180 years of Royal contact

Press, 28 December 1989, Page 16

180 years of Royal contact

On February 1 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh begin another tour of New Zealand. This article, prepared by the Royal Visit Office of the Department of Internal Affairs, traces the Royal links with New Zealand, which reach back to the first decade of last century.

WHEN Prince Philip arrives in Auckland with the Queen on February 1 he will be following in the footsteps of another Duke of Edinburgh — Albert, the second son of Queen Victoria, who made the first Royal visit to New Zealand more than 120 years ago-

But Albert wasn’t the first member of the Royal family to have contact with New Zealand. More than 60 years earlier a New Zealander made the long sea voyage to England and met the Duke’s grandfather, King George 111.

Little is known about the meeting between King George and the Ngapuhi chief, Te Pahi Matara, in 1807, but 13 years later another, more famous, Ngapuhi, Hongi Hika, also journeyed to England with a fellow chief, Waikato, and they too were granted a Royal audience. According to one account it was Hongi who broke the ice by saying, “How do you do Mr King George?” George IV allegedly replied in return, “How do you do Mr King Hongi? How do you do Mr King Waikato?” The social niceties over, the chiefs were taken on a tour of the palace and presented with gifts including a suit of armour for Hongi Hika. Four years later, George IV met another chief, Te Pehi Kupe, of the Ngatiawa. He had boarded the Urania in Cook Strait and demanded to be taken to meet “King Georgy.” In this he succeeded, but he failed in his other ambition to acquire muskets from the Royal arsenal. Fleeting though these visits may have been, they helped build up an understanding, particularly among the Northern Maori, of a special relationship between New Zealand and Britain, which paved the way for the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

The next known visit, in 1851, by Tamihana Te Rauparaha, son of the Ngatitoa chief, Te Rauparaha, was to have a significant influence on New Zealand’s development. He became one of the leaders in the founding of the Maori King movement in the 1850 s, and it is widely believed that he got the idea from his visit to England and his meeting

with Queen Victori? in June 1852. More unusual was the story of Albert Victor Pomare, the first Maori child born in England and godson to Queen Victoria. His parents, Hare and Hariata, were among a party of 14 who met the Queen at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in June 1863. The Queen noticed that Hariata was pregnant and asked if she could be the godmother of the child. On October 26, 1863, Albert Victor was born and Queen Victoria gave him a silver fork, spoon and cup. On December 4, the day after he was baptised, Albert Victor was presented to the Queen and her daughters. It was the Queen who paid for the family’s first-class ticket home when they left on Christmas Day, 1863. That wasn’t the end of Albert Victor’s contact with royalty, for the Duke of Edinburgh sought him out during his visit in 1869. Prince Albert arrived in Auckland on April 11 and spent almost two months in New Zealand visiting Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin, where he attended a Caledonian Games, strolling among the crowd — perhaps the first example of a Royal walkabout. More significant was his visit to Wellington, where Tamihana Te Rauparaha presented him with a 500-year-old piece of greenstone, perhaps signalling a healing of the bitterness caused by the wars between pakeha and Maori which had only recently ended.

The duke must have liked New Zealand because he returned for two unofficial visits the next year, on the second occasion travelling to Rotorua and inspecting the Pink and White Terraces subsequently destroyed in 1886 by the eruption of Mount Tarawera.

With steamers taking more than a month to travel from Britain to New Zealand, it parhaps was not surprising that it

was to be 30 years before the next Royal visitors, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, came to New Zealand. 1901 was the height of the British Empire, and the three-week long visit in June was marked by much pomp and ceremony, with frequent presentations of loyal addresses and many formal occasions. Contact between the Royal couple and ordinary New Zealanders was almost non-existent, in marked contrast to today’s tours with their emphasis on meeting people. There was one modern note: the visit was recorded on film by the Salvation Army Film Unit of Australia, only three years after the first moving pictures were shot in New Zealand.

