Snooker, which combines elements of pool, black pool, and pyramids, has gradually superseded these games and now rivals billiards in popularity. The game did not achieve any real importance overseas until after the First World War, and the New Zealand Snooker Championships date only from 1945.

On its professional side, New Zealand billiards have been long dominated by Clark McConachy, who has been the New Zealand Professional Billiards Champion since 1915 and World Professional Billiards Champion since 1951. He was runner-up to Joe Davis in the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Championships in 1932 and to Horace Lindrum in the World Professional Snooker Championships in 1952. In 1964 McConachy was awarded the M.B.E. for his services to billiards. He is one of the two official examiners for the British Association and Control Council.

Prior to 1963 the New Zealand Billiards and Snooker Championships were restricted to two representatives from each affiliated association. In 1963 the system of sections and post section play was introduced and 32 players were accommodated in each event. In 1964 twenty competitors took part in the national championships and the winner and runner-up represented New Zealand at the World Amateur Billiards Championship.

The following are the New Zealand amateur billiards and snooker champions since the inception of their respective competitions.

The first World Amateur Billiards Championship to be played in New Zealand was held at Pukekohe from 30 November to 16 December 1964, under the auspices of the South Auckland Amateur Billiards Association. Ten players competed, the contest being won by W. Jones (India). The highest placed New Zealander was H. Robinson, who came seventh in the tournament.

Although billiards have been played for many hundreds of years, the game in its present form dates from the early part of the nineteenth century. It was introduced into New Zealand in the late 1880s and became popular in the decade following. The first New Zealand firms specialising in the manufacture of billiard tables were founded in Wellington (1892) and Auckland (1893). Although the New Zealand Amateur Billiards Championships have been held since 1908, there was no national organisation until about 1927 when the New Zealand Billiards Association was formed in Christchurch. In the early 1930s this was replaced by the New Zealand Billiards Association and Control Council which now controls amateur and professional billiards and snooker in New Zealand. The following eight provincial associations are affiliated: Wellington, Canterbury, Auckland, Southland, Otago, Northland, North Otago, and South Auckland – while the NZBA & CC is, in turn, an affiliate of the British Billiards Association and Control Council.

(1815–53).

Botanist and explorer.

John Carne Bidwill was born at St. Thomas, Exeter, on 5 February 1815, the eldest son of Joseph Green Bidwill and Charlotte, née Carne, of Falmouth. Of a roving disposition, he sailed for Canada in April 1832 at the age of 17, returning in November 1834. In April 1838 he set out for Sydney in company with his sister Elizabeth. After only a few months in Australia he left on his first visit to New Zealand, arriving at the Bay of Islands on 5 February 1839. He commented succinctly on the scenic and agricultural limitations of the area and noted that Kororareka probably contained “a greater number of rogues than any other spot of equal size in the universe”.

The main purpose of his journey was to reach the mountains of the interior and he immediately took passage in a small schooner for the Thames, Mercury Bay, and Tauranga. Here he made preparations for the inland journey. The welcome assistance and generosity of J. W. Stack, who induced some of his Maori servants to accompany Bidwill, enabled him to overcome the shortage of Maori bearers. On 17 February the expedition of seven Maoris and two Europeans – one an unnamed European interpreter – set out, Bidwill taking careful note of the vegetation through which they passed.

At Rotorua he met the Rev. Thomas Chapman who had just arrived from Taupo, the first recorded visit to the area by a European. It was for Bidwill a fortunate meeting and he waited some days until Chapman was able to assist him further with additional Maori porters. The party set out again on the twenty-third, arriving at Lake Taupo near the village of Tapuaeharuru (not named) three days later. On 28 February they crossed the lake in a large canoe, reaching Te Rapa, close to the present village of Waihi, in the evening after calling at two villages on the eastern shore. Bidwill's guide apparently accompanied him no further than Taupo, although a mission-trained Maori “Peter” was most helpful on the last section.

