Frank Mace
The Pluckiest Fellow I Ever Met
Frank Mace galloped through the Taranaki Wars like no one
else. Since his first exploits during the Battle of Waireka on
28 March 1860 tales of his bravery multiplied, providing
fodder for historians, colonists and yarn spinners alike.
Mace’s military career spanned much of the Taranaki Wars
and he was collecting plaudits long before the fighting
ended. In July 1862 the 25-year-old horseman received an
inscribed revolver for bravery at Waireka. As he presented
the revolver, Captain Charles Stapp told Mace, and others
honoured at the ceremony, he had no doubt that “…if ever
they were called upon to use them in a just cause they
would never be found wanting.” Mace did not disappoint.
Right and bottom next page: Only 23 New Zealand
Crosses were awarded, making them one of the
rarest military decorations in the world. Mace
donated his inscribed cross to Taranaki Museum
in 1927, shortly before his death. The handsome
silver Maltese cross is decorated with gold laurels
and topped by a gold crown. Only a handful of
these decorations remain in New Zealand, with
other specimens scattered around the world in
private and public collections. The locations of
several are still unknown. A74.799.
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Whether galloping alone towards the enemy, riding
dispatches through hostile country or rescuing injured
comrades, his service record shows a complete disregard
for his own safety. Even Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Carey, a
British Imperial officer who scorned settlers as dirty, greedy
and selfish, thought Mace, “…the pluckiest fellow I ever met.”
After all this attention it was no surprise Mace was awarded
the New Zealand Cross, the highest colonial gallantry award,
on 23 January 1877. While active in veteran’s circles after the
Frank Mace | 13
wars Mace kept his feet on the ground. After receiving the
New Zealand Cross he said he knew “…other men who were
as well entitled to it as himself…” and he owed much of his
success to his men. Mace farmed at Wairau, near Ōākura,
and became a pillar of the community. When he died aged
91, a glowing obituary noted:
“…the name of Mace must for all time be written high up in
the list of those who made possible the prosperity of to-day.
It represents perils met unflinchingly, duty done without
complaint, and the genial hospitality of the true Englishman
now the head of the family has gone to rest, a brave and
gallant officer and a gentleman.”
More recently, Mace has not been so uncritically praised.
Puke Ariki’s Taranaki War 1860-2010 Our Legacy Our
Challenge Te Ahi Ka – Te Ahi Katoro exhibition in 2010
observed that “ …by admiring and glorifying his actions,
settlers and their descendants could celebrate their victories
over Māori, and see them as right and good.” The murky
politics behind the award of the New Zealand Cross where
“power, land, money, and social status” all played a part
have also demonstrated colonial hero stories are not always
what they seem.
Recently a letter from Taranaki civil
commissioner Robert Parris was re-discovered, accusing
Mace and others of “an indiscriminate system of looting”
during the south Taranaki campaigns of 1865, including the
theft of numerous horses from “friendly natives.” This sort
of complaint appears to have never gained popular traction,
being swamped by straightforward accounts of Mace’s
bravery and riding prowess.
Top left: Several formal portraits of Mace and his New Zealand Cross were
taken during his later years. The inscription on the reverse of this framed
painting “To whom we all owe Wairau” hints at the levels of devotion he
attracted. TM2000.242.
Above: Daring deeds by settlers were often marked by the gift of presentation
revolver. This .44 calibre six shot Beaumont-Adams patent revolver, with a
silver nameplate mounted on the butt was given to Frank Mace at a parade of
the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers in July 1862 for his “gallant conduct in the field”
at the Battle of Waireka on 28 March 1860. An identical revolver was given
to his comrade Charles Messenger and a posthumous award made to his
comrade Edward Messenger, at the same ceremony. A57.362 and A76.946.
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Mysteries Unearthed
Kiakia Swamp
Two baffling taonga and a finely carved paepae are among
the pieces which emerged near the site of a major Taranaki
stronghold.
While many items in the heritage collection are shrouded
in mystery, two pieces of worked wood, discovered by Jim
Donald on his father’s coastal Taranaki farm in 1973, are
among the most puzzling. Donald found the items while
draining part of Kiakia Swamp, just to the west of the Tāpuinīkau pā site near Warea.
