(DRAMATIC BEAT) 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? (SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC) Captions by Kristin Williams. Edited by Glenna Casalme. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2019 (SLOW HARMONICA MUSIC) There's only one place to start a real Whanganui story ` on the awa. Twain ` or rather Samuel Clemens as he was born ` was a riverboat captain. His pen name, Mark Twain, is a term for depth of water. Ash and his uncle live and breathe the river's wairua. # ...ki te rangi. # There's a Maori saying, 'Ko wai au? Who am I?' And 'wai' is the Maori word for water. So when I'm asking, 'Who am I,' I'm actually making a statement. You're actually answering the question. Yes. Saying, 'I am water.' Ko wai au. Ko wai au? Who am I? But actually, I am water. So Twain came here in 1895, and he's a river man, obviously ` being a former steamship captain ` and he loved it. People talk about the river in almost mystical terms ` about its importance to the people. And now that I'm on it, I sense that. Awesome. What a cool way to see Whanganui. Every bend has a mystical being. You might be channelling some of them. (ALL LAUGH) This peaceful place is actually the battleground for one of our longest-running legal wrangles. In 1873, Whanganui River iwi began the fight for the river to be protected. Last year the Whanganui River was awarded the same legal status as a person. It only took 143 years (!) Given the river now has legal status in a court... As an individual person. ...as an individual person,... Hello. ...people now are obligated to look after it better. People now have a responsibility. The country now has a collective responsibility ` given there's legislation that protects the river and its health and well-being ` to look after it. So I'm hopeful. I really am. Same. Chur, bro. Chur, brother. Being on the river, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, I can't swim. I've only just started to learn last year, so I've always been a little bit scared of water. 80% of the drownings in New Zealand happen in rivers and streams and waterways, so even though it looks calm, I was still a little bit nervous. There is a mystical thing about the river, and I really felt its power. It's just a body of water, but it's an individual now. And I feel like... we're mates. (SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC) I reckon Twain would've toasted the river getting its own rights. He once said, 'Whisky is for drinking, and water is for fighting over.' And Thomas Cook, the guy that did those travellers cheques, once called this river the Rhine of the Pacific. And you can imagine that in 1895, when Twain visited, that this would've been the place to be. (SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC) I'm following Twain ` cos it says in the title ` so I'm getting on board his favourite type of transport with the help of steamship captain Don McGhee in the Waimarie. The name means 'lucky', and I can't swim, really, so here's hoping it's plain sailing. (SLOW HARMONICA MUSIC) So how old is this boat that we're on? She's 117 years old. Wow. So she was launched only five years after Twain was here,... Yes. ...and he would've explored this river on a similar craft. Probably. (SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC) So I'm just trying to get a sense of how important this river would've been to Whanganui back in the day. It was absolutely critical because this was basically the highway to the interior. It carried passengers, cargo, trade. So at one stage this river would've been teeming with craft. Absolutely. There was vessels like this carrying cargo and passengers. The Maori population, they had all their own canoes and wakas, and everyone was dependent on the river. Wow. Everyone. This used to be like State Highway 1 before State Highway 1. It was. And then, of course, once the railway and the road went through, the riverboat traffic started to die. What a shame for Whanganui that technically evolved like this. I think it's what a shame for the world that technology's evolved the way it did, never mind this town. (CHUCKLES) It seems like those were the glorious, golden years for this area. They certainly were, and they'll never come again, unfortunately. I sometimes wish I'd been born 100 years earlier. Is that the sailor in you speaking? Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot more adventure back then. I mean, everything now is... If you want to know something, you just look at your phone. You know? (CHUCKLES) Funnily enough, coverage is pretty patchy on the river, but old-school Don has it covered with pigeon post. I'm sending a Twain quote up the line, but in the past, birds have spread the word on some pretty epic world events. Julius Caesar used pigeons to broadcast the news of his conquest of Gaul. And the Greeks announced the victors of the Olympic Games in the same way ` the very first tweets. From this very boat in 1903, they did pigeon mail. (SQUEALS) What do I do now? Are you ready to let them go? Yeah. So just on the count of three, you can just let them go. OK. BOTH: One, two, three. (SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC) Old school. Coming up ` the trigger-happy mayor caught up in a gay scandal... He kind of lost the plot and shot this guy. ...and the bootlegging bust gone wrong. Full coverage that doesn't quit. Superstay Foundation from Maybelline. With full coverage that stays flawless for 24 hours. Now new Superstay Foundation Stick. Cover, conceal and touch up. Superstay Foundation, only from Maybelline New York. * If it was 1840, I'd say, 'Welcome to Petre.' This is the town of more than one name change. Petre officially became Wanganui in 1854. Thank God. And the H made an official return in 2009. For a small town, it's seen some big drama ` protests, bombings, occupations and even all-out war. 'The memory of those brave men who fell at Moutoa. 14th of May 1864 'in defence of law and order against fanaticism and barbarism.' Wow. Here in the beautiful Moutoa Gardens in Whanganui, and this is quite historical because it's actually New Zealand's oldest war memorial. And it's not about the Boer War or any other war that New Zealanders were desperate to get stuck into. It was about a battle that took place further up the river on Moutoa Island. The weeping lady symbolises grief. It's a weeping white lady. I don't know how you symbolise grief for brown people. The riverbank was flooded with tears in 1883 when tiny Flossie Veitch washed up dead. Her mum was found guilty of her murder but dodged the death sentence by pleading the belly. It delays a pregnant woman's sentence. It was only used once here, but famous pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read had their death sentences delayed thanks to that plea. (GENTLE COUNTRY MUSIC) This town has seen some desperate pleas. The Rutland Arms was where Charles Mackay was lured to dine with man about town Walter Darcy Cresswell. There were rumours that Mackay was gay and Cresswell wanted to out him. Local history podcasters Zaryd and Cass know the ins and outs of this showdown. Gidday. Oscar. Hi. Kia ora. Nice to meet you. Kia ora. Nice to meet you. Zaryd. How you going? I've been walking these streets, and I get a great sense of history about this place. I understand you guys are experts. A little bit. A little bit. Yeah? One story, in particular, about a former mayor, and he was set up by a young guy to out him in the community. Do you think it was a honeytrap of sorts? Yeah. Yeah, it was. Cresswell wrote to Mackay and said, 'If you don't tell the community that you're gay,' pretty much, 'I'm gonna out you publicly.' And then, um, there ended up being a bit of a stand-off up in that office, Mackay's office. Yeah. And Mackay threatened to kill Cresswell. Mayor Mackay kind of lost the plot and shot this guy. Did he die? No. So Cresswell fell back and people heard it from down on the street. And Mackay got taken to court. Didn't he? Mm. Would you say it was, kind of, New Zealand's first public outing? I think so. And he was apparently treated for sex addiction. Wow. So sex addiction was even a thing back then. Yeah. And it was called homosexual monomania. Homosexual... Monomania. ...monomania. Back then if you were gay, it was punishable by hard labour, imprisonment,... That's right. ...even maybe getting lashes, eh? So it was quite a serious thing. Even that's interesting about our history, eh? 'Boy, have we had some crazy laws.' (SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC) It's hard to imagine that at one time in New Zealand, alcohol was illegal. Keeping Kiwis away from their liquor seems as improbable as keeping cows away from the grass, but in the King Country, for example, that was one area that stayed dry until 1954. And there they had particularly creative ways to get around this ban. For example, you could go down and see someone at the river and buy off them a stick like this. Now, that's not illegal, but attached to the stick was a rope, and at the other end of the rope... was alcohol. Eh? Smart Kiwis. Number eight wire. Very good. For every cunning crim, there are clued-up coppers. John Cullen was our first undercover cop. He was also hell-bent on nabbing notorious bootlegger Rua Kenana. I'm 10-7 with former detective Graham Bell to find out about their showdown. Graham, how long were you a police officer in New Zealand for? 33 years. 