October 2, 2025 • 17 mins
Kiwi Country: Rural New Zealand in 100 Objects is a new book by Te Radar and his wife Ruth Spencer. It's a charming tour of rural NZ, following the layout of a farm.
There's a lot to unpack here... so we thought we'd get the author Radar on to talk us through some of it!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Get a It's Jerry here from the Headache Briecklist, just
letting you know that if you're listening to the podcast
but didn't know that we also do a live radio show,
we do. And if you're wondering how to find out
what frequency to listen to us in your area, just
takes north or South as an Island to three four.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Eight three and we'll let you know.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
And now let's get on with the podcast. Welcome along
to the podcast, Friday the third of October twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
What was your favorite part about the radio show today?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Jerry, Oh, so many things.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I love the way that we had a nice, broad
easy max of sport news and stories about our own lives.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
You know what you did love, Jerry actually talking to
Britt Comorley about the NRL you loved has Brick Kimorley
Kimali evenly balanced with the unders appointment of g Lane.
But I believe it's time on the podcast today to
call Terada.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
He's got a book out called Kiwi Country, Rural New
Zealand and one hundred Objects.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
That's a great idea for a book. I want to know.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
One of my questions for him is going to be.
How Like when that came to him, he must have
just been like, yep, book go.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
This is the idea here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I suspect it's an idea he's been working on for
Sometimes she'd give him a call.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I think we should more fun than you can shake
a sharing shit at the riots, romp through rural.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
New Zealand, interesting parts of time of the book.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Good morning, Tarada, Good morning, Hi.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Manaiah and Jerry here.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
How are you Very good, gentlemen, very good Rada.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We have called you live on our podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
This is excellent news and I can report that at
this exact moment here in christ Church, it's a beautiful day.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's great news. It's lovely to hear that country.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's not We've got each a copy of your book
in front of us.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Here we do the publishers throwing them around. Willy Nelly
will have help you to share.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
We'll have a couple of giveaway. I want to say,
first off, I don't judge a book by a cover,
but I will judge a book by its smell. And
your book smells delightful.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Oh look, that pleases me greatly because one of the
things I do with joy is that new book smell. Yeah, yeah,
And I'm going to be honest, it was literally the
first thing I did when they turned up in the
post the other day. I flicked it open, and I
got a little straighter. I actually buried my nose in
the box.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Well, can you imagine writing a book and going to
all that if at thousands and thousands of words, hundreds
and hundreds of hours work, and then picking your book
up from the publisher radar and smelling at anything that's
like a person with book.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Just immediately upset you, you know, And well bo is
one of those things though, wasn't it. You know, each
everyone's got their own kind of little thing. You know,
smells rerisen differently actually, and I did hear women who
were on the contraceptor pill and then went off. It
changed their sense and smell, and quite often they don't
(03:09):
like the way their smell.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Oh wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, I know that smell is a huge part of
your memory attraction to someone and whether or not your
jeans work with their genes, and it's obviously subconscious. But yeah,
apparently someone who doesn't smell quite right to you, because
you know you have smelled people on the pass and
you are. It's weird how how the person that you
end up you know, living with oftentimes or becoming very
(03:36):
very close to you don't mind the smell of their skin,
You don't mind you like the smell sometimes of their
body odor.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It's quite a week. That is such a weird thing. Yeah,
it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I see so on the cover of Rural New Zealand
and one hundred Objects, I was just saying to Jerry
off here before, this is an amazing idea for a book.
When it came to you, did you just click immediately
and go Eureka, that's a great idea for a book.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Look going to take credit for it. It was initially
I think the publishers were looking at one hundred New
Zealand's rural kind of innovations and we looked at it
thought well, they've kind of been done, and so we
preached it slightly sideways and said, what about those things
that just remind us of you know, rural New Zealand.
There's a little there's something in there for everyone, and
(04:20):
you know A hundred was quite daunting, and I was like, oh,
you know where you're sort of flounder around with one hundred,
and then Ruth, who is my wife and co writer,
had the brilliant idea of breaking it down into ten sections.
