A Walk in the New Zealand Rainforest

The bush grows dark, dank and mysterious. Trees and shrubs tumble around, over and under each other in an impenetrable barrier. This is the typical New Zealand native bush, which is in fact rainforest, quite different to what the Australians call ‘bush’.

New Zealand has many different types of ‘bush’, as the country extends from the sub-tropical to the temperate zones of the Southern Hemisphere.  In Orewa, just a few hundred metres from where I am writing this, is Alice Eaves Scenic Reserve, a small relic of the original coastal rainforest near Auckland city. The forest here is primarily of stands of nikau palms, large gnarled hardwood puriri and small healthy stands of young kauri, the giant tree of North Auckland which was decimated for its excellent timber in the 19^th and first half of the 20^th centuries.  

Nikau palms & ancient puriri trees in Alice Eaves Reserve, Orewa

In Northland there are still a few areas of the original dense rainforest where the giant kauri trees still flourish.  Te Matua Ngahere, a forest giant with a girth of over 16 metres, resides almost unseen in the dense sub-tropical Waipoua Forest.

The ancient giant kauri tree, Te Matua Ngahere, 'Father of the Forest', Waipoua

On the West Coast of the South Island there are the swamp-forests where the predominant tree is the kahikatea, the New Zealand white pine, often referred to as the dinosaur tree as this species is said to have changed little since the age of the dinosaurs. The swampy vegetation surrounding these trees adds to the primeval atmosphere.

Swamp forest at Ship Creek, Westland

In the higher more temperate country of the South Island are the beech forests, the ancient nothofagus species whose ancestors had colonised much of primeval Gondwanaland, and now exist naturally only in parts of Australia and South America. These are no relation to the beech trees of the Northern Hemisphere - fagus spp.

Southern beech trees in the temperate rainforest at Makarora, Otago

With the lack of browsing mammals, the New Zealand forest can grow extremely dense, with clumps of the twisted liana vines known as supplejack, making the bush all but impenetrable. The bright red summer berries of the supplejack, along with those of the karamu, were a source of bush-food to the pre-European Maori. The karamu is of the Coprosma species whose Latin name means, to use the vernacular,  'smells like shit' ... or dung in polite society, which shows that some botanists did have a sense of humour!  One of the species, Coprosma foetidissima, known to the Maori as hupiro, was called stinkwood by Europeans, hence the name for the entire family.

A tangle of supplejack - Ripogonum scandens - an the red berries of the karamu -  Coprosma robusta

While the New Zealand rainforest lacks mammals, with birds and insects also being very scare, there is an abundance of interesting smaller plants which the average bush-walker can easily overlook. Flowers can be small and many are white, catering for the large numbers of night-flying moths - native butterfly species only number around 15. 

The beech forests harbour some interesting specimens. In some areas a thick black sooty mould covers the bark of certain beech trees. Closer inspection will reveal thin tube-like apendages protruding through the mould, secreting tiny droplets of honeydew, These are the anal tubes of a primitive scale insect which feeds on the sugary sap of the tree. The sooty mould grows on the discarded honeydew. Other insects, particulalrly the introduced wasp and native birds in turn feed on the honeydew, an important link in the forest food-chain.

Also in the beech forests, particularly in the Spring or early Summer, the so-called beech strawberries appear. These are a parasitic fungus, Cyttaria gunnii, that appear on some of the smaller brachlets of the beech trees in temperate areas. They are not always obvious, except when the yellow honeycomb-like fruiting bodies have fallen to the forest floor.

Scale insects anal tibes with droplets of honeydew, & the fruiting bodies of beech strawberries.

While the New Zealand rainforest is normally regarded as being benign to human intruders - no ferocious mammals, snakes, scorpions, and even a lack of biting insects - there is a lurking hazard for some of the lower insects. This is the stuff of nightmares, something out of a Kafkaesque dream. Several species fungi take over the bodies of living insects, feeding on or altering the structure of the victim. Best known is probably the awheto, or vegetable caterpillar - Cordyceps robertsii - in which the fungus will perfectly retain the shape of its victims. This unfortunate was also used as a tattooing pigment by some Maori tribes. While I have never found the awheto in the forest, I have come upon its close relative, the vegetable cicada - Cordyceps sinclarii. This fungus will attack a buried cicada nymph, feeding on its tissues. An indicator is white, powdery fruiting heads in the forest undergrowth and when uncovered, the remains of a cicada nymph becomes visible. Another of these parasitic fungi is the sugar icing fungus that will attack living cicadas, stick insects, mantids, and wasps, coating the vunerable parts of the body with 'icing', while it feeds on the unfortunate insects internal organs.