On 1 March they climbed over an unnamed mountain–almost certainly Pihanga–to Rotoaira, called “Rotuite” by Bidwill. Ruapehu and the cone of Ngauruhoe were obscured, making it difficult for them to obtain accurate bearings during the approach. On the third, after a night by a stream, probably the headwaters of the Wanganui, he climbed over a hill to face an unexpected descent into another stream, probably the Mangatepopo, before ascending the cone. Ngauruhoe was a tiring obstacle and “Had it not been for the idea of standing where no man ever stood before, I shoud certainly have given up the undertaking.” Precise and observant as Bidwill is on so many features of his journey, the account of his actual climb and accompanying detail are disappointing. The absence of an interpreter probably accounts for the lack of all but a few inaccurately recorded place names. However, his climb of the peak is authenticated not merely by his very approximate reference to the diameter of the crater and his noting that the lip was higher on the eastern side, but more particularly from his sighting of the Blue Lake on Tongariro, visible only from the upper slopes.

After the ascent he returned to Te Rapa where he met a very angry Te Heuheu (Te Heuheu Tukino II), who upbraided him for climbing the mountain. The party, however, returned safely to Rotorua whence, after a further stay, they made their way to Tauranga on 24 March carefully avoiding a Waikato war party. Bidwill continued on to Te Aroha, Waihou, Matamata, and Tauranga before joining the missionary vessel Columbine on the first stage of his return to Sydney. He had successfully completed a bold and determined journey aided, certainly, by a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, but, so far as the Ngauruhoe climb was concerned, to be repeated once only during the next 30 years.

Business interests provided the excuse for another New Zealand journey in August 1840, this time to Port Nicholson, which enabled him to provide a postscript to Rambles in New Zealand, published the following year. Despite his comparatively brief visit and lack of knowledge of Maori, Bidwill formed balanced and judicious impressions, while his observations on the flora and Maori agriculture are still significant. The specimens he had collected, including those from Ngauruhoe, the first from any alpine terrain in New Zealand, were sent to Lindley, who, however, failed to publish them, although some duplicates were sent to Sir William Hooker at Kew.

Bidwill returned to England in the second half of 1843, presumably in connection with family business interests, but left again for Australia on the Arachne, this time with his sister Mary. In February 1845 he left for Tahiti, where he spent a year, returning to Australia. In September 1847 he was appointed Government Botanist and Director of the Sydney Botanic Garden, but was replaced in January 1848 by Charles Moore, a Colonial Office appointee.

It was immediately after this, in March 1848, that he paid his last visit to New Zealand, this time to Nelson, where he botanised around the town and extensively at the head of the Motupiko in the Top-house area. It is clear from letters to Hooker at Kew that he climbed to about 6,000 ft in two areas to which he gives the name “Morses (?) Mountain” and “Cypress Mountain”, perhaps in the St. Arnaud Range and to the northward in the Red Hill district. Probably one of the first Europeans to ascend above the bush line in these areas, he intended to send Hooker “a short sketch of my late trip in New Zealand which… you might be able to publish.” Regrettably, however, it appears not to have been written.

On his return to Australia he was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands at Wide Bay. He was reported to have discovered gold at Gympie. In 1853, after an exhausting journey between Wide and Moreton Bays, he fell critically ill from the effects of starvation and died. In both countries he was one of the most assiduous collectors of plants, normally sending his collections to Kew, corresponding with Sir William Hooker, and accompanying his son J. D. Hooker, then a naturalist on the Erebus and Terror expedition, on excursions around Port Jackson. J. D. Hooker in the Flora Novae-zelandiae quotes Bidwill as the collector of about 90 species, of which 60 were from the South Island, while in the Handbook of the New Zealand Flora (1864) he cites Bidwill as the first explorer of the Southern Alps “making extensive and very important collections on the Nelson mountains….” Many well known alpine plants were discovered by him, while his name is perpetuated in the bog pine Dacrydium bidwilli, the small alpine perennial Forstera bidwilli, and a number of others.

by Austin Graham Bagnall, M.A., A.L.A., Librarian, National Library Centre, Wellington.

• Correspondence with Sir W. J. Hooker, (MSS), Library of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew
• Bidwill Family Bible, Turnbull Library
• Rambles in New Zealand, Bidwill, J. C. (1952).

(1820–84).

Pioneer runholder.

Charles Robert Bidwill, the third son of J. G. Bidwill, was born at Exeter on 25 April 1820. At the age of 20 he was studying medicine, but, on the advice of his brother J. C. Bidwill, then in Australia, he left for Sydney, arriving early in 1841. He spent the next two years learning sheep farming and in March 1843 sailed for New Zealand in the schooner Posthumous. With him he brought 1600 sheep and some horses. A number of sheep died on the voyage and there were further losses at Nelson, the first landfall. The flock was put ashore on Fifeshire Island where, owing to a shortage of fresh water, many sheep drank salt water. Some of the survivors were sold disadvantageously, but the balance, probably under 400, landed at Wellington and were depastured on A. Ludlam's farm in the Hutt Valley.