And then actually that became difficult because when you've only
got ten things to sum up the household or the orchard,
then suddenly you've got quite a long list till you
(04:41):
start culling them out. Sometimes things moved from one place
to another. But yeah, and there's and there's always that
thing of you what do you put in and what
do you leave out?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, what was interesting is how you came up with
those ten spots. So those ten spots are homestead, paddack, orchard, livestock,
shared cowshed.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Now that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
There creek, back blocks, smoko and then road.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yes, and Ruth designed it so that she said, it's
like it's like a journey on to a farm. So
you generally you generally arrived at the homestead. And quite inadvertently,
the very first chapter of the duney because if you
have traveled to the country, it's quite a long drive
and the first thing you need to do is go
and use the toilet. That wasn't deliberate, but I only
really noticed that once it was published. Actually and then
(05:31):
and then you know, when you travel through the farm,
you go past you know, you go past the ortude,
you go past the shed, there's the cow shed, your
head down the back of the creek and you know,
up into the black box, and then you take that
kind of long country road home again. It was a
sort of a structure to it. Really.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So I'm looking at smoker. There's obviously there's the obvious
stuff that you you remember, like goalposts and a paddock.
That's something that we can all picture straight away. But
then you've got a picture of sconce And nothing makes
me think of smoke o more than a jam maybe
a bit of cream on a scone.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
We're going to tell you what, And it's actually we've
got my mother's scone recipe in there because she uses
lemonade and you know, it makes for a lighter scone.
And everyone's look, everyone's got their own particular scone recipe.
I've got another show at the moment about the history
of New Zellan cookbox and you'll you'll find these vintage
New Zealan cookbox. I've got one from Bank's Peninsula and
(06:23):
there would be something like twelve recipes for scones because
obviously people put in their idea. You know, you can't
leave anyone out when you've got one of these fundraising cookbox.
And I'm sure that people would have gone through and
tried Marjorie's and Islands and Francises and various others to
come to whatever they think is the best scone recipe,
because the resk one is slightly different.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Right when I was.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Fucking through, I got to the paddock section, which is
chapter two, and something that struck me as unusual and
I wasn't expecting was the flax fiber skateboard. Yeah, tell
me about the flax fiber skateboard. Why would that be
in the paddock section?
Speaker 4 (06:59):
The core Flex generally grows in a petic and we're
looking at those things that sort of surrounded they. One
point flex was Flex was one of the biggest export
industries in New Zealand. And look, it was a very
good way to get the word glory hole and suture
into the book within the flex and this glory hole
was a pretty important piece of infrastructure. Way back when
(07:20):
I think they threw a small boy into the glory
hole and he spent some time down there being covered
in flex. But actually, if you have a look at Flex,
it's one of those magic kind of fibers. I remember
taking some a flex wing mirror that had been you
use the flex and they use it like a little
bit like carbon fiber. It's very very good. We took
it over to the UK where there was a New
(07:41):
Zealand company was sending parts of it. The Formula three
race cars for Flex. I think Hayden Patten's car might
have quite a lot of fleas in it. But yeah,
there's an outfit that was using flax fibers to basically
bonded together and make skateboards. So it's these unexpected little
things up We all drive past flax. Most people don't
think about the huge success, but you know, one of
(08:01):
the very first and largest industries in New Zealand disappeared
by the wayside and now possibly coming back again.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
This seems like one of those books where you have
it beside your bed and you pack up and you
read one chapter or one item and they put it
back down again. Think about it for a while and
you know it's one of those ones you can just
pack up and take and bite sized pieces, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Look we both Ruth and I were brought up with
the classic toilet book. You know, you'd go to visit people,
and often you'd want to go back to visit someone
just because there was a book like this right by
the toilet, and it was piles of time magazines, readers, digests,
you know, national geographics, what it may be. And we
really thought that we wanted to have it as that
toilet book. So yeah, literally you can pick it up,
(08:42):
you can flick through. You don't have to read it
in order. As something tickles your fancy, you read it.
And I remember when Ruthles sending some drafts through. You know,
it's that classic thing. You laugh at something, you learn
about something, and then you have something to go and
talk about at the water cool it. We also say,
you know it's the classic Christmas book because the next
day you can be that person at the boxing day.
