(1881–1948).

Operatic soprano, professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music.

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

Rosina Buckman was born at Blenheim on 16 March 1881, the daughter of John Buckman, a carpenter. She was gifted with a voice of great purity, but was discouraged from taking up singing as a career. In her own words she “drifted in grand opera”. After some early training in New Zealand she went to England where, for two years, she studied under George Breeden at the Birmingham School of Music. Because she thought herself unready and unworthy, she refused a leading role in The Magic Flute and returned to New Zealand where, soon afterwards, she crossed to Australia and toured with J. C. Williamson's light opera companies, and later with Dame Nellie Melba's grand opera company, singing soprano roles. In 1913 she received a message from John McCormack, the Irish tenor, with whom she had toured in Australia, and returned to London to make her début, with immediate success, at Covent Garden in La Bohème. In 1915 she sang with Robert Courtneidge's company and achieved her greatest success as Cho Cho San in Madame Butterfly, an interpretation still regarded as one of the finest. From 1915 to 1920 she was leading soprano with Sir Thomas Beecham's company, singing with distinction in Tales of Hoffman, Tosca. Aida, and Tristan und Isolde, in which she gave another notable performance as Isolde. Rosina's voice is preserved in many gramophone records made during her lifetime. Critics agreed that a natural disinclination for concentrated study preven ed her from achieving a still greater success in the operatic world. In 1919 she married Maurice d'Oisly, the operatic tenor, and together they visited New Zealand during a world tour in 1922. She died in London on 30 December 1948.

by Oliver Arthur Gillespie, M.B.E., M.M. (1895–1960), Author.

• The Talking Disc, 1918
• Dominion, 3 Jan 1949 (Obit).

(c. 1877–1951).

Anthropologist and director, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii.

A new biography of Buck, Peter Henry appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Buck was born at Urenui, on 15 December 1880, or 1877? (memorial cairn, unveiled 15 August 1953, marks the birthplace), son of William Henry Buck and Rina of the Ngati Mutunga tribe of Taranaki. His mother died a young woman and the boy Peter was reared by her cousin, Ngarongo ki Tua, and his great-aunt (kuia) Kapuakore. Through his father, Peter was descended from a line of Irish clergymen and professional men, which included at least one civil engineer, that has been traced back to one Andrew Buck, clerk in Holy Orders, who entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1742. From his mother's only brother the young Peter took in his teens his Maori name of Te Rangi Hiroa, which he used as an alternative to his European name all his life. In his later years he seemed, in his purely scientific publications, to prefer to use his Maori name, keeping the name of Peter Buck as a parenthetical second name – a change in practice that may have symbolised a re-affirmation of his Maori ancestry as the principal source of his own personal identity.

Buck received his early education at the local Urenui primary school, thereafter for three years (1896–98) at a Maori secondary school, Te Aute College. From this school Buck went on scholarship to Otago University, where he graduated in medicine with his M.B., and Ch.B. degrees in 1904 (house surgeon, Dunedin Hospital 1905–08), M.D. 1910. He was later awarded honorary degrees in arts and science from Yale (M.A., 1936; D.Sc., 1951), New Zealand (D.Sc., 1937), Rochester (D.Sc., 1939), and Hawaii (D.Litt., 1948). Other honours awarded during his lifetime for distinguished service in war and to the science of anthropology included D.S.O., 1918; K.C.M.G., 1946; the Swedish decoration of the Royal Order of the North Star, 1949; the Hector Medal, Royal Society of New Zealand, 1936; Rivers Memorial Medal, Royal Anthropological Institute, 1936; and the S.Percy Smith Medal, University of Otago, 1951. During his lifetime Buck became a fellow of the American Anthropological Association, the Royal Society of New Zealand, the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also a member of such learned societies as the Polynesian Society, the Society of Sigma XI, Yale Chapter, the American Association of Museums, and the American Folklore Society. His interest in Pacific affairs inevitably linked him to educational, welfare, and scientific organisations of the Pacific: he was chairman of the Barstow Foundation for American Samoans, and of the Honolulu Committee, Pacific Science Board of the United States National Research Council, honorary consultant of the South Pacific Commission, and a member of the Advisory Committee on Educational Affairs of Guam.