The vegetable cicada - Cordyceps sinclarii - fruiting bodies among liverworts, & an exhumed nymph

Finishing on a less macabre note, in certain areas of the forest is found the giant moss, Dawsonia superba, which is one of the world's largest mosses. The first time I found this, was in the Coromandel rainforest. I was with an American botanist. She looked at the plant, stood back and said: "it can't be." I looked at her, somewhat puzzled. She said "it looks like a moss, but is far too large."  A few days later I received a fax with the moss identified as Dawsonia superba.

The giant moss, Dawsonia superba

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Travel Books by the author, available from Amazon

Capt. James Cook & William Hodges in Vanuatu

Sparkling waters push a coconut further up the coarse, reddish sands. Pink-tinged Barringtonia flowers add a splash of colour to the leaf debris flotsam of the high-tide mark. Palms sway in the gentle tropical zephyrs that blow in off the blue Pacific.

Barringtonia flowers on the beach at Malekula

The beach is deserted except for a couple of figures at the waters edge at the far end of the beach. All is serenity, so far from the hustle and bustle of the modern world. The coconut will, perhaps, sprout & eventually add to the swaying verdant fringe of this pristine shore.

Sanaliu Beach, Malekula

This is a scene that would be recognised by Captain James Cook, as he sailed down this coast, on his second voyage of discovery, in the Resolution in 1774. Cook was in need of fresh provisions and no doubt his men looked longingly at the pristine beaches, seeing the natives who waded into the warm waters waving green branches, a sign of greeting, to the European intruders. Eventually a safe anchorage was found in what Cook named Port Sandwich, at the southern end of Malekula.  The British sailors’ first encounter with the Malekulans was tenuous to say the least. Initial tolerance soon turned to intolerance: the Malekulans believed the Europeans to be the ghosts of their ancestors, who could sometimes be malevolent, and in return the Europeans did not understand the Malekulans attitude to private possessions. Tensions became strained and the uncertainty of Cook’s landing was accurately captured by his onboard artist, William Hodges, in a colourful canvas entitled ’Landing at Mallicolo’. Firearms are displayed by Cook’s men while one or two Malekulans brandish spears.

Landing at Mallicollo by William Hodges  1744-1797

          William Hodges is, perhaps, the most under estimated landscape painter of the 18^th century. As he was on Cook’s 2^nd voyage of discovery he was under contract to the British Admiralty, so many of his magnificently coloured paintings of the 18^th century Pacific remained, for many years, in the Admiralty archives. For that reason,Hodges was relatively unknown even in his time, a sentiment admirably described by his friend, the poet William Hayley, on his epitaph:   
                       

 “Ye men of genius, join’d to moral worth,

                           Whose merits meet no just rewards on earth.'

                             “ To active Hodges, who with zeal sublime

                                 Pursued the art, he lov’d, in every clime;

                                 Who early traversing the globe with Cook,

                                 Painted new life from nature’s latent book.”

          As Cook sailed on through other islands in Vanuatu,  which he named the New Hebrides, Hodges conscientiously recorded the landings. On Erromanga, Cook’s reception was hostile and led to the death of several locals.

Landing at Erramanga by William Hodges

The Williams River on Erromanga, named after the Missionary John Williams who was killed her in 1839

Cook did not stay at Erromanga and as he sailed south, passing Aniwa, he and his men noticed what seemed to be a large fire on an island to the south-west. By the time Cook sailed into the bay he named Port Resolution, he had realised that what they had seen was, in fact, the volcanic fires of Mt Yasur.

A recent photo of the eruptions on Mt Yasur, island of Tanna

As on other islands, Cook’s reception on Tanna was initially tense, and the ship’s cannon had to be fired several times to warn off the natives. An added complication was the realisation by Cook’s men that the islanders had several distinct languages and that there was little relationship and co-operation between each tribe. There are 110 distinct languages in Vanuatu and 3 extinct languages.

          William Hodges detailed Cook’s landing at Port Resolution in a canvas utilising magnificently the atmospheric effects of bright tropical sunlight & the dark brooding smoky fires of Mt Yasur, which forms the backdrop to Cook‘s confrontation with the Tannese.

