SAM NEILL: New Zealand, or Aotearoa, as Maori call it,
has been my home for most of my life.
But today, for me, a first.
I'm on my way to an emotional homecoming.
Maori remains held in foreign museums
are rightfully being returned to their iwi, their tribes.
(PEOPLE SING AND CHANT)
The two skulls were apparently taken in about 1890...
..without the knowledge or approval of local iwi.
MAN 2: Today, we consider this acquisition of such a collection
as contravening to human dignity.
On Lieutenant James Cook's voyage to New Zealand in 1769,
Joseph Banks was the first to purchase a preserved human head,
foreshadowing what would later become a macabre trade.
On my voyage around New Zealand in the wake of Cook,
I'm looking for new stories behind old history
and, in doing so, trying to understand what happened...
(BOTH LAUGH)
..and why that matters.
In 1769, Cook was on his first epic Pacific voyage.
So far, he and his ship, the Endeavour,
have been to the Tahitian islands.
There, he advanced science and navigation
by mapping the transit of Venus.
His men, meanwhile, traded Venus's other pleasures,
swapping nails for sex.
But in July, it was time to go.
Before the ship departed, Joseph Banks, the botanist,
persuaded Cook to take with him a guest,
a high-ranking Tahitian, the extraordinary Tupaia.
Tupaia was one of the most important religious leaders in Tahiti.
Encouraged by Sydney Parkinson, the artist on board,
Tupaia took up painting.
Except it's incredible there's no known image of Tupaia himself,
which is curious given that we know
he was a handsome and impressive figure.
But Tupaia's own painting of a chief mourner,
a role that he would have played himself at various times,
might serve as a kind of self-portrait.
It's an enigmatic picture indeed.
Cook would have no idea how critical Tupaia would become
in the next few months.
From Tahiti, the Endeavour sailed south,
under Admiralty instruction, to find the fabled great southern continent.
But with no such land in sight, Cook turned west, into the unknown,
unknown to Europeans apart from two squiggles on a chart
by the Dutchman Abel Tasman more than a century earlier.
Four of Tasman's men had been slaughtered by Maori.
Cook must have had some sense of trepidation
imagining what kind of welcome he might enjoy.
After months at sea and desperate for fresh water and food,
Cook has no choice but to make contact.
He leads a shore party towards signs of settlement.
And he spots a group on the other side of the river.
He rows across with a group of officers,
leaving four very young midshipmen here to look after the yawl.
You know what a yawl is, don't you?
And then, no sooner does he get there, he hears a shot.
(GUNSHOT)
What the hell has happened?
Cook dashed back and found a Maori man dead on the beach.
His companions had fled the scene.
This is a calamitous start.
The man they killed was called Te Maro.
Nick, his descendant, has agreed to meet me.
One of Cook's midshipmen claimed the shot was self-defence
because of the way Te Maro approached them.
Cook assumes that it's a war dance in his journals.
Right.
And... and to an untutored eye,
if... if you're European
and this is a totally strange land,
do you think it's a fair assumption?
Yes, I guess... I guess so.
If they had left home that morning to come to town to do a little...
..little bit of relaxing or something,
but they're sailing across to the other side of the planet.
What do they expect to find? A little bit of England?
They were going to find other peoples
and other cultures and strange lands.
That's their whole intention. Yep.
And, in my view, they... they were prepared.
They had weapons. The weapons were loaded.
They shot Te Maro in the heart.
And I think it trivialises their...
..the potency of their role on the crew
to say they were just boys that were on some kind of sailing jaunt.
They were on a mission.
And I think this land was a brand-new land with new resources
and it had some natives on it.
You know, I suppose it's part of... of empire expansion.
You know, lives will be lost and...
..it just happened to be Te Maro.
Tell me about Te Maro.
He was very likely going to be the next chief of his people.
He was the carrier of...
..tremendous amount of traditional knowledge,
knowledge about the land, about the soil on the land,
so Te Maro's death meant also the loss of that knowledge.
It is a terrible day, and... and Cook goes back,
he's full of remorse.
I'm... I'm just...
..I'd just like to think there was a ray of hope there for one moment.
