New Zealand - Meal break on the Waiharara diggings, near Houhora. These two photos tell more than words of the masculine comradeship of the Dalmatian gum-diggers. #602213 - The history of the Dalmatian people has brought changes to their name, and to their country - In the 1880s when the first Dalmatians came to New Zealand, the Austro-Hungarian empire ruled Dalmatia, which is on the Adriatic coast of the Mediterranean. This is why they were often mistakenly called ‘Austrians’ in New Zealand. - After Austria-Hungary was defeated in the First World War, Dalmatia was incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929 this was renamed Yugoslavia. - In the early 1990s, the wars in the Balkans tore Yugoslavia apart. Eventually Dalmatia became part of the new country of Croatia. - Immigrants from this part of Europe have been known not only as Dalmatians but also as Yugoslavs and Croatians. (https://teara.govt.nz/en/dalmatians/page-1) - Kauri gum is a fossilised resin extracted from kauri trees (Agathis australis), which is made into crafts such as jewellery. Kauri forests once covered much of the North Island of New Zealand, before Māori and European settlers caused deforestation, causing several areas to revert to sand dunes, scrubs, and swamps. Even afterward, ancient kauri fields continued to provide a source for the gum and the remaining forests. - The Māori had many uses for the gum, which they called kapia. Fresh gum was used as a type of chewing gum (older gum was softened by soaking and mixing with juice of the puha thistle). Highly flammable, the gum was also used as a fire-starter, or bound in flax to act as a torch. Burnt and mixed with animal fat, it made a dark pigment for moko tattooing. Kauri gum was also crafted into jewellery, keepsakes, and small decorative items. Like amber, kauri gum sometimes includes insects and plant material. - Kauri gum was used commercially in varnish, and can be considered a type of copal (the name given to resin used in such a way). Kauri gum was found to be particularly good for this, and from the mid-1840s was exported to London and America. Tentative exports had begun a few years earlier, however, for use in marine glue and as fire-kindlers; gum had even made up part of an export cargo to Australia in 1814. - Since the kauri gum was found to mix more easily with linseed oil, at lower temperatures, than other resins, by the 1890s, 70 percent of all oil varnishes made in England used kauri gum. It was used to a limited extent in paints during the late 19th century, and from 1910 was used extensively in the manufacture of linoleum. From the 1930s, the market for gum dropped as synthetic alternatives were found, but there remained niche uses for the gum in jewellery and specialist high-grade varnish for violins. - Kauri gum was Auckland's main export in the second half of the 19th century, sustaining much of the early growth of the city. Between 1850 and 1950, 450,000 tons of gum were exported. The peak in the gum market was 1899, with 11,116 tons exported that year, with a value of £600,000 ($989,700). The average annual export was over 5,000 tons, with the average price gained £63 ($103.91) per ton. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauri_gum) Northland New Zealand - Introduction: - I was a country boy, growing up in Totara North, with the Whangaroa Harbour, or, more specifically, mangroves, at my front doorstep, the disused bush tramway leading into the hills behind, and the sea, everywhere the sea. - I went to primary school and began high school in the North, having one year to the smell of beer and stale cheese in the Masonic Lodge at Kaeo, which was the building that housed the foundation pupils of Kaeo District High School. Later I came back North, to spend five strong years working at Kaitaia College and living at Ahipara, on the edge of Ninety-Mile Beach. I have a son there still, and many friends and relatives, from Mangonui to Mahurangi Heads. - The North is as formative for me as it was for the country as a whole, and this book is the journey that, this year, I cannot take, a leisurely drift through the quiet back roads and waterways of the old North, where the past never really died, it simply faded not quite away. - Plundered, despoiled, worked over many times by those who came like flights of hungry locusts, the North has an immense resilience. Northland has arrived at a precarious balance between human needs and natural forces, it is now a mild, equable region, with the sea, cleansing, restoring, a backdrop to almost every view. - These photos, this text, is aimed at the spirit as well as the simple actuality of life in the North, from Maori times onward. - In collecting the photographs and paintings, in writing the text, in designing and laying it out, working with Mary Foreman (another Northlander now living in Coromandel), "The North' has been a pilgrimage back to a land I never really left. - Barry Mitcalfe Author: MITCALFE, BARRY ISBN : 0908632010 Click the link provided at the top to purchase the book through the MAD on New Zealand Shop - Supporting New Zealand Authors and Artists