In his youth he was as interested in field sports as he was in scholarship. Buck became senior sports champion, Te Aute, 1897–98; New Zealand amateur long-jump champion, 1900, 1904; Otago University long-jump champion, 1902, 1903, 1904.

In 1905 Buck married Margaret (M.B.E.) daughter of A. W. Wilson, of Milton, Otago. There were no children.

Buck's career after graduation from Otago falls into three fairly well-defined phases. The phases overlap to some degree, yet each is distinctive and the first two almost inevitably culminate in the final career of Buck the scientist. The first phase of Buck's life was largely devoted to public health work among his own Maori people and, perhaps as a tangent to this interest in Maori welfare, a rather brief political career in the New Zealand House of Representatives. The second phase, of necessity, was military; the third was largely scientific and administrative. The first phase began when Buck became associated with that group of Maori leaders, known as the Young Maori Party, which included the lawyer, Apirana Ngata, and another Maori doctor, Maui Pomare; the aim of this group was to improve Maori social conditions by political and other kinds of direct action in education, hygiene, and health. Buck joined the New Zealand Health Department as a Medical Officer for Maori Health, 1905–08, but soon went into politics when he was elected member of Parliament for the Northern Maori electorate, 1909. He retained this seat until 1914. By 1912 Buck had attained Cabinet rank as Minister of the Maori Race, Cook Islands, Public Trust, and Government Life Insurance. He resigned the Northern Maori seat in 1914, but failed by a few votes to win a European electorate.

The outbreak of war in 1914 led to the end of politics and the beginning of a military career. Accompanied by his wife, serving as a nursing sister, Buck went overseas with the New Zealand forces as medical officer to the First Maori Contingent serving in Egypt and Gallipoli, 1914–15. Transferring to the infantry, Buck became major and Second-in-Command, New Zealand Pioneer Battalion, 1916–17. He rejoined the medical staff in 1918 by becoming successively associated with the 4th Field Ambulance and No. 3 New Zealand Military Hospital, 1919. On returning to New Zealand, Buck resumed his career as Medical Officer for Maori Health, 1919, subsequently being appointed Director, Division of Maori Hygiene, New Zealand Department of Health, 1919–27.

Already by the end of the war the third phase of Buck's career was beginning to shape itself. Up to 1911 he had published at least six scientific papers on various aspects of Maori and Pacific island life. Returning to New Zealand with his army unit, he characteristically used the leisure of a long sea voyage to measure the physical characteristics of each Maori soldier under his command. The result, published in 1922 and 1923, was a major contribution to the physical anthropology of the Maori. A further series of important scientific papers on Maori topics followed rapidly in the years up to 1927. By this date Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, was ready to begin a systematic anthropological survey of Polynesian societies. The director of the museum invited Buck to participate in this survey by joining the museum staff for five years as a full-time ethnologist. After some considerable heartsearching Buck resigned his position as Director of Maori Hygiene, and left the safe harbours of a New Zealand Government job in order to set out on a new voyage of scientific discovery that was to take him to almost every known part of the Polynesian Pacific. By 1936 he had achieved a second professional career that included a professorship of anthropology at Yale University and, successively, the directorship and presidency of the Board of Trustees of Bishop Museum.

Buck spent almost 25 years studying and recording the native cultures of the Polynesian Pacific. He produced a continuous stream of scientific articles and monographs of the highest order. He was a fascinating and inspiring teacher and an administrator of great skill and understanding. A succession of high honours and membership in distinguished scientific bodies showed that the world at large and his scientific colleagues in particular recognised his merits. The years at Honolulu brought to flowering a talent for scientific investigation that was largely self-nurtured and grown in a soil of patient determination. The later administrative years at Honolulu were not easy ones for Buck. Bishop Museum was not a wealthy institution. There was a continual scraping for funds to carry out the scientific programme that Buck planned for himself and his colleagues. The years of the Second World War brought many additional difficulties, but Buck patiently ploughed on, solving the difficulties as they arose with patience and unfailing good humour.