(LAUGH) OK, I'm sorry. (LAUGHS)
Well, I mean, we've got a rainbow in the sky today.
So there's a little ray of hope. Yes, there we go.
Yeah. But... and it's stopped raining.
Before leaving England, the Royal Society sponsoring the voyage
prepared hints, how to behave in new lands,
saying, "Every effort should be made to avoid violence."
But Te Maro's death was just the first.
(MEN SHOUT)
The next day, Cook landed in a second attempt to get supplies,
but 100 armed warriors met him with a haka,
an intimidating challenge
and a vital part of New Zealand culture to this day.
When... when I perform a haka,
what's going through my head is
all of our ancestors, the tribe,
it feels like I'm paying tribute to them
in probably the purest way I could, through haka.
MAN: You know, pretty... pretty much like the brother over there,
paying tribute to the ones who stood here before us,
you know, I mean, just looking up to them,
asking for guidance in what we want to do in life.
It's a tradition we like to keep uplifted. Yeah.
(MEN SHOUT)
(BLOWS)
Unlike the previous day, Tupaia accompanied Cook.
Tupaia called out in Tahitian, and, incredibly, the warriors stopped.
The Polynesians clearly understood each other.
Was it a breakthrough?
Now some of the warriors moved in towards the English,
each side close and fascinated by the other.
Cook and a warrior hongi, the pressing of noses,
and just for a moment, the possibility of real connection.
But then, suddenly, everything turned into chaos.
A sword was stolen.
Cook ordered his men to shoot.
They killed the thief and wounded others.
This was a disaster.
The second Maori killed was also an important chief, Te Rakau.
But his people have a different story of the events.
They had come to seize the Endeavour.
Cook had no idea he'd saved himself and his ship.
He leaves behind the name Poverty Bay,
because there's not one thing that he wants that he can find there.
This name is today considered something of a curse.
And I'm leaving Poverty Bay taken aback,
because that anger about those deaths on the beach all those years ago
lingers to this day.
(LAUGHS)
(SIGHS)
As Cook sails along the coast, they're constantly met with
what they interpret as hostility or aggression.
For instance, one day, a canoe comes alongside
and an exchange takes place.
Someone on board, possibly the chief, takes offence
and then they are presented with a traditional Polynesian custom,
it's called whakapohane, and it is the baring of one's bum.
I think you don't really need to understand Polynesian custom
or even speak Maori
to understand that the baring of a bum is as good an insult as they get.
But, in contrast to Poverty Bay,
this place, Uawa, or Tolaga Bay,
remembers Cook's visit much more fondly.
And here, despite the news about the fatal encounters in the south,
Maori were eager to meet the ship
because news had spread of a great man on board.
And no, not Cook, but Tupaia.
Our people had already heard about what had happened in Poverty Bay,
and so they were prepared for it,
so they went out in the waka and brought them in.
Right. Mmm.
It's a friendly encounter. Why do you think that is?
(LAUGHS)
I really think it's because Tupaia, the Tahitian priest,
was calling to our people that they were coming as friends.
So... everybody knows they're... they're... they're turning up.
The news has come up the coast pretty quick.
Very, very quickly.
And they wanted to know everything they possibly could know
about that ship and its crew,
because the news that had come up was that there were some deaths
and that those deaths were caused by a firestick.
They wanted to know what was this firestick that could kill somebody
at a distance?
Whereas they were used to hand-to-hand combat,
and some of the crew do record
that many a hour was spent entertaining the locals
by throwing gunpowder into the fire.
And, remarkably, Tupaia, who was only here for six days,
left such a warm feeling in this place.
Absolutely.
Because Tupaia was a carrier of messages for both sides,
he made out that he was the captain of that, that waka with sails,
and he ordered Cook's crew around in his own language.
And so... that's typical Polynesian sense of humour.
"I'll tell them I'm the boss here."
And he would have had a marvellous time doing that.
(BOTH LAUGH)
It's no wonder Tupaia wanted to elevate himself
in the eyes of the locals.
Physically tall and noble by birth,
he had, until now, been having a miserable time on the ship.