While they are clearly well crafted and of Māori origin so far
the items, which were found wrapped together, have defied
explanation. Each boast a “stirrup” type handle and shaft and
are so similar it seems very likely they were designed to be
used together.
Along with these intriguing finds other taonga have been
Left: The draining and clearing of Kiakia swamp,
on the western side of Tāpui-nīkau pā during the
1960s and 1970s yielded an array of taonga, many
of which were donated to Taranaki Museum by
the Donald family, who owned the farm. Here,
Ken Donald is shown rotary hoeing the cleared
and drained swamp on his David Brown 880
tractor. PHO2004-454.
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discovered in Kiakia, including a finely carved paepae
(beam) from a pātaka ( raised storehouse) which hints at
the swamp burial practices of Māori. The paepae, a rare
surviving example of Taranaki iwi carving, was covered by
swamp peat and vegetation, when it was struck by the discs
of the plough in November 1976. It had been buried face up
Mysteries Unearthed | 21
and was resting on an angle, with the shallow end just 15cm
below the surface.
Carved panels like this one are treasured and prestigious
taonga, representing tūpuna, and were known to be
“deliberately hidden in swamps so invading taua could not
desecrate them”. Using this method Māori made use of the
preservative qualities of swamps while keeping their taonga
from their enemies.
Just why or when this particular paepae was hidden will never
Top right: This carved ceremonial kakau (adze
handle) was discovered by Ken Donald in Kiakia
swamp in 1975. The lightly constructed handle
with a slight curve in it has a face carved just
above the lashing notch, which is a particularly
fine piece of work. A67.136.
Middle right: These two taonga recovered from
Kiakia swamp in 1973 by Jim Donald remain a
mystery. While clearly of Māori origin no one
has yet been able to establish just what they are.
TM1997.188 TM1997.189.
be known but Tapui-nīkau was laid siege to by a powerful
Ngāti Toa taua led by Te Rauparahā in 1818. Relying only on
traditional weapons and facing a war party bearing muskets
the Taranaki defenders were hard pressed. After days of
fighting and with little hope of relief they eventually snuck
away from the pā in darkness; it is tempting to imagine they
buried the paepae before they left, keeping it safe from the
frustrated taua who later pillaged the pā.
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Below: This richly carved tōtara paepae, thought
to be from pātaka (raised storehouse) unearthed
from Kiakia swamp on 7 November 1976 features
three frontal figures flanked by side facing figures
at each end. The central female figure links hands
with two males on either side. The female and
one of the males seem to have had their heads
deliberately removed before they were hidden
in the swamp and the figure on the left suffered
minor damage from the disc plough which
uncovered it. The surface decoration includes
diamond shaped pakati, puwerewere and simple
spirals. A67.135.
Mysteries Unearthed | 23
A Marine Parade and
Pleasure Pier
New Plymouth Central City
Visions of parks and pleasure piers brought William Davidge
half the way round the world to where New Plymouth’s
Centre City shopping centre now stands.
The influential Englishman, a key member of the Garden
Cities and Town Planning Association, visited New Plymouth
in July 1914 as part of an Australasian tour with enthusiastic
garden city booster Charles Reade. The pair gave a series of
lectures based on the idea that “mean streets created mean
people” and raised concerns “slum“ conditions in some
New Zealand cities could lead to moral ruin.
Although Davidge travelled widely, New Plymouth was the
Left: Rail yards dominated central New Plymouth
for years. This scruffy view, taken in the early
1900s, shows the reclamation of the yards at the
Huatoki Stream mouth with the railway station
and Terminus Hotel. The rise of Puke Ariki / Mount
Eliot is behind the carriages, the hill, which was
once a great pa site, was also where the town’s
early administrative buildings were sited. A chunk
of it was removed when the railway arrived in
1875. Further railway expansion in the early 1900s
spelled the end for the hill, as Egmont Street was
dug through the middle and large portions were
used as fill for a sea wall. PHO2002-003.
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only town that paid extra to take full advantage of his skills,
setting aside 25 guineas for a report giving “…suggestions for
the improvement of the seafront and of other parts of the
Borough.” Formal town planning was in its infancy in New
Zealand but this did not deter New Plymouth town clerk
Felix Bellringer. Bellringer was convinced New Plymouth
could become “one of the principal seaside resorts in all
the Dominon” if there was a suburban growth strategy and
a scheme to improve the whole foreshore and he thought
Davidge was just the man for the job.
