Obituary: Owen Wilkes
Peace activist. Died aged 65
Owen Wilkes, the peace activist who once faced jail for allegedly spying in Scandinavia, has died in Hamilton. He was 65.
Invitations to work at peace research institutes in Norway and Sweden were sparked by the work Wilkes had done on the proposed Omega transmitter station in the South Island, which he believed would make New Zealand a target in a nuclear war.
He went to the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1976, where he studied electronic listening posts in Norway.
Wilkes moved to Hamilton in the early 1990s and rediscovered a lifelong passion for archaeology. He worked for the Department of Conservation, researching pre-European settlements in the western King Country.

 

Owen Wilkes by Gordon Campbell
1940-2005
As his former colleagues fondly attest, Owen Wilkes was the sort of good keen chap who would wear only a T-shirt and shorts in midwinter, would rarely go to the doctor, who built his own house and scorned wearing a helmet while riding his bicycle. A classic Kiwi individualist. Yet for decades Wilkes was also the visible face of the peace movement in New Zealand, and the man who laid its intellectual foundations. A brilliant researcher and organiser, Wilkes became a household name in this country during the 70s and 80s for his trail-blazing forays into New Zealand's political, military and academic links to the US military machine.
For most of his life, though, Wilkes was also prone to bouts of deep depression. Koa, his only child, committed suicide, a devastating tragedy for which he blamed his own "depressive genes" and which contributed to his retirement from the peace movement in 1992. In later years, Wilkes tended his garden, went sailing, and returned to his first love, archaeology. As the historical officer for the Department of Conservation in Hamilton, Wilkes charted many sites in and around his beloved Kawhia Harbour, the location where – ultimately – he took his own life.

Archaeology in New Zealand will have an obituary for Owen.

 

Mt Pleasant Heavy Anti-aircraft Artillery Battery
From DOC: Five concrete structures on the hilltop east of Mt Pleasant in Christchurch represent a command post and four gun positions. They are the remains of a World War II (1939-1945) Heavy Anti-aircraft Artillery (HAA) battery.
The structures are much as they were when they were decommissioned by the army after the war."

 

Race to save the dying art of tree etching
Many generations after they were etched into the sides of trees, the faces created by unknown Moriori artists on the Chatham Islands still seem to speak to us.
The faces, full bodies and other designs on living trees cannot be more than a century or two old.
Many may have been carved after 1835, when 900 Atiawa people from Wellington invaded the Chathams, killed about 300 of the Moriori and enslaved the rest - around 1500 to 2000 people.
In the quiet forests where only the roar of the sea breaks the silence, it is easy to imagine those sad survivors etching their designs on to the kopi (karaka) trees, perhaps to pass on their memories to their children.
The practice was widespread. In the late 1950s and 1960s, Auckland Museum ethnologist David Simmons recorded 1400 tree etchings throughout Chatham and Pitt Islands. "

 

Vandalism and neglect wiping out Maori art
Some of New Zealand's oldest art, painted by early Maori on caves and rock outcrops, is disappearing thanks to years of vandalism and neglect.
Several hundred little-known rock drawings and carvings have been identified from the Far North to Southland and in the Chatham Islands, where there are also unique carvings of human figures on living trees.
But most of the 1400 tree carvings identified in the 1950s have been lost, some of the best rock art has been drowned by hydro power schemes and much of the rest is decaying because of weather, vegetation, animals and people. "

Monday, May 09, 2005