At the end of 1947 Buck underwent an operation for cancer. The disease should have killed him, but for three more years he fought a battle with himself to live a strenuous life. He made a return visit to New Zealand in 1949 on the occasion of the Seventh Pacific Science Congress, travelling from one end of the country to the other and undertaking what must have been an exhausting programme of professional and social consultations with colleagues and Maori groups. Returning to Honolulu he worked hard to finish his two unpublished monographs and to organise the miscellaneous notes that could not be immediately used. After his seventy-first birthday, he toiled on until he had cleared his desk for life. Then, and only then, did he re-enter hospital to die on 1 December 1951 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His ashes were brought back to New Zealand and placed in a vault sheltering under a giant symbolic Polynesian canoe prow at Okoki, Taranaki, on 8 August 1954. Buck often quoted an old Maori classical saying to stress his interest in the changing social conditions of the Maori people: “Ka pu te ruha The old net is laid aside” “Ka hao te rangatahi The new net goes a-fishing”

He would have appreciated the fact that at his own Okoki tangi the Governor-General of New Zealand neatly turned this into a challenge to his Maori audience by saying to them, “The old net is cast aside, but where is the new net?”

Buck was a man of two worlds. From his mother's culture he inherited the charm, the humour, the patience, the dignity of the Polynesian; and from his father and his European education came the capacity for hard work, the rigorous devotion to science, and the ability to move with an easy grace within and through a European world. Combining so readily these two usually divergent streams of social heredity, Buck became in his Hawaiin years what one of his scientific colleagues has aptly named “the Great Chief of Polynesia”, for native and European alike, in all matters relating to scientific research and native welfare. His advice was continually sought by politicians, scientists, and Pacific atoll chiefs. For them all, he had an apt story, wise advice, a twinkle in his eye, and a calm and spacious wisdom that may not have immediately solved all problems but at least could give his questioner a broadened horizon, and the zest to tackle anew his own problems that came from the happy enthusiasm of Buck's own personality. He demanded much from himself: a whole lifetime of hard, conscientious, slogging labour. From his friends and colleagues he also demanded much, but this much or more they were readily prepared to give in return for the charm, the friendliness, and the example of Buck's own work.

Buck's scientific work is contained in some 60 odd articles, 11 major monographs, and three more general books, no small output for a man who came to anthropology as a serious disciple when already the first half of his life and at least two different careers were behind him, and much detailed administrative work had to be fitted into the scientific programme he laid out for himself. Add to all this work a ceaseless round of committee attendances and speaking engagements, together with the fact that meticulous, but time-consuming, line drawing was both a hobby and a tool of his trade: add all this up and one has a good measure of a life literally filled to the end with an almost super-human industry. He came to Maori and later to Polynesian anthropology at a time and period in the development of this science when the careful recording of the artefacts of Maori and Polynesian material culture seemed to him to hold out the greatest promise for progress in the field. Buck commenced his work essentially untrained (or rather self-trained by reading and hard work) and relatively innocent of anthropological theory, in the sense in which training and theorising would have been taught him today in a university school of anthropology. Guided only by his own common sense, his capacity for hard work, and his ability to listen and learn from colleagues and students as his work went along, he slowly mastered the art of recording the intricacies of material culture and the more obvious aspects of social organisation. In his scientific monographs he left behind him a superb factual record upon which future students will more surely build a satisfactory scientific picture of the past and present of the Polynesian peoples. To New Zealanders, whether Maori, European, or of mixed ancestry, Buck's life is an example of his own belief that the blending of two races in New Zealand “will in time produce the future New Zealander who will have derived physical and cultural superiority from the intermixture of two bloods”: as doctor, physician, scientist – Buck combined three careers with his Maori ancestry. None of the careers was less than a masterpiece.

