Ours: Treasures from Te Papa

This nocturnal creature doesn't have the prettiest mugshot and can appear a little intimidating with its tusks, barbs, and armour.

It's the "ultimate monster" which has been on the scene even before the dinosaurs. Sir Richard Taylor was so enamoured by the critter that he named his company after it.

Meet one of New Zealand's most iconic insects - the wētā - just don't get too close - this little monster bites.

Watch the video from the episode here.

Taylor, the head of Weta Workshop, is on a quest to encourage New Zealanders not to be so afraid of his company's icon.

"For 25 plus years, when people have asked me about wētā, I've said 'Oh, they're completely innocuous, they won't hurt you' because I love people not to think to squish them, so you want to try and make them fairly safe sounding, right?...

"But...what, two years ago, with Ruud [Kleinpaste], live on film, one bit me on the end of the finger. And it really hurt."

Te Papa's wētā collection contains hundreds of specimens - including a West Coast bush wētā that was identified and named by the naturalist Sir Walter L. Buller in 1896.

Entomologist Phil Sirvid is the custodian of these insects at Te Papa, which he describes as a privilege.

"I don't think there's any debate, if we asked New Zealanders to name the most iconic New Zealand insect, this would be up there," he says.

While the insect is found in other parts of the world, Sirvid reckons the New Zealand wētā is particularly special.

"Nowhere else have they diversified to the extent they have in New Zealand," he says.

"A lot of them have taken the roles that we might assign to some of the mammals that we don't have here. Wētā have been described as invertebrate mice, literally scurrying around on the forest floor - this is before we got mice, of course. Some of them are seed dispersers and all sorts of other things."

According to the Department of Conservation, there are more than 70 species of wētā in New Zealand. They can be broken down into five groups: The tree wētā , ground wētā , cave wētā , giant wētā and tusked wētā.

About 17 species of wētā are endangered.

Taylor, who was knighted for his services to film in 2010, is clearly a big fan of this nocturnal invertebrate.

"We named the company wētā because this is the ultimate little creature in New Zealand, maybe the ultimate monster although a very beautiful one. And wētāpunga of course means god of ugly things so we thought what a wonderful thing to name our company after," he says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

The story of a nation is more than great works of art, turbulent moments of history and dramatic discoveries. Sometimes you can see the truth of a country in a piece of fish with a scoop of chips.

A fish shop worker's uniform seems an unlikely item to include in a museum collection, but that's only if you take it on face value.

Lean in to take a closer look. There might just be the lingering smell of fish and chips caught in its fabric.

It's a taonga that tells many stories – the story of a young Tongan woman in Otara working long hours to help her family, and more, the story of this nation's social and industrial identity.

The uniform consists of a navy cap with Toby's Seafood embroidered on the front, a name badge, polo shirt and a royal blue hoodie to keep warm in winter.

The name badge says 'Peta'. It belongs to Elisapeta Fononga, 18, who donated it after taking part in Project 83 - Small Things Matter - a co-collecting project that Te Papa took with a Year 13 Tongan language class from Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Otara.

When asked by the museum to choose an everyday item that meant a lot to her, she chose her Toby’s Seafood uniform because it represents "the struggle" for her and her family.

"I wanted to put my story out there, just for other people to see and read and just to see what it was like - my experience, you know, working and also studying at the same time," she says.

Nina Tonga, curator of Pacific Art at Te Papa, says the uniform is part of the social history of Tongan youth as told by Elisapeta.

"The reason she gave it to us was because she actually wanted to tell the story of sacrifice and of family. So she saw her parents struggling financially and she really wanted to help them by getting a part-time job."

Toby’s Seafood is New Zealand owned and operated and has five fish shops in Auckland. They sell all sorts of kaimoana including shellfish, fresh fish and that Kiwi classic - fish and chips.

Elisapeta started work at the Otahuhu branch of Toby's in late 2013 when she was in Year nine. She had to pay for her uniform, though the tee-shirt was free. The jacket cost $17.50 and the cap $20. She mostly worked at the cash register but also helped the cooks and did cleaning.