33 years. Now, I remember when I was` My very first job after school was a cadet reporter for the Auckland Star, and one of our scary jobs was calling you at the Auckland Central Police Station. 'Hello, is there anything happened? And you'd be, like, very police-like and very stern down the phone. Quite scary too. (BOTH CHUCKLE) I imagine in your 33 years, you're well familiar with New Zealanders' ways of getting around the law. I am. Definitely. (BOTH CHUCKLE) And they are countless. What are some of the stories that you know about all this no-liquor nonsense? Probably the most famous sly grogging incident of all with the prophet Rua Kenana in the Ureweras in a place called Maungapohatu. (TENSE MUSIC) Rua was known to have sold some grog to his followers. It was widely known that he'd been doing that, and on the scale of seriousness, it was about a one. Rua's philosophy was 'one rule for all', or for 'both peoples', actually. He had it on his flag. And he'd thought that Maori were being discriminated against, and they were. They clearly were. So he was selling them liquor, and someone went to talk to him and he, in a fit of anger, commented that he hoped Germany won the war during the First World War and that he was hoping he'd get a visit from the Kaiser afterwards. And not only that, he also was discouraging all his followers from enlisting to go to the First World War. And a lot of middle-of-the-road New Zealanders thought, 'This guy is a traitor, and he's planning a rebellion down there and something's gotta be down about it.' So Cullen, who was then the Commissioner, assembled a huge contingent of police officers. A war party. It basically` Yeah. Nothing short of a war party. Rua went out to welcome them, and then saw all these firearms, so he immediately started screaming, 'They're all armed. This is evil,' and chaos instantly broke out. Two of Rua's followers ` one was his son ` were killed, and four police officers were seriously injured. And when all the fighting died down, Rua was arrested and taken away. Cullen, on his horse, followed by Rua in manacles and a whole lot of constables on foot... No way. ...leaving the place. And I have some insight into this because my grandfather was in that raiding party. Wow. Do you recall what his take on it was? Oh, absolutely. He told me many times before he died that he was always against the way Cullen had conducted the raid. He thought it was Cullen's fault that the thing had gone so badly wrong. The whole thing went to trial. Rua was charged with sedition, which he was acquitted of. The sly grogging charges went ahead, and he got convicted of that and sent to prison ` hard labour for a year. For sly grogging? For sly grogging. That's how they got him? Yeah. And my grandfather took issue with the way the whole thing had been done, and he sought to give evidence at the court case and was refused permission by the Police. Wow. So he left the Police after that, totally disillusioned... Wow. ...and lived the rest of his life regretting the whole thing. Wow. And how's this for a sequel to the story of that 1916 raid led by John Cullen? Just months ago, the government pardoned Rua Kenana, saying that it was an unjustified invasion carried out with excessive force. It only took them over 100 years, but they got there. And Graham Bell's granddad was right. He always knew that. Coming up ` Twain calls it like it is.... One of his chapters is called How Women Help Run the Country. ...and revelations about our luminous natives. Their life cycle is really strange. You're still numbing sensitive teeth? It's the way. There's a better way. Colgate Sensitive Pro-Relief actually helps repair the openings to exposed nerves. That's, uh...that's... A better way. (GROANS) Ohh! VOICEOVER: Colgate Sensitive Pro-Relief. (GENTLE MUSIC) (MUSIC SWELLS) (QUIRKY MUSIC) * Welcome to Whanganui. No, not a mistake. Wellington is actually Whanganui-a-Tara ` the last stop on mine and Twain's tour. There's so much written about Mark Twain, and there's so many cool things that he said that he almost passes into the realm of myth and legend, but actually what I've learned is that he was a real dude. He was a walking, talking, breathing human, and he came here. And the fact that he included New Zealand on his world tour and then wrote about it... And one of his chapters about New Zealand is called How Women Help Run the Country. New Zealand's women were sisters doing it for themselves. After they won the right to vote here in 1893, they had two months until the electoral roll closed for the next election and no orange guy to tell women how to register. Yet 