Buck's principal scientific monographs are as follows: The Evolution of Maori Clothing, 1926; The Material Culture of the Cook Islands, 1927; Samoan Material Culture, 1930; Ethnology of Tongareva, 1932; Ethnology of Manakiki and Rakahanga, 1932; Mangaian Society, 1934; Ethnology of Mangareva, 1934; Arts and Crafts of the Cook Islands, 1944; Introduction to Polynesian Anthropology, 1945; Material Culture of Kapingamarangi, 1950; Arts and Crafts of Hawaii, 1957. In addition, he published for the general reader a survey of Polynesian life entitled Vikings of the Sunrise, 1938; an account of Polynesian religion, Anthropology and Religion, 1939; and his final thoughts on Maori life published under the title of The Coming of the Maori, 1949.

For published works on Buck's life and scientific standing see the obituary by Roydhouse in Te Ao Hou, No. 1, 1952, with important corrections by Ramsden in the Journal, Polynesian Society, Vol. 61, No. 3 and 4, 1952; the best factual survey of his life and a good scientific evaluation is that by Katherine Luomala in Edmonson, Report of the Director [of Bishop Museum] for 1951, B. P. Bishop Museum Bulletin, 208, 1952. Additional material including the Roydhouse obituary may be found in “Tributes to and Speeches by Sir Peter Buck”, Journal, Polynesian Society, Vol. 60, No. 4, 1951, pp. 223–254. Buck's own article, “He Poroporoaki – A Farewell Message”, on the occasion of the death of Sir Apirana Ngata”, Journal, Polynesian Society, Vol. 60, No. 1, 1951, pp. 22–31, contains valuable information about Buck's own medical and political career. To commemorate the unveiling of the Okoki memorial, Eric Ramsden published A Memoir … Te Rangihiroa, Wellington, Department of Maori Affairs, 1954, 38 pages. This memoir, brief as it is, is the best available account of Buck's life. Ramsden here gives his reasons for believing that the probable year of Buck's birth was 1877 (October 1877 is the birthdate given in the register entry on 22 January 1884 recording Buck's admission to Urenui primary school) rather than the year 1880 as Buck was accustomed to claim in his later years.

by Ernest Beaglehole, M.A., PH.D., LITT.D., F.R.S.N.Z. (1906-65), late Professor of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington.

(1819–98).

Naturalist and draughtsman.

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

John Buchanan was born in Levenside, Dumbartonshire, Scotland, and educated at the parish school. He was apprenticed to a pattern designer of a print and dye works, which led him to take up the study of botany for a source of design material. This soon developed into a serious interest in the plants themselves. After moving to Glasgow, Buchanan emigrated to Otago in the Columbus in 1849, settling in North-east Valley, Dunedin. The collecting and study of plants soon became an absorbing interest and he sent large numbers of dried specimens to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The quality of these collections was such that Hooker recommended him to James Hector. When Hector arrived at Dunedin to begin a geological survey of Otago for the Provincial Government in 1862, he advertised for Buchanan who was appointed botanist and draughtsman to the expedition. With Hector, he travelled over a great part of Otago, collecting and studying the plants wherever he went. The results were summed up in his essay A Sketch of the Botany of Otago, submitted to the New Zealand Exhibition of 1865.

Until 1863 the bulk of the specimens collected had been sent to Kew for study and were incorporated into Hooker's Flora Novae Zelandiae. After this publication Buchanan continued to send plants from time to time, but retained duplicates of them in his private herbarium. With the founding of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute he also began to publish his own conclusions, contributing nearly 30 papers to that journal.

When Hector became Director of the Geological Survey, Buchanan was appointed to his staff and also had charge of the botanical collections in the Colonial Museum, Wellington. The new appointment gave him greater opportunity for travel and study of the vegetation of the country. He visited Campbell and Macquarie Islands, Auckland, Mount Egmont, Kapiti Island, and the Kaikoura Mountains. In all these areas he collected assiduously, studying his specimens and publishing his results. Although primarily a botanist, he made contributions in the fields of geology and zoology.