Cautious Landing at Tanna by William Hodges

 If Cook was to return to Tanna  today he would immediately recognise the fires of Mt Yasur, which still dominate the southern area of the island, periodically blowing mineral-rich volcanic ash across the island, adding the  natural fertilizer which nourishes  the excellent Arabica coffee trees that  grow on Tanna, producing one of the world‘s best coffees.

William Hodges was also to paint the first images of Easter Island and some of the first oil paintings of Tahiti and New Zealand.  Hodges story and photos are admirably illustrated in the book, William Hodges 1744-1797: the Art of Exploration published by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. 
 © Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Travel Books by the author available on Amazon Books

Sign Spotting: a brief World Tour

What's in a sign?    Quite a lot when one looks beneath the surface. Signs can be straight forward, pointing to somewhere interesting; they can impart interesting, or not so interesting, information, or they can serve no practical purpose at all. It is for all these reasons, that photographs of signs will enhance any photographic collection, be it photos in an album or a visual presentation.
Over the years, as I have walked around a town or a city, or even in the country, I have always kept my eyes open for interesting signs. It is surprising what one sees,

Many years ago I was travelling through central  Africa and had reached the town of Garoua on the Benoué River when a poster at the local Post Office caught my eye. It couldn't be, but it was; a picture of an old Maori woman with a moko (chin tattoo). It was advertising the colour film Nouvelle-Zélande, Terre des Maoris; sponsored by Cameroon Airlines and the French Airline UTA, which then flew into Auckland. It was bizarre to see one's homeland advertised in the heart of Africa.

A surprising discovery in the town of Garoua in the Cameroon; Queen Elizabeth stepped ashore here & a Wyoming mud flap & bumper sticker.

On another occasion, I was walking along the coastal path from Mrs Macquarie's Seat in Sydney's Botanic Gardens, when I stepped on a worn, dusty plaque. Closer inspection told me that 'the Queen Stepped ashore here'. It didn't say when, but subsequent investigation told me that it was in 1954 and she was the first reigning monarch to visit Australia. So I can say I was following in the footsteps of Her Majesty, although I wasn't coming in from the sea!

On a later trip to Wyoming in the USA, I spotted a mudflap and bumper sticker on a local truck. To be honest I did know the owner of the pickup truck, and the bumper sticker was appropriate as he was always wearing a cowboy-style hat.

Beware of dog sign in Port Vila; 19th century dentist's door, Blists Hill; neatly printed gas station sign in Bikaner.

In Vanuatu the local lingua franca is known as Bislama, a form of pidgin comprising a corruption of words from English, French and the local languages. Some of the results are hilarious. A Beware of the Dog sign becomes 'Lukaot wan spesil Dog' (Lookout, one special dog!). Special because it bites!!

In the Blists Hill open-air museum in Shropshire in England is the glass-door to a dentist that tells me, waiting in anticipation, that, my teeth will be 'carefully extracted'. A daunting prospect in that pre-ether era!

In Bikaner in the Indian Stae of Rajasthan I came upon a neatly painted brand new sign at a petrol station, telling me that if I doubted the honesty of the dealer, a 'duly authenticated capacity measure' was available on request.

Sign to the 'One & Only Octopus restrauramt of the vorld, Bodrum & the Holy Water sign at churcTralee

In Bodrum in Turkey there was a sign which pointed to "The First and Only Octopus Restaurant of the Vorld' - in English, Turkish and German. I wonder if it is still there?
And in Tralee in Ireland, I rather liked the idea of Holy Water being on tap at the Church of St John the Evangelist.

             The South Sea Liquor Lugger on Stewart Island & the information sign in Montana's Bad Rock Canyo

Signs are not always of the conventional type.  In Half Moon Bay on New Zealand's Stewart Island, an old Bedford truck served a very practical purpose.It was the local hotel's 'Liquor Lugger', then gainfully employed lugging booze from the Mainland ferry to the island's only hotel. 

But the descriptive information on a board beside the Flathead River in Bad Rock Canyon in the U.S. State of Montana, gives an amusing local history of the derivation of the Canyon's name, painstakingly written.in the vernacular,

A Benefaction board in St Andrew's Church, Nether Wallop, Hampshire & the Fijian Devonshire Tea sign at Rings Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula.

