The rations New Zealand soldiers had overseas left a lot to be desired.
Bully beef (fatty and oversalted) and ship’s biscuits which were hard as rock were staples.
In fact the food was so deficient in essential vitamins that it left them vulnerable to scurvy as well as illnesses like dysentery and typhoid.
So anything that arrived from home were more valuable than gold.
Families along with the Red Cross organised things like condensed milk, coffee and cocoa to be delivered to the fighting men.
And around the country families also sent personal care packages.
One was a gingernut biscuit. Not quite the ones that are our favourites today. But one from a recipe made by Taranaki woman, Helena Marion Barnard, who received the British Empire Medal for baking and sending a truly astonishing four and a half tonnes of biscuits.
Helena Marion Brown was born in Nelson on April 3, 1865 to Alfred Joseph Brown Rosenberg and Sarah Elizabeth Brown Rosenberg.
She married Henry James Barnard in 1884 and they went to live in California during a gold rush but ended up back in New Zealand and they went on to have a daughter and eight sons.
By the time World War 1 broke out they were living in Eltham. Six of the boys went out to serve in the war, three of them at Gallipoli. Two died there and the other four succumbed to illness, shell shock or serious wounds.
Helena said she first started making the biscuits for her sons to take tramping but during the war she began sending them overseas packed in tins.
The biscuits were considered tiny - only about the size of our $1 coin now, but that made them perfect to put a handful in a pocket.
She was prolific making them and also with knitting socks and balaclavas.
Not long after the end of the war she and Henry moved to Wellington but he died in 1922.
Marion bought a bell for her two boys that died at Gallipoli which is part of Wellington’s (currently silent) National War Memorial Carillon.
Then in 1939 when World War II started, she was 80 and she began all over again.
Food rationing made it harder but she managed to get a special permit for extra rations. She made nearly a million biscuits that were sent to troops.
Letters from all over the world came to her, simply labelled to Mrs Barnard, The Gingernut maker.
Marion lived to 100 - telling her story to Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision - before she died on August 16, 1965 and is buried in Bolton St Cemetery.
For those who want to know here is the recipe: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/.../mrs-barnards-gingernuts.../

The astonishing price paid for a single huia feather - $46k - in an auction in May came 116 years after the last confirmed sighting of the bird.
Huia, and their feathers, are considered sacred.
Overseas there are many pieces of New Zealand, either in private collections or in museums.
New Zealand was the last country on earth to be discovered. And it came with a new range of extraordinary creatures.
The feather (and fur) trades were massive. The demand for more and new exciting feathers to adorn hats or other fashion items was so large that whole species have been killed off for it. Women, after all, were not properly dressed without a hat.
Even now, Te Papa holds a number of items that would be considered extremely bad taste now, a muff made from a kiwi, another made from a Southern royal albatross.
Other museums hold similar pieces, like a muff made from a king penguin in Otago.
It was, of course, considered completely normal then and there were a number of businesses who offered the pretty bits for sale.
One was Liardet’s in Wellington.
Hector Evelyn Liardet had been born in Kent in 1827 and left England with his father and six brothers headed for Australia, landing near Melbourne at a beach that ended up being called Liardet’s beach.
For a while the family lived in tents before the father Wilbraham built a hotel and a jetty and set up business.
The family also went back and forth to New Zealand - and Hector came to Otago for the gold rush there.
He ended up in Wellington where he set up as a naturalist and a dealer in Maori curiosities - including things like feathers with his wife Elizabeth.
In 1876 he showed off the fur and feathers of New Zealand at the Philadelphia Exhibition, revealing new things to the world.
The Evening Post reported:
“The manufacture of muffs is now a local industry in Wellington. Unkind punsters might insinuate that the community was already amply supplied with muffs, but any lady who saw one of the seagull muffs manufactured by Mrs Liardet would immediately think otherwise. These muffs are made from seagull skins, the feathers being of dazzling whiteness. The birds are shot by Mr Liardet, jun., the skins preserved by Mr Liardet, sen., and manufactured into very beautiful appendages to a lady’s outdoor toilette by Mrs Liardet. They are much superior to any imported articles of the kind.”
Hector often got skins from sailors that called into the port in Wellington. In January 1875, Liardet received “130 splendid skins of albatross and mollyhawks” from the officers of the French transport ship La Vire, which had returned from the sub-Antarctic islands, along with an order for “25 sets of muffs, tippets &c” destined for Paris.
They sold their goods both locally, and internationally.
After Queen Victoria and Princess Alexandra admired their work at the Indian & Colonial Exhibition in 1886, the exhibition’s New Zealand commissioner, Julius von Haast sent Queen Victoria a muff and collarette made from the skin of a pūtakitaki, and Princess Alexandra a snowy white albatross muff. The Liardet's priced their albatross muffs for between £2 and £3.
Eventually the fur and feathers trade died out.
Hector died on November 28, 1891 and is buried in the Bolton St Cemetery.​