Elisapeta, who has nine brothers and sisters, worked part-time but long hours, 7am to 7pm, getting paid what was then the minimum wage of $15.75. Her mum helped her get the job as she already worked at Toby's fish markets.

Tonga says the uniform has a story that goes beyond Elisapeta’s life…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

It looks like a bit of wood, but it tells a much bigger story of immigration and inspiration. A story as big as a dinosaur.

This is where Jurassic Park began. It's when we actually stared walking with dinosaurs. In fact it's the moment humans first realised dinosaurs existed, and, like the rest of us, it immigrated to New Zealand and has found its home here.

Amongst the collections at Te Papa - and a dead-cert for our list - is a simple fossilised tooth that is truly a world first and the envy of dinosaur fanatics worldwide. It's a tooth that was discovered near Brighton, in England, around 1820 by Mary Ann Mantell and her husband, Gideon. The couple were passionate fossil collectors and one day Mary Ann - or was it Gideon? Both stories have been told - found some large teeth on the side of the road. Experts struggled to identify them. Rhinoceros? Crocodile? Some kind of large lizard?

How were they to know it belonged to an Iguanodon, a creature that weighed around three tonnes and could be 13 metres long? As 16 year-old dinosaur enthusiast and our guide for this episode, Eric London says, for those trying to make sense of the fossil record two hundred years ago, "it's kind of like a real life dragon".

"Of course you can imagine in the 1800s," says Dr Hamish Campbell, Te Papa’s geologist in residence from GNS Science, "how did educated people get their head around the concept of extinction? It really didn’t exist until the discovery of dinosaurs and then bingo, people started realizing wow, there must have been organisms around on this planet that ware no longer here so it kick-started the whole investigation of dinosaurs as well as raising the concept of extinction.”

And it began with this tooth, the very first fossil to be recognized as dinosaur.

"This is like the Holy Grail," says Campbell.

"it kind of led us to realize what these creatures were, where they’d come fro and well, it basically started off our knowledge about dinosaurs in general so stuff like Jurassic Park," London adds. "All the cool things that stem from dinosaurs kind of started with that tooth…. You know, it’s pretty cool.”

Even though it looks like a bit of wood. So how did it end up in New Zealand?…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

I am scared is about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It's a universal theme, but its depiction by this great New Zealand artist could only have been painted here.

He is New Zealand's great 'I am'. No, not God or Yahweh, but Colin McCahon, an artist with a fondness for the words 'I am' and grand religious themes. They feature in many of his works in many different ways, and he undoubtedly is one of New Zealand's artistic greats. Someone whose work could only have been created in Aotearoa.

Painted in 1976 and bought in 2008, I am scared is simple, urgent and dark. It shows us McCahon's distinctive use of words from a time when he had said that he only ever needed black and white to do his work. Light and dark. The words 'I am scared' are lower case and hesitant; the rejoinder that speaks of a determination to stand for something in spite of that fear is written in upper case and at least attempts to look stronger.

"I'm scared," says art critic Anthony Byrt, "about the things that he is expressing on the surface of those works, which is kind of around environmental questions but also existential ones."

Te Papa's Senior Curator of Art, Sarah Farrar, replies: "There were five works that he made as part of the Scared series – through the series of five it kind of shifts from being this kind of very personal expression to being more of a comment on the human condition."

Byrt says for him McCahon had started painting landscapes so confidently, but by the Scared series he had found more violence and uncertainty in the New Zealand landscape and he was doing his best to follow that darkness where it led.

"I think we owe him a lot for that, for not turning away, for not letting the fear get the better of him in that moment."

Sam Neill has described the words on this artwork as a definition of heroism. The feeling of the fear, but the doing it anyway. In that sense, the theme is universal.

But McCahon's themes are so often New Zealand's themes: Landscape and race relations.

Says Byrt: "The 'I' comes to stand for all of us who are a product of this traumatic collision between two cultures and that’s why I think McCahon’s work is a problem because New Zealand is forever a problem. It’s a very unresolvable thing.

"And so New Zealand culture is a thing that we struggle to describe that happens on the surface of that scar, that moment of collision between two cultures that he articulates almost better than anybody else."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

What has the biggest eyes in the world, blue blood and three hearts? Sam Cousins knows and it's a bit of natural science that connects us to the oceans surrounding us.

