Mark Twain ` one of the most famous writers who's ever lived. Even if you've never read his books, I bet you've heard of him. In 1895 he was broke and was forced to do a worldwide lecture tour. He came here. What did he think of us? What did we think of him? And what else was happening in New Zealand at that time? (THEME MUSIC) Ka pai, Taranaki. The name means shining peak ` nice. To the south of that epic peak is Hawera. And that was Twain's next stop. You could say it's the hot half of Taranaki. Local mayor Ross Dunlop is happy to explain why. I was going to commend you on the lack of tagging. But I see that Brittany was here on the 7th of February, 2015. (CHUCKLES) Hawera ` or Te Hawera ` means breath of fire, or burnt place. And actually, in the late 1800s there'd been a number of fires. And just before Twain came, there was actually a massive fire through the centre of the town. Ah, that was the great fire of Hawera. The great fire of Hawera. Wow. And it would have looked like a bomb site, so goodness only knows what Mark Twain would have thought of the place. It was, you know, real devastation in the centre of town. I read that it started in the curtain shop. I can't think of a worse shop for a fire to start. That's right ` all those flammable curtains. And next door was the stationery. Exactly. Wow. Yeah. And so after the great fire of Hawera, they thought, 'That's it. This can never happen again,' hence the construction of what we're standing on now. The people in the community decided, 'Hey, we've just got to do something,' yeah. And so the local council engineer came up with the idea of a water tower. This is buzzy as. I've never been up a water tower. Is it true that there is a slight lean? There was actually a slight lean after it was built, but in the middle of the night, the council engineer remedied the slight lean. Yeah. In fact, it's a bit of a shame in a way, cos it could be the Leaning Tower of Hawera. Could be the Leaning Tower of Hawera. So where could Twain's gig go ahead in this fire-ravaged town? Somewhere I can feel the burn, even today. (JERSEY DEMIC'S 'MAJOR') ...99, 100. Two more, Os. Two more. One, two. Feel the burn, feel the burn. 103, 104, 105. Oh my gosh. Believe it or not, this is where Mark Twain performed when he came to Hawera. One night only. People came from all the surrounding districts. And there was standing room only, so the reviewer made a note that there was only one small door as a fire exit. Because obviously fire was uppermost in their minds at the time. It's a grand old venue called the Drill Hall. The army uses it sometimes. And the ceiling is the same ceiling that Mark Twain performed under. And not only did Twain perform here, wrestling legend Andre the Giant as well. Twain loved writing about seedy small-town life, and Hawera writer Ronald Hugh Morrieson loved living it. A drinking, gambling, womanising jazzman known for raising heck, he knew how to set a scene on paper too. This is the first line from 'The Scarecrow'. READS: The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut. The locals would have read this and went 'Klynham! He means Hawera! 'That's that Morrieson bastard from 1 Regent St.' He's a talented one, though, and his work will last forever. Like Twain's. Aroha Awarau is also a Hawera writer. He won the Ronald Hugh Morrieson literary award three times, so Morrieson is something of a personal hero. Hawera's most famous son, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, he once lived here. He wrote all his novels here. He had a homestead that stood on this site. Wow. Hawera's ` and one of New Zealand's ` most famous authors had his house here, and now it's a KFC. Now it's a KFC, yes. After his family sold it, it became, like, a community centre. I remember playing in the home. I remember the smell, is one thing I do remember. It smelt like creativity. Now it smells like lunch. Yes it does. (LAUGHS) Let's go for a ride, bro. Yeah, let's do it. Do you know this is a really historic corner? Is it? Yeah, Hawera's most famous person had his house here. Who? Like, Ben Hurley? (ALL LAUGH) Ronald Hugh Morrieson said that I'm gonna be one of those poor buggers that is discovered when I'm gone. Cos that's what happened ` he died, and then people discovered his brilliance. Ronald Hugh Morrieson left more than just words to haunt Hawera. So here's Morrieson's cafe. I wondered whether there was a connection to Ronald Hugh Morrieson when I saw the name. So, these tables were his old floorboards here. He would have trod these. He would have, yes. He would have gone 'Oh, I need a drink.' Yeah. (LAUGHS) His footsteps would have stumbled, maybe,... Definitely. (BOTH LAUGH) ...over these floorboards