As bizarre as it sounds, there were New Zealanders who rode camels into war.
The First World War had its own camel company, called cameliers, who operated in the Sinai Desert.
Technically they were part of the horse mounted 2nd New Zealand Machine Gun squadron.
We all know that animals were used in war, horses, dogs and pigeons especially.
But the story of the cameliers is less well known. But it makes sense. Camels do better in a desert environment than horses. At full strength there were 3880 camels in use.
In August 1916, No 15 (New Zealand) Company, Imperial Camel Corps, was formed from men originally intended as reinforcements for the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade.
Once they had received their training - it’s not like riding a horse - the New Zealand cameliers joined the 1st and 2nd battalions at El Mazaar oasis in the Sinai desert.
They joined other imperial camel corps into a single brigade with three camel battalions.
A mere four days later they took part in the Battle of Magdhaba.
They also began long range patrols, protecting the vital strategic asset of the railway and water pipeline.
Once the enemy withdrew from the area the rest of the camel companies were taken off those duties and formed into the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade's fourth ('Anzac') battalion in May 1917.
For the rest of 1917, the New Zealand, Australian and British cameliers fought against the Ottoman Turks, first in Palestine proper, and then from early 1918 in the Jordan Valley.
Despite being brought in for long range patrol the camiliers found themselves in full scale battle.
During the Battle for Hill 2029 the cameliers managed to capture the hill but it brought retribution from the Ottoman Turks who targeted it with heavy artillery fire. Quickly on the heels of this artillery bombardment came a series of ground assaults by Ottoman infantry determined to retake the hilltop.
The 4th Camel Battalion repelled them, holding on until they were told to withdraw.
The action cost the cameliers three of its six officers. Two of them, 2nd lieutenants Charles Thorby and Victor Adolph, were killed in action during the battle; the third, Lieutenant Arthur Crawford, died of his wounds in hospital two months later.
During their whole service, the New Zealand cameliers lost 41 men.
The cameliers were disbanded in 1918.
At the end Colonel T. E. Lawrence – better known as Lawrence of Arabia – convinced the commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant-General Edmund Allenby, that the camels would be put to better use by the Arab Army.
One of the British cameliers said while they had often cursed the animals they had become attached to their ugly ungainly mounts.
Ronald Francis MacKenzie was born in Wellington in 1889 to James and Annie - he went to Egypt in 1916 with the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and transferred to the cameliers and served in both Egypt and Palestine.
He died in Tauranga on December 25, 1952 and is buried in the Thames Memorial Park.​

How did you find a wife or husband in late 1800’s New Zealand?
There were some societal rules you couldn’t break. Women couldn’t (or shouldn’t) go to a pub, men needed to be introduced and chaperons were a thing.
So what if you could go to someone who could arrange a marriage?
Marriage was as much a business and financial partnership as it was a love match.
And Thomas Brown Hannaford had the answer.
As well as being a debt collector, accountant, inventor, rates collector and land agent, he was a marriage broker.
In February 1867, Hannaford established a registry service, advertising services for people looking for positions but it quickly moved into a matrimonial service agency.
Advertisements ran in national newspapers saying things like farmers looking for a valuable wife, educated widow looking to negotiate, asking for skills like chicken rearing, sewing, making bread and with flowery compliments like capable of spreading sunshine in any home.
He also married those he matched up.
In particular was the desire of farmers who often worked in isolated rural locations, to have a wife. Hannaford claimed he had found 115 suitable wives for such men and by 1890 he claimed 180 couples.
He refused to match up anyone in bad health or was not considered respectable by the time’s standards.
In many ways he was responding to the influx of young women created by a government campaign launched to bring them to New Zealand.
He asked the young men to complete a questionnaire that included, among other things, their income and prospects, something women would likely not consider a match without.
Hannaford was also at pains to advertise privacy and discretion.
James Thomas Browne Hannaford was born in 1823 in Brixham, Devon in England to James Hannaford and Ann Browne.
Initially he worked on the docks then was a clerk to a railway contractor.
He married Ann Jarvis in 1850 and they had several children before divorcing and making his way to New Zealand in 1859.
He worked at various jobs for a while before starting a land agency and debt collection agency which led to the matrimonial agency.
He married again in 1875 to Anne Mary Josephine Bethel. They had several children but tragically most died as infants.
Thomas, as he was called, died on July 15, 1890, and while there are no records, his place of burial was advertised in the papers as the Symonds St Cemetery.​

