Searching for:

Valintines' Fire On the 30th July 1978, Hamilton’s Bryce Street Market building went up in flames. Occupied as a flea market with no sprinkler system installed, the fire quickly spread through to the roof, then licked up the wall to the adjacent two-storey Valintines' Government Surplus and Appliances Store and the neighbouring six-storey Rural Bank building. The fire was reported in a Waikato Times article on 31 July 1978 (Reid, 1978): "A fireman on a turntable ladder battled to save the banking building. But flames swept up almost to the top before they were brought under control. The entire building was damaged by the intense heat. Even in areas the flames didn’t reach, plastic light covers sagged and paper turned crisp and brown. In the rest of the building telephones melted into blobs of plastic-coated metal and tables charred as if swept by a blowtorch. Government records were lost in the fire." The family-owned Valintines' store, a major Hamilton retailer and mail order specialist, was completely gutted in the blaze, as were the offices of Yorkshire-General Life Insurance and General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corporation Limited in the storey above. Demolition of the building occurred two months later, in late September and early October 1978. Buildings on the river side of Victoria Street, between Claudelands Road and Bryce Street, were also damaged or destroyed. The Rural Bank and the State Advances Corporation building were badly damaged but not demolished. Day’s Building, which housed Porterhouse Meat Parlour and “Bridge 500”, a stationery and book shop, were demolished alongside Valintines. Reference: - Reid, C. (1978, July 31). Blaze-swept market opened in defiance of fire-safe regulations. Waikato Times, pp. 1–3.
Read more

Agathis Australis Author: Jon Primmer, Curator These endemic, ancient giants ventured further south than any other species in their genus Agathis, leaving them solitary in Aotearoa. The ancient conifer Araucariaceae family was once widespread in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, now represented in a few regions of the southern hemisphere. Nowadays you’ll typically find Agathis australis clustered in groups in the forest, though sightings aren’t what they would have been a few centuries ago. They wear an armour of large flakes or scales, blue/grey in colour, which drop away easily to shrug off an attack. As the juveniles become adults, they drop their lower limbs, pull up the ladder, and become untouchable. Their crown towers over their neighbours. Commonly known as Kauri, their tactics remain largely unchanged for millennia, incorporating a crucial competitive advantage. They can inhabit low-nutrient soils, and drain them even further, inhibiting any competition. Vegetation in the area can be stunted long after the trees are removed. However, in many ways they are a victim of their own success. The timber has a straight grain, with immense strength to weight ratio and rot resistance, making it an ideal material for shipbuilding, house construction, furniture, and panelling. The heartwood is a light yellowish brown, while sapwood has a lighter tint. They’re the third largest conifer in the world, and the trunk of Taane Mahuta alone has a volume of 244.5m³. The largest surviving ancient groves reside in pockets too inaccessible to have been worth felling. The sap forms precious gum, from fresh resin to semi-fossilised and on the way to forming amber. A whole gum-digging industry formed. It was predominantly used as varnish and became Auckland’s main export for fifty years. Our remaining groves are now susceptible to a new threat – Kauri dieback disease. It is caused by a fungal pathogen called Phytophthora agathidicida, which infects the root structure and disrupts the nutrient flow, essentially starving the rest of the tree. Their extensive root structure means a hiker with just a few spores on their boot can irreparably damage a mature giant. There is no known cure, so we are all responsible for protecting our giant taonga.
Read more