The fear of Russia invading has terrified New Zealanders for years.
As far back as 1873 we would panic at any hint that the Reds were coming.
So when the news broke in February, 1873, that a Russian warship was in Waimate harbour and that troops were on land, people were aghast.
After all, any mention of Russian ships in our waters already had people panicking.
But it wasn’t true.
The report was published in the Daily Southern Cross, of a Russian invasion of Auckland by the ironclad cruiser Kaskowiski – ‘cask of whisky’. Despite an asterisk in the story’s headline referring to a date almost three months in the future, gullible Aucklanders were alarmed to read that marines from the Kaskowiski had seized gold and taken the mayor, Philip Philips, hostage, captured ammunition and attacked a British ship in the harbour.
Quite a number of people were taken in by the article.
But it did its job, the Government commissioned a report into the country’s defences.
David Luckie, the editor and publisher of the newspaper, believed the threat was such that a fake report was needed to wake people up.
While perhaps not the most responsible way of trying to wake up the public, it was indicative of how the public viewed the Russians. The continuing fear led to the building of a series of fortifications in coastal cities to protect from attacks from the sea, some of which included large artillery guns.
Luckie was born in Scotland on October 5, 1827, the son of Thomas Luckie and his wife Mary. Initially he worked in a mercantile office and a law clerk before starting work for a newspaper.
In Lancashire he married Fanny Clara Dickinson in 1861.
In 1863 he and his family came to Nelson on the Electra to become editor and part owner of the Colonist newspaper.
One of the first big stories was of the four men found guilty of the Maungatapu murders.
He also became active in local politics - gaining a seat on the Nelson provincial council.
Luckie became editor of the Daily Southern Cross after moving to Auckland in 1873, then was editor along with William Berry of the New Zealand Herald when the two papers merged.
Later he moved to Wellington to become editor of the Evening Post but only remained six months before becoming government insurance commissioner.
He stepped down due to ill health in 1889 but went on to write articles for Wellington newspapers for years. He retired in December 1908 and died in Wellington on May 6, 1909.
He is buried in Karori Cemetery.​

​New Zealand has been a land of giants, huge raptors, birds, insects once roamed our islands.
It’s also been a haven for flightless birds, after 60 million years of isolation and due to the lack of land based predators.
And also massive penguins.
The largest penguin in the world is now the Emperor penguin but before that was different types of giant penguin, some about waist high and up to 80kg and others that were up to 350kg that lived in the cold waters of the ocean surrounding us about 60 million years ago.
New discoveries of fossils have meant a better understanding of it, but long ago, three little bones - now held at Te Papa were the first discoveries of giant New Zealand species.
Why they went extinct (when some giants like the moa survived into a modern age) is debated, but they also disappeared about the same time seals began spreading through the area.
Those three bones came from Charles Traill who had been born on November 26, 1826, in the Orkney Island in Scotland and educated in Edinburgh after which he became apprenticed as a lawyer.
In 1849, he struck out for Australia where he took up sheep farming, on to California for the gold rush, a visit to Britain then in 1855 came to New Zealand.
He set up a mercantile firm with a partner but it was ultimately not successful.
While living in Oamaru he made a trip to Foveaux Strait and discovered oyster beds.
He shifted to Stewart Island and bought Ulva Island (now part of the Rakiura National Park).
Charles was postmaster and storekeeper for the area for many years.
It was in 1872 that he was in Fortification, Southland when he found three bones.
They have proved to be from a giant penguin.
Charles became known as a passionate botanist and natural historian. He collected so many shells that were left for museums.
He had married Jessie Buckholz in 1871 and died in 1871 and is buried on the island he loved.

