POETRY & ART

Up on the hills a line of boiling cloud
Spills silently over the beautiful skyline,
White against the black storm behind,
Lyttelton's basin filled and overflowing.
And within those recumbent slopes
Sleeping Papatuanuku sighs and stirs,
Breath of life exhaled over warm hills.

Mothering hills, generations patient
As your precocious children have
Tumbled and spilled about your sacred body,
Bound with roads and lines,
Mounted and occupied,
Tunnelled your inner privacy,
Improved your naked beauty
With a clothing of houses and trees,
Fashion accessories for a sleeping beauty.

Yet still, there you recline -
Patient, silent, beautiful,
Empowering, loving, giving -
Mothering the careless little ones,
Breathing them life, promising them future
Despite their tumbling and squabbling.

Hail Mother, full of Grace!
Ave Maria, mater dei i!
Ki a Papatuanuku!
Haere mai! Haere mai! Haere mai!
Breathe on us your breath of life,
Caress us again with your rainbows,
Angle again golden sunrises and shadows
Across your beautiful body,
Bleed again your mother's cleansing renewal,
Your seasons changes,
Your gift of rebirth for tomorrow's children,
Spring renewal from the hills to our restless city.

Mothering hills,
Day by day
Season by season
Generation by generation,
Change us with your breath of life.

GHD Oct 2002

AS OLD AS THE HILLS?

The following reference to the Port Hills comes from Arthur Harper's auto-biography Memories of Mountains and Men published in 1946. Among other fascinating glimpses of Christchurch life in the last half of the 19th Century Harper includes the following incident concerning the Port Hills, from 1901. This was about the time Harry Ell commenced his push for recognizing and conserving the Hills for public enjoyment. On page 18, 'Early Days', Arthur Harper writes:

'...Another very favourite ride of ours was to Dyer's Pass or up the old track behind Sir Cracroft Wilson's beautiful home, Cashmere. We often wondered why the people of Christchurch were so slow in realising what outstanding views can be seen from the Port Hills. At the risk of a digression the following will show that this want of appreciation existed even as late as 1901. 'When the late King George, as Duke of York, came to New Zealand in June of that year, one of his party was Mr E. F. Knight, the author of 'Where Three Empires Meet'. He was a great friend of Dr. Jennings, who gave a dinner party in his honour. It was a 'stag party'. When Knight was leaving for his hotel, I asked him to let me take him up the Dyer's Pass road to see one of the great views in New Zealand. The other guests heard my suggestion, and were much amused. They advised him not to waste his time, and Knight began to make excuses about having to be at the Military Review in Hagley Park at 11 a.m., but I persisted, saying I'd call for him in my dogcart at 9 o'clock.

'Next morning I found him still hesitant, but on my promising to get him back for the Review he consented to come. We went up to about the present tram terminus. It was one of those perfect winter mornings, a hard frost, no wind and very clear air, the mountains covered with snow, the plains and the city were at their best. When I told him that fifty years prior to his visit the plains had been practically uninhabited he admitted that it was an object lesson to anyone of what British enterprise can do. He couldn't understand why the others had tried to dissuade him. His appreciation was shown later when he published his book on the tour, for he devoted two pages entirely to this view...'

The book referred to, With the Royal Tour by E.F. Knight (1902), is in the New Zealand Room of the Central Library. The two pages in question dwell more on the plucky achievements of British enterprise to be seen in the decorative work and the heraldry in the Sign of the Takahe, than on the Hills or the view per se. But the extract does illustrate that it seems always to have been an uphill battle (no pun intended!) to have some sections of the Christchurch community value the wider qualities of the Port Hills. The polarisation of attitude is perhaps as old as the hills themselves.