Bidwill reached Wellington at a time when the shortage of suitable farm land was directing attention to the Wairarapa. Several parties visited the district, including Charles Clifford, Henry Petre, and William Vavasour, who had been active in these expeditions. Bidwill later joined them in a journey for the express purpose of leasing runs from the Maori owners of the district during the brief interval when this practice was officially condoned. The chief Manihera, whose influence at the time dominated the lower valley, led them across the Wharekaka Plains south of Waihenga to the Dry River and through the bush to Kopungarara. Clifford and Vavasour, who presumably had first choice, selected the Wharekaka proper, and Bidwill the country to the north. A satisfactory lease for an annual rental of £12 was arranged in both cases.

The prospective runholders then returned again by the coastal route to Wellington for their stock and such belongings as could be carried. Petre and Vavasour with Frederick Weld, who had joined the group as a partner, were in charge of the Wharekaka flock on the outward journey. Bidwill was assisted by William Swainson. Negotiations with the Maoris for canoes to ferry the animals over the lake were protracted and both parties camped for some time on the western lake approach. As Bidwill decided to return to Wellington for cattle, the Wharekaka sheep were first over and on to the run, which was a fitting tribute to the efforts of their owners. Bidwill, however, arrived at Dry River only a week later than the other party in mid May 1844.

Bidwill and Swainson stayed at Wharekaka for a short time while Maoris were cutting a track through the river fringe of bush to the Ruamahanga opposite the new station Pihautea. Two whares were erected close to the river and the laborious and exacting tasks were begun of shepherding unfenced flocks, living off the country, and erecting more permanent buildings on higher ground as time and weather permitted.

Bidwill appears to have taken some 350 sheep to the station which lay between the Ruamahanga and Lake Wairarapa and extending from north of Waihenga to Kahutara in the south. Progress was slow, for the 1847 stock return shows that after three years' occupation there were only 420 sheep, but 195 cattle and 46 horses. It was in fact horse breeding, upon which Bidwill early embarked, that led to his ultimate success. Maori rentals climbed steadily as the open lands in the lower Wairarapa and on the East Coast were taken up, and competition for the illegal and uncertain Maori leasehold became more keen. Following Crown purchase of the area in 1853, runholders were given pasturing licences over the runs they occupied and they set out to acquire the freehold as quickly as was necessary and possible. In 1855 Bidwill held 10,000 acres, an approximate estimate only, of which 1,970 acres were freehold. The total number of sheep was only 500. In 1857 and again in 1860, with the assistance of his father, he imported merino rams, but the breed was unsuited to the low-lying flood plains. Bidwill soon after changed to Romneys and was quickly able to demonstrate their superior advantages for the district.

On 13 September 1851, at St. James Church, Hutt, Bidwill married Catherine Orbell, by whom he had three sons and six daughters. Some three years after Weld's move to Flaxbourne Wharekaka was abandoned and Bidwill had the satisfaction of seeing his family growing up around him on one of the earliest New Zealand sheep stations. In 1879 his sons J. O. and W. E. Bidwill leased the run. Bidwill senior died at Pihautea on 21 April 1884, and in 1896 the run was divided into three blocks, Pihautea, Rototowai, and Tawaha. 2,200 acres of the latter block in 1906 were taken for dairy farms under the Land for Settlement Act, and there has been further inevitable subdivision of the other sections in more recent years.

In its cycle of initiative, uncertainty, and belated success with dynastic succession and subdivision, the Bidwill story may be taken as typical of many families in the pastoral provinces.

by Austin Graham Bagnall, M.A., A.L.A., Librarian, National Library Centre, Wellington.

• Wairarapa Standard, 24 Apr 1884 (Obit)
• Bidwill of Pihautea, Bidwill, W. E. (1927).

(Acaena spp.).

Bidi-bidi – a corruption of the Maori name piripiri – is well known to all New Zealand children because of the hooked spines on the fruit of some species which attach themselves to clothing. They also stick to the fleece of sheep and thereby lower the quality of some wool from sheep feeding on dry, hilly pastures.

