pub on every corner, while along the narrow highways, hotels were closely and regularly spaced so that travellers of all ages, occupations and classes could find food and a bed for the night while the horses were rested. Those of a genteel disposition might affect an aloof indifference while all manner of itinerants, ne’er-do-wells or local workers drank, fought, gambled, danced or cursed the night away in the bar.

Over-nighting at a roadside hostelry would have been a great leveller and, as such, might most appropriately have exemplified what New Zealand was all about - equality. ‘…you can forget those ancient European airs and graces, they won’t wash here!’

Railways and greatly improved roads gradually reduced the importance of closely spaced travellers’ hotels, with their accommodation and dining rooms, lounge bars and facilities for stabling of horses. Today, the emphasis is upon destinations rather than stages along the way, and a highly developed network of motels and luxury hotels serves tourists and business travellers at their journeys’ ends. In one or two of the remaining old country hotels you can still get a hint of what life might have been like at the turn of the century - in hotels like the Brian Boru at Thames or the Mangonui Hotel - but most of them, with redundant upper storey bedrooms and their attendant spindly fire escapes, are simple taverns, offering, at minimum, beers and lagers to farm or factory workers, but often rising in sophistication to a ‘good table’ with fine food and wines, and achieving seven-day opening by allowing food and non-alcoholic drinks to feature on their menus as prominently as liquor.

Toe to toe with the changes wrought upon pubs by improved transport and communications are others both social and statutory. Drinking mixed with driving is legally and socially unacceptable these days, and while it’s true that the Sunday newspapers still carry plenty of reports of the public bar excesses of the previous night, things aren’t what they used to be: they’re getting better.

If you doubt me, read these edited extracts from Phil May’s ‘West Coast Gold Rushes’-

‘The number of hotels was commonly regarded as an index to prosperity…’

‘The presence of a barmaid was an undoubted stimulus to trade…’

‘Many of the bigger hotels provided a small orchestra in the evenings, for diggers loved to dance. Of necessity the style was “stag” or “buck” dancing…’(the first gay bars?).

‘Drunkenness was rife in the goldfield community. A large number of licensed hotels (102 in Hokitika in 1867) an unlimited number of unlicensed shanties, an unknown number of illicit stills, twelve local breweries (on the West Coast)… did not make for sobriety. Drunkenness was, of course, the colonial evil…’

***

I promised myself that I would not write a history book. That flaking paint and those distorted boards have a lot to answer for!

‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’ is neither a definitive survey of New Zealand hotels and taverns, past and present, nor a series of beer-breathed anecdotes or pen-portraits of public bar heroes - although I’ve had great fun turning up little snippets of history, some of which may turn out to be apocryphal! It is simply a collection of pubs that look interesting to me as an illustrator.

The pen and watercolour illustrations were done over five years to 1995, during which time many of the pubs have had new owners, and a new coat of paint. At the time of publication, one of them, the Rat Trap at Upper Takaka, had burned to the ground and so suffered the fate of most of the old hotels. There’s not too much one can do about that; sufficient to look at each drawing and say that that was how it was on the day I visited it. Nothing remains the same and, in time, nothing of the old buildings will remain at all. I’m happy to have captured just a few of New Zealand’s rural pubs of character as they were towards the end of the twentieth century.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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The Art Critic

I wander along the Barga-Renaio road and sit with my feet in the long grass of the downward side of the road doing a painting of the houses that teeter over the bluff above the town, with the very misty, almost obscured at times, Apuane Alps in the distance. Although absorbed, I hear a faint shuffle behind me and some laboured breathing. I look around to see an old, stooped man leaning on a stick watching me. ‘Buon giorno’ I wish him; he replies with a grunt. I continue my work while he wheezes. He seems content to be ignored. I, not at all put off, work quickly with oil pastel and watercolour and as the lighter colours emerge from the wash he grunts, ‘Buon lavoro…’ and totters away. 

When I realize that he has just congratulated me I call after him, ‘Grazie, signor’ and he waves his stick at me without looking round. ‘Good work!’ Indeed, I must be good if he has said so.

It’s pleasant sitting in the summer grasses looking out into the silvery mists across the olive groves that dive away from my feet. The tortuous trees - they look saurian with lizard limbs of wood - are fruiting with hard little olive, modest looking treasures.

The weather seems to be changing.


From ‘Antipasto’ random samplings from various writings made over a few years of visits to a ‘New Zealander’s Italy’

© DON DONOVAN
 donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Country Churches of NZ 15. Minniesdale Chapel, Wharehine, Port Albert

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.