The first official casualty of World War one for New Zealand was Sapper Robert Hislop.
And he was nowhere near the front.
Indeed, Robert was close to home - guarding the Parnell railway bridge in Auckland.
The First World War saw more than 120,000 men enlist and about 100,000 of those - mostly young men - went overseas. One in five did not return.
But back home there were any number of men who stayed, often used to guard assets, even lay mines in harbours to protect our shores.
Robert Arthur Hislop was one. He was an employee of the Railways Department and a member of the North Island Railway Battalion.
Like many others he was sent out to guard what were considered strategic assets.
On August 13, 1914, Robert was doing just that, making sure the bridge was safe when he fell.
He fell between the sleepers on to the road way below fracturing both femurs.
He was found and taken to hospital but his injuries were too severe and he died.
Robert was the son of Robert Hunter Hislop and Jane Hislop and until shortly before his accident had lived in Christchurch. He had only recently moved to Auckland.
It took more than 100 years for him to be officially recognised as New Zealand’s first casualty of the war.
Hislop received a military funeral, a cortage was assembled under Lieutenant Colonel Hartley with two companies of the North Island Railway battalion, the New Zealand engineers and members of the Expeditionary Force from Epsom Camp along with the Garrison Artillery Band.
His body was conveyed from the railway station by train then to the cemetery.
Robert’s gravestone featured the battalion’s badge, and his name appeared in the Railways Department roll of honour. But he had not enlisted in the NZEF and was never assigned a service number, which perhaps explains why his name was not entered on the official national roll of honour.
In 2014 Hislop was one of six servicemen added to the official roll after the New Zealand Defence Force determined that he had died as a result of war service.
He is buried in Waikumete Cemetery.​

Alfred Hanlon’s first murder trial was a sensation.
HIs client Billy Fogarty had hit Jimmy Fiddis who fell over, hit his head and died. Billy was charged with manslaughter and found guilty - but by the end, he served just one hour in custody.
Because Billy was 12 and Jimmy was only just 11 and had been arguing over a toy.
In his time as a lawyer Alf - as he was usually called - was the defence in 18 murder trials and 22 manslaughter trials.
As a lawyer he was considered the very best in early New Zealand, making his name with some of the most high profile cases New Zealand has ever seen, like baby farmer Minnie Dean.
Alfred - or Alf as he was usually called was born on August 1, 1866, to Elizabeth and William Hanlon who had come to New Zealand in 1862 from Ireland.
William became a member of the Otago constabulary and Alf would have seen the law in action.
Alf attended various schools, not always enthusiastically, before becoming a law clerk at age 15 then becoming a barrister and solicitor.
He had to set up his own practice in his early twenties and his career spanned over 50 years, becoming a King’s Council in 1930.
Alf was an impressive man, standing well over 6ft in his black robes and his turn of phrase and addresses to juries was considered legendary so much so that he actually drew crowds to trials where he appeared. He was commanding in the courtroom and an exceptional speaker.
The case he is most associated with is Minnie Dean in 1895, the only woman to be hanged in New Zealand, and obviously a case he lost. He had contended that it was manslaughter rather than murder.
His grasp of the dramatic often worked to his advantage. In the case against Thomas Kerry for casting away a yacht at the mouth of the Waitaki River he suspected a document was a forgery. He had a photograph made, enlarged and thrown up against a screen to compare the words added to the original. It was so successful the prosecution opted to withdraw the document as evidence and Hanlon’s client was acquitted.
As well as criminal work he worked divorce cases and nautical litigation - he had a river limit captains certificate himself.
Like many great lawyers, he was theatrical, Alf loved Shakespeare and he considered acting as a career at one time. He was a founding member and president of the Dunedin Competitions Society and the Dunedin Shakespeare club.
He declined to get involved with politics but was president of the Otago District Law Society.
Alf hated snobbery, was atheist, loved gambling and often wore a sprig of boronia in his buttonhole.
In 1894 he had married Mary Ann Hudson (daughter of the founder of Hudson’s biscuits) and they had four children.
He died at Dunedin on February 6, 1944, aged 77, and was buried at Andersons Bay cemetery.​