Cramped conditions, stale food, superior-minded company
were not what Tupaia was accustomed to.
But iwi here loaned this high-born priest
a patch of earth to call his own,
a cave, where he could hold court.
As a high priest from Tahiti,
he had the mana, or prestige, of a rockstar.
And here I am, and it feels like a real privilege to be somewhere
where so much important contact was made.
I'm in Tupaia's Cave with Pop.
We're about the same age, but he looks...
..half my age. (LAUGHS)
Which is deeply irritating.
And Pop's the guardian of Tupaia's Cave.
And, Pop, I just want to say thanks very much for allowing me to be here,
and it's just such an important place.
It's... it's a pleasure having you here, Sam.
You're the guardian of... of a rather sacred place.
Yes. It's got a lovely feeling here.
We all respect it.
This... this area, it's very sacred to us.
It would have been a very different landscape.
A fortified pa up here.
Yes.
And would have been all native trees up in there.
Can still see a couple here anyway. Yeah.
Yeah. So this would have been a...
Tupaia's knowledge of what had happened
in the 500 years or more since Maori had migrated from Tahiti
was a major revelation.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Thanks to Tupaia, the English ship was restocked and the men revived.
Sex may have helped in this regard,
and we can safely assume that Tupaia was looked after
with the same generosity.
Tempting as it must have been for Tupaia to stay here,
he was determined to press on to England with Cook
and secure an ally in King George III, as well as firearms,
for Tupaia had his own tribal politics at home to set right.
Before they left Tolaga Bay,
the English spent hours immersed in the landscape,
collecting seeds and identifying new birds.
Banks was particularly taken by this incredible rock formation,
describing it as "superior to art".
The Maori, not so much.
They called it...
..the anus of the land.
Today, some of those seeds that were taken back to England by Banks
have returned,
and 250 years later, the locals will replant these seeds around the cove,
restoring the farmland to its natural state -
a gift from the past.
An extraordinary idea.
Cook continued north, and his greater purpose became clear.
Apart from his navigational skills and his leadership of men,
I think the other thing I'm beginning to admire in him
is his dedication to surveying and charting
and, if proof were needed,
his work around the coast of Aotearoa, New Zealand,
is in his charts.
His mapmaking was so remarkable
that portions of his work were still in use in the 1990s.
But Cook's charts changed so many things.
Because of their accuracy,
people followed Cook's charts into the Pacific
and here, to the Bay of Islands in the north.
The Endeavour spent a month here.
Just 22 years later, before the century was out,
Cook's descriptions of safe moorings
and the evident abundance of gigantic creatures
lured future visitors.
Whales were highly lucrative to 18th- and 19th-century manufacturers.
Everything from buggy whips
to women's corsets, bone piano keys
and the handles of walking sticks and, of course, oil for lamps.
Fun fact - it took only 50 years of ruthless exploitation
for whaling to become commercially unviable in the South Pacific
and to push most whale species to the brink of extinction.
The Bay of Islands was a perfect base to and from the Southern Ocean
for whalers to refit and repair their ships
and to indulge their every appetite.
For a time, this was the biggest whaling port
in the Southern Hemisphere.
This foreshore was heaving with grog shops and brothels.
At any one time, there might be 20 or more vessels moored out there
and ashore were 600 whalers and sealers
and just as many prostitutes plying their trade.
It was known as the hellhole of the Pacific.
It was a chaotic place, much given to vice and violence,
which is probably quite a lot of fun if you're a whaler,
who were really rather fond of vice and violence.
The stories of the unions between Maori women
and white, or pakeha, whalers
have been passed down through the generations.
So tell me about your... your first pakeha ancestor.
Captain John Howe. American Captain John Howe.
White, pointy nose, blue eyes.
Tall.
And was arranged to be with my great...
..great-great-grandmother Heni Nuka,
and she was black as the ace of spades.
Why would you have an arranged marriage? Why...
Everyone had an arranged marriage.
She would have been around 19 years old, 20,
and he would have been late 30s, 40, 42-ish.
And that arranged marriage was because...
..we lost power.
We had to trade something.