Lance and Goo, did you know it's a flax industry
(09:03):
used to have things called the glory Hole into Ay.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
We're talking to today are about his book Kiwi Country,
Rural New Zealand and one hundred objects. We're going to
take a break and come back, and when we come back,
I'm going to ask to Radar, how he can justify
taking a complete swipe at one of New Zealand's.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Biggest sacred cows. Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
We're talking to Todeda about his book KEEI Country, Rural
New Zealand and one hundred objects. And this is going
to upset a lot of people, Radar, because when I
was having a browse through, I saw something that's going
to upset people who are huge fans of See Edmundhillary
and I feel like you're running him down. The Hillary
family will be upset about this, referring to his downstairs
(09:50):
operation in this way, Edmund Hillary's b smoker. A. What
was it about Edmund Hillary's b smoker that you were
interested in?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Look, the reason Hillary could do what he did was
because he was a beekeeper and he had his bee smoker,
and so he would He's got incredibly fit back in
the day, tramping great distances to his beehives, carrying the
hives around, and it actually provided the money that he
required to go on and become a mountaineer. But he
(10:22):
was first and foremost a beekeeper of one of the
most sort of I guess almost holiest and most sacristanct
of all of the animal keeping sectors.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I'm looking here at a stick of jaug nite. This
has caught my attention and I've just had to flick
through it now. Jalug nites. It's basically like dynamite, isn't it?
And you could use it for all sorts of roadbuilding
and tunneling and mining and.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
But I don't know if it was covered off in
the thing. Have you heard of jellyfishing? This is when
you take a stick of gelignite, you throw it onto
the top of a pond and then you shoot it.
It explodes and the concussive blast makes every fish in
that pond to the top.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Look.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
I'm a swamp person from the North Way Katto and
so we were particularly familiar with that. My dad used
to use a lot of gentlemen on the farm, you know,
as we said the book back during the sixth season seventies.
She didn't need a license. You could go and buy
a box of it. And if you went, and I
remember we used to have a lot of for blowing
stumps and swamps. And my dad had left someone a
(11:23):
shed and then he discovered it and it had got
a bit leaky, which is not ideal. Now normally probably
in this day and age, you calling the bomb squad.
He simply picked it up and very carefully walked at
some distance down the farm, put a detonator into it,
came back, pressed a little lever. Nothing happened, so he
waited the requis a couple of hours. He went back down,
(11:44):
put another one in, went back just on three o'clock.
The neighbor was getting this cows and and he blew
it up and the resulting explosion echoed around the hills
of the north Way. Catto run the fund money in
their wetlands subsequently were investigating reports that perhaps the safe
had been blowing, but the neighbor, who took some time
(12:04):
to give them his cows absolutely well. After they'd fallen over,
they took off out the race and for probably the
next like I cerd'ly remember it. All the way through
my childhood, there was this incredible chronicle shaped hole in
a paddock that would have been about two and a
half meters seep.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Wow, foxhole asteroid.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The day I'm looking here, Bob Simple's tank. This is
the thing that's deared in my heart. Of course, Bob Simple,
being the Ministry of I think Public Works Ministry of
Public Works back in the day during World War Two,
and he thought it was a good idea to get
messy ferguson trucks and then chuck some corrugated iron on
the outside of them.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Is that the general vibe there with the simple tank
look pretty much?
Speaker 4 (12:46):
I think there are some some caterpillar crawlers and the
guys in the railway workshops they've built a fleet of
these bob simple tanks fleet I think I meant Sex
and they were designed to boost morale around the country.
They called them simples pie carts and they had I
think a crew of eight five guns, and they were
said to be relatively and accurate, quite top head, been
quite unstable, and we say of them they couldn't hit
(13:09):
a barn door. They were parts inside the barn door.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Was the idea that we were going to deploy those
into the war?
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Look, it was a brilliant idea, you know, because a
lot of people don't remember, you know, just how terrified
people were in New Zealand. The Japanese had just where
they bombed Pearl Harbor. They dropped more bombs on Darwin
than they did on Pearl Harbor. Japanese planes had flown
over New Zealand, there were ships and submarines. People were terrified,
and I certainly, having spoken to people of that generation,
(13:38):
some of the plans of what families were going to
do should the Japanese have invaded, were really you know,
they didn't know what to do. And so Bob seople said,
there's no point complaining things. We're just going to make
do with what we've got. And the brilliant part of
it was these caterpillar callers. You couldn't just have them waiting,
and so essentially a bit like a cattle crate, he
(13:59):
designed these these armored structures that you you're back the
crawler into the shed, you dropped the superstructure onto it,
you're bolted on, and off you go to war. You know. More,
they took them on a morale building tour of the country.