Acaena is a genus of mostly prostrate herbs belonging to the rose family. Its main centre of development is in the temperate mountains of South America. One species extends up into California. Others are found in Australia and Tasmania, and about 14, all of which are endemic, occur in New Zealand. There are approximately 150 species altogether, by far the greater number being found in South America.

A. novae-zelandiae, probably the commonest species, is found throughout the country at the lower elevations, in tussock grassland, and open places. This plant has woody, creeping and rooting stems up to 3 ft long with short, ascending branches. The leaves are pinnate, with a dozen or more leaflets, and are up to 3 in. long. Flowers are in rounded heads on stalks about 3 in. long. The dark purple spines on the fruits stick out somewhat less than half an inch all around the head. Another widespread species is A. anserinifolia which has much the same distribution as the above. The spines are yellowish green to dark-brown. A very beautiful little plant is A. microphylla which forms mats in open places and in low vegetation about the volcanic plateau in the North Island and mainly to the east of the Southern Alps in the South Island. The spines are crimson or in shades of red and have no hooks. A. buchananii found in the South Island has yellow spines. Hybrids occur between some New Zealand species, and between the Australian, A. ovina and A. anserinifolia. These are common wherever the two species meet. A. ovina and A. novae-zelandiae also hybridise freely.

by Alec Lindsay Poole, M.SC., B.FOR.SC., F.R.S.N.Z., Director-General of Forests, Wellington.

(1842–1929).

Scientist and eccentric.

A new biography of Bickerton, Alexander William appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Alexander William Bickerton, Canterbury College's first professor of chemistry, was born on 7 January 1842, at Alton in the county of Hampshire. His father was a builder's clerk, his mother a farmer's daughter. At the local grammar school he gave little promise of future distinction. After being employed, first in a railway workshop and, later, in an engineer's office, he set up a cabinet-making establishment, using machinery of his own invention. The enterprise failed, but before it finally did so Bickerton began to study science under one Moses Pullen, a teacher working for the Science and Art Department. This was the turning point in his career. He had already married Anne Phoebe Edwards when, in 1867, he won an exhibition at the School of Mines, his percentage of marks constituting a record. While attending lectures by Huxley and Tyndall, he organised and taught science classes for working men in Chelsea. Failure had overtaken previous attempts of the kind, but Bickerton, who believed that a science class should be made “as entertaining as a music hall and as sensational as a circus”, was soon addressing crowded lecture rooms. In 1870 he became science lecturer at the Hartley Institute, Southampton, but after three years he grew dissatisfied with conditions there and made it known that he was available for some other position. Offers of professorships came from Japan, Canada, and Central America, but on consideration he finally accepted the Chair of Chemistry at the new university college then in process of being established at Christchurch, New Zealand.

He took up his new duties in 1874 under anything but ideal conditions. There were no proper lecture rooms and very few students since no elementary science was taught in the secondary schools. To make up for this deficiency he gave lectures in elementary chemistry to school children, and evening lectures to adults. Results came steadily and his classes began to fill. As the years passed he became known as a teacher of exceptional ability, but at the same time his agitation for university reform made him powerful enemies on the Board of Governors of Canterbury College.

In 1878 he began to formulate his theory of partial impact, ascribing the sudden appearance of bright new stars followed by a rapid waning in brilliance to collisions between dark bodies moving through space which, having struck each other a glancing blow, would develop an intense degree of heat and create one or more new stars of exceptional though temporary brilliance. For a while the theory was hailed locally as an astronomical discovery of great significance, but when it was ignored by the scientific world Bickerton's disciples soon fell away, though he himself persisted in the conviction that before long his views would be universally accepted. During the last decade of the century when the attendance at his university classes began to diminish, he was blamed for wasting time over digressions concerning his theory, and complaint was made that, as a professed socialist who was also given to speaking disrespectfully of the church, he was no fit person to instruct the country's youth. In 1894 his enemies on the Board of Governors succeeded in appointing a committee to inquire into the management of his department but, still having powerful friends, Bickerton survived what was in fact an attempt to prepare the way for his dismissal.

