​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.​

Names are funny things. Streets, regions, cities all have names and there is nearly always a story behind them.
And sometimes the story behind the names seems obvious at first glance but in fact there is much more to it.
Take Elizabeth Island in Milford Sound. The largest island in inner Doubtful Sound.
We automatically think of things named Elizabeth are named after our late Queen. Or the first Queen Elizabeth but in reality it was neither.
Elizabeth Island is one of the many places in the Fiordland National Park named by settler, sailor, ship builder, ship captain, sealer, whaler and farmer John Grono.
And it was after his ship the Elizabeth - itself named after his wife Elizabeth Bristowe.
He also named Bligh Sound, again named for one of his ships which was named for infamous Captain William Bligh who was Governor of New South Wales.
Milford Sound was named by Grono after a place in his birthplace.
Grono was born in 1763 in Newport, Wales. Not much is known about his early life but he went into the Navy, aboard the Royal William as an able seaman and in 1798 he went to Australia aboard the HMS Buffalo and transferred to the first Australian ship.
He left that life in 1801 and went into business going into farming and growing wheat.
After losing money he took up sailing again - seal fur hunting in New Zealand.
He gathered several ships and organised the trips, even turning to ship building.
In 1809, his ship the Governor Bligh struck a rock in Foveaux Strait. The ship was able to be saved and he made it back to Sydney with over 10,000 seal skins.
It was the first time the name of the strait had been in print.
Later that year he returned and entered Doubtful Sound where he set up a base on the south coast of Secretary Island which is still called Grono Bay. The highest peak on the island is named Mount Grono.
He also named Milford Sound after Milford Haven in Wales. Nancy Sound and Caswell Sound, and Milford Sound's Cleddau River have also been traced back to him.
Later he made two more trips to New Zealand aboard the Elizabeth before handing his ships over to his son-in-law Alexander Brooks.
Permanently back on dry land he concentrated on ship building.
Grono died on 4 May 1847. Elisabeth had died fourteen months later at age 77. They are buried at the entrance to Ebenezer Church, New South Wales.
Photo over Doubtful Sound near Elizabeth Island from Te Papa’s collection​

​War artists often captured the harsh realities of war in a way that gave a visual shock.
Not only did they show us the images but some were also appointed officially by governments who used them in other ways, to show them landscapes so they could plan, record events or for propaganda purposes.
Nugent Herrmann Welch was born on July 30, 1881 in Akaroa to Joseph and Isabel.
Joseph was surveyor and in 1893 he took a position as a draughtsman in Wellington and moved his family there.
Nugent was interested in art early, copying his father who was an amateur artist.
He passed first and second grade drawing exams and became a clerk in the accounts branch of the Wellington Harbour board but hated it, resigning to become a full time artist.
He worked full time from the family’s Wright Street home in Mount Cook then opened a studio in Boulcott street and began exhibiting.
The first World War came and he enlisted in March 1916 and served with the 2nd Battalion, New Zealand Rifle Brigade on the western front.
In April 1918 Nooge as he was called was appointed divisional war artist with the temporary rank of sergeant. His landscapes often featured ruined buildings and seldom included people, portraying the desolate aftermath of battle.
After his discharge in 1919 he went back to his art, becoming a member of the council of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.
For the National Art Gallery's opening in 1936, he was commissioned to paint a large canvas of Wellington Harbour; it was later displayed at Government House.
Landscapes in particular held his interest, and most of his attention was devoted
to the lower North Island, particularly Wellington's rugged coastline.
Cape Terawhiti was one of his favourite painting locations. Tall and athletic, he regularly tramped for three hours to Oteranga Bay, where he would paint by day (often nude) and spend nights in a cave furnished with wood from the beach.
He most often worked in watercolours.
He received an OBE in 1949 and many of his works at held at Te Papa.
After a fall in 1964 he was forced to give up his studio. He never married and lived in his family home until 1967 when he moved to a rest home with his sister Jessie.
He died in Wellington on July 16, 1970 and his ashes were scattered at Cape Terawhiti.

Dr Margaret Cruickshank was so worn out from her work trying to help those sick during the influenza epidemic, she lost her own life.
She was one of 14 doctors who died trying to save lives during the outbreak.
Margaret Barnet (or Barnett) Cruickshank was born on New Year’s Day, 1873, to farmer George Cruickshank and his wife Margaret.
They lived in Hawksbury - which was later called Waikouaiti - in Otago. Margaret and her twin Christina were about 10 when their mother became gravely ill. Life being hard, the girls alternated going to school - one staying home to care for the five younger kids while the other attended and then that twin taught what they had learned to the other.
Their mother died on June 19, 1883.
Margaret went on to high school where she was joint dux with her sister then she won a New Zealand University Junior Scholarship in 1891. Christina gained an MA and Msc and later became principal of Whanganui Girls College and Margaret went to the University of Otago Medical school.
She became the second woman in New Zealand to complete a medical course and graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine in 1897.
Margaret became the assistant to a doctor in Waimate and in 1897 became the first New Zealand woman to register as a doctor and go into general medicine.
With only one break - in which she studied for a year overseas - she worked at that practice and her patients were devoted to her.
She then obtained the degree of doctor of medicine in 1903 and studied in Edinburgh and Dublin.
Her patients in Waimate presented her with a purse with 100 sovereigns and a gold watch for her trip.
Margaret returned in 1914 to a huge workload - many men were away with the First World War and there was much to be done. Along with the practice she organised the local red cross fund and worked at the hospital.
When the influenza epidemic hit she responded with more work. She was the only doctor left in the district and used a bicycle or horse to get to her patients when her driver fell ill. Sometimes she helped by feeding the children, cleaning and milking the patients’ cows.
In November 1918 she caught influenza herself and while she tried to continue working - and did for several days - she was eventually hospitalised and died of pneumonia on November 28, 1918.
The people of Waimate turned out for her funeral - lining the streets to farewell her.
A statue of her was put up - the first time a statue of a woman other than a royal was put up in New Zealand - with the words The Beloved Physician/Faithful unto Death.
She is buried in the Waimate Old Cemetery.​