The gathered crowd watched in horror as three little girls stood near the roof of Auckland’s posh Grand Hotel as it burned.
Below, their father, in his pyjamas yelled for help. But it wasn’t to be.
The Grand Hotel had been built in 1881 and was considered the pinnacle of fashionable hotels of the time. So much so that the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall were due to stay there as part of their Royal Tour.
On May 30, 1901, there were actually fewer guests than normal, only the staff, the owner and his family and a few guests.
The night porter Henry Jones had been cleaning a guest's shoes when he saw smoke.
He woke the owner Alexander Johnston who quickly got his wife and baby son out but when he and Henry tried to go back in, the smoke drove them back.
Neighbours by now could see the smoke and fire and the call had gone up for help.
But while Auckland was a quickly growing city, a fire brigade was not the biggest priority.
The bell at the firehouse on Albert St rang out and the men could see the glow of the fire in the sky. They scrambled to get there, but back then that involved getting the horse set up and the trip, and with some men pulling a handcart with more equipment. Firemen from other suburbs also set off.
By the time they arrived the fire was engulfing the hotel.
No one knew how many were still inside, although Alexander knew his three young daughters were. Some of the maids had managed to leap from their bedroom windows into the street. One, Dora Wallace, died trying to jump to safety.
Despite what was then a desperate fight to put the fire out, the fire swept through the hotel and by the end the bodies of the three girls and a bank inspector Fred Ayres were found in the charred remains.
It led to a discussion about fire escapes on buildings that improved the public buildings in Auckland in the event of fire as well an upgrades for the fire brigades.
All three girls, Leonore, aged 14, Eva, 12, and Nina, 6 are buried at the Purewa Cemetery.​

Crowds lined up between the gaol and King Edward Place as murderer Joseph Burns was brought, in a cage, with a military escort, through the streets to his execution.
Not many executions in New Zealand were done in public. It was more common for them to be done in the yard of a jail with just enough witnesses to make sure it was done.
But Joseph Burns was the first European man to be hanged in the young colony and he had killed three people.
Burns was born in Liverpool, England somewhere between 1806 and 1811 and joined the Navy when he was 20. He arrived in the Bay of Islands aboard the Buffalo in 1840. Not long after the ship was wrecked and Burns took a discharge. He worked for the government for a bit before becoming a ship builder.
Likely an alcoholic, he and Margaret Reardon, who was estranged from her husband, set up house in Mechanics Bay. They had two sons.
Burns then worked for a market garden but was dismissed. Work was hard for him to find but he began working as a farm worker only to be dismissed again and evicted from the farm cottage. He built a shack at Shoal Bay where Burns worked for the local chief Patuone along with the vegetables Margaret grew.
He became increasingly desperate for money. Then on October 22, 1847, he murdered Lieutenant Robert Snow, his wife and daughter with a tomahawk for the £12 in their home. He mutilated the bodies in a way supposed to make it look like it was a Māori attack.
It led to Māori in the area to be suspected but a coroner believed it was a different type of murder.
Margaret left Burns who opted to join the naval steamer Inflexible for a trip to Australia.
When he got back he tried to persuade Margaret to marry him, as a wife could not give evidence against a husband.
When she would not, he attacked her then tried to kill himself. He was arrested and sentenced to transportation.
He asked for Margaret to bring the boys to the prison and then got her to lie for him about two shipmates of his being part of the Snow murders.
He ended up charged and accused Margaret of inciting him to make a fake confession but she owned up, admitting perjury and telling the whole story.
She was convicted of perjury and transported herself.
Burns was found guilty of the murders and only then did he make a full confession.
On June 17, 1848 he was taken from the jail across the harbour to the site where he had killed the Snows and was hanged before the crowd.
Initially he was buried at the Old Auckland Gaol but in 1966 he and other executed murderers were exhumed and reburied in the Symonds St Cemetery.
Photo by Tamara Gore.​