Morel was simply increased, and then the army looked as
Bob but no tank, and then dismantled them.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
All yeah, well, I just can't imagine that struck much
fear into the enemy rolling over the hill in these things.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Oh, come on, I reckon. They had been a fleet
of these around the country and they'd been manned by
you good rural blokes and the short chorks with with
with tuck and best standing beside them in the Japanese
start into the harbor and they would have just had
to stand there and get out of take a look
at New Zealand, go we're not into this, and sailed away, right,
(14:44):
my dad. But we when we're filming to radios, Shi
could pass. We've built an exact half sized replica of it,
of the simple tent, which we still have in one
of the sheds at time.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So rural New Zealand and one one hundred objects. Obviously
that's a lot of objects. Is there one object and
particular that stood out for you as as being of
particular interest?
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Oh, look at any number of them. There was a
few of them that I owned Muldoon's lamb, which in
various others. But I was thinking about it this morning
and I I really loved the box storn hedgecutter blade.
So down on tanamuky they they had an issue with
box thorn hedges at the end of the Second World War.
A whole lot of folks down there, the Butler brothers, Bruce, Alexander,
various others, they went and bought all of this military circlus,
(15:27):
bren gun carriers, tank motors, whatnot, and they built some
of the greatest fleet of hedgecutters anywhere in the world.
And in Tarpani Museum there's a blade and Pokiati kid
is a blade. They're just up on the wall and
that now these incredible pieces of steel manufactured and people's
garages that have done hundreds and hundreds thousands of hours
(15:49):
of hedgecutting. They're worn smooth, and I think they're just
both a gorgeous piece of art, but also they tell
this incredible story about I guess what we do in
our sheds when we want to go and do something.
And if people haven't seen some of these machines, they
are unbelievable. I think Pokyariki's got some footage up online
(16:09):
of them. Fantastic you know, two and a half three
meters steal blades. Sometimes those pads came off, we're never
seen again. And this footage of one are the blokes
driving one of these machines and his safety gear is
literally a pair of sunglasses and a jaunty buret.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Well.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
The book's called Kiwi Country Rural New Zealand and one
hundred objects. If you read this book, you'll become a
far more interesting person, no doubt, and become very very
popular at dinner parties and barbecues around New Zealand. And
there won't be a single time I imagine where you
can't just point to something and then come in with
a couple of facts on it radar. Thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Always lovely to chat.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Thanks mate, good on your radar.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
I do appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Are we Thursday?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Thursday when you don't know what data is?
Speaker 4 (16:59):
I like that always.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
God take you all right, married and see you.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
My b
Speaker 3 (17:06):
We week
Get a It's Jerry here from the Headache Briecklist, just
letting you know that if you're listening to the podcast
but didn't know that we also do a live radio show,
we do. And if you're wondering how to find out
what frequency to listen to us in your area, just
takes north or South as an Island to three four.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Eight three and we'll let you know.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
And now let's get on with the podcast. Welcome along
to the podcast, Friday the third of October twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
What was your favorite part about the radio show today?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Jerry, Oh, so many things.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I love the way that we had a nice, broad
easy max of sport news and stories about our own lives.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
You know what you did love, Jerry actually talking to
Britt Comorley about the NRL you loved has Brick Kimorley
Kimali evenly balanced with the unders appointment of g Lane.
But I believe it's time on the podcast today to
call Terada.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
He's got a book out called Kiwi Country, Rural New
Zealand and one hundred Objects.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
That's a great idea for a book. I want to know.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
One of my questions for him is going to be.
How Like when that came to him, he must have
just been like, yep, book go.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
This is the idea here.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
I suspect it's an idea he's been working on for
Sometimes she'd give him a call.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I think we should more fun than you can shake
a sharing shit at the riots, romp through rural.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
New Zealand, interesting parts of time of the book.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Good morning, Tarada, Good morning, Hi.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Manaiah and Jerry here.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
How are you Very good, gentlemen, very good Rada.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We have called you live on our podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
This is excellent news and I can report that at
this exact moment here in christ Church, it's a beautiful day.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
It's great news. It's lovely to hear that country.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's not We've got each a copy of your book
in front of us.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Here we do the publishers throwing them around. Willy Nelly
will have help you to share.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
We'll have a couple of giveaway. I want to say,
first off, I don't judge a book by a cover,
but I will judge a book by its smell. And
your book smells delightful.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Oh look, that pleases me greatly because one of the
things I do with joy is that new book smell. Yeah, yeah,
And I'm going to be honest, it was literally the
first thing I did when they turned up in the
post the other day. I flicked it open, and I
got a little straighter. I actually buried my nose in
the box.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Well, can you imagine writing a book and going to
all that if at thousands and thousands of words, hundreds
and hundreds of hours work, and then picking your book
up from the publisher radar and smelling at anything that's
like a person with book.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Just immediately upset you, you know, And well bo is
one of those things though, wasn't it. You know, each
everyone's got their own kind of little thing. You know,
smells rerisen differently actually, and I did hear women who
were on the contraceptor pill and then went off. It
changed their sense and smell, and quite often they don't
(03:09):
like the way their smell.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Oh wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Well, I know that smell is a huge part of
your memory attraction to someone and whether or not your
jeans work with their genes, and it's obviously subconscious. But yeah,
apparently someone who doesn't smell quite right to you, because
you know you have smelled people on the pass and
you are. It's weird how how the person that you
end up you know, living with oftentimes or becoming very
(03:36):
very close to you don't mind the smell of their skin,
You don't mind you like the smell sometimes of their
body odor.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It's quite a week. That is such a weird thing. Yeah,
it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
I see so on the cover of Rural New Zealand
and one hundred Objects, I was just saying to Jerry
off here before, this is an amazing idea for a book.