His published papers reveal considerable caution as a botanist, but two contributions are preeminent. The first is the series of illustrations he provided for the first 19 volumes of the Transactions. Nearly all the drawings, in all subjects, are by his hand including the lithography. The second contribution is the excellent volume Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand, which appeared in three parts between 1877 and 1880. The work was commissioned by the Government and was the first major botanical work by a resident botanist. The illustrations were done by lightly inking dried specimens and impressing them on a lithographic stone, the details and enlargements being filled in by hand. This “nature-printing” was prescribed by the terms of the commission. The work was much more than a compilation. It included the results of Buchanan's studies of the species of grasses and also the forage potential of the native species as deduced from his own and other observations.

In the course of his journeyings throughout Otago, Buchanan managed to execute a number of water-colour drawings of the landscape. Unfortunately, only a few of these have survived. The finest, Milford Sound, which is in the Hocken Library, Dunedin, has qualities of restraint and simplification which are unique for its time.

Buchanan was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1880 and, on his retirement in 1885, a life member of the New Zealand Institute. His health became poor in his later years and he died at Wellington on 18 October 1898. His collections of plants and his voluminous notes are now in the Otago Museum.

by Bruce Gordon Hamlin, Botanist, Dominion Museum, Wellington.

(1837–1904).

New Zealand Superintendent of the New Zealand and Australia Land Co., pioneer of scientific farming methods, founder of the dairy industry.

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

Thomas Brydone, born at West Linton, Peebleshire, Scotland, was removed at an early age with his parents to Blair Athol. He received his education at the Perth Academy. After leaving school Brydone worked for two years in the office of Mr Dickson, a commissioner appointed to inquire into the means of financing landlords into improving their estates by drainage. He was then successively land steward to the Earl of Buchan, at Roxburn, West Lothian, and to the Duke of Hamilton. He became travelling inspector for the West of England Land Co., where he moved in close contact with the latest schemes of land development, and with early experiments at scientific farming. For a short time he acted as factor in Lord Falmouth's Kent estate, before returning to Roxburn, where oil had been recently discovered. In 1866 he became a partner in Young's Paraffin Oil Co.; however, his prospects here were soon blighted by American competition.

The old New Zealand and Australia Land Co. in 1867 advertised for a superintendent for their New Zealand holdings. Brydone applied and took up the appointment, arriving in Dunedin in 1868. He was located at Totara, North Otago, and quickly settled down to applying his experience of scientific farm management to such effect that in a few years his methods had turned the company's neglected estates into a going concern. His success drew the attention and unqualified praise of W. S. Davidson, who was then managing the Levels run for the Canterbury and Otago Association, with the consequence that when the two companies amalgamated in 1877, Brydone was appointed to succeed Davidson as New Zealand superintendent of the joint concern. This post he held until his death. In his collaboration with Davidson (then General Manager of the Company in Edinburgh), Brydone handled the New Zealand arrangements for the preparation and loading of the first shipment of frozen meat from New Zealand in 1882.

When it became apparent that the company's Southland estates were uneconomic, Brydone (1881–82) suggested dairying. The company approved the experiment, and Brydone established New Zealand's first dairy factory on the company's Edendale estate, which initially exported cheese, with butter making a later development. Brydone also pioneered the use of lime and artificial manures. He played a great part in the Otago A. and P. Society, being a foundation member, a governor of the society and four times president. In addition, he was a founder-director of the New Zealand Refrigerating Co., as well as a director of the Milburn Lime and Cement Co., and of the Kaitangata Railway and Coal Co. He was also a promoter of the Agricultural Hall Co., as well as of several dredging companies. In May 1898, on the eve of a trip to England, the A. and P. Society presented Brydone with a gold medal of life membership, and a handsome illuminated address honouring his services to New Zealand agriculture. Brydone sailed for England on 1 April 1904, in order to obtain medical advice about an internal complaint which had troubled him for some months. He died suddenly in Edinburgh on 17 June 1904, and on the news of his death reaching New Zealand the flags on all Dunedin business firms were lowered to half mast.