She came all the way from the Ross Sea, to lie in central Wellington. And she is a she. A female colossal squid that surprised the world.

When a 300kg specimen was found in 2003, speculation that some colossal squid could weigh as much as 500kg was met with some skepticism. Then in 2007 a longline trawler chasing toothfish in the Ross Sea came across a 470kg specimen and the proof was hauled from the ocean as the cameras rolled. Colossal squid could really be that colossal.

The giant creature has since been housed in Te Papa and is one of the museum's star attractions. It's the only one on display in the world and, perhaps, a sign of New Zealand's significance as the "last, loneliest, loveliest" place before you hit the frozen land of Antarctica. The squid and its popularity speaks to New Zealand's scientific curiosity and connection to the seas that surround us as an island nation. Certainly, nearly-10 year-old Sam Cousins is a fan. And full of facts.

"They have three hearts. Their eyeballs are the size of soccer balls," he says.

He's been visiting the squid for years, and he's not the only one. Te Papa's Collection Manager of Sciences, Andrew Stewart, says it's been an aquatic attraction for experts. You see, for all Sam's facts, we know very little about them.

"It was a unique opportunity for scientists from around the world to come and look at the whole animal, not just extrapolate from the bits and pieces we've had in the past; what sex it is, how mature is it; how big do they actually get; what are the dimensions of the different parts of the body..."

It's a rare scientific bonus to come from fishing industry by-catch.

"Catching a whole specimen in Antarctica, bringing it back, those excellent relationships we have with the observers and the seafood industry making scientific specimens available, we're learning more and more. Every specimen that comes in gives us more and more information that we didn't know before and we keep finding new things right under our noses."

That will mean more facts for Sam - and all who still have a bit of the nearly-10 year-old in them.

"They can see in the dark because they have the biggest eyes in the world," Sam says. "And it's funny how their blood is blue."

*The colossal squid will go into storage shortly after Easter until Te Papa opens its new nature zone early next year.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

In the 1970s New Zealand started to find its own voice through mass media, and that included imported children's television. Ready to knock? Turn the lock.

he names are instantly recognisable to a generation or more, because they were the toys that belonged to us all... Humpty, Jemima, Big Ted, Little Ted and of course New Zealand's own Manu.

Sometime it's not the significant or serious things that tell us most about ourselves. So in this week's Ours we look at the dolls that really were ours.

NZ On Screen: Play School - Presenter Compilation

As Te Papa's Modern New Zealand curator Kirstie Ross says "they're part of shared national popular culture and memory". They were on the one and only TV channel, and we entered the world of games, crafts, stories and these toys through the iconic Play School door ("Ready to knock? Turn the lock. Play School!"). If nothing else, we learnt dozens of things to do with old toilet rolls and cotton wool.

Play School began in New Zealand in 1972, a knock-off from the BBC, but it came at a time when New Zealand was changing, and the way our hosts talked, acted and played with those dolls reflected those changes.

Actor and one-time Play School host Theresa Healey recalls that when she worked on the programme in the 1980s "we were getting away from the British, about being a New Zealand voice. Because in the show, it always used to make me laugh, we'd go through the window - it was always these - you'd go through to the Thames. If we were talking about rivers we'd go to the Thames... And it as like - we've got so many amazing things here, why aren't we using New Zealand stuff?"

Humpty, Jemima, and the Teds all derived from the British series that started in 1964. Humpty, Healey especially recalls as "just gorgeous... round and cuddly".

But the dolls didn't always cooperate. "They never quite did what you wanted them to do. You'd be putting them in the boat, because you were going boating and one would fall over."

But we also got one of the earliest indigenous characters on New Zealand television - the doll Manu.

"For Manu," says Ross, "we do have a piupiu and a feather cloak as well, because she's a Maori doll she would wear those for special events. And Manu was what made New Zealand's Play School quite special."

Working with those dolls, Healey knew her place.

"They were the stars of the show... they were telling the stories and that's what the kids identified with."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

The '81 Springbok Tour woke and divided New Zealand, but this week's object and its champion are a surprising combination that shows just how far we've come.