Down Wellington’s Lambton Quay people were used to seeing the dapper man accompanied by his little dog.
It was so common that even now, the man, John Plimmer and the dog Fritz, who was his constant companion, are still there at the entrance to the Plimmer steps, life-sized and cast in bronze.
In the colder months it's not uncommon for Fritz to end up yarn bombed, with a wool coat or scarf. And it’s one of the most popular and photographed pieces of street art in the capital.
Plimmer is sometimes called the father of Wellington.
Plimmer was born on June 28, 1812, in what was called Upton-under-Amon in Shropshire, England.
He was the second youngest of 12 children to Isaac Plimmer and his wife Mary.
Initially he was going to be a teacher but instead trained to be a plasterer and master builder.
In 1841 he came to New Zealand on the Gertrude and his first home was a raupo hut.
Local Maori thought he might be a bit nuts when he told them he intended to live in what would become Wellington.
He built his own hut at the top of what would be Ingestre Street and worked as a carpenter and builder and started a brick and lime works.
In 1851 the ship Inconstant wrecked in Wellington, running aground. Plimmer saw an opportunity and bought the hull for £80 which he turned into a wharf which was linked to the shore by a bridge and served as one of the first piers with the interior serving as a warehouse and auction room. It became known as Plimmer’s Ark.
It also served as a bonded customs store, immigration pier and office for the first Wellington harbourmaster. A light mounted at the seaward side of the ship became the first harbour light in Wellington.
Gradually the hull became landlocked as buildings and land were built up around it. It was discovered again in 1990 and is visible now as an archeological dig beneath the Old Bank Arcade.
Plimmer was a member of the Wellington provincial council, the first town board and then the Wellington City Council and organised the Wellington and Manawatu Railway company.
The suburb of Plimmerton is named after him.
Plimmer built the Albert Hotel in 1877 at the south corner of Boulcott and Manners streets and decorated it with carved figureheads of prominent Wellingtonians, including Plimmer himself.
The Albert Hotel was demolished in 1929, and was replaced by the St George hotel.
Plimmer planted an oak tree in his garden in the mid-1800s and it still stands, on the left near the top of the steps.
He had married Mary Rodden in 1833 who died in 1862 and remarried to Janet Anderson He died on January 5, 1905, and is buried in Bolton St Cemetery.​
​Picture from Te Papa's collection.

Long before we became fascinated by the Arthur Allan Thomas case in Pukekawa and who fed the baby, there was another little child left alone with the bodies of his murdered parents.
James Frackleton Holland was an Irish immigrant who was a farmer. He had sold quite a bit of his land for a freezing works and he and wife Hilda Marion - called Marion - lived in a two-storey house near the southwestern side of the Kaiapoi River. They had one son, Cyril.
Marion was his second wife. He had five children with his first wife.
Both James and Marion were found dead in their home on May 12, 1916. Marion’s body was found inside the front door with a rope around her mouth while James was in a shed where he kept the horse trap also with a rope around his neck. Both ropes were cut and there was no suggestion they had been hanged.
James, who was 74, was found in a pool of blood with his right arm dislocated although his cause of death was a blow to the head.
Marion was much younger than James in her early 30s. It was believed she went to his aid and was hit on the head with a bar and died of a fractured skull.
Hilda appeared to have been killed in the yard and dragged into the house.
Her death was reported to police by an insurance agent who visited the house the next day finding the front door open. He knocked and a little boy answered. It was three-year-old Cyril, the couple’s son.
He saw Marion lying in the hallway and went no further.
Police ruled out suicide but could find no trace of a murderer. But the family cat dragged in a piece of blood-stained wrapping into the house and it led to the police finding the iron bar wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
Which is odd. Why would the murderer not have taken the weapon with them?
Police were unable to find a motive for the killings.
There were plenty of theories. One was money. Holland drove to Christchurch the day before he died and withdrew over £1000 from a building society. He then cashed the cheque at a bank before taking it to Kaiapoi and put the money in a bank there.
But when he was found he still had £10 in his pocket. Police wondered if someone knew he had taken out the money and would still have it.
There was also a concern there was a sexual motive as Marion’s clothes were disturbed. But she had been dragged into the hallway which would have accounted for it.
It was possible they knew their murderer - no cry for help was heard from their home. A worker on the property though was mostly deaf and could barely speak and unable to help with investigations.
After months of investigations, police came up with nothing. Even offering a reward brought no new information.
Cyril was taken to a relative's house and both James and Marion were buried in the Kaiapoi Public Cemetery.​