to get another whisky. Yeah. And then to go back to his desk where he churned out the magic. Yes. All the events and all the things that are in his novels, the characters, are inspired by actual events that happened in Hawera and people that lived here. Was that popular with the local people? Not at all, no. They didn't like the mirror being held against them ` seeing all the mayhem, the affairs, the seedy side of this town. They hated it, and they actually hated him for it. But that's all the interesting parts of this town. It is. (BOTH LAUGH) And that's what made me, um, admire him. To not be afraid to write about that stuff. He loved gangsters, he loved movies, he loved movies about gangsters. Actually, Came a Hot Friday was kind of like The Sting set in Hawera. I reckon Mark Twain would have loved his work because his characters Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were also troublesome` Mischievous` ...mischievous adolescents. Yes, they were. I think that's what I loved about reading Tom Sawyer,... Yeah. ...was cos I was a mischievous youngster who got in trouble ` and it wasn't my fault. No. (LAUGHS) Coming up ` shot through the heart and history is to blame. This is TWF ` totes wow factor. And The Naki's very own Eddie the Eagle sets records. New Clinically Proven Lash Serum from L'Oreal Paris, proven to repair and strengthen lashes in 30 days. New: And for intense volume, finish your look with Paradise - our number one mascara. From: * Taranaki. Check him out. Maori legend speaks of a mountain still brooding over his love, Pihanga. His slopes have claimed 84 lives since 1891. One of the most majestic things you can see in New Zealand ` Mt Taranaki on a clear evening like this. When I worked in New Plymouth, me and couple of colleagues ` both Maori ` planned to summit it, you know, as a fun Saturday thing to do. But they explained to me that they never go all the way to the top, because it would be like standing on his head. That weekend I slept in and I missed the whole trip, so I didn't even get to walk on his body. So I feel like I was extra respectful. But in 1855, Jane Maria Atkinson didn't hold back. She was the first Pakeha woman to summit. An expedition needed a cook, so she ditched her dress, donned home-made dungarees and climbed into the history books. A fellow trailblazer was Anne Evans. Check this out. She nursed with Florence Nightingale back in the Crimean War. In Hawera, she was known as 'Anne the doctor'. One time, in the 1870s, she was blindfolded and led into the bush to treat resistance leader Titokuwaru. She tended him for eight weeks, and he thanked her with a �100 note ` or in today's money, $14,000. That is one heck of a house call. The Naki is full of folks pushing boundaries. Take Nigel Ogle. He decided to turn the old Tawhiti Cheese Factory into a mini Disneyland that celebrates Taranaki's rough-and-ready early years. So, Nigel, what's the story? In 1976 I bought an old dairy factory. And we've spent the rest of the time since then making it into a museum. A museum! From a dairy factory to a museum. Why? Why not? (LAUGHS) He's personally painted all the bits that bring these tiny scenes to life. So this depicts an actual event? It does. In 1832, Waikato tribes came through into Taranaki in the Musket Wars. And as you can see, the tribe entering has all the muskets. Yeah. Negotiating here with locals in terms of supplying them with men and supplying them with food. Oh, you missed a bit. I did, just here. No. (LAUGHS) I notice I did. Nigel, how did a former art teacher end up in the middle of this cultural, historical empire? Well, I want to find creative ways of telling stories. And probably one of the main ways I've ended up pursuing is the model side of it ` life-sized figures right down to tiny, tiny scale figures. So what are you painting here? I'm just finishing off a range of figurines that we've done for the painted war diorama, which is a display about a particular artist who painted the campaign in 1865. 