New Zealand has a proud tradition of activism dating back to Hone Heke and Kate Sheppard. But few who have chosen protest as their turangawaewae can claim to have changed New Zealand.

John Minto is one who did just that, which is why his helmet is the focus of this episode. Now, his courage is being recognised by, of all people, New Zealand's police chief.

The ’81 Tour was a watershed moment in modern New Zealand history for many reasons – the way it forced New Zealanders to confront racism in South Africa and here at home; the divides it exposed between urban and rural New Zealand, generations and even within families; the damage it did to the reputation of the New Zealand police; how it was cynically but effectively used to win an election; and how it challenged what New Zealanders would forgive for the sake of the national religion, rugby.

At the heart of that upheaval, challenging New Zealanders to take a long, hard look at themselves, was Minto. As national organiser of Halt All Racist Tours (HART), Minto led the protest movement as it went, in his words, "to the edge of the law".

Yet the police saw it differently, with 1500 arrests from among the estimated 150,000 people who took part in more than 200 demonstrations.

One of the young officers policing the law's edge was Mike Bush, now the country's police commissioner. He was on duty at the infamous Hamilton game, when the protestors made it onto the field and stopped the match.

"There was a lot of anger and aggression between both parties and as I reflect on that and think about how we manage these days, we learnt a lot from 1981 in how we manage any public order event or protest. We have to remember that in these situations we're the professionals."

What might surprise some - even upset a few - is Bush's praise for the courage of those protestors.

"You just have to admire those central leaders in the protest movement for standing up for what they believe in.

"Because they really did change the course of history... They didn’t just put their values on the line, they put their bodies on the line for it as well. And it had a massive impact."

The helmet is at the light end of things, made of fibreglass and covered with dings. It was, believe it or not, a scooter helmet. Not much protection from the police batons and a curious choice given other at the protests opted for motorbike helmets.

Minto was given the helmet by his girlfriend, after he was hit by a bottle the night of the cancelled Waikato-Springbok game on July 25…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Before humans, New Zealand was a land of birds. Our recent efforts to save them have sparked some heroic stories... but also some, er, quirky ones. Such as the kakapo ejaculation helmet.

It's the story of a bird alone. A good keen bird, you might say, just not keen enough on the right things.

Sirocco the kākāpō became a star in 2009 when he tried to mate with zoologist Mark Carwardine, who was filming a BBC documentary with British actor Stephen Fry.

Sadly, this has been typical of Sirocco's tastes and he hasn't been terribly successful mating with his own kind. As the folk at the Kākāpō Recovery Programme have written:

"The call of the wild wasn’t so loud for Sirocco. It soon became apparent that, as a result of the intensive hand-raising and lack of kākāpō company, he had been imprinted on humans."

So in a great Kiwi tale of thinking outside the box, rangers tried wearing a "kākāpō ejaculation helmet". If it was a human head that turned him on, well... Te Papa's Vertebrates Curator Colin Miskelly takes up the story:

"The helmet was part of trying to make use of these over-sexed males and seeing if they could get them to leave their semen on the helmet".

Well, it was worth a crack, Sirocco.

For Seven Sharp host and bird fancier Jeremy Wells, a dimpled latex helmet was certainly worth the effort, because the kākāpō is such " a beautiful bird... beautiful plumage. You've got to say, next level plumage."

Humans, he says, were a huge blow to their species.

Once, they were a common sight in New Zealand - apparently in the old days you used to shake trees and out they fell - but they became a staple of the Māori diet and then suffered further when Europeans arrived with stoats and weasels.

As New Zealand children are routinely taught, kākāpō were nearly extinct, but they are making a comeback, if a rather fragile one.

The effort made to save the bird that Fry described as looking like a Victorian gentleman with sideburns has been massive, and the population at the time of writing is 149.

Given New Zealand is a land of birds - a country that before humans hardly knew what a mammal looked like - we could hardly tell the story of New Zealand without a nod to our efforts to save our birdlife from our own sins.