When it came to you, did you just click immediately
and go Eureka, that's a great idea for a book.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Look going to take credit for it. It was initially
I think the publishers were looking at one hundred New
Zealand's rural kind of innovations and we looked at it
thought well, they've kind of been done, and so we
preached it slightly sideways and said, what about those things
that just remind us of you know, rural New Zealand.
There's a little there's something in there for everyone, and
(04:20):
you know A hundred was quite daunting, and I was like, oh,
you know where you're sort of flounder around with one hundred,
and then Ruth, who is my wife and co writer,
had the brilliant idea of breaking it down into ten sections.
And then actually that became difficult because when you've only
got ten things to sum up the household or the orchard,
then suddenly you've got quite a long list till you
(04:41):
start culling them out. Sometimes things moved from one place
to another. But yeah, and there's and there's always that
thing of you what do you put in and what
do you leave out?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, what was interesting is how you came up with
those ten spots. So those ten spots are homestead, paddack, orchard, livestock,
shared cowshed.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Now that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
There creek, back blocks, smoko and then road.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yes, and Ruth designed it so that she said, it's
like it's like a journey on to a farm. So
you generally you generally arrived at the homestead. And quite inadvertently,
the very first chapter of the duney because if you
have traveled to the country, it's quite a long drive
and the first thing you need to do is go
and use the toilet. That wasn't deliberate, but I only
really noticed that once it was published. Actually and then
(05:31):
and then you know, when you travel through the farm,
you go past you know, you go past the ortude,
you go past the shed, there's the cow shed, your
head down the back of the creek and you know,
up into the black box, and then you take that
kind of long country road home again. It was a
sort of a structure to it. Really.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So I'm looking at smoker. There's obviously there's the obvious
stuff that you you remember, like goalposts and a paddock.
That's something that we can all picture straight away. But
then you've got a picture of sconce And nothing makes
me think of smoke o more than a jam maybe
a bit of cream on a scone.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
We're going to tell you what, And it's actually we've
got my mother's scone recipe in there because she uses
lemonade and you know, it makes for a lighter scone.
And everyone's look, everyone's got their own particular scone recipe.
I've got another show at the moment about the history
of New Zellan cookbox and you'll you'll find these vintage
New Zealan cookbox. I've got one from Bank's Peninsula and
(06:23):
there would be something like twelve recipes for scones because
obviously people put in their idea. You know, you can't
leave anyone out when you've got one of these fundraising cookbox.
And I'm sure that people would have gone through and
tried Marjorie's and Islands and Francises and various others to
come to whatever they think is the best scone recipe,
because the resk one is slightly different.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Right when I was.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Fucking through, I got to the paddock section, which is
chapter two, and something that struck me as unusual and
I wasn't expecting was the flax fiber skateboard. Yeah, tell
me about the flax fiber skateboard. Why would that be
in the paddock section?