MINNIESDALE CHAPEL, WHAREHINE, PORT ALBERT

Traveling long distances on dusty roads to find remote churches can be exhausting but when you come over a rise and see a gem like Minniesdale Chapel, Wharehine, in its garden of lavender, ornamental manuka and geraniums it's all worthwhile. After that there's little more rewarding than to sit on a grassy bank and splash some watercolours around.

The chapel was assembled from parts pre-fabricated in England and shipped to New Zealand in 1866 - four years after the area was settled - and was opened for its first service on Sunday, 29 December 1867.


© DON DONOVAN


donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Country Churches of NZ 8. St. Barnabas, Peria, 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.

ST BARNABAS, PERIA

Opposite the local school, in broad green pastures and a not-very-crowded graveyard, you can smell the polish in St Barnabas, Peria.

It is clearly a much loved and carefully groomed church and wears its age well. It was dedicated by the Bishop of Auckland, O.T.L. Crossley, on Tuesday 26 March 1912.

© DON DONOVAN


donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Country Churches of NZ 1. Introduction

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 contents.

This is the introduction to Country Churches of New Zealand

 IN THE BEGINNING I had a list of over 500 historic churches from around New Zealand. I spent the following three years travelling the country illustrating, observing and collecting snippets of history. It wasn't possible to include so many churches in a book of this sort so, as my main interest was in the uncomplicated structures more likely to be found in the country, I eliminated almost all city and major provincial churches. That led to the title Country Churches of New Zealand which just about sums it up. The odd city church has crept in because it was probably built when the city was no more than a small town and has that simple charm that so much takes my fancy.

I wrote and illustrated a book titled The Good Old Kiwi Pub a year or two ago and have been intrigued at how much old churches and pubs have in common. They were at the heart of new colonial communities, being practically the first public buildings to be erected. They were focal points, the church offerings being spiritual; the pub's more likely spirituous. They both would have offered not only comfort but also entertainment: comfort at the pub in a sympathetic barmaid's ear; entertainment in church through the sheer joy of a lustily sung Sunday hymn or Christmas carol. They were almost invariably built of the same materials - whatever came to hand, mostly timber. There the resemblances end. Churches, being used with sobriety and civic responsibilty, had a good chance of survival whereas pubs more often than not burned down, not unusually through a glowing cigarette butt falling from drunken fingers on to a straw-packed palliasse on a Saturday night thus to deny their victims the opportunity of repentance the following morning.

The oldest surviving church in New Zealand was built in 1835. Since then, due to fast, cheap transport, good roads, and the urbanization of population, small rural settlements have shrunk, many to the point where congregations have virtually disappeared. No church is a more poignant example than St Paul's, Whangaroa, where a plaintive note inside apologises that the cemetery is overgrown because there remain only twelve active parishioners all of whom are over 60. Now New Zealand is left with two sorts of country church: the first is a collection of decaying hulks bereft of support; the second survives with the financial help of the Historic Places Trust or earnest local communities of particular affluence and spiritual substance.

External architectural forms are my sphere of illustrative interest. That's why I have, over the years, drawn and painted old stores, houses and cottages, pubs and churches. I like variety of colour, texture and shape. This allows me to pick and choose which churches to illustrate without regard to denomination or creed. Country Churches of New Zealand contains Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Ratana houses of worship. (I would have relished an historic synagogue or mosque but never found one.) I'm drawn to them all, not only for their graphic possibilities, but also because, not being a religious man, I am fascinated by the spiritual energy that went into their construction. It seems that with few resources beyond their physical strength, newly arrived settlers were able to erect their churches as quickly as possible as if their spiritual survival were as important as the need to dig wells, build houses, plant crops and husband stock. And the additional miracle is that they carried the incumbent polytheistic Maori with them with such speed and to such effect that now, in the twenty-first century, they are some of the most devout of worshippers. An infidel such as I can only be astonished.

In gathering information, I have mostly encountered enthusiastic and generous contributors whom I have acknowledged elsewhere. But it wasn't all plain sailing; some guardians have been distant, unhelpful and secretive perhaps simply because their churches' histories have been forgotten, or for shame at their neglect, or maybe because they haven't trusted my motives. I was actually ejected from one churchyard with most unchristian-like hostility but the less said about that the better...

Here and there I have mentioned building costs in pounds (£).When New Zealand went metric in 1967 the pound was divided into two dollars thus £100 equals $200. I have not attempted to convert old values to current.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
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