3500 men marched up from Whanganui, and they took 90 days to get here. Yeah. So it gave their artist a lot of time to do watercolours. Paintings of camps and men crossing rivers and bullock teams and all this sort of thing. But wait! There's more. This feels ominous. Well, we're heading underground. This is another way of recreating a little piece of our local Taranaki history. Wow. This is like Disneyland but in Hawera. Well, I guess you better get into the boat and see the rest of it. (LAUGHS) Nigel's Traders and Whalers exhibit is a water ride that truly packs a punch. We're telling the story of the early trading and whaling period in Taranaki. So that` We're talking about 1830, 1840, that period. Yeah. And, uh, so everything you see in here is from that period, from the ships and boats and the trading that's going on for muskets mostly, at that time. It's, like, 50 years before Mark Twain arrived. Was it a civilised place back then, or would have it been quite rough and ready? No, it wasn't. There was no law keeping going on. It was survival of the strongest. And so hence the mad race for muskets; if you had muskets, you survived. And tribes that didn't have muskets simply didn't survive. It was a very tough period. Wow. This is definitely the piece of resistance, isn't it? It is. You do not expect this. We hope to have the wow factor with this sort of thing. This is totes wow. This is TWF ` totes wow factor. (MOCK CANNON EXPLODES) (CHUCKLES) Sorry, I just couldn't resist. Guns aren't the only way to win a war. Someone very clever once said history is written by the victors. I've had a pen in my hand for most of my life, so I guess that must make me a winner. Choice. So, when I came to New Zealand from Samoa as a 4-year-old, I moved straight to West Auckland and I stayed in Auckland, and I thought that was New Zealand. And then when I was 19 I nearly got fired from my first job. But instead of firing me they sent me to work at a newspaper in New Plymouth ` the Taranaki Herald. And that was a real eye-opener. And, uh, I feel like it transformed me. I met cool people, played league for the mighty Suburbs Tigers. And by the time I left, I feel like I had a much truer, more authentic idea of what New Zealand was really like ` all thanks to New Plymouth. Who wouldn't love this place? It's got a mountain, the sea, and cricket. When Twain bowled through, Pukekura Park's cricket pitch had just been finished. So in 1895, quick-thinking cricket officials lured the touring Fijian team down for a game when Auckland piked out on their promised second match. Fiji won by two wickets ` and they played in bare feet. Beautiful, eh? A little-known story about that mountain is, up there was a ski field called Manganui, and on those slopes is where a hardcore Taranaki local, by the name of Brian McMillan, practised in order to set the New Zealand ski jump record. And he broke that record in 1937, and it still stands today. 18.6m. It's also the world's lowest. You could probably fall that far. Next up, Lady Luck rules at the races. Yes, come on, horse. And 1895's mushroom king rakes in the cash. This mushroom-loving country of ours. * Ahh, the beautifully named Poet's Bridge ` a chance for me to show off how many of the English Romantic poets I know. Keats and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Byron. (LAUGHS) And you think, 'Ah, that's why they named it like this.' But actually, seven years before Twain arrived, a local by the name of JT Davis had won �150 in a horse race in Auckland ` that's over $18,000 in today's money. And he donated his winnings to the bridge fund. And the name of the horse? The Poet. And that's how this bridge got its name. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY) Twain found it funny, though, and it made him remark on how much New Zealanders love horse racing. (TRADITIONAL 'CALL TO THE POST' ON TRUMPET PLAYS) It was a New Zealand invention that harnessed the power of horse racing. The totalisator automated betting system was devised by George Julius, who studied engineering at Canterbury. He was trying to make a fraud-proof vote counter for elections. The world's very first fully mechanical tote was installed at Ellerslie Racecourse in 1913. Can I have $10 to win, please? Number 2, number 3 and number 5, thanks. Not gonna mess around with that 'each way' palaver. When Twain was here, he remarked on New Zealanders' seeming obsession with horse racing. Ah, when I first came to this country, the first building I went into was a dairy, uh, so I loved dairies, and then the second one was a TAB, cos my pop was really into horse racing. And I remember being a 5-year-old kid walking into the Totalisator Agency Board, as it was known then, and seeing the women behind the windows and all the smoke rising from the betting forms. So looking forward to a good day here at the Hawera Races, at the Egmont Racing Club, to indulge a passion that New Zealanders have had for over a century now. My pop taught me the value of a local tip. So I'm hitting up trainer Trudy Keegan for some intel. Who's your top New Zealand racehorse? Gingernuts at the moment. OK. Gosh, he's just... Is he the current horse du jour? He's so` He certainly is. Is he a Melbourne Cup contender one day? Yes, he is. Yes. Gingernuts. Remember that. Gingernuts is a good name, too. (LAUGHS) Here's a tip involving the Melbourne Cup. The first woman to train a winner was