The visit of the Prince of Wales in 1920 was similarly formal, but seven years later the tour of the Duke and Duchess of York marked the beginning of a change in Royal visits which has continued to this day. While there was still much formality, the duke went out of his 'way to break free of constraints. In Palmerston North, the duke dropped into a men’s club and had a few drinks with the members.

The next day, after an early morning visit to a dairy factory, he strolled around The Square in Palmerston North, completely unrecognised. The pattern continued during the Royal couple’s stay in Wellington, with the duke making completely unscheduled visits to workers’ homes in the Hutt Valley. This impromptu gesture was to be repeated nearly 40 years later by his daughter, the Queen. After visiting a housing subdivision in Porirua during the 1966 visit, the Queen and Prince Philip dropped in on a very surprised Porirua couple. The Duke of Gloucester’s visit at the end of 1934 was marked by a similar growth of informality. While he laid foundation

stones at the new Wellington Railway Station and Dunedin Hospital, the duke also found time to ride Black Man into fourth place in the Ladies Bracelet at the Marton Jockey Club’s New Year meeting, and to go surfing in Auckland, Gisborne and at Oreti.'

The post-World War II years brought a new era in Royal relations with New Zealand. Over the previous 100 years there had been five tours of New Zealand; the last half-century lm» ? seen 21 visits. And itjs not just the frequency which has changed; so too has their nature. Now rhembers of the Royal family come to New Zealand to be involved in our activities and interests.

This was emphasised by the 1953 tour, the first visit to New Zealand by a reigning monarch. When the Queen and Prince Philip were discussing their itinerary with officials, the Prince vetoed a trip to Franz Joseph Glacier because there were no towns, no farms and hence no people, and it was the people they had come to see and be seen by.

With her keen interest in horse-racing, the 1953 visit had some special moments for the Queen. As well as attending race meetings in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, the Queen visited one of New Zealand’s top studs, Alton Lodge, near Hamilton.

That visit was scheduled, but the Queen also made another unscheduled trip to a nearby stud to see Summertime, the seven-year-old . son of a horse raced by her father, King George VI. In 1980 she took her interest in New Zealand bloodstock a step further when she sent one -of her mares, Header, to New Zealand to be.serviced by the top stallion Balmarino. Since the 1953 visit, the Royal couple have been to New Zealand five times, The 1970 visit

was one of the most memorable as it inaugurated the first of the Royal walkabouts which have become a feature of Royal tours since then. According to the then Secretary of Internal Affairs, Sir Patrick O’Dea, “the suggestion was made that the Queen might walk and talk with anyone she chose. The Government gave its blessing, so that idea went to London and the Queen gave it her blessing.” With further visits by the Queen and Prince Philip in 1974 for the Commonwealth Games and in 1977 to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, Wellington’s “Evening Post” was moved to remark, on the eve of her 1981 trip, that “these occasions have ceased to be an awesoitje spectacle, and there is. now aa air of informality about the visits wfiich *ffie Queen has actively encouraged.” But the Royal couple’s involvement with New Zealand is a Lot more regular than their increasingly frequent trips suggest. Both the Queen and Prince Philip afe patrons of a wide range of New Zealand organisations. For tse Queen this includes the New Zealand Cancer Society and the New Zealand R.S.A. The Prince became the patron of the Royal Yacht Squadron in Auckland fa 1986.

This involvement will be taken a stage further in 1990. While the Queen will be present at t(je Sesquicentennial celebrations, which include commemoration of the Treaty signed when her great-great-grandmother was Queen, she will also be taking up residence here as Queen of New Zealand for the first time. In both Auckland and Wellington, Government House will becorrie her home where she will entertain New Zealanders. And whije she is here she will make one special trip, to a Jersey stttd farm just outside Otorohanga, owned by Don Ferguson. •;

There is a very particular reason for her interest. Since 1975, Don Ferguson has beqn supplying the Royal Farm at Windsor with Jersey stock. $r Ferguson now reckons that about 80 per cent of the farm’s‘ 130 stud Jerseys were bred here in New Zealand.