1 (SOFT CLASSICAL MUSIC) Some people say New Zealanders are a nation of dreamers ` the quarter-acre paradise, the bach, the boat. Sailor Johnny Wray had a dream, and what he did` (SPLASH!) And what he did with some salvaged timber and a pair of his pyjamas proves that New Zealanders (COUGHS) have the tenacity to bring their beautiful dreams to life come hell or high water. (SPLASH!) That` That was actually probably too much water. (LIGHT`HEARTED MUSIC) (LAUGHTER) New Zealand has a past filled with people who thought, 'She'll be right,' when more often than not it wasn't. Join me as we celebrate these true stories of the history that history tried to forget. (WHIMSICAL STRING MUSIC) Copyright Able 2017 We're a nation of people who dare to follow their dreams. Now, I don't know if acting in this show is anyone's idea of a dream come true, but we've given some ordinary New Zealanders the chance to tell these true tales of some extraordinary New Zealanders. Keep an eye out for our youngest ever actor and the scantiest-clad ` they're not the same person ` as we tell our proud tradition of Beautiful Dreamers. As the sun rises on the 1930s, New Zealand's dream of economic prosperity is about to be crushed by the nightmare of the Great Depression. This is Johnny Wray. He's currently unemployed and living at home with Mum and Dad. We've all been there. Johnny has a lot of time on his hands, but he's not afraid of hard work. It is one of my beliefs that every man should do at least three weeks' work per year ` if only for the good of his soul. As well as that attitude, all Johnny has is a motorbike, �8 and a dream to sail the South Seas. What he doesn't have is a boat. So, despite having no boatbuilding experience whatsoever, he decides to build one. For timber, he salvages logs from the harbour and almost sinks his mate's boat in the process. He manages to tow a 13m tree home behind his motorbike. He's knocked unconscious when a frame collapses. And then he nearly kills himself when he diverts the mains power directly to his workshop, accidentally causing almost every surface to become electrified. But Johnny perseveres. He doesn't have any bolts, but his father does have some old fencing wire lying around, which Johnny waterproofs by coating it with some bitumen he's liberated from the roadside before baking it in his mother's oven ` when she's not home, of course. A leaky boat would be a nightmare. Fortunately, Johnny has nightwear, and so for caulking, to seal any gaps in the timber, he uses strips torn from his cotton pyjamas. Probably didn't tell his mum about that either. (JAZZ MUSIC) Finally in 1933, Johnny splashes out on a keg of beer to celebrate the launch of his yacht, the Ngataki, which immediately starts sinking, because Johnny forgot to put the bung in. Luckily, the beer keg has a cork. And using that to plug the hole, the Ngataki is saved from a watery grave. It also gives Johnny and his mates a pretty good excuse to finish all of the beer. Cheers, boys. To the Ngataki! MEN: To the Ngataki! (JAZZ MUSIC CONTINUES) As Johnny Wray sails off into the mighty Pacific Ocean to pursue his beautiful dream, he has no idea of the adventures that await him. But perhaps he needn't have gone so far, because some people's dreams of getting away from it all are a little more modest. In 1901, lawyer Henry Swan, disenchanted with his city life, bid farewell to his city wife, hoisted his sail on his yacht, the Awatea, and set off from Devonport in Auckland. Does he head east, off past Rangitoto and over the horizon to the sunny South Pacific? No. He sails west and, on a flood tide, travels as far as he can up Henderson Creek, where he lives for the next 30 years. He grows fruit trees and teaches local children astronomy, and he's visited occasionally by his city wife. And what do you do when you're up the creek and you need to paddle? Well, Swan built a swimming hole, complete with arch. And concerned about the number of drownings and the fact that many children didn't know how to swim, Swan encouraged them to learn in the safety of his pool at the base of the arch. Auckland's own Swan Lake has gone, but we still have Swan's Arch ` a testament to what you can do if people will just leave you alone long enough to get on with it. Now, while Johnny Wray dreams of seeing the world and Henry Swan dreams of getting away from it, others dream of having the world come to us. Artist Colin McCahon has just received a commission to celebrate the great London to Christchurch air race of 1953. It's being held because Christchurch has a brand-new international airport and they'd quite like people to fly there. The race organisers have a dream that the world will discover in New Zealand a sophisticated culture full of art and inspiration. We all have that dream. So they've enlisted the most vibrant artists of the time, commissioning a piece of music by Douglas Lilburn, a poem by Denis Glover and a painting by artist Colin McCahon. This is the finished work. He called it International Air Race. Catchy title. Oil on hardboard. A bold depiction of planes above the plains of Canterbury. Every major gallery in the country ` all four of them ` demand it for their collections. But, 'No,' says the man from TEAL ` Air New Zealand's forerunner. 