Not all signs have to be outdoors. A benefaction board in the small parish church of St. Andrew in the village of Nether Wallop in Hampshire records for posterity  how much local benefactors have bequeathed to the poor of the community. I wonder how far £4 per annum went in 1559? 

But then, not all signs are serious. At Rings Beach on New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula, I used to pass this sign regularly. The Fijian Devonshire Teas were always going to be available 'tomorrow'!

A sign outside of local grocer shop in Leh, Ladakh; Queen Victoria's vacation sign in Auckland & the sign to Alzon in France from Waitangi in the Chatham Islands

I have already mentioned that signs in India can be interesting.  Some years ago I was in Leh, the main town of Ladakh in the Indian State of Kashmir, when I noticed this sign outside a grocery store. I know what mixed pickles and toilet paper are but what is Aji-no-moto?  (P.S. just googled it - seems it is MSG  - monosodium glutamate!)

A few years ago the statue of Queen Victoria in Auckland's Albert Park went missing. On her plinth a note was left stating that Her Majesty had gone:  'On Vacation for some much needed beauty treatment'. I wonder if she was amused?

Next to the courthouse in the settlement of Waitangi on the remote Chatham Islands is a sign pointing straight down, 12,800 kms, through the centre of the earth to the small town of Alzon in southern France. There is a similar sign in Alzon saying it is the Antipodes of the Chatham Islands, - Situation Unique en France..

Seems that privacy can be a necessary requisite on an island for whatever reason. I came across this ominious sign while walking along a back road on  New Zealand's Stewart Island. Needless to say, I didn't trespass, if I did, I wouldn't be writing this article today!

Small, remote Islands may have their advantages, but they can also have disadvantages, disadvantages that we Mainlanders take for granted. This sign appeared on the bowser of the only fuel station on  the Chatham Islands during my stay. Fortunately the weather calmed down and  the supply boat, which had been delayed, arrived a couple of days later!

But I think the last word can be safely left with this plaque, in the Windsor Reserve in the Auckland seaside suburb of Devonport - On This Site in 1897, Nothing Happened.

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Travel books published by Neil Rawlins:  

One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps

One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride

   

Anzac: the Turkish Monuments on the Gallipoli Peninsula

As Anzac Day comes around once again, there is a tendency to forget that this is an equally important event from Turkey. Rightly or wrongly, the Ottoman Empire had been drawn into an alliance with Germany and the Astro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War, and for Britain, France and Russia, this posed a threat, both to Russia’s access to the Mediterranean and, hence, to the  rest of the World, and also  to Britain’s sea routes through the Suez Canal and, consequently to India, then the jewel in the British Crown. Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had devised a plan, maybe ill-concieved but certainly ill-executed by the War Office, to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula which would give the Allies control of the Dardanelles and hopefully lead to the capture of Constantinople taking Turkey out of the War – what could be more simple? The plan did not take into account the tenacity of the Turkish defenders who were, after all, defending their homeland from foreign invaders, some of whom were from ‘the uttermost ends of the earth’.

Banners on the Grand Eceabat Hotel, Eceabat

 Turkish Martyrs Day, on the 18 March, commemorates the defeat of the first Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles on 18 March 1915 using, purely, a naval force. Many of the Turkish forts were badly damaged, but the Allies lost 3 battleships sunk and 3 seriously damaged, before turning back and re-thinking their invasion plan, which saw the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsular on the 25 April. The Turks had their hero on the 18 March. Corporal Seyit who, in the heat of battle after a shell elevator had been put out of action, single-handedly carried three 275kg shells to his gun which, in turn, badly damaged the ill-fated HMS Ocean. After the action, he was asked to lift a shell for a photograph but was unable to do so. He is then said to have uttered “If war breaks out again, Ill lift it again.”

Statue of Corporal Seyit with  a shell, Eceabat

 As one crosses the Dardanelles from Çanakkale, the Dur Yolcu Memorial, above the fort at Kilitbahir, can be seen. An image of a Turkish soldier holding a firearm, points to words by Necmettin Halil, a Turkish poet, The words translated mean:
                                   Traveller halt!
                                   The soil you tread
                                   Once witnessed the end of an era.
This is a reference to the many soldiers who lie buried on the Peninsular and the end of an era, probably refers to the Otoman Empire of which the Gallipoli Campaign was one of the last major battles before the Empire finally collapsed.