80% of adult women were enrolled before the roll closed. Twain finished his tour here in Wellington, and while he was here he was wined and dined by the city's influential people, one of whom was probably a man called Harold Beauchamp who was the Chairman of the Bank of New Zealand. And that year his daughter was 7, and she grew up to be one of New Zealand's greatest ever writers ` Katherine Mansfield. I wonder if they ever met. Mansfield once wrote, 'To be alive and to be a writer is enough.' Wow. Full on. But as it turned out, the Wellington she knew growing up was filled with death. (BELL CHIMES) Wellington was a bit under the weather when Twain arrived. It had just been through a typhoid outbreak, so they ditched the city and built the suburbs in the hills to escape all that disease and disorder. It was great ` apart from the hills ` and then they built this handy device and cut out all that nasty hill-walking. Thank goodness. As Twain was preparing to leave Aotearoa, a Wellington chap was working on an epic idea ` a world first. You could say George Hudson saw the light before anyone else. I'll let Rebecca Priestley from Victoria University explain. In 1895, George Hudson had an amazing idea. Tell me about that. He proposed something that he called Seasonal Time Adjustment, which is what we would call daylight saving. And he proposed this at a meeting of the Wellington Philosophical Society, which was a gathering of mostly learned men who would get together and present scientific papers and talk about their great ideas. (CHUCKLES) So he came up with this idea and presented it, and it was really ridiculed. People thought it was a dumb idea. Really? Yeah. Yeah. No one really got it. Couldn't really understand it. But it wasn't until 1927 that a version of daylight saving was adopted in New Zealand. While George was waiting for the world to wake up to his big idea, he focused on the little things. He wrote books about insects in New Zealand and this was actually his first one, which I think is quite lovely. An Elementary Manual of New Zealand Entymology. Wow. And he wrote this when he was only 19 years old. 1892. Wow. Three years before Twain arrived. Yeah. He talks about collecting insects, and he gives a bit of advice. OK. 'An umbrella held upside down under flowering shrubs in the forest will often be found swarming with beetles 'after the plants have been sharply tapped with a stout walking stick. 'The dead bodies of birds and animals also contain peculiar species. 'They may be held over the umbrella and shaken into it. 'Dead fish on the sea beach are often very productive.' So, is that tempting? Are you keen to go out and have a try? (CHUCKLES) So he would shake the corpses of dead birds and animals for the beetles inside that would fall out? Yeah. Yeah. And then he'd take things home, and then spend a lot of time looking at them very closely and painting them. No surprise that George earned the nickname Bugs. And one of the bugs Bugs really dug was the glow-worm, which, it turns out, isn't even a worm. I'm going 'worm' watching with Dave, who is even more excited than I am. # This little light of mine,... (CHUCKLES) # ...I'm gonna let it shine. I mean, there's a lot of bioluminescent animals right through the world, but these guys have got it down to a fine art. Their light is spectacularly bright. They're great beasts. But they're actually maggots, aren't they? With lights that shine out of their butts. (BOTH CHUCKLE) But 'glow-worm' sounds much more delightful. Yeah. Yeah. And their life cycle is really strange. They'll stay in this bank for between six and nine months. Just glowing like this? Just glowing like this every night, hoping to catch something. Until they finally hatch out into an adult fly. Into a beautiful adult fly. And then how long do the flies live for? About four days. Four days?! The adult flies have got no mouth parts at all. They can't eat. So all they do is mate. They've got a finite time to get everything done, and they go for it. Gosh. Speed dating. (CHUCKLES) They could really do with Tinder. (SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC) Twain spent 39 days here. He landed in Bluff, travelled all around the country by horse-and-cart and boat and train. And from his writings, he really enjoyed himself here and the people that he met. And it's been a real privilege following his historic footsteps around the country. The Twitter generation might not have heard about Mark Twain, but that's OK. That's progress. But what I've realised is that history isn't just something that happened ages ago. It's happening every day around us. We're making it. And the people that are making it today in Aotearoa...