'We intend to hang it in our head office.' And so to the head office it goes. Lovely painting. Love the way you depict planes. Once the painting is hung in TEAL's head office, that is the end of it. Literally. It turns out the bigwigs at TEAL aren't all that keen on how McCahon paints aeroplanes. So it's off to storage it goes. The painting languishes in storage until it's rescued by someone who thinks, 'We can't have all of that good hardboard going to waste.' (EASY-LISTENING JAZZ MUSIC) He turns it into a packing case. (GRUNTS) (JAZZ MUSIC CONTINUES) (GRUNTS) Hamish, had this McCahon survived, what would it have been worth? Oh, 2.5 million, possibly ` on a bad day. Right. Could have been more. Cause you would be one of` of very few people around now who` who actually saw the work. Yeah. It really impressed me. I think I was about 15, 16, and I hadn't seen such a whacko painting ever in my life before. When you heard about that, what did you think? Well, I was kind of angry. (BOTH LAUGH) When you have a relationship with a painting and it` something happens to it, you do feel the loss, and you continue to feel it. I mean, you know, if this painting was still here, it would be a painting I'd want to see every now and then. And I guess when it comes to a lack of cultural sophistication, the packing crate, in a way, is almost nothing compared to what happened to Lindauer's Hinemoa. (CHUCKLES) Yes. Well, you know, some people say it's an urban myth, but I've actually seen the marks on the back of the painting where the thing had been fastened. And apparently, um, some naughty-minded citizens used to spend some of their lunchtime fondling Hinemoa's breast. So the chief attendant had a cunning plan. He put a buzzer` an electric buzzer, um, flat side against the breast and bell side against the wall` pushed out against the wall, so any miscreant fondling the breast would set the alarm off. I don't know if anybody ever did, but, uh, certainly that was the story when` when I arrived here as a young curator. And I suppose that it wouldn't have been something they would've publicised, because then you would've had every... Oh, no, no. ...Tom, Dick and Harry coming in and pressing it to hear the buzzer. No, there would have been no` no sign saying, 'This breast is buzzed.' Mm. Would there? No. The only fondling that gets done with Lindauer nowadays is when people are drinking the cheap, fizzy wine, get a bit frisky on it, out in the burbs. We've all been there. Yes, but, uh,... they're not allowed to do it in here. No. But there it is, and there it will be, and it's beautifully looked after. And we're happy to have the gallery as its guardian now and forever ` untouched and unfondled by salacious citizens. No buzzer required. No. So much for our beautiful dream of becoming a nation of sophistication and culture. Still, at least TEAL only destroyed a work of art; there were others whose beautiful dreams did a lot more damage to New Zealand. (SERENE CLASSICAL MUSIC) (SERENE CLASSICAL MUSIC) New Zealand is a nation full of people with beautiful dreams and, more often than not, the gumption to see those dreams realised. It's the early 1930s, and the unemployed Johnny Wray has built the boat of his dreams from driftwood, bits of his pyjamas and a lot of hope. Contrary to everyone's expectations, she hasn't sunk. The Ngataki's first offshore cruise in 1934 took Johnny to the exotic shores of Tonga and Norfolk Island. MAN: Gidday, mate! It's amazing he even found those islands, because he taught himself to navigate while he was on his way there. He got back safely just in time to enter a trans-Tasman yacht race. He comes second, which is pretty impressive ` until you find out only two boats entered. (CLAPPING) On the way back, he picks up a shipment of oranges in the Kermadecs to be sold in Auckland. (WISTFUL STRING MUSIC) Sadly, they never make it back. The oranges, that is. Johnny ate them all. And while Johnny Wray's oranges may not have made it, one look at our flora and fauna shows us that a lot of other exotic species most certainly did. Good orange. In New Zealand, early British colonists found a beautiful green land full of fascinating and unique creatures, but they had a dream. So they rolled up their sleeves and set about turning New Zealand into something a little bit more like home. But for the most audacious example of this, you can't beat what Governor Grey has done here on Kawau Island. Hello, sir. Welcome, boy. Welcome. Thank you. For 25 years, from the 1860s, he's turned this