The Dur Yolcu Memorial overlooking the Dardanelles

 The ferry from Çanakkale arrives at Eceabat on the European shore of the Dardanelles, the town closest to the Gallipoli Battlefields. On disembarking attention is drawn by a very large, detailed memorial to the bloody battles fought on the peninsular. The memorial is in several parts. There is a large collage of sculpted images of soldiers, both Turkish and Anzacs, topped by Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish commander, who, as Kemal Atatürk, became the ‘Father of modern Turkey’, a weeping woman, symbolising the grief for the battle-dead,  sits beneath. There is a fascinating representation of both the Turkish and Australian trenches, complete with sculpted figures of soldiers in action as well as the dead and dying, all in interesting detail. Maps along the pavement show the Peninsular and where the important battles were fought. Instructive as well as a memorial.

Details of the large Gallipoli War Memorial at Eceabat

 Near Cape Hellas, on Hisalık Hill, is the Çanakkale Martyrs Monument, a huge monolithic structure of four huge columns topped by a large concrete slab.  Friezes of battle scenes decorate each of the four columns and a large Turkish flag adorns the bottom of the capping slab. In the shadow of the Monolith are other memorials, particulalrly to Atatürk, and graves of the Ottoman soldiers who fell in the defending their Homeland. The Çanakkale Martyrs Monument is a prominent landmark seen from across the Dardanelles and from much of the southern Gallipoli Peninsular.

The monolithic central feature of the Çanakkale Martyrs Monument

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Travel books by the author, available from Amazon

Franz Josef, a Landscape on the Move

I watched with amazement, on a news clip on my iphone, as the one-lane bridge at Franz Josef washed away in the flooded Waiho River. It was only a week before that I had crossed this bridge with a coach load of British tourists. I had commented at the time that the river was very low, but it could rise very quickly. I was able to show my clients, before they left New Zealand, the destruction of the bridge on my iphone.

The bridge over the Waiho River at Franz Josef, just a week before it was washed away in a flood, March 2019

This photo was taken several years ago when the Waiho was in flood. Note how high the river is

When the river is in flood, large chunks of glacial ice tumble down the river along with the river boulders.

Franz Josef is a small tourist village on New Zealand’s South Island West Coast. The town takes it’s name from the nearby Glacier, named after the 19th century Emperor of Austria-Hungary by the German traveller and geologist, Julius von Haast. Along with the nearby Fox Glacier, these two icy rivers are a major tourist attraction.

The Franz Josef Glacier as it was in March 2008

Climate change has, of course, taken its toll on these two Glaciers over the last few years. I first visited both the Franz Josef and the Fox Glaciers in 1975, when they were in retreat. Then, during the 90s, both Glaciers advanced spectacularly, and I did read a report that the eruption of Mt Pinatuba in the Philippines was partially responsible. In this report it stated that the large amount of ash pushed into the atmosphere by the volcano, cooled the average temperature in this part of the world by only about half a degree Celsius, but it was enough to increase the snowfall in the glaciers’ névé areas to push these rivers of ice forward.

The névé, or snow catchment area of the Fox Glacier

 During this period of advance I led many groups to Westland where a hike on the Fox Glacier was an included highlight. This was a most popular inclusion as most of my clients had never been on a glacier before. The Fox was our preferred Glacier and for a time access was through the surrounding stunted rainforest which we had to hike through before dropping down onto the glacier ice. A unique experience.

Hiking through the stunted temperate rainforest before dropping down onto the Fox Glacier 

Each time I visited both the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, things could be different. Sometimes rain had washed out the access track, or ice movements had altered the access points to the ice. It was an ever-moving landscape with no two trips being the same. If the access road to the Fox was washed out, which was not uncommon, my groups would hike up to, and onto, the Franz Josef Glacier. This was usually considered a bit more difficult and was certainly steeper.

A group hiking on the Fox Glacier 

Among the ice crevasses & pinnacles of the Fox Glacier 2008

The two glaciers reached their peak advance in 1998. From 1999 until 2003, there was a recession of the glaciers which soon became noticeable, then there was a further advance until 2008. Since then both Glaciers have receded, and the amount of melt has been rapid. Hikes onto the glacial ice can now only be done using helicopters, and the Franz Josef has disappeared from view from Sentinel Rock, which used to be a main viewing platform for non-hikers.