But I have to say... you know, these things happen for a reason,
and now we can fit in the world a little bit more,
us little hybrids, half coloniser, half colonised.
Cook called it the Bay of Islands. What should it be called?
It's not about what it should be called. It's... it is called.
It was named, and it's named Ipipiri.
And that means 'the stars aligned during June'.
And he decided to make it his.
You know. He's renamed places.
That's pretty powerful.
And it's only powerful when you have other energies,
or people, for this matter, calling it that.
It's occurred to me that every time someone like Cook names something
that already has a name, he's... he's...
..he's disempowering the name that was there before.
That's right.
Now, this is where everything changed for us.
It's because of him.
I ponder on the power of language.
Calling places by an English name
surely made it easier for settlers to feel connected here.
John Robson is a settler,
and he's spent a lifetime studying Cook's charts.
JOHN: I was born about 8km away from where Cook was born.
So from a very early age, I had an awareness of Cook in many ways.
Then I found myself visiting countries with Cook connections
and ended up coming and living here in New Zealand,
where, you know, Cook is everywhere.
And... 9 out of 10 things are named after Cook for some reason.
Well, there's many... many things that he gave names to,
though, to be fair to him, he did try to find out names.
For example, I mean, he never called this North Island.
He called it Te Ika-a-Maui.
But he was also aware of his position.
He was only still a very junior officer. He was only a lieutenant.
And he needed to placate the people back in London and the Admiralty,
which is why we have Stephens Island in the South Island.
So he was a career man.
Yeah. He was sucking up. You could call it that.
(LAUGHS) OK.
In New Zealand, Cook knew he was in a critical race for the British.
The Spanish and Portuguese had made claims in the Pacific
since the 16th century,
and now the French, Dutch and Russians were there,
but Cook had an iron will to succeed.
He pressed on northwards and reached the top of New Zealand
in a blinding storm
to confirm the point mapped by Abel Tasman.
Persistence and precision - some of his finest qualities.
Tenacity was also the hallmark of the Ngapuhi,
the northernmost iwi Cook had been trading with during his stay.
And having witnessed Cook's cannon and muskets in action,
they were keen to do business.
Cook declined to give up his weaponry,
but subsequently, Ngapuhi would succeed,
trading with missionaries and whalers for muskets.
They have scores to settle and begin a campaign of conquest
against neighbouring tribes, who, in return, need to arm up to retaliate.
Whalers are knee-deep in the dirty business of arms dealing.
Thus, in 1807, only a few decades after Cook refused to trade weapons,
began more than 30 years of the Musket Wars.
Guns wreaked a scale of death previously unknown.
Some iwi were almost destroyed.
Many tribal boundaries had to be completely redrawn.
It was brutal attrition, killing some 30,000 people,
perhaps a third of the Maori population.
That, ironically, leaves more room for new settlers - the British -
unintended consequences.
In response to Maori and settler concerns,
the British government took over to establish order.
In 1840, a document called the Treaty of Waitangi
was signed by both representatives of the Crown and many Maori chiefs.
Written in just four days with, critically, two different versions,
English and Maori,
with small but significant differences.
Today, the Waitangi Treaty Grounds
are one of New Zealand's foremost attractions
and, as the brochures say,
help tourists discover the birthplace of our nation.
(CHANTS)
The treaty is the foundational document of the country,
but it has always been problematic.
The British believed that Maori were ceding sovereignty.
The Maori have never believed that that is so.
(GRUNTS)
Here, Sam. You hoist it, mate.
You do... you do the hard pulling and I'll just...
OK.
..do the easy stuff.
I think the Maori believe the treaty was introduced with a hope
of creating a good relationship with the European people,
not for the European to take over their lives.
What's your view on first contact?
What do you think?
Oh, I... I... I think as far as Cook and Abel Tasman,
I thought they were just explorers at the time,
they were just looking around on behalf of the King of England,
and they were exploring,
but I suppose I had to admire them that they... they came and they went,
they came and they went.
They didn't actually take control until well after,
when the missionaries came, with only one purpose,
which was to acquire land.
Numbers alone tell you the story.