Brydone's early English and Scottish experience in land development fitted him well for the role he played in New Zealand agriculture. His close cooperation with Davidson to a large extent has blurred their respective parts, with Brydone, the man on the spot, collecting the greater part of the credit. His part in the first shipment of frozen meat was a subsidiary one, but in dairying he was indeed father of the industry. The butter and cheese industries owe him eternal thanks for his foresight and energy. In addition to his labours for the company, he threw a large amount of well-directed energy into agricultural societies, and into Dunedin mercantile firms, but his greatest contribution was undoubtedly his pioneer use of artificial manures, particularly lime. Of his use of it on the Edendale estate, the Evening Star, Dunedin, wrote in his obituary: “He redeemed it with lime, and turned a waste into a garden.”

A cairn now stands on top of Sebastopol Hill, Totara, to commemorate Brydone's work.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• Davidson and Brydone, Founders of the New Zealand Meat Export Industry, Hewland, P. D. (1958)
• Otago Daily Times, 21 Jun 1904 (Obit)
• Southland Times, 21 Jun 1904 (Obit)
• Evening Star, (Dunedin) 20 Jun 1904 (Obit).

(1833–1913).

Cabinet Minister, farmer, and soldier.

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

John Bryce was born in Glasgow on 14 September 1833, the second son of John Bryce, a bootmaker and cabinetmaker, and Grace, née MacAdam. He came to New Zealand with his father, elder brother, and sister on the Bengal Merchant in 1840. He had little formal schooling apart from what was offering at Petone where his father first settled. Later, the family began farming in the Hutt Valley. In 1851 John Bryce went gold mining in Australia for two years. On his return to New Zealand in 1853 he took up land at Brunswick, 9 miles from Wanganui, where he farmed until 1903.

Bryce entered local politics as early as 1859. From 1862 to 1863 and from 1865 to 1867 he was a member of the Wellington Provincial Council, although in fact he favoured the abolition of the provinces and the establishment of municipal councils. In 1866 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives but he resigned in the following year. He served under General Cameron in the early stages of the Maori Wars and in 1868 helped to raise the volunteer force known as the Kai-iwi Yeomanry Cavalry in which he was given a lieutenant's commission. His service in a minor incident at Handley's woolshed, Nukumaru, later led to a famous libel case, Bryce v. Rusden.

In 1871 Bryce was elected unopposed by Wanganui to the House of Representatives; he was returned again in 1876 when he led Julius Vogel at the polls by 19 votes, and in 1879 when he and Ballance were returned with 560 and 547 votes respectively. On 8 October 1879 he became the Native Minister in the Hall Government. In that year Vogel termed him “an excellent Native Minister”. Noted throughout his career for his insistence upon what he himself termed “a vigorous policy” in dealing with the Maoris, Bryce was determined to deal firmly with the Parihaka prophets, Te Whiti and Tohu, who had encouraged their followers to pull up survey pegs, erect fences across roads, and plough European-owned farms in an attempt to reassert Maori rights. When Cabinet did not stand by him, he resigned in January 1881 but by October he was back in office with the support he demanded. On 5 November 1881, mounted on a white horse, he led-a force of 959 Volunteers and 630 Armed Constabulary into the Parihaka settlement to arrest Te Whiti and Tohu. Although greeted by chanting boys and skipping girls instead of by hostile warriors, and offered bread by the women of the settlement, the force proceeded to arrest the prophets who continued to counsel passive rather than active resistance. The force also pulled down the whares of Maoris from other districts temporarily congregating in Parihaka. In 1882 Bryce was reappointed Minister of Native Affairs in the Whitaker Ministry and again in 1883–84 in the Atkinson Ministry. He was responsible for the West Coast Peace Preservation Bill which enabled the Government to hold the prophets as prisoners without trial. Bryce also secured a pardon for the chief, Te Kooti.