A Marine Parade and Pleasure Pier | 25
His New Plymouth lecture, held on 10 July 1914 at a
packed out Theatre Royal, was well received. He was often
interrupted by applause but with his Whanganui talk booked
just two days later he had no time to linger.
Davidge returned to England but World War I and other work
commitments stalled progress on his report which finally
arrived in New Plymouth in February 1916. Accompanied
by a massive hand coloured map, it laid out radical changes
to make the seafront “…the principal attraction of the town.”
He proposed shunting the railway back from the foreshore,
engineering work to protect the beach and a marine parade
with amusements, a promenade and pleasure pier.
While the full report was printed in the Taranaki Herald on
21 March 1916, it was shelved with little comment. The huge
costs of the proposal combined with the grim climate of
war appear to be to blame.
Instead, the city continued to ignore the sea with much
of the central foreshore occupied by railyards, the council
gasworks and other commercial areas until a new master
plan emerged in the 1980s.
Worries that a large scale suburban shopping centre
could devastate New Plymouth’s CBD prompted the New
Plymouth council to play developer, buying up land from
several owners before on-selling the whole block for a
“suitable major retail facility.” Mayor David Lean said the deal
would broaden the CBD and reassured worried ratepayers
that the two shopping areas would complement each other.
Supermarket giant Foodstuffs clinched the deal and the
Centre City shopping centre was built.
When the $30m
complex was opened on 19 October 1988 with much fanfare,
Wellington architect Roger Walker said it would integrate
with the surroundings and spur further development. While
the placement and design of Centre City still draws criticism
from many it has always been a popular shopping spot, and
opened the way for the much loved coastal developments
of the last 20 years. Perhaps Davidge would have approved.
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Left: The mid 1980s saw much of central New
Plymouth occupied by a motley collection of
buildings and railway yards. The city council
stepped in, bought up land and paved the way for
Centre City. This series of photographs, taken by
G Knox from the top of a nearby building shows
the site being cleared between April and July
1985 and some of the early construction. Centre
City opened on 19 October 1988. PHO2006-343.
Above and right: Big ideas call for an expansive
canvas and influential English town planner
William Davidge did not hold back with his
plans for New Plymouth in 1916. This imposing
hand drawn watercolour map on linen backed
paper, measuring 950 x 1675 mm, shows his
master plan for the city, which celebrates the
waterfront and natural features and shunts the
railway line away from the town. While the plan
was shelved for a long time, in the last 25 years
much of his thinking around the foreshore has
finally been embraced. Dr Caroline Miller, from
Massey University’s planning school said the
ambitious map was a notable achievement at the
time which stands out from anything else in New
Zealand. “It is absolutely a unique piece. There is
nothing equivalent to it anywhere”. ARC2007191 .
A Marine Parade and Pleasure Pier | 27
Oddments
Exotic Collecting in New Plymouth
Oddments and curios lurk in Puke Ariki, a legacy of a
chequered collecting history that lends plenty of spice for
the future.
In the early days of Pākehā settlement the Victorian ideals of
the day led New Plymouth based museums up some exotic
paths. Somewhat ironically, a full history of Puke Ariki and
the museums preceding it are still to be written, but a brief
Left: While many off-beat Puke Ariki collection
items date from earlier freewheeling phases of
collecting unexpected gems are still finding their
way into the storerooms. Majesty was created by
the New Plymouth trio of Mary Perrott, Margaret
Doyle and Wendy Petersen in 1999, using a calf
skull collected from the Vernon’s Midhirst farm
neatly mounted on a lampshade frame and
bicycle helmet and dressed with plenty of finery.
It scooped the pool at the inaugural Taranaki
Creative Headwear awards.More recently, ‘her
royal hatness’ featured in the 2011 exhibition
Stranger than Fiction, which invited visitors to
get creative and provide their own fictitious
museum labels. Resulting labels claimed she was
modelling ancient burial clothes or was a “special
breed of dinosaur mouse that ruled over the
dinosaurs”.TM1999.312.
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sketch of the first museum stirrings in the town explains a
portion of the collection now cared for today.
