Fencible Village (Howick Historical Village)

**###KILTEDKIWI###** · 18th October 09, 12:58 AM

So, in an attempt to avoid a childs birthday party, I got dropped off at the afore mentioned area.

Found it very interesting as a distant relative was one of the Fencible Settlers in Auckland. (Also got fair molested by the people who run it when I let slip I was a rellie...worked out well, with both of us recieving extra information about the man and his family in question, I was able to fill in another line for them, and provide photos, and they in turn gave me some more information about his military history before becoming a Fencible)

They had some re-enactors present from the period of the NZ Land wars (if you are PC), more commonly referred to here as the Maori wars...

A re construction of a Fencibles accomodation when they arrived and found that their promised cottage wasnt ready (apparently)

Some of the men moving a mortar

And hopefully, the Sargent pointing the correct way to fire...

As a quick note, regarding the chap in the "Kilt like" outfit, I have ripped this out of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre

"...Bush Fashions.
Other times, other clothes. The Imperial soldiers in their day in New Zealand did not take to the kilt like the later Armed Constabulary, but after 1868 practically all the military forces in the field left their trousers in barracks or other permanent camps, and took the bush trail wearing the waist-shawl, like the Highlanders' tartan array and the Maori rapaki. At a later day many of us, when bush-travelling, resorted to the kilt, in the form of a bit of blanket or a small shawl, and found it a capital fashion for rough work, and particularly river-crossing in such places as the King Country bush before it was roaded and bridged, and in the Urewera Country beyond the limits of the horse-tracks. But nowadays pleasure-trampers, as well as many bushmen and surveyors of the later generation, are seen in shorts that recall their schoolboy days. There is virtue in both rigs; perhaps a combination of the two is the ideal bush costume.

Praise for the Shawl-kilt.
Lieut.-Colonel St. John, in his book, “Pakeha Rambles Through Maori Lands,” thus describes the kilt undress worn by nine-tenths of the bush fighters in New Zealand in the later wars:

“A flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up, a shawl worn kilt fashion, shoes and long stockings. To this dandies added a blue serge jumper. Such a dress is at first rather uncomfortable for the knees when going through a bush full of ‘lawyers,’ or, a trifle worse if possible, through high burned fern, with the charred stalks, now sharp-pointed, preserving inclinations acquired page 55 when green, under the influence of constant winds, and bent down in opposition to one's progress. But then, in river work its advantages are palpable. You have to cross a river, say, sixty times in one day's march, and that is not an out-of-the-way number. The trousers-wearing warrior finds a baggy weight gradually increasing about his ankles as sand imperceptibly invades his nether garments, well tucked into the socks as they are. There is a drag about the waist, and perpetual are the hitchings up and halts to wring out the part flopping about his ankles. Not so with him of the kilt; on entering the stream he simply lifts up his garment, wades through, and ten minutes after is as dry as ever.”

St. John well knew the convenience of this costume, for it was in that garb that he led his kilted A.C.'s and Maoris up the Whakatane Valley in the invasion of the Urewera Country in 1869..."

There were also some Boer War re-enactors there, with the three distinct periods of dress of the NZ units.

AND THEN THE CAMERA BATTERIES DIED....poo.

Won't be able to respond to this for a week, off to Perth (Aus) for work.