From bird to New Zealanders to Chinese gooseberries — new book tracks the worldwide flight of 'Kiwi'

Kiwi: A Curious Case of National Identity
Richard Wolfe

How did the Māori name for a flightless bird come to mean a New Zealander and a fruit that originated in China, while morphing into the badge for the national rugby league team and the air force? Not to mention becoming the brand name for everything from rabbit traps to a bank, and a term for pilots who are no longer flying? 

Kiwi: A Curious Case of National Identity tracks this unlikely evolution. Diving into the natural history of this unique bird and its significance to Māori, the story spreads its wings to relate how ‘kiwi’ came to symbolise the emerging nation during the First World War – thanks in part to a brand of boot polish originating in Australia. 

 

By the mid-twentieth century, while the bird population steadily declined, ‘kiwi’ was propagating everywhere from the Golden Kiwi lottery to the new 20-cent coin. 

 

After 1959, with the coining of ‘kiwifruit’ to replace the Chinese gooseberry, the emergence of this export industry has taken the national symbol into a fruit salad of uses worldwide. Along the way there’s been Kiwi the Melbourne Cup-winner, a couple of Kiwi airlines (neither of which flew for long) and TV’s beloved Goodnight Kiwi.

 

Richard Wolfe’s decades of Kiwiana collecting furnish the book with an array of colour photos, art and ephemera, making this a visually stimulating work for Kiwis and kiwi fans of all feathers. 

 

The Author

Richard Wolfe is a cultural historian and curator who has written or co-authored over 40 books on themes from the moa to New Zealand art, including Footprints on the Land: How Humans Changed New Zealand (Oratia Books, 2022), Hellhole of the Pacific and New Zealand’s Lost Heritage. He was a display artist at the Auckland and Canterbury museums, and co-curated the first major exhibition of Kiwiana (a term he helped invent). Richard lives with his artist wife Pamela in Auckland.

Publication Date: 10 October 2024 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004264-5 |  RRP $45

Paperback, 250 x 185 mm portrait, 208 pages, colour

The human impact on New Zealand revealed in captivating new book

Footprints on the Land
How Humans Changed New Zealand 

Richard Wolfe

It must have been a hell of a shock. After millions of years of isolation, New Zealand’s unique flora and fauna suddenly felt the stir of human footprints just over 800 years ago. 

In the blink of an eye in terms of the Earth’s history, the last large landmass to be settled by humans changed in ways impossible to reverse. 

 

Footprints on the Land narrates those changes, taking in the destruction of forests, draining and flooding land, building railways and roads, farming and mining, and the inexorable spread of towns and cities. 

Some of the more dramatic changes, carried out in the name of progress, appear very differently through a modern lens. 

 

Richard Wolfe accompanies his even-handed account of the effects of human settlement with an astute selection of paintings and photography befitting a curator and art writer. 

He also charts the growth of the environmental movement, with a number of high-profile national campaigns. 

That heightened awareness has helped to avoid repeating mistakes of the past, but Wolfe shows compellingly that we are not yet — as it were — out of the woods. 

Habitat destruction, pollution, species introductions and (above all) climate change threaten the short history of people on these islands. When will the shock be absorbed?

The Author

Richard Wolfe is a cultural historian and curator who has written or co-authored some 40 books on themes from the moa to New Zealand art, including Hellhole of the Pacific and New Zealand’s Lost Heritage. He was a display artist at the Auckland and Canterbury museums, and co-curated the first major exhibition of Kiwiana (a term he helped invent). Richard lives with his artist wife Pamela in Auckland.

Publication Date: 12 October 2022 |  ISBN: 978-1-99-004220-1 |  RRP $45

Paperback, 250 x 185 mm portrait, 184 pages, b/w with colour sections

First Encounters memorably records the first impressions of Europeans in New Zealand

First Encounters: New Zealand 1642–1840  

Edited by Gordon Ell and Sarah Ell

Father-and-daughter authors Gordon Ell and Sarah Ell build on their impressive legacy of New Zealand books with First Encounters — the fourth in Oratia Book’s growing NZ Series.

This collaboration samples some of the amazing first impressions that Europeans formed when they landed in Aotearoa. 

 

They had no idea what they would find, and their journals are filled with wonder, curiosity and inevitable misunderstandings. 

First Encounters selects some of the key writings from these early traders, missionaries, explorers and surveyors. 

 

It covers nearly 200 years from Abel Tasman in 1642 and Joseph Banks in 1769, to early settlers such as John Logan Campbell in 1840 —in first-person accounts that preserve the English of the times.

The text is well illustrated with two-colour imagery and photos, alongside fact boxes explaining historical language, places and events.

 

The NZ Series now counts four titles, with the fifth, Matthew Wright’s The New Zealand Wars, to publish in July 2021. 

The series introduces New Zealand society, history, science and geography to general readers and students.

Click on these links to read about other titles in the series — Rush to Riches and Pioneer Women, and Volcanoes and Earthquakes.

The authors

Gordon Ell was a writer and publisher with a life-long interest in New Zealand’s natural and historic heritage. He wrote more than 30 books for adults and children during his distinguished career. He passed away last week, having just seen advance copies of his last book.

His daughter, Sarah Ell, is an editor, writer and journalist, who has written ten books, and inherited her father’s love of New Zealand history and the environment.

Publication: 8 April 2021  |  RRP $29.99  |  ISBN:  978-0-947506-90-2

Paperback, 240 x 160 mm, 108 pages, 2 colour

First two books announce the arrival of non-fiction series for young adults

Volcanoes and Earthquakes– Gordon Ell and Sarah Ell

Pioneer Women– edited by Sarah Ell

Recognising the need among readers from intermediate school up for attractive non-fiction books relating to their own experience, Oratia Books is today publishing the first of The NZ Series — a snappily designed and fact-packed collection on New Zealand society, history and geography.

The first two books in the series respectively plumb the mysteries of New Zealand’s earth movements and relate the history of early European settlers with easy-to-understand text accompanied by numerous photos, explanatory diagrams and ‘Fact File’ boxes. 

Volcanoes and Earthquakes investigates the causes and history of seismic activity in Aotearoa, taking in the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes and recent volcanic activity. Historical and contemporary photos and colour diagrams bring the whole field to life!

Pioneer Women presents extracts from diaries and letters by women who emigrated to New Zealand from Europe in the nineteenth century. These tales of hardship and happiness are accompanied by portraits , newspaper clippings, and markers like the Women’s Suffrage Petition.

With two books a year planned for 2020 and beyond, The NZ Series promises readers a broad range of rich, visually stimulating introductions to what makes New Zealand unique.  

The authors

Gordon Ell is a writer and publisher with a life-long interest in our natural and human heritage. He has written more than 30 books for adults and children. His daughter, Sarah Ell, is an editor, and journalist, who has written ten books, and inherited her father’s love of New Zealand history and the environment.

Publication: 9 July 2019  |  RRP $29.99 each

ISBNs: Pioneer Women 978-0-947506-59-9  | Volcanoes and Earthquakes 978-0-947506-60-5

Paperback, 240 x 160 mm, 100 pages colour