Because Magnetic Island researcher Gary Davies is deeply interested in so many subjects , about which we have numerous discussions over coffee, scones , even his own homemade cheesecake , the above slim Kangaroo Press publication , bought in a bundle at a book sale , was flicked to him for perusal . Not only did he make an interesting discovery but one of particular significance to this blogger.
Eagle - eyed Gary, who has three albums of postcards under the heading Maori , quickly spotted the above illustration , from the La Trobe Collection , State Library of Victoria , claiming to show Aboriginal boys at Lake Tyers, Victoria , in 1905 , shooting pool on a makeshift table, and immediately declared it was wrong, that it was Maoris in New Zealand.
I needed no convincing that Gary was right because back in the 1960s, when I was a reporter on the Rotorua Post, I wrote articles about the very same photograph , which had been provided by local historian Don Stafford , author of Te Arawa , A History of the Arawa People and the Rotorua district, a Cyclone Tracy damaged copy of which I have .
With his wife, Stafford ran a menswear shop in Rotorua and also had an interest in Tikitere , a spectacular geothermal area between lakes Rotorua and Rotoiti , its sulphur baths used by Maoris as a cure for scrofula and cutaneous diseases . When atheist Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw visited Tikitere in 1934 he commented the volcanic activity there reminded him that religious colleagues in England had warned he would go to Hell . Tikitere, he said , was Hell's Gate, and Maoris so liked Shaw they gave it that Pakeha name .
Stafford provided the information that the photograph had been taken by former schoolteacher , Charles Maude Phillips, an Englishman of private means, who lived for a time at Whakarewarewa , Rotorua's well known Maori village, the locals calling him "Piripi". The cue in the photo was a twisted manuka stick.
A member of the Rotorua Post staff identified one of the boys in the photograph as being a relative. Further information surfaced that copies of the photograph had appeared in billiard rooms throughout New Zealand and it was often claimed the boys were locals. Phillips, a keen photographer,who had lived in Christchurch in the 1870s, also taught Maori girls how to cook Sunday dinners which enabled some of them to obtain work as domestics.
Confirmation that the photograph was indeed one of Maori boys is contained in the Auckland Council Library ,which mentions my articles in the Rotorua Post, and other Phillip photos appearing , one in 1907, in publications such as the Auckland Weekly News and New Zealand Illustrated...(Peter Simon).