By the time nursing Sister Alice Clara Searell left Egypt after the Gallipoli campaign she had nursed more than 4000 men.
And not just of their injuries. Disease, like typhoid and venereal disease was also rife.
Alice had been born on January 18, 1883, in Christchurch to Richard Trist and Mary Searell.
She received a private school education at which she did excellently.
In 1908, she passed the preliminary state examination for anatomy and physiology and the next year was one of six nurses trained at Timaru hospital who passed the state examination.
Alice became a district nurse from Southland Hospital.
She offered her services as nurse to the expeditionary force in 1914 and enlisted in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service Corp on April 8, 1915 at the age of 32.
She left from Wellington aboard the Rotorua headed for Egypt. She was promoted to sister and on arrival in Alexandria went to the 31st General Hospital in Port Said.
It was hard work, meaning changing dressings all day on terrible gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
In 1916 she boarded hospital ship Braemar Castle to transfer to the Brittanic. She also worked on the ship Devanha before arriving in England in October 1916 before going on to the No.1 New Zealand General Hospital at Brockenhurst (Hampshire) in the south of England.
Alice nursed men from all parts of the war until the hospital closed in March 1919. In her time there she also nursed her own brother, Driver Lewis Trist Searell, who was transferred there in November 1917 after having been gassed.
Alice returned to New Zealand in March 1919 and was awarded the Associate of the Royal Red Cross (ARRC) decoration along with the 1914-1915 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.
She became assistant matron at the King George V Military hospital in Rotorua then acting matron and eventually matron.
Alice went on to become military matron at the Auckland Public Hospital in 1935 before retiring in 1939.
She continued with an active life, a member of the Returned Sisters Club, holding bridge parties and gardening.
Alice died on July 28, 1975 and was cremated to Purewa after a lifetime of service to others.​

The SS Rangitane left Auckland on November 24, 1940, with 14,000 tonnes of cargo worth millions of dollars and 111 passengers.
A Royal Main ship, she was heading to Britain via the Panama Canal through seas made doubly dangerous by the prospect of encountering German ships and submarines.
On board were servicemen and radar technicians - tactically important to the war effort. She also carried butter, pork, mutton and cheese, along with 45 bars of silver
The same day the SS Holmwood was sunk by German raiders but the Rangitane knew nothing about that and as they approached the 300 mile mark three days later the ship was confronted by the German ships Komet and Orion. With them was a support boat Kulmerland.
It was 3.30am when Captain Lionel Upton was called to the bridge - in his pyjamas.
The Rangitane was ordered to stop and not make radio contact with anyone. But it’s Captain Upton who ordered QQQ to be sent - basically code for ‘suspicious’ to be broadcast.
The Germans reacted by jamming the signals and began firing on the Rangitane.
For several moments there was chaos and neither side knew what was going on, but when Upton realised his message had been received he ordered the surrender of the Rangitane.
He quickly ordered documents like code books and key engine parts to be destroyed, determined to limit the German’s prize.
Another code was sent on an emergency transmitter - RRR - raider attack.
In the confusion the Rangitane had its steering damaged by the shelling.
Despite his surrender, the Germans continued firing and Upton wanted to fire upon them but was unable. So he had to order abandon ship.
Sixteen people, eight passengers and eight crew died. The survivors were put on to the German ships.
By this time the Rangitane was on fire and sinking, but the Komet fired again on the failing ship, sending it to the bottom. The German ships couldn’t hang around however, the cool head of Captain Upton meant his radio messages had got through and allied aircraft would be on their way.
The Rangitane was one of the largest passenger ships sunk during World War II.
The crowded conditions of the captured prisoners meant the civilians were to be offloaded, which ended up being on the tiny island of Emirau off New Guinea which they were later rescued from.
The military prisoners were taken back to prisoner of wars camps in Germany.
Upton was later released and returned to England.
Many of the prisoners felt the humane way they were treated was due to Upton’s civilising influence and impeccable behaviour.
Three crew members received British Empire Medals for their selflessness, including stewardess Elizabeth Plumb.
She had been born Elizabeth Ann Orr in Rothbury, Northumberland on August 31, 1882.
Despite being wounded by a shell fragment she reached the passengers and guided them to the boats keeping them calm.
She died in Bexley, Sidcup on June 27, 1960 and was cremated at Greenwich Cemetery.​