A large ice cave was visible from the main access track to the Fox Glacier in 2007

A large slip has cut all access to the Fox Glacier, and now the Waiho River bridge has been destroyed, although this is being replaced and should reopen within the next few days, restored the main highway between Franz Josef and Fox Glacier and on through the Haast Pass to Wanaka and Queenstown. These recent events have most definitely emphasized how much this really is a landscape on the move.

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Travel books by the author available from Amazon Books

Old Harry - a Story of Passchendaele

Words inscribed on the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne

Old Harry looked at me through his dark rheumy eyes as he flicked through the magazine on the table.

“Y’know”, he said in his raspy old voice as he paused at a page and pointed to a photo, “I was very surprised to see that picture...”  He hesitated before he went on “…that’s me there!”

The photo showed a group of seven soldiers wading through mud up to their knees. Six of them were man-handling a stretcher upon which, covered in an army blanket, lies a critically injured man. The caption to the photo said something like: ‘It takes six men, six hours to bring one wounded man out of the mud of Passchendaele’.

Old Harry’s finger was resting on the man closest to the camera; a moustachioed, stocky man with his tin helmet pulled down to just above his eyes. “That’s me,” he repeated “I remember seeing the photographer…”  His voice trailed off and perhaps I detected tears in his eyes and a quaver in his voice as the memories flooded back. “I remember seeing the photographer.” He repeated again but said no more.

 

Old Harry, centre, in the mud of Passchendaele, 1917

Harry and his wife Gwen had lived next door to us until about a year before.  They had originally been farming near Whangarei but had come down to Auckland in retirement with Mate, their old sheep dog. Harry walked rather stiff-legged and had a raspy gruff voice. Gwen told me that he had been gassed at Passchendaele in an attack that had killed his best mate and no doubt the stiffness in his walk was due either to a war injury or to arthritis exacerbated by the mud and wet of the Western Front. Harry, understandably, did not talk about those days. Both Harry and Gwen were devoted to their old sheep dog, Mate. Gwen would often send Mate, carrying a basket of beans or eggs in his mouth, around to our house. Mum, after taking the goods from the basket, would give Mate a treat, before he happily trotted back home, empty basket still in his mouth. We were all rather sad when Harry, Gwen and Mate moved away.

I was 14 when Harry had pointed to the photo. It had appeared in a special magazine published by the New Zealand Herald to mark the paper’s centenary in 1963. I’m not sure how old Harry was then, maybe in his mid-seventies.

A century has passed since this photo was taken. Each time I see it, and it has been in numerous publications and even on book covers, I think of old Harry, his gnarled finger pointing, saying “That’s me.” In 1963 I was too young to understand the full impact; the horrors that men like Harry went through. How they were unable to talk about it; how they knew that unless you had been present, there was no way you could ever understand the full impact of their horrific experiences and it was better to remain silent. It has only really been in recent years that we have begun to understand the full horror of what these men went through. I will never know whether the burning mustard gas of that attack in 1917, which had affected Harry’s voice, still troubled him when he spoke, but undoubtedly the memories would have haunted him.

We owe a lot to men like Harry; men who suffered in silence; men whose battlefield demons haunted them for the rest of their lives. I can still see him with that magazine, pointing to the picture. Perhaps it was a mixture of pride, but there was also an innate sadness as the memories flooded back, a mixture of emotions that I was then too young to perceive or understand. Unknowingly that photo was Harry’s claim to immortality.

This was the last time I saw Harry, but the memory of that kindly, haunted old soldier has always remained, deep within my sub-consciousness, triggered whenever I see that picture, and on the morning of each Anzac Day.  Requiescat in pace!

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Travel Books by the author available from Amazon

In Search of the Shrine of the Toothache God of Kathmandu

           In Search of the Toothache God of Kathmandu

I first visited the then mysterious city of Kathmandu, capital of the Kingdom of Nepal, in February 1970. It was a place little visited by outsiders, other than hippies here for the cheap and legal marijuana and hashish. There was very little motorised traffic in the city. Locals either walked or used one of the many bicycle rickshaws found throughout the central city streets.

Illustrative of the lack of motor-transport in Kathmandu in February 1970; one morning I came upon these 'street-sweepers' making their slow way down one of the major thoroughfares of the city.