A few years later he founded a “federative home” at Wainoni, near New Brighton, Christchurch, hoping to initiate a new form of society. At the same time, with typical lack of circumspection, he made several public statements critical of the institution of marriage. Not surprisingly, the rumour spread abroad that the principles of sexual morality were being ignored by the “federators”. Bickerton's flouting of all the conventions, social, religious, and political, played into the hands of his enemies on the board, who finally secured his dismissal in March 1902.

Not having proved a great success, the “federative home” was now wound up and turned into a pleasure park which provided a variety of novel and entertaining spectacles. Naval battles with real explosive, shipwrecks and rescues, were staged on an artificial lake at Wainoni. Thousands of visitors poured in every Sunday and at first the place paid well, but Bickerton was no business man and before long it was being run at a loss.

In 1908 new astronomical discoveries revived his hopes of getting the theory of partial impact accepted. For this he believed his presence in Europe to be essential. Mainly through the exertions of a Bickerton committee, formed at the Christchurch Trades Hall in 1910, funds were subscribed to meet the necessary expenses. He sailed for England and settled in London the same year, leaving Wainoni in the care of his wife and three other members of the family which consisted in all of five sons and two daughters.

Bickerton had hoped for valuable assistance from his most famous pupil, then Sir Ernest Rutherford, who thought partial impact to be “the only satisfactory theory of accounting for the remarkable phenomena observed at the time of the appearance of a new star”. But Rutherford, not being an astronomer, was in no position to give expert opinion, and Bickerton persistently neglected his advice to re-examine the theory of partial impact in detail and in the light of fresh knowledge come to hand since its conception. At this stage he appeared incapable of doing more than reiterate the generalisation in its original form. Partial impact, then, remained under a cloud although Bickerton did, while still living, gain recognition of a kind in that his theory began to be mentioned in authoritative works which discussed the various hypotheses advanced in explanation of the appearance of novae.

His wife having died in 1919, Bickerton, then aged 79, married Mary Wilkinson in 1920. He was the author of a number of books–The Romance of the Heavens, The Romance of the Earth, and The Perils of a Pioneer being among the titles. Though often on the verge of destitution he never lost heart or surrendered the conviction that one day he would be hailed as a second Kepler. Hatred and malice were foreign to his nature. He was endowed with the rare capacity of being able to see himself as a victim of persecution without harbouring the least ill will against his fancied persecutors.

Some months before his death in London on 21 January 1929, as an act of restitution he had been appointed Professor Emeritus of Canterbury College.

by Randall Mathews Burdon, M.C. (1896–1965), Author, Wellington.

• A Short History of Canterbury College, Hight, James, Candy, Alice M. F. (1927)
• The Life and Times of Sir Julius von Haast, von Haast, H. F. (1948)
• Scholar-Errant, Burdon, R. M. (1956).

(1856–1931).

Ethnographer.

A new biography of Best, Elsdon appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Elsdon Best was born on 30 June 1856 at Grasslees Farm, Tawa Flat, the son of William and Hannah Best. Nine years later, when the family moved into Wellington, Elsdon was able to attend school and, in due course, passed the Junior Civil Service Examination. Twelve months in the office of the Registrar-General were sufficient to make it clear that he had not the temperament to tolerate the drudgery of clerical work. Hence, in 1874, he sought a living on the East Coast mustering and bush felling. In 1881 he joined the Armed Constabulary and was for a time in camp at Parihaka during the Te Whiti troubles.

After the arrest of the Maori leaders he left the force and spent three years wandering in the Pacific and the United States – first in Hawaii, then in California and the Sierra Nevada, cattle mustering and lumbering. The interlude in Oceania doubtless broadened his knowledge of Polynesians, and his learning of Spanish may later have increased the facility with which he polished up his Maori, but otherwise this period of wandering would seem to have little bearing on his future vocation.

Late in 1886 he returned to New Zealand to resume his open-air life in the bush. Now that he was older, more mature, and settled, the historical and traditional background of the Maori aroused his curiosity. More systematic study gave him increasing facility in the language with the confidence to enter into discussion with the surviving tribal elders who were prepared to answer informed questions. Already he had an urge to write, his first newspaper articles dealing with his Californian experiences being published shortly after his return.