In the 1930’s New Zealand had a smuggling problem. But it wasn’t gold, or jewels or even things like alcohol.
It was coins.
New Zealand did not have its own currency before 1933 - the money in circulation was part of the British currency.
But after the New Zealand coins were devalued it led to large scale smuggling of coins.
Several rings were broken up.
In June 1933, the second officer and seventh engineer of the Marama were arrested in Timaru for attempting to export silver using specially fitted belts to hold the coins.
About the same time four men from the Wanganella were arrested in Wellington.
In 1934 the steward on the Monowai was fined £25 for smuggling £132 in silver coin.
There was contention over replacing the coins with a uniquely New Zealand set of currency.
It all led to the Coinage Act 1933 which laid out the weights and compositions of various denominations. New Zealand was the last British dominion to issue its own coinage.
In 1940, Leonard Cornwall Mitchell won a design competition for the penny and half penny for New Zealand.
Leonard had been born in 1901 in Wellington to Charles William Mitchell and Hester (Esther) Watson.
He became an artist studying at the Palmerston North Technical School completing a signwriting apprenticeship and a correspondence course in cartoon and caricature from America.
He was a stamp designer for the Post Office and head artist with the company Filmcraft (later the National Film Unit) in the late 1920’s.
Mitchell designed posters and illustrations for the Tourist and Publicity Department and worked in the art department of W D & H O Wills Tobacco.
He also worked in the 1940s for Coulls Somerville Wilkie which eventually became Whitcoulls.
One of his specialties was reconstructions of historical scenes.
He designed the commemorative centennial half-crown coin in 1940. Later he worked as a commercial artist. He was called the father of New Zealand graphic design.
Mitchell had married Victoria Adelaide Cogswell in 1923. Three of their sons, Leonard (Victor Leonard William) Mitchell, Alan Gordon Mitchell, and Frank Mitchell were also artists.
He died on September 22, 1971 and is buried at Makara Cemetery.
A large number of his works are in the National Archives and Te Papa. Picture from Te Papa.​

In a Dunedin cemetery is a member of an Eastern European royal family who lived his last days in New Zealand.
Prince Alois Konstantin Drucki-Lubecki was born in 1801 in Warsaw, Poland, a descendant of the Norman Prince Ruric who was once invited to govern Russia. His forefathers became Lithuanian princes. His grandfather had married a Polish noblewoman and a cousin was Prince Xavier Drucki-Lubecki, a minister of finance in the Polish government.
Lech Paszkowski in his book, Poles in Australia and Oceania 1790-1940, said Alois was an officer in the Polish National Army and took part in the Polish-Russian War, a failed revolution called the November Uprising seeking to create an independent state. When the movement collapsed he got away, but his estates were forfeited.
He left to live in Germany, then France before going to England.
There he married Laura Duffus in 1836.
With Laura’s brother, the Reverend John Duffus and his family, the group emigrated to Australia where he and his family were the first known settlers in New South Wales.
Unable to get a job, Alois and his new wife opened a school in Parramatta for young ladies.
But as the area became economically depressed, the school failed and Alois became ill.
After his recovery, the couple moved to Sydney then to Melbourne where Alois became a confectioner while Laura continued to teach.
In 1863 with Laura and his two daughters, Alois came to Dunedin where they settled.
The old prince named his Dunedin residence Koldano after the battle he had fought in an engagement with the Russians.
He was often called the talking general, liking to talk about those times. It is believed he became a bank manager in New Zealand.
During the Polish insurrection against Russia in 1863, Alois Lubecki contributed to the press campaign on behalf of Poles, writing to New Zealand newspapers.
Unfortunately, he was not to enjoy his life in New Zealand for long, he died on 7 October 1864. His wife lived until 1901 in Nelson and was then buried with Alois in Dunedin’s Southern Cemetery.
The Prince’s grave was restored in 2019.​