In 1840, at the signing of the treaty,
Europeans were vastly outnumbered by Maori.
But in just 50 years, their population had shot up from 3,000
to 700,000 settlers,
at least seven times the number of Maori.
50 years after that, the country celebrated
the 100th anniversary of the treaty's signing.
Efforts to recognise indigenous culture were made.
Tainui iwi built this war canoe, a waka taua.
And the government had this meeting house, a wharenui, erected.
Inside, under one roof,
are wall carvings representing all Maori tribes.
Not a smart idea.
Because all these carvings here are all tribes, and they made...
..they... they said, so that we can be all...
One people. ..one people.
You know, one thing that we... we must understand,
that we are tribal people,
each with their own way of doing things,
and one tribe dare not cross the boundaries of another tribe,
because otherwise there will be war,
and so when they start putting carvings in of other tribes
into these kind of buildings,
it says that... it belongs...
..this country... this belongs to them.
And so there was a concern. Oh, right. OK.
You know? It... But also, it sets up confrontation.
Yeah.
And I can recognise one...
..chief there of the carving there
who was eaten by that other guy.
So... (BOTH LAUGH)
Who made a soup out of them, and...
..you know, and then... and then... then they in here.
(BOTH LAUGH)
But you understand what I'm trying to say?
(BOTH LAUGH)
Right.
So, in other words, we see it as another takeover.
Right. Take over our tribal area.
Insensitive. Yeah. Very insensitive. Yeah.
Hmm.
So there you are. (BOTH LAUGH)
Who do we have up the top, in that case?
I have no idea who the heck they have up there.
Nobody knows? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Yep.
Consequences, intended or otherwise, what followed Cook
was New Zealand becoming part of the British Empire.
I suppose, as much as anything, Cook was a precursor of things to come,
the colossal impact of the West upon this hemisphere,
upon the Pacific -
disease, dispossession,
the wholesale destruction of indigenous cultures,
mostly by missionaries, colonisation and so on.
And Cook could hardly have seen any of that,
but, as night follows day, that is what happened.
After leaving the northerly tip of the country,
Cook sailed down the west coast of the North Island,
heading to where Tasman had his fateful encounter.
Cook anchored in a nearby inlet, present-day Marlborough Sounds.
This is Ship Cove.
It's easy to see why Cook found this fit for purpose.
There's plenty of fresh water, secure anchorage, it was sheltered,
scurvy grass for the crew and food aplenty.
Cook spent much of his time surveying his whereabouts.
On summiting a hill one day, he surmised
the massive body of water, now called Cook Strait, separated two islands.
He was starting to understand the shape of the country.
Banks, on the other hand, was still puzzling over its culture.
One day, he, Cook and Tupaia were out rowing
when they spied a family cooking something on the beach.
They went in to investigate.
When the men come ashore, they find it's deserted.
There's a fresh camp fire
with a basket full of human bones picked clean.
Cook is strangely philosophical about this.
He concludes this is a natural consequence of warfare here
that you eat your enemies.
Tupaia, on the other hand, is completely horrified.
To me, it is a little ironic Tupaia was appalled,
because Tahitian warfare was grim indeed.
Enemy heads were strung like trophies on their temples
and prisoners were disembowelled alive.
But they didn't eat their foe.
So, when the family returned, Tupaia interrogated,
"In this country, do you eat their heads as well?"
"No," he was told.
Heads were revered.
While the Endeavour was moored,
an elderly man called Topaa approached the ship in his canoe.
He had something called toi moko to show them.
So... in a...
..in a basket, I imagine, he's carrying three heads.
Mmm. What are these heads?
Why is he carrying these three heads?
In the Maori world at that time,
and right up until the end of the 19th century,
the way of memorialising people was either in the ultimate memento mori,
of the preserved human head,
or, of course, in carving.
And seeing that they were perfectly preserved, Banks immediately,
as an 18th-century Georgian gentleman of means
and the keeper of a cabinet of curiosities, if not an entire house,
decided that he wanted one for his collection,
at which point Topaa was seduced
by a pair of fine white drawers
and parted with one of the heads.
So let me get this right.
Banks...