In 1892 the Polynesian Society was founded, very largely through the enthusiasm and energy of Percy Smith. Its journal was to become the most important ethnological periodical in the Pacific area. Best, who about this time had left the country for a storeman's job in Wellington, contributed an article to the first number, somewhat curiously a study of the Filipinos. He was at the same time working up a series of articles on the history of Wellington Harbour. Percy Smith, then Surveyor-General, realised that the opening up of the Urewera Country provided a magnificent opportunity to record the facts of the still relatively intact Tuhoe way of life and traditions. Best, probably on Smith's suggestion, took a position of timekeeper on the road works then commencing at the Te Whaiti end of the block. Here he went in 1895 to work off and on for nearly 15 years in the district, later changing his headquarters to Ruatoki. In 1903 he transferred to the Native Department and in 1905 was appointed Health and Sanitary Inspector for the Mataatua Maori Council District. He had qualified in 1900 as a licensed interpreter and used his growing mastery of the language to begin his comprehensive series of field records and note books to which he was to add systematically for the rest of his life.

Notable among his Tuhoe informants were Tutaka-nga-hau and Paitini, with Hamiora Pio of Ngati Awa. By his single-minded devotion in his search for knowledge, he was able to gain the confidence of these men and to achieve a degree of rapport seldom equalled by a later generation of ethnologists. As Buck has said, “He saw things with their eyes and felt with their feelings”. From the growing volume of notes, articles were distilled for the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute and the Journal of the Polynesian Society. His first separate work, Waikaremoana, the Sea of Rippling Waters, With a Tramp Through Tuhoe land, appeared in 1897. Despite its slightly affected archaic style, it showed a mastery of the district lore. Much of his writing during the next 10 years was of a popular nature in newspapers such as the Canterbury Times and the Hot Lakes Chronicle. More serious studies, later to be expanded into full-length monographs on the lore of the whare-kohanga and forest lore, were in train.

Best, however, needed more time, a modicum of comfort, and access to the existing publications to ripen his findings. In 1910 he was appointed to the position of ethnologist at the Dominion Museum. This move, even on the nominal salary which it carried, gave his work exactly the new impetus it needed. His first major contribution, The Stone Implements of the Maori, appeared in 1912 and was followed four years later by a companion bulletin on Maori storehouses. In 1919 appeared The Land of Tara, the Maori history of Wellington Harbour. The definitive systematic survey of Maori primitive culture, The Maori, was published in 1924 in two volumes, its shorter companion volume, The Maori as He Was, also appearing in the same year. Next year the society published Tuhoe, the Children of the Mist, a monumental tribute in 1,200 pages to the people among whom he had spent so much of his life. It may be regretted that Best did not make his opus a rounded formal study of all aspects of Tuhoe culture instead of confining it to traditional history and mythology. What Best learned of Urewera forest lore, social customs, implements, and methods of warfare is scattered widely through his specialised monographs.

In 1914 he was awarded the Hector Medal of the New Zealand Institute, and in November 1919 was one of the 20 original fellows of the institute. In addition to the well-merited formal scientific recognition of his pakeha contemporaries, Best, with a natural modesty and charm, widened his Maori circle of informants to become a recognised leader. Numerous stories exemplify at once his commanding knowledge and the quiet, almost deferential persistence with which he added to it. Throughout his later life at the Museum and, for a time, at the Alexander Turnbull Library, his literary work continued. Field notes along with gleanings of his indexed searchings of the literature were welded into an impressive series of monographs. In some of the later studies he quoted extensively from the books of earlier writers, but was reluctant to a fault to assess or criticise doubtful material. Among his fellow students of the Maori he was less influenced than others by the blind alleys of speculation regarding Maori origins, although he did accept somewhat uncritically middle-period sources such as the Whatahoro manuscripts.

No man can be omniscient and it is an indication of Best's stature that his techniques in the field stand comparison with those of formally trained ethnologists of a later generation. His 25 books and pamphlets and over 50 papers are an unequalled contribution to Maori studies. Best married Adelaide Wylie, who was his indefatigable companion for many of the Urewera years. He died at Barnard Street, Wadestown, Wellington, on 9 September 1931, and his widow survived him. There was no issue.

by Austin Graham Bagnall, M.A., A.L.A., Librarian, National Library Centre, Wellington.

• Best Papers (MSS), Turnbull Library
• Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 41 (1932), Evening Post, 9 Sep 1931 (Obit)
• Dominion, 10 Sep 1931 (Obit)
• Man of the Mist – a Biography of Elsdon Best, Craig, E. W. G. (1964).