Kiwi Hedwick 'Granny' McDonald, with Catalogue in 1938. Women could legally train horses here, but not in Australia, so the win was credited to Granny's husband Allan. Bloody Aussies. Here we go, here we go, here we go! Lady Luck is weaving her magic today. Trudy's pick stormed home. Won easy too. Twain didn't get to enjoy a day at the races, but he did get his pound of Taranaki horse flesh. The coach ride from Hawera to New Plymouth took four hours ` and it's only 70 K's. Rough. If you'd run faster, I could have won more of these. But no. Checking out my winnings from my day at the races. It's a beautiful 50. I don't get to see many of these, and of course on one side is a very handsome Sir Apirana Ngata, and on the other ` not many people know this, but New Zealand is the only country in the world to feature fungi on a banknote. This mushroom-loving country of ours. (PLUCKED GUITAR MUSIC) In following the historic footprints of a man like Twain, who came here over 120 years ago, I expected to learn stories about the first settlers to this country. Uh, and I kind of picture stern white people from the motherland. I certainly didn't expect to learn about a man like Chew Chong, who is immortalised here in this mosaic. Eight years before Twain arrived, he built New Zealand's first dairy factory. He introduced things like refrigeration. He was the man. Chew was well known as a dairy pioneer, but it was his fungus empire that made him uber wealthy. Chew's grandson Brian is very proud of his entrepreneurial ancestor. And here he is. Well, it's not him, obviously; it's a dioramic representation of him. He's a handsome bloke. Just like you, Brian. 1866 he came to New Zealand. He started a store. He served the farmers. And they came across a tree fungus. And he saw it, and he managed to export a whole lot to China ` quite a lot. A tree fungus? And what was it used for in China? Aphrodisiacs and things like that. He became a fairly rich bloke. And believe it or not, he invented the pound of butter. He invented the pound of butter? So you could say that he is one of New Zealand's dairy pioneers. Yes, yes. The godfather of the pound of butter` Pound of butter. Wow. Yeah. He's loading in the butter into these kegs which he'd send overseas. His surroundings weren't that hygienic, by the looks. It was the 19th century. (CHUCKLES) Yeah. Your grandad was the man. Yeah. I'd wish I'd seen him. (CHUCKLES) Never mind. Chew wasn't the only one 'milking it'. Taranaki had hundreds of dairy factories. And they still dot the landscape. Some see crumbling concrete, but photographer Kevin Bone sees beauty. Established 1898, which is three years after Mark Twain's visit. Yeah. Yeah, that's focused. (LAUGHS) You're shooting old dairy factories, but they say a lot more about the area, don't they? It's the lifeblood of the area, was these old factories. This was the gathering point of all the farmers in the morning. All the carts and the drays would have gathered here with their, you know, one or two containers of milk on them. Yeah. Not like these days. (CHUCKLES) Kind of almost like fading memorials, aren't they, to dairy life in New Zealand back in the day. Yeah. Look how well they last. Amazing, isn't it? Yeah. I've never even looked at an old dairy factory before, but from now on, when I'm driving through New Zealand's beautiful countryside, I'm gonna actually start noticing them and seeing them and wondering about the stories. Yeah, you might have to stop. Might have to stop and take a photo. Knock on the door. (BOTH LAUGH) Behind a few of these faded facades are fantastic homes. None of this is for sale, and don't try asking for the address. This is a special, once only, sneaky peek. It's like a magical mystery tour. Yeah. The owners of this place are obviously very cool. So just bring it back so I can sort of see your feet. Just about` This way, sorry. That's it, perfect. Work the light, work the light. That's it. I think I've pretty much got the portrait. When you drive through the New Zealand countryside, especially Taranaki, you get used to seeing the rolling hills and the beautiful green pastures, and you think, 'Oh yeah, that's good dairy country.' But you don't expect to go up a drive of an old dairy factory and walk into this. Pretty awesome. Well, you wouldn't want to lose your keys. No. (LAUGHS) That beautiful white colonial-looking building behind me was formerly the White Hart. When I lived in New Plymouth, it was probably the most notorious pub in town. It was a favourite haunt of the local bikie gang, The Magogs, who are still around. And most people were too scared to go in for a beer. And now it's this flash as boutique-y hotel full of trendy eateries. Progress, eh?