The time has arrived in the history of our colony when our scenery should be preserved, when the historic and beautiful places should be for all time conserved, and when we should do something to protect the thermal springs, which are of so great value to the country, from being destroyed and from falling into the hands of private individuals.
European settlers in New Zealand struggled to rework the indigenous landscape. They wanted the trappings of civilised society they had left behind, not the wild and savage landscape of the new country. For many, the land and its bounty was a resource to be exploited. The forest was a source of timber for houses and fences; its removal was a constructive process of turning 'wasteland' into 'farm land'. Rocky peaks and swamps were of little value, useful at best for compensating Maori for the loss of more profitable lands.
Even before systematic colonisation began in 1840, New Zealand had been promoted in British publications as a wild, scenic, romantic wonderland – and a place of extremes. Guidebooks responded to the growing Victorian appetite for travel, and they marketed flora and fauna and the iconic 'old-time Maori'. These interests also reflected the European fashion for the picturesque and the perception of the 'wild and primitive' romantic landscape as the antidote to the increasingly artificial and corrupt urban life of industrialised society. According to this idea, wild places were not only beautiful but could serve as areas of physical recreation and mental and spiritual rejuvenation.
Kennedy's Bush
Between the 1880s and the 1920s local scenery preservation societies and other pressure and interest groups became active. Most scenery preservation societies were urban and focussed on the maintenance of town belts and urban reserves, such as Christchurch's Kennedy's Bush.
Others had broader interests. In 1898 the Nelson Society called for the creation of a national park in the Rai Valley. This was New Zealand's first major public campaign to create a national park.
Politician Harry Ell was the strongest advocate of scenery preservation in the early 20th century. He raised the issue of legislative protection for the environment in Parliament more than 20 times between 1901 and 1903 alone. His call for the reservation of 'representative' areas of forest got limited political support. He could not convince Richard Seddon to include preservation of forests for aesthetic and ecological as well as tourism reasons in the 1903 Scenery Preservation Bill. Conservation was fine in theory. In practice it was still alien to the notion of appropriate use of productive land in a frontier society.
Maori had mixed feelings about the Scenery Preservation Act 1903. Politician Hone Heke Ngapua welcomed it as a way to protect totara and prevent the loss of more kauri forest, but he objected to the way compensation was made available to Maori. The value of Maori lands, he argued, should be assessed not by the Native Land Court but by the same courts that assessed general lands.
Tobacco fields, Pangatotara, Nelson, 1943, by Doris Lusk.
Doris Lusk (1916–90) painted this work during a holiday in Nelson with Colin and Anne McCahon in the summer of 1942–43. Lusk and Colin McCahon both painted the same scene. While McCahon concentrated on the undulating forms of the hills, Lusk included the valley and used a more conventional spatial treatment. The motif of industrial imagery imposed upon the landscape is typical of Lusk and is seen in her best-known painting, The pumping station.
North Otago landscape no. 2, 1967, by Colin McCahon.
Sketch of birdlife at Tutira by Herbert Guthrie-Smith.
An internationally acclaimed classic of ecological writing, William Herbert Guthrie-Smith's Tutira: the story of a New Zealand sheep station (1921) was New Zealand's first major environmentalist publication.
New Zealand is one of the few places in the world where the public can walk around the grounds of Parliament. On a fine day, people sunbathe or enjoy their lunch on the grass; walkers getting from one part of Wellington to another use the grounds as a short cut; and the rose gardens and sloping lawns make an ideal venue for special photographs, especially with the backdrop of the buildings. The grounds have been a traditional place for groups of people to gather for celebration, to listen to important announcements, for protest or to mourn the death of a major public figure.