Speaker 4 (06:59):
The core Flex generally grows in a petic and we're
looking at those things that sort of surrounded they. One
point flex was Flex was one of the biggest export
industries in New Zealand. And look, it was a very
good way to get the word glory hole and suture
into the book within the flex and this glory hole
was a pretty important piece of infrastructure. Way back when
(07:20):
I think they threw a small boy into the glory
hole and he spent some time down there being covered
in flex. But actually, if you have a look at Flex,
it's one of those magic kind of fibers. I remember
taking some a flex wing mirror that had been you
use the flex and they use it like a little
bit like carbon fiber. It's very very good. We took
it over to the UK where there was a New
(07:41):
Zealand company was sending parts of it. The Formula three
race cars for Flex. I think Hayden Patten's car might
have quite a lot of fleas in it. But yeah,
there's an outfit that was using flax fibers to basically
bonded together and make skateboards. So it's these unexpected little
things up We all drive past flax. Most people don't
think about the huge success, but you know, one of
(08:01):
the very first and largest industries in New Zealand disappeared
by the wayside and now possibly coming back again.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
This seems like one of those books where you have
it beside your bed and you pack up and you
read one chapter or one item and they put it
back down again. Think about it for a while and
you know it's one of those ones you can just
pack up and take and bite sized pieces, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Look we both Ruth and I were brought up with
the classic toilet book. You know, you'd go to visit people,
and often you'd want to go back to visit someone
just because there was a book like this right by
the toilet, and it was piles of time magazines, readers, digests,
you know, national geographics, what it may be. And we
really thought that we wanted to have it as that
toilet book. So yeah, literally you can pick it up,
(08:42):
you can flick through. You don't have to read it
in order. As something tickles your fancy, you read it.
And I remember when Ruthles sending some drafts through. You know,
it's that classic thing. You laugh at something, you learn
about something, and then you have something to go and
talk about at the water cool it. We also say,
you know it's the classic Christmas book because the next
day you can be that person at the boxing day.
Lance and Goo, did you know it's a flax industry
(09:03):
used to have things called the glory Hole into Ay.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
We're talking to today are about his book Kiwi Country,
Rural New Zealand and one hundred objects. We're going to
take a break and come back, and when we come back,
I'm going to ask to Radar, how he can justify
taking a complete swipe at one of New Zealand's.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Biggest sacred cows. Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
We're talking to Todeda about his book KEEI Country, Rural
New Zealand and one hundred objects. And this is going
to upset a lot of people, Radar, because when I
was having a browse through, I saw something that's going
to upset people who are huge fans of See Edmundhillary
and I feel like you're running him down. The Hillary
family will be upset about this, referring to his downstairs
(09:50):
operation in this way, Edmund Hillary's b smoker. A. What
was it about Edmund Hillary's b smoker that you were
interested in?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Look, the reason Hillary could do what he did was
because he was a beekeeper and he had his bee smoker,
and so he would He's got incredibly fit back in
the day, tramping great distances to his beehives, carrying the
hives around, and it actually provided the money that he
required to go on and become a mountaineer. But he
(10:22):
was first and foremost a beekeeper of one of the
most sort of I guess almost holiest and most sacristanct
of all of the animal keeping sectors.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I'm looking here at a stick of jaug nite. This
has caught my attention and I've just had to flick
through it now. Jalug nites. It's basically like dynamite, isn't it?
And you could use it for all sorts of roadbuilding
and tunneling and mining and.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
But I don't know if it was covered off in
the thing. Have you heard of jellyfishing? This is when
you take a stick of gelignite, you throw it onto
the top of a pond and then you shoot it.
It explodes and the concussive blast makes every fish in
that pond to the top.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Look.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
I'm a swamp person from the North Way Katto and
so we were particularly familiar with that. My dad used
to use a lot of gentlemen on the farm, you know,
as we said the book back during the sixth season seventies.
She didn't need a license. You could go and buy
a box of it. And if you went, and I
remember we used to have a lot of for blowing
stumps and swamps. And my dad had left someone a
(11:23):
shed and then he discovered it and it had got
a bit leaky, which is not ideal. Now normally probably
in this day and age, you calling the bomb squad.
He simply picked it up and very carefully walked at
some distance down the farm, put a detonator into it,
came back, pressed a little lever. Nothing happened, so he
waited the requis a couple of hours. He went back down,
(11:44):
put another one in, went back just on three o'clock.
The neighbor was getting this cows and and he blew
it up and the resulting explosion echoed around the hills
of the north Way. Catto run the fund money in
their wetlands subsequently were investigating reports that perhaps the safe
had been blowing, but the neighbor, who took some time
(12:04):
to give them his cows absolutely well. After they'd fallen over,
they took off out the race and for probably the
next like I cerd'ly remember it. All the way through
my childhood, there was this incredible chronicle shaped hole in
a paddock that would have been about two and a
half meters seep.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Wow, foxhole asteroid.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The day I'm looking here, Bob Simple's tank. This is
the thing that's deared in my heart. Of course, Bob Simple,
being the Ministry of I think Public Works Ministry of
Public Works back in the day during World War Two,
and he thought it was a good idea to get
messy ferguson trucks and then chuck some corrugated iron on
the outside of them.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Is that the general vibe there with the simple tank
look pretty much?