As New Plymouth grew as European society became
fascinated with the past. Collecting became “rational
amusement, spiritual enlightenment and healthy recreation”
for the middle and upper classes. Just as big game hunters
took delight in slaughtering exotic animals to populate the
walls of their drawing rooms, educated men combed the
landscape for curios of the cultural and natural world.
But it seems the museum craze did not begin in New
Plymouth until 1865. The fledgling settlement was still
mired in the Taranaki Wars when a museum, as part of the
Mechanic’s Institute, was raised as “… a sort of standing
protest in favour of rational and intellectual pursuits and
Oddments | 29
enjoyments and against their contraries …” Starting as a
museum, actually just a couple of rooms in the Provincial Council building, saw the chamber bulging
“cabinet of curiosities” the hope was expressed that, together
with visitors in early 1902. One of the early museum committee members was William Henry Skinner,
with other facilities it would “… help to give many a young
now acknowledged as the founder of Taranaki Museum. In 1913 he offered his outstanding taonga
mind wavering between good and evil courses, an impulse
collection, and that of his son Henry Devenish Skinner, to the museum as long as a fire proof building
in the right direction”. Accounts of what the curiosities
and suitable display space was provided. Council took him up on the offer and an annexe to the library
were, and how they were displayed are thin on the ground
building effectively extended it from King through to Ariki Street. The Skinner Collection was installed
but they must have been doing something right. In 1874,
in this building in 1918 and New Plymouth’s first well established museum was born. Under Skinner’s
responding to a Dunedin hack’s attack on New Plymouth
chairmanship the museum collections continued to grow and re-cataloguing of the original collection
as isolated and “semi-comatose”, the Taranaki Herald
began. The museum continued operating, effectively as an offshoot only of the public library, until a
editor lamented “nothing is said about the Museum, which
new purpose built library, museum and war memorial hall building was opened on 3 July 1960.
contains many interesting articles.” But five years later, deep
A dedicated museum curator, Rigby Allan, was appointed and the institution, re-named Taranaki
in debt, the Institute voted to palm the collection off to the
Museum, was explicitly responsible for collecting for the entire province.
Taranaki Education Board and the venture collapsed. The
In 2000, with the advent of the Puke Ariki project, the museum and library were united again, and joined
next museum in town was based at the new high school,
with the former New Plymouth information centre.
and was launched with a gala day and a game of schoolboy
rugby in May 1882. With displays put together by teachers
and students, a feature were a large collection of “Maori
spears, meres, South Sea Island weapons, clubs etc.,” along
Above: This battered shako, with green light
infantry pom pom, is a survivor from the New
Plymouth museum’s 1902 collection. Donated
by W. L Newman, it is a rare example of textiles
worn during the Taranaki Wars. A77.348.
with “specimens of rare birds, fishes…” and, more bizarrely,
“the bones of a Maori giant found on the ranges, which are
of enormous size, attracted a good deal of attention.”
While this museum attracted a favourable newspaper review
some years later Clement Govett was less flattering, labelling
the majority of Māori material on display as embarrassing
“rank forgeries.” Govett later slammed the school museum
as “practically useless” and urged the community to establish
a new one to keep “hidden treasure” in the province. In
1901 he got his wish with a committee again established
to furnish a small museum. After some initial publicity a
cornucopia of curios emerged including “spears”,“stuffed
Right: Exotica from foreign climes was keenly
sought for the opening of the museum in New
Plymouth in 1902. This ornate Japanese fan
with carved ivory sticks mounted with peacock
feathers was part of “a large and beautiful
collection of Burmese, Japanese and South Sea
Island curios and specimens of art” donated
by Adolphus Kyngdon. The delicate Tahitian
snail shell necklace strung together with white
cotton thread was donated around the same
time by Stephenson Percy Smith, the well
known ethnographer who was a key supporter
of the museum venture and spoke at its opening
ceremony. A76.850, A98.642.
quail” , a “death-adder” and “Indian implements and
specimens”, along with Māori implements ,carvings and an
“axe”. Public education and future generations motivated
organisers as they noted that the public in later years “…
will have no personal knowledge of the life, history and
struggles of the early settlers of Taranaki, and of their allies
and foes the Maoris.”
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The opening ceremonies for the
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