place into his own personal Zootopia. And it's become one of the must-see highlights for anyone touring the South Pacific. (DRUM ROLL, TRIUMPHANT MUSIC) Behold! Magnificent. I know, right? In 1868, Grey introduces possums, which decimate the bird life. (BIRDS SQUEAL) He introduces wallabies, which eat all of the seedlings, which denudes the island, which allows topsoil to wash into the ocean, which devastates the sea life. He introduces monkeys, which cause a hullabaloo by attacking a visiting lady,... (WOMAN SCREAMS) ...so he has to get rid of them. Grey even introduces zebras to pull his carriages. But island life isn't really for them, and they decide to get rid of themselves by running into a tree or jumping off a cliff. Bit skittish, you see. The whole thing's turned into a bit of a shambles, George. Seemed like such a good idea at the time. Luckily, other people's ecological dreams have turned out a little more beautifully. Unlike Grey's menagerie, there is a more successful example of introducing foreign species to New Zealand in the hills just west of Gisborne. During the First World War, Douglas Cook was recovering from his wounds at a stately English home when he fell in love. Not with a nurse but with the trees he sees in the park-like grounds. When he gets home to Gisborne, he starts planting trees. And he doesn't stop. He gets married, and he continues planting trees, which causes his marriage to end, so he continues planting trees, which cause his finances to collapse, whereupon he continues planting trees. By the 1950s, with the Cold War raging in Europe, he is determined to make his farm a repository for European plants in case they're destroyed in the north by a nuclear war. Douglas Cook eventually plants over 5000 different species, making his the largest collection of northern hemisphere plants south of the equator. As well as being a devoted naturalist, Douglas is also a passionate naturist, and he spends a lot of his time planting wearing nothing but a hat and a single gumboot. And he needs the gumboot, obviously, to push his spade into the hard Gisborne soil. He also stashes bottles of alcohol all around the arboretum so that neither he nor his friends are too far from a refreshing drink. Cheers! (GLASSES CLINK) 'Course, he has to hide the bottles everywhere because... no pockets. Should probably not have looked back at your butt. Just checking ` definitely no pockets. There was another man, though, whose beautiful dream involved introducing something quite different to the country. This is Te Pehi Kupe. Climbing aboard the Urania in 1824, Te Pehi refuses to get off until he's taken to Europe to meet King George. 'No,' said Capt Richard Reynolds. 'Throw him overboard!' Throw him overboard! But our hero holds fast, and eventually Capt Reynolds gives in, and Te Pehi sets off on a voyage in which he practically invents the great Kiwi OE. Te Pehi gets to England, where he learns to ride a horse,... (HORSE WHINNIES) ...visits some factories and is said to have inspired the character of Queequeg in Moby Dick. Ishmael! And then his dream comes true when he finally meets King George. To be fair, Te Pehi's beautiful dream also included asking King George for rather a lot of muskets. 'No muskets for you,' says King George. But he does give Te Pehi many other presents, including a chain mail suit. (CAMERA SNAPS, WOMAN LAUGHS) Does that stop a guy like Te Pehi from realising his beautiful dream? Hardly. In a stopover in Sydney, he sells his suit of chain mail and buys the muskets he wants before heading back to New Zealand. Still, a dream's a dream, as Johnny Wray well knows. But he probably never expected that his home-made yacht, the Ngataki, would fulfil another sailor's dream decades later. (SOFT STRING MUSIC) INDISTINCT CHATTER Bro. It's Pamela. SMOOTH MUSIC (SLURPS) # You know we get down with all the cyber moms. # One of them told me I was hot right now like Tiger Balm. # One of them said, 'Larz, you a teen heart-throb ` # 'make my baby faint; make a tween's heart stop.' # (GRUNTS, RETCHES) Ewww. He's a bit of a grossie, eh? (CHUCKLES SOFTLY) < (GRUNTS) Is that your friend? Him? (CHUCKLES) Nah. < (RETCHES) Ooh. (CHUCKLES) (UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC) When it comes to living the dream, New Zealand is a great place to do it ` whatever that dream may be. Johnny Wray has built his boat in his parents' backyard, and he's now living his dream ` sailing around the Pacific alone, apart from his rum-drinking cat, Rasmic. But that's the thing about a beautiful dream ` sometimes you just have to go it alone. One young woman had a dream to become something the country had never seen before and wasn't at all sure it wanted ` a female doctor. It's 1891, and the Otago Medical School has a new student ` Emily Siedeberg. But as certain subjects are not considered fit for mixed company, she's forced to sit through some