Speaker 4 (12:46):
I think there are some some caterpillar crawlers and the
guys in the railway workshops they've built a fleet of
these bob simple tanks fleet I think I meant Sex
and they were designed to boost morale around the country.
They called them simples pie carts and they had I
think a crew of eight five guns, and they were
said to be relatively and accurate, quite top head, been
quite unstable, and we say of them they couldn't hit
(13:09):
a barn door. They were parts inside the barn door.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Was the idea that we were going to deploy those
into the war?
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Look, it was a brilliant idea, you know, because a
lot of people don't remember, you know, just how terrified
people were in New Zealand. The Japanese had just where
they bombed Pearl Harbor. They dropped more bombs on Darwin
than they did on Pearl Harbor. Japanese planes had flown
over New Zealand, there were ships and submarines. People were terrified,
and I certainly, having spoken to people of that generation,
(13:38):
some of the plans of what families were going to
do should the Japanese have invaded, were really you know,
they didn't know what to do. And so Bob seople said,
there's no point complaining things. We're just going to make
do with what we've got. And the brilliant part of
it was these caterpillar callers. You couldn't just have them waiting,
and so essentially a bit like a cattle crate, he
(13:59):
designed these these armored structures that you you're back the
crawler into the shed, you dropped the superstructure onto it,
you're bolted on, and off you go to war. You know. More,
they took them on a morale building tour of the country.
Morel was simply increased, and then the army looked as
Bob but no tank, and then dismantled them.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
All yeah, well, I just can't imagine that struck much
fear into the enemy rolling over the hill in these things.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
Oh, come on, I reckon. They had been a fleet
of these around the country and they'd been manned by
you good rural blokes and the short chorks with with
with tuck and best standing beside them in the Japanese
start into the harbor and they would have just had
to stand there and get out of take a look
at New Zealand, go we're not into this, and sailed away, right,
(14:44):
my dad. But we when we're filming to radios, Shi
could pass. We've built an exact half sized replica of it,
of the simple tent, which we still have in one
of the sheds at time.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So rural New Zealand and one one hundred objects. Obviously
that's a lot of objects. Is there one object and
particular that stood out for you as as being of
particular interest?
Speaker 4 (15:05):
Oh, look at any number of them. There was a
few of them that I owned Muldoon's lamb, which in
various others. But I was thinking about it this morning
and I I really loved the box storn hedgecutter blade.
So down on tanamuky they they had an issue with
box thorn hedges at the end of the Second World War.
A whole lot of folks down there, the Butler brothers, Bruce, Alexander,
various others, they went and bought all of this military circlus,
(15:27):
bren gun carriers, tank motors, whatnot, and they built some
of the greatest fleet of hedgecutters anywhere in the world.
And in Tarpani Museum there's a blade and Pokiati kid
is a blade. They're just up on the wall and
that now these incredible pieces of steel manufactured and people's
garages that have done hundreds and hundreds thousands of hours
(15:49):
of hedgecutting. They're worn smooth, and I think they're just
both a gorgeous piece of art, but also they tell
this incredible story about I guess what we do in
our sheds when we want to go and do something.
And if people haven't seen some of these machines, they
are unbelievable. I think Pokyariki's got some footage up online
(16:09):
of them. Fantastic you know, two and a half three
meters steal blades. Sometimes those pads came off, we're never
seen again. And this footage of one are the blokes
driving one of these machines and his safety gear is
literally a pair of sunglasses and a jaunty buret.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Well.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
The book's called Kiwi Country Rural New Zealand and one
hundred objects. If you read this book, you'll become a
far more interesting person, no doubt, and become very very
popular at dinner parties and barbecues around New Zealand. And
there won't be a single time I imagine where you
can't just point to something and then come in with
a couple of facts on it radar. Thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Always lovely to chat.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Thanks mate, good on your radar.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
I do appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Are we Thursday?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Thursday when you don't know what data is?
Speaker 4 (16:59):
I like that always.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
God take you all right, married and see you.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
My b
Speaker 3 (17:06):
We week
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