..sees fit to buy a head
for a used pair of underpants.
Yeah. Banks's second-hand underpants.
But, then, not that I jump to his defence, Sam,
those underpants were white linen.
No Maori textile could equal white linen.
And something that no-one else in the tribe on the island
had ever seen or worn.
That was the first instance on record
of the heinous trade in human heads.
No-one could have predicted the consequences.
The initial exchange turned into a grotesque commerce,
Maori killing Maori, collecting heads and trading with Europeans.
Reportedly, two heads bought one gun.
James Cook.
When Cook came, everybody was really fascinated by the weaponry,
by the way of controlling death.
Mmm. People wanted that.
We tend to romanticise how Maori were.
And... sometimes I get really annoyed by that,
because so often, we are portrayed
as being either stolen from or exploited.
But in those periods of first encounter,
we were friends and we were equals,
and that Maori set the terms.
Maori were conscious of what they were doing.
And even though now we have taken the more righteous view
of the preyed upon,
we were the predators too.
As my journey continues around New Zealand, I'm continually surprised.
For instance, it never occurred to me that in the toi moko trade,
chiefs could further insult their enemies
by sending opponent heads away from ancestral lands.
But it's good to know
that for whatever reason they left in the first place,
repatriation is bringing them home.
Cook now travels south down the east coast of the South Island
with one burning question -
would this land prove to be part of the great southern continent,
one that many theorised must exist in this part of the world
to balance the Northern Hemisphere.
Banks was a firm believer. Cook was sceptical.
When they rounded the South Cape, with no more country south or west,
Cook was proved right.
Tupaia had always known this to be so.
Tupaia, like Cook, was also a master navigator,
and he was already familiar with vast swathes of the Pacific.
Cook, for whatever reason, took this knowledge less and less seriously
as the voyage went on.
Tupaia was a proud man, and this must have hurt terribly.
He became increasingly aloof and detached,
and the two men, as the voyage went on, became more and more estranged.
I'm not the only one who finds Tupaia's story fascinating.
Tim Finn, an old friend,
has written a musical drama called the Star Navigator
on the complicated relationship between Cook and Tupaia,
and I've been invited to join the family jam session.
Where's Tim Finn? Has he done a runner? Oh, there he is.
TIM: I started...
..going on board the replica Endeavour in Sydney,
and as soon as I got into the Great Cabin,
it struck me immediately what a theatrical space it was,
'cause of the sort of compression.
But then imagining those... those people in there, those big minds,
those big egos, with Cook and Tupaia as the two navigators
that could have been such good friends
but were never able to kind of find their way into each other's worlds.
Tupaia is really the protagonist? Of Star Navigator? Yeah.
He's the strongest voice in it.
And it's his story that we see.
So, this is a song called As Far As It Goes,
and they're in Batavia, fixing up the boat,
gathering supplies and provisions to head back to England,
and one by one, the men begin to die.
One, two, three, two, two, three.
(STIRRING MUSIC)
♪ Been as far as it goes
♪ You've been as far as it goes... ♪
Tim's story finishes with the tragic end of Tupaia's time on the ship.
TIM: You know, and the sailors got a bit fed up with him
and thought he was moody and arrogant
and, you know, misunderstood everything, I suppose.
It was, you know, really sad.
And, you know, in the end, you don't want to think of it
just as a tragic story of one great navigator priest.
He lives on, and it lives on,
the visit and the intercommunications that went on.
Desperately homesick on the voyage to England, Tupaia became very ill,
most likely with scurvy,
and, his pride wounded, he died from pneumonia and typhoid fever
thousands of miles from Tahiti and home.
♪ Now no-one is here
♪ To share the last breaths
♪ It wasn't supposed to be
♪ Like this. ♪
That felt great. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
It's lovely, Tim. I reckon that was the one.
Let's do it again. I was just enjoying it too much.
(LAUGHS) That was a good take. Mmm.
Tupaia's memory lives on among Maori,
some who even named bloodlines after him.
They were able to connect because of their shared cultural history.
Today, Maori and white New Zealanders, pakeha,
also have a shared history,
stretching back 250 years to Cook's first footfall.