The case of murder against Cantonese miner Ah Lee would have been thrown out of court if it happened today.
Almost nothing about the evidence against him was solid, there was no motive for the murder, and there was even better suspects.
What is beyond argument is that Mary Young was killed on August 4, 1880. She was found in her Naseby home dying.
Mary was a young widow, who after her husband had died was planning to return to her homeland, Scotland.
Instead she was found by her neighbour Lee Guy about 7.30am.
That started a series of events that compromised any investigation. First a number of people came and went. Mary was still alive, but barely so Guy sent another neighbour to get help and then a doctor - who was 16km away.
Margaret Fogie who had come to help had spoken to Mary, trying to find out what happened and who did it.
She asked who did it? Was it an Englishman - and Mary managed to say it was not. When Margaret asked if it was a Chinese, Mary said yes.
By the time the doctor arrived, Mary was unconscious. Large stones were found beside her and likely caused her injuries. She died around 1.30pm
At the inquest the case for it being a Chinese man became the centre of the investigation. That turned public attention to all Chinese immigrants living in the area. Two were arrested shortly after but let go.
Attention then turned to 24-year-old Ah Lee. Lee usually lived at the Coal Pit Gully, did odd jobs and sometimes smoked a little opium.
He was arrested on August 10. Not long after, a Naseby businessman had a breakdown and began ranting that he had killed Mary. He was quickly and quietly committed to Seacliff psychiatric hospital.
Meanwhile shoe tracks found near Mary’s home had a distinctive nail pattern and a bootmaker matched it to Ah Lee’s boots.
A silk handkerchief said to have been Ah Lee’s was found under Mary and a local draper said Ah Lee had bought it from him.
Spots of blood on Ah Lee’s trousers were examined and determined not to be animal blood.
Ah Lee gave a sort of confession - although the translator who helped did not speak the same dialect as him. Shortly after Lee Guy was also arrested.
No defence was called for Ah Lee who was found guilty and hanged at Dunedin Gaol on November 5. Lee Guy was found not guilty.
But there were serious issues with the evidence. The boots Ah Lee had were not the only ones with that print pattern in the district and many people had come through Mary’s property in the hours after her death.
The blood found on Ah Lee’s trousers could not be found to be human. And the timeline around the handkerchief failed - the draper gave a date that did not fit with when Ah Lee had been seen with it.
Shortly after the Naseby businessman was released from Seacliff and promptly repeated his claim that he had killed Mary and was again hushed up.
Ah Lee was initially buried in the gaol yard but his body was reinterred in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery.
Photo by Bernard Hermant.​

Two ships are responsible for the settling of Norsewood in central Hawke’s Bay, the Ballarat and the Hovding.
But the man behind the settlers was Bror Eric Friberg.
Friberg was born in Kristianstad in Sweden on July 6, 1839, to Else Lundgren and Nils Erik Friberg.
He studied forestry and worked as a forestry officer in Scandinavia. He married Cäcilie Elisabeth (Cecilia Elizabeth) Böhme on January 31,1866 before they decided to come to New Zealand which was opening up forested areas for settlement.
They sailed from Hamburg in 1866 and arrived in Auckland where they had their first child. Friberg transferred to Napier where he managed the Hawke’s Bay Steam Boiling Down Company.
The Government wanted to make sections available and thought immigrants should be brought in to work the land.
Friberg offered his services to the Immigration and Public Works department as a recruiting officer.
Given that he spoke Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, German and English, he was appointed and was sent to Europe. The recruitment of Norwegian settlers had already been arranged and he was prevented from recruiting settlers in Sweden
He eventually sailed for New Zealand from Christiana - now called Oslo - Norway on the three masted sailing ship Hovding with 292 adult immigrants- mostly from Norway. It arrived in Napier on September 15, 1872.
A few hours earlier Ballarat, with Danish immigrants, had arrived.
It was not as simple however as travelling to their new homes. It was a long hard slog to where Dannevirke and Norsewood would be - taking days.
And when the men arrived they found there was little in the way of sections cleared and they would have to do it themselves. They were given an area and some tools.
So they set to work. The women and children arrived 12 days later but there were no shelters and many slept and cooked outside.
While their homes were being built - the men also had to work for the government - clearing land for roads - for three or four days a week.
They also found they had to pay £5 for their passage to their new country, £40 for 40 acres of land and £1 for their trip to the newly forming town.
They were disillusioned and bitter about it, but worked hard. Of those that arrived 63 families settled in the Norsewood area. Friberg took several to what was to be Dannevirke.
A year after they arrived the Hovding returned with another bunch of immigrants.
He supported a petition for an extension of time for repaying their passage money.
Friberg himself had applied for three sections in the Makotuku settlement and later bought four more.
He was a hard worker, travelling on horseback across the area in all weather and it affected his health.
Friberg was naturalised on February 1, 1876, and made a justice of the peace.
But in 1877 his salary was reduced as part of a reduction in the immigration service. The next year he requested a leave of absence due to ill health but the reply to that came too late, he had died on February 3, 1878, in Norsewood aged only 38.
He is buried in the Norsewood Cemetery.
Norsewood, of course, has a Hovding St and gallery, named for the ship that started it all.​