To me, a first-time traveller in 1970, the city was very much a culture shock. Singapore was the first Asian city I had visited and that had very much been a jolt when compared to the rather demure life I had led in Auckland. Kathmandu was something else. I wrote in my diary, on my very first day in the Nepalese capital, that ’it had been very much like going back to medieval days’ – or at least what I then imagined the medieval cities of Europe to be like! 

Over the next few days I visited many of the major sites. I walked around the array of splendid temples in Durbar Square in the centre of the city and stood in the courtyard of the temple of the Kumari Devi, the Living Goddess, seeing the pretty little ‘goddess’ herself. I hiked up to the fabulous golden stupa of Swayambhunath, on a hill overlooking the city. I hired a bicycle, cycling out first to the shrine of the Reclining Vishnu at Budhanilkantha, where I met my first sadhu, or Hindu holyman and then to the large Hindu temple complex at Pashupatinath, then finally to the major Buddhist Stupa at Bodhnath. The Kathmandu Valley was certainly a fascinating place and I knew there was a lot I had missed. At the time I did not think I would be back.

In the courtyard of the Temple of Kumari Devi
 (the Living Goddes

The Temples of Pashupatinath

It was almost 10 years later that I did return to Kathmandu, this time as a tour leader with Sundowners, one of the Overland companies that carried intrepid travellers on the various routes through to London. As I often had long gaps between the tours out of Nepal, I was able to explore Kathmandu and the surrounding Valley more thoroughly. I would wander around the area known as Freak Street which had been the centre of Western hippy culture, with small shops, seedy bars and restaurants, cheap hotels and dope dens. There was ‘Pig Alley’, so named by Westerners due to the number of semi-feral pigs which fossicked through the rubbish in the street, and on the way down to the Vishnumati River was what we called ‘Shit Alley’, so named as it seemed to be the place where many of the less-well-off of the city came to defecate! In the dry season the Vishnumati River, which was en route to Swayambhunath, could be crossed by a make-shift plank-bridge rather than by the permanent (if that could be the right word) suspension foot-bridge.

The bridges over the Vishnumati River in 1981

 At various times I hired a bicycle and cycled out to the Durbar Squares in both Patan and Bhaktapur, sister cities in the Kathmandu Valley.

Even in 1985, there wasn't much in the way of motorised transport in Bhaktapur

It was during my last visit to Kathmandu, that I purchased a small locally published book called ‘Exploring Mysterious Kathmandu’ by Katharine Hoag. In the Table of Contents, I had seen a reference to the ‘tooth ache god’ which intrigued me – I had never heard of this, so I decided to find this obscure, but interesting, street shrine. Katharine Hoag gives only a very brief description: “You soon reach another large square, just before entering it notice on your right at shoulder level the shrine to the tooth-acre god. A tiny three-inch golden deity sits embedded among nails and spikes on a great twisted lump of wood. If your tooth aches and you pound a nail into this wood the god will cure you. Bangemudha, the name of this square, means ‘twisted wood.’”

Although the description was rather basic, I decided to look for this little shrine and following the directions given in this small guide book, I did finally find the shrine in a nondescript intersection in a crowded suburb of the old city. On closer inspection I could see that it had once been an ancient tree stump and that the ‘nails’ mentioned in Katherine Hoag's book had each been driven through a low-denomination alloy coin of Nepal as an offering to the god. The large number of coins now completely hid the original wood, but I could just make out the image of the small deity in the central cavity of the shrine.  This was what the locals called the ‘Tooth-acre Tree’. 

I took a couple of photos of this un-aesthetically pleasing, but interesting shrine before I wandered my way back to the Blue Star Hotel in the gathering dusk.

Katharine Hoag’s little book did not give the name of the god and for years I was unable to find any reference to it in any other guide book. However, with the advent of the internet and Google, I have finally found out a little more about this interesting roadside god. It seems that the toothache god is peculiar to the Newar people of the Kathmandu Valley and is known as Vaishya Dev. The wood into which the coins have been hammered was a cutting from a legendary tree known as Bangemudha. Whether by design or accident, the ‘Toothache Tree’, as it is often referred to now, is in the heart of the city’s dental district. Maybe many of the local Newars believe a bit of jiggery-pokery at the shrine of Vaishya Dev will overcome the pain, both physical and financial, of undergoing dental treatment.

The shrine of the Toothache God, as in was in 1985

© Neil Rawlins  text & photography

Read about my experiences as both an independent traveller & as a tour leader in my two books, One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps & One Foot in Front of the Other - Full Stride