MAN: You know, first contact for us,
it was a huge spiral of change immediately.
From that first foot on the sand on the beach,
we were never, ever gonna be the same again.
This is Gordon Toi. He's an old friend.
He's an artist, an actor, carver and a tattooist.
Oh, look at the comfort!
The comfort.
(CLOSES DOOR) Rides don't get better than this.
No, they don't.
How you been? I've been good.
We first met on the New Zealand film set of The Piano,
and if you've seen that film, the tattooed arse is Gordon's.
This is where the famous House of Natives is.
I do believe you're right, Sam. I think... I... I've got a feeling.
Whoa! Thanks, matey. Sweet as, brother.
(GROANS)
(GROANS) Oh, man.
Gordon's workshop is where he creates whakairo,
or traditional Maori woodcarving.
Want to do some carving? Yeah, come on. Let's...
Between you and I, Sam, don't stuff this up.
(LAUGHS) Alright?
I'm watching out of the corner of my eye.
As Cook travelled around Polynesia,
he saw carving all across the Pacific islands.
But here in New Zealand, it was after contact with Europe
that carving reached a pinnacle as metal tools replaced stone and jade.
And we're really fortunate in this country to be able to have a culture
that still exists and lives and breathes, you know,
when the language is strong, the people are strong
and they want to sort of say, "Well, this is who I am."
And if you don't know that, then you're kind of just lost.
Don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going.
Yeah. Yeah.
That was deep, wasn't it?
(BOTH LAUGH)
It turns out wood isn't the only material
that Gordon's working with today.
I'm probably about to weep like a...
..primary school girl, but...
..I'm about to get tattooed by...
..my old friend Gordon.
And... (LAUGHS)
..he's looking more pleased than I think is a good thing.
(LAUGHS)
This is my boy, Tim.
He's about to see something he never thought he'd see in his life.
(LAUGHS)
I'm glad you're taking the opportunity. It seems fitting.
Gordon's the man. Mm-hm. Yeah.
Yes, quite.
(LAUGHS)
You... you're... you're gonna decide, aren't you?
Yes.
It's better if you decide. Yeah. Yeah. I'll decide.
Yeah. OK.
I'll be gentle.
I'm a little bit moved by this moment, actually.
I think there's something...
..important happening here.
Alright.
Following Maori tradition,
Gordon picks the design of the tattoo to suit his sitter.
(WHIRRING)
BOY: It looks like moana, Papa. GORDON: Aye.
It DOES look like the spiralling moana.
This is probably one of our most sacred symbols, actually.
We use it all the time to represent somebody's path in life.
You know, each... each road will lead them
into another sort of spiral,
and then they move on and move to another one
and so on and so on and so on.
And the fact that these two energies are meeting and coming together,
causing this effect of a spiral,
is a really powerful one.
Nice and steady. Nice and steady.
(MAKES CLICKING NOISES)
We're done. So here's the reveal, Sammy.
Oh, wow!
It's open for extensions.
(SOFT LAUGHTER)
(SIGHS)
Thank you, Gordon.
Maori culture has become so much more respected and...
..and part of what we are as a nation.
Wow!
(LAUGHS)
Yeah, there!
Sweet as.
Whoa!
(SPEAKS MAORI)
I'm grateful for this journey
and the opportunity to see this land with fresh eyes.
Cook's journey concluded in March 1770,
when he returned to the top of the South Island,
and here he completed his chart of New Zealand, of Aotearoa,
something that many people consider his finest achievement.
Tasman's squiggles have been transformed
into an impressive full outline of the whole country.
When the Endeavour left New Zealand,
Cook indulged in a rare moment of feeling,
naming the receding cliff Cape Farewell,
a name perhaps hinting at his fondness for this land,
because Aotearoa would compel Cook to return time and again.
I can understand why.
This place has power.
Maori call it mana.
Cook had followed his Admiralty's instructions perfectly,
but, as he later wrote,
"The man who does no more than carry out his instructions
"will never get very far in discovery."
Cook was supposed to return directly to England.
He decided instead to head towards the coastline
of the great land we know today as Australia
and chart it.