John Rodulphus Kent was first in quite a few things, including sailing the first European ship through the Rangitoto channel and entering Waitemata Harbour.
His was the first survey plan made, allowing other ships to brave the harbour.
But he’s also considered the man who brought mice to New Zealand, even if it was by accident.
Mice were, of course, all over the world - but for isolated countries that had never encountered Europeans.
New Zealand had a strange assortment of animals, but only a couple of mammals before human settlement, a bat and marine mammals like Hector's dolphin.
Kent was born about 1790 in England, although there don’t appear to be any records confirming that.
The first real mention of him is as an officer in the Royal Navy serving the government of New South Wales as captain of the schooner Prince Regent.
They surveyed timber resources in New Zealand and Kent was able to explore the Hokianga and Northland harbours.
A year later, as captain of the cutter Mermaid he sailed to Hawaii before returning to Port Jackson in 1823.
In May of that year he took the Mermaid to Foveaux Strait to look at whether a flax trade was viable. He went on to visit many South Island harbours, sketching coastal profiles to aid navigation.
It was in 1823 that Kent took the Elizabeth Henrietta, a brig, back to Foveaux Strait for another load of flax.
But this time the brig broke her mooring and drifted ashore on Ruapuke Island, one of New Zealand’s southernmost islands. It would later become known for a particular species of spider that was everywhere on the island.
But the Elizabeth Henrietta was carrying something else - mice that escaped on to the island, and over time came to New Zealand.
The Elizabeth Henrietta was refloated and went on its way, but by then the damage was done.
Kent went on to captain sealing ships before setting up a trading post in Hokianga in 1826 under the patronage and protection of the Ngāti Korokoro tribal leader Moetara, and formed a liaison with his daughter Wharo.
In 1828 he moved to Kawhia to trade with the Waikato Maori. There he met Te Wherowhero, paramount chief of the Waikato tribes and later the first Maori King, and married Tiria, his daughter.
His trading went well for years and Kent often crossed the ocean in various ships.
He retired to Kaitotehe, near Taupiri, his flax trading activity became based at Ngaruawahia, centre of the trade routes for the Waikato River and the Manukau Harbour.
He became ill and died at Kahawai on the Manukau Harbour on 1 January 1837 and on 3 January he was buried by his Maori friends in a cemetery on the Te Toro promontory. A collection of Kent's northern profiles is preserved in the Hydrographic Department at Taunton, Somerset, England.​

It’s clear, even in its current abandoned state, that the former St Mary’s Church in Carterton was once a beauty.
Now the church that was once the heart of a community sits alone, forlorn and looking like it had been through a fire.
From the outside it’s discoloured, stained glass windows are broken and the statue of Mary at the top is looking down on an overgrown garden.
Despite being on the main road, it feels lonely but there was a time when it was the centre of the community.
After the Christchurch earthquake, St Mary’s was assessed as unsafe and in need of extensive restructuring.
In 1876, Fr Anthony Halbwachs raised funds to build St Mary's Church in Carterton, the center town of the Wairarapa.
Halbwachs was the first parish priest in the Wairarapa. He also raised funds to build churches in Masterton, Greytown, Featherston, and Tinui.
Wellington architect Thomas Turnbull was picked to design the church.
It was built on a block of land purchased in 1867, for £146. Sited at 461 High St South, it became the centre of a growing Polish village and the first headquarters of the Wairarapa Catholic Mission Station. It originally had a 23m spire.
In 1901 when the towns from Carterton south were recognised as a separate parish. Fr Thomas Cahill was the appointed resident priest in 1904. The church was relocated a number of times and in 1932 it became the parish hall for a new larger church of ferro-concrete built for a growing congregation.
Thomas Turnbull was born in Scotland - the home of gothic style churches - on August 23, 1824 to Jeanie and Joshua Turnbull.
Both however died early in his life and he was raised by relatives. He initially went into the building trade before going to the architectural office of David Bryce in Edinburgh.
By 1851 he had gone to Australia - filled with burgeoning gold fields and began gaining experience designing churches.
He married Louisa Urie in Melbourne before the couple went to San Francisco where he worked until 1871 until he came to Wellington.
At the time Wellington was still rebuilding after a series of severe earthquakes. Turnbull advocated for structurally sound methods of building, using ideas such of iron supports and tensile reinforcing.
But his true talent lay in the gothic churches, a great many of which are still standing, such as St Peter’s and St John’s, both on Willis Street.
He also designed many Wellington buildings that showed his style, the General Assembly Library and a group of commercial buildings on the corner of Lambton Quay and Customhouse Quay, including the former National Mutual Life Association building, and the former head office of the Bank of New Zealand (1889), both strong and ornate classical designs typical of much of Turnbull's commercial architecture.
The old Kirkcaldie and Stains building and the stunning Old Bank Arcade are also his work.
Thomas died in Wellington on February 23, 1907, and is buried in Karori Cemetery.
Many of his works still stand and it’s a shame one of his churches, many of which are heritage listed, has been left to the elements.​