And the ejaculation helmet is a suitably 'just crazy enough that it might work' sort of idea that seems right at home here. The fact it failed is neither here nor there, it's the willingness to give it a go that speaks volumes…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Jonah Lomu steamrolled Mike Catt and, as former TV host Julian Wilcox recalls, changed the game of rugby forever. But this treasure about much more than sport.

Rugby is a game of colonies, transported from the playing fields of England's private schools around the British Empire. But in 1995 there was a moment of brilliance that made rugby a world sport and changed the game forever; and it was sparked by a Tongan 20 year-old.

It was the semi-final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the All Blacks vs England. The All Blacks had been dominating the tournament but this game went down in history due to what commentator Keith Quinn called "the most brilliant quartet of tries you'd ever wish to see". They were scored by Jonah Lomu. They got New Zealand into the final. But they did much more.

"This was more than just a game," says former TV host and die-hard Hurricanes fan Julian Wilcox. "

Perhaps the most memorable moment was when Lomu simply ran over the top of England fullback Mike Catt, in his famous bulldozer run. But his performance that day was as memorable for its impact off the field as it was for securing the comfortable 45-29 victory.

"We now know that as a result of what Jonah did, the world became interested in rugby. Jonah becomes this global brand. Jonah becomes the ambassador of Sport New Zealand. And rugby itself across the world. Jonah’s got a Jonah burger at McDonald's. Jonah is professional sport in New Zealand. Jonah is the reason why the world becomes interested – not just in rugby – the world becomes interested in the All Blacks," says Wilcox.

So this week's object, chosen in part to recognise the importance of Pacific culture in our national story, is not a tapa cloth or one of the other 15,000 typically traditional items in Te Papa's collection.

It's the 1997 PlayStation video game 'Jonah Lomu Rugby'.

"When these games first came out it was interesting that the rugby bosses chose a Pacific Islander and a Tongan to represent the game," says Sean Mallon, Senior Curator Pacific Culture at Te Papa.

"This was part of the marketing of Jonah Lomu within the marketing of the international game. So you have this Tongan man from New Zealand becoming the face of international professional rugby. And that’s part of a bigger story about how Pacific people became the face and the most marketable commodity in the professionalization of rugby."

"For a long time and even today New Zealanders have had an ambivalent relationship with Pacific peoples, wanting them in some instances and not wanting them in others..…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has a favourite item at Te Papa and in episode two, we discover that while it speaks to her of endurance, it's probably not what you might expected.

Not many politicians would choose as a hero a man as famous for finding trouble as he was for getting out of it. Yet when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gets up close and personal with one of the hand-made sleds from Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1907 Antarctic expedition she can hardly contain the excited child inside. "Incredible... Extraordinary," she gushes. It turns out Ardern has a little known obsession with the Irish-born explorer.

Watch a video from the episode here

Ardern confesses to having considered getting a tattoo of Shackleton. But where would she have put it?

"That became the problem," she laughs.

Shackleton may not be an easy hero and was a forgotten one for much of the 20th century. But he wasn't any old chancer; indeed, he's now regarded as a role model in team-building. He might have failed in his attempt to be the first to cross Antarctica in 1914, but the heroic leadership of his stranded crew over ice and sea, without a single loss of life, has become a story for the ages. And perhaps not bad inspiration for a leader of the modern Labour Party.

For episode two of Ours, as we discover 20 objects in Te Papa's collection that help tell the story of our country, Ardern went behind the scenes at Te Papa to see one of the bamboo, ash and hickory sleds Shackleton's crew hauled across the frozen continent on the earlier 1907 Nimrod expedition. It may be a story that takes place offshore, but the Nimrod set sail from Lyttleton and in 1914, Shackleton's ship the Endurance was captained by Cantabrian Frank Worsley.

New Zealand's connection and commitment to Antarctica runs deep, including Sir Edmund Hillary's 1957-8 journey to the South Pole (the first by motor vehicle) and the loss of 257 lives in the Mt Erebus air crash in 1979.

Ardern's passion for Shackleton stems from her father and the book, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. She lists it as her favourite read.

"It was Alfred Lansing’s version of the story that was published in the 1950s where he’d managed to get those eyewitness accounts - it was just such an extraordinary tale and I couldn’t imagine the human spirit let alone body that could have endured that and yet there it was," she says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details