of her lectures alone. Anatomy. Awkward (!) It was probably just as well, because occasionally during dissection classes, the male students would throw pieces of flesh at her. Only small pieces. Things didn't get much better when she went to Edinburgh University to study. See if you can spot her in this photo. Emily becomes New Zealand's first female medical graduate, and as Dr Siedeberg, she sets about making healthcare better for women at a time when it was desperately needed. In 1918 she opens New Zealand's first antenatal clinic. Emily's dream also led her to deliver the writer Janet Frame ` one of our most beautiful dreamers. HUSHED: There we go. Frame would go on to write, 'It's nice to travel if you know where you are going and where you would live at the end.' Didn't you? You're going to write that in the future. Still, it's also nice to travel if you can take a little bit of where you went back with you,... (CLEARS THROAT) Oh! Sorry. WHISPERS: There you go. Good work. (CRIES) ...which is exactly what self-made businessman John Martin did here in Martinborough, the town he founded. It's actually his rather elaborate travel journal. It's a little bit difficult to tell from the ground, but if you look down, on the town you'll see that when he designed it in 1879, he did so in the shape of a Union Jack. And then he named several of the streets after places he visited on his travels, including ` Venice St, Texas St, Strasbourge and Cork Streets, Panama St. And here I am on New York St, and, as they say, 'If you can make it here, 'you'll have to turn around and go back... because it's a dead end.' (SWING MUSIC) But for some people, there's no going back ` like the woman with a dream to set off and sail the seven seas with her young son. She falls in love with a battered old boat held together with wire, waterproofed with torn-up pyjamas and built 60 years earlier by Johnny Wray. So could you sail? No. (LAUGHS) No. (LAUGHS) I took some navigation lessons, and then when my navigation teacher heard that I'd` was` bought this boat, he came and gave me some more navigation lessons. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS) That was good. Clearly not a lot of confidence in his initial classes. The thing about being young, when I done it, you're naive. That's the good thing about not knowing boats ` you don't know all the problems you might have. You know, the more you know, the more it stops you doing stuff, a lot of the time. Was it the dream that people imagine ` when you run away to sea? Oh yeah. It was a pretty good dream. (LAUGHS) Had a few nightmares in between. Cos it must be` When you are out, and it's the middle of the night, the ocean is crashing around, you know, and` Did Jay ever sit there and go, 'Mum, what are we doing here?' Oh no, that's more in port, really. You think, 'What are you doing?' Out at sea, it's` it's` it's fantastic out there. Like, we did, um, from Panama to Marquesas ` 39 days out at sea ` just Jay and I, so it's just the two of youse on board ` four hours on, four hours off. But it's unique to be with your son for five weeks with, you know, no one` no one else. And, um, yeah, when the weather's good, everything's good, of course. But, yeah... And of course, how was the` the pyjama corking? Well, it was still there in the stern quarter. That's, um` It only just come out just recently. But, um, she was a dry boat. Well, as much as a wooden boat's dry` It's always a little` You need a little bit of moisture, don't you? Just to keep everything held together. Yep. But, no, basically, she` she was` she's a pretty sound old girl for` for the years she was, yeah. Well, just think, you know ` if there hadn't been that, sort of, young, unemployed guy with a dream in the Depression to build a boat and all of those naysayers going, 'You can't do that, Johnny,' we wouldn't be here today. Yeah. No, that's` I often think of that. And I just` I think, you know, I was the lucky one to actually find the 'taki, to` to have her, and she's` she's just given me such a lot of adventures, and she's a very special boat, this one. New Zealand was founded by people who dreamed of a better life, and we remain a nation of dreamers. After Debbie fulfilled her dream, she donated the Ngataki to a trust that lovingly restored her. And how did Johnny Wray's dream turn out? Well, pretty good actually. Johnny and his cat, Rasmic, sailed the South Seas. He had all the death-defying adventures a young man could dream of, and then in Tonga he met Loti. They married and settled down on the South Pacific paradise of Waiheke Island. Just over there. And then he writes this classic book, South Sea Vagabonds, in which he says, 'I was a dreamer once, but now my dreams have come true, and I am satisfied and happy.' And Johnny Wray's story proves that your beautiful dream can come true too ` although you might just have to sacrifice your pyjamas.