The criticism aroused by his use of physical force against the pacifists of Parihaka earned him the hostility of the aristocratic but radical Governor, Sir Arthur Gordon (later Lord Stanmore). G. W. Rusden, in his three-volume History of New Zealand (1883), blackened the name of Bryce largely on information supplied by Governor Gordon on hearsay from Bishop Hadfield who had drawn his impressions mainly from Dr Featherston. Inter alia Rusden claimed that Bryce and his sergeant had cut down Maori women and children at Handley's woolshed in 1869 “gleefully and with ease”. In March 1886, at the Queen's Bench Division in the High Court of Justice in London, Bryce proceeded against Rusden and was awarded the verdict with £5,000 damages. Of this sum only £2,531, the actual costs to Bryce, were claimed because full payment would have ruined Rusden. In 1887 Bryce, and in 1888 Atkinson, tried to persuade the Colonial Office to rebuke or in some way punish Sir Arthur Gordon, but the Secretaries of State felt that justice had been done.

Bryce re-entered the House of Representatives as member for Waipa in 1889 and at the general election in 1890 he was re-elected without a contest for the new Waikato seat. He became Leader of the Opposition when Atkinson transferred to the Legislative Council. In August 1891, however, when asked to withdraw words critical of the Premier, he said: “I shall not withdraw them, and I shall take the consequence.” When the House censured him, he withdrew not only from Parliament but also from politics for all time.

On 28 September 1854 Bryce married Anne Campbell from whose father's origins in New Brunswick, Canada, the district near Wanganui derived its name. John and Anne Bryce had 14 children and over 50 grandchildren. He died at 1 Guyton Street, Wanganui, on 17 January 1913.

Bryce was the type of man who excited strong emotions among all who knew him: his friends were absolutely loyal in their support of “Honest John”; his enemies regarded him as stupid and crude. He was perfectly sincere, always taking his stand on principles in a way which can only be characterised as stubborn. His appeal to voters as demonstrated by his many electoral successes arose largely from the degree to which he was typical of his generation. His background and experience meant that he felt keenly for white settlers' needs and was incapable of understanding the grievances of the Maoris or of dealing with them in a sympathetic and conciliatory manner. No man in public affairs could have been more uncompromising or more certain of the rightness of his principles and practice.

by Angus Ross, M.C. AND BAR, M.A.(N.Z.), PH.D.(CANTAB.), Professor of History, University of Otago.

• Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1883, A. 4
• 1884, Sess. II, A. 5;The Defenders of New Zealand, Gudgeon, T. W. (1887)
• The Parihaka Story, Scott, Dick (1954).

(1821–74).

Surveyor, explorer.

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

Thomas Brunner was born in April 1821, the son of an Oxford attorney. He trained as a surveyor and at the age of 20 was appointed an “improver” on the New Zealand Company survey staff. He sailed to Nelson with the main party on the Whitby, along with the Will Watch, and thus was a first settler in the Nelson Haven site.

In the late winter of 1843 Brunner explored the head of the Motueka River, but had to leave the testing of Maori stories of grassy plains between Rotoiti and the West Coast for a later expedition. In February 1846 Charles Heaphy, with Brunner, Fox, and a Maori guide Kehu, resumed the search for accessible Nelson grazing land. The heavily laden party reached Rotoiti and continued to the Buller, its southern tributary the Howard, and over the ridge to Rotoroa. They then crossed to the Tiraumea (Mangles) and travelled down the Buller to below the junctions of the Matakitaki and the Matiri, where shortage of food compelled their return on 1 March.

Three weeks later Heaphy and Brunner set out again, this time by the coast, to find the mouth of the Buller. With the faithful Kehu they crossed the isthmus from Golden Bay to the West Wanganui and, travelling steadily south, they camped by the Kawatiri on 30 April and decided that this was the Buller which sprang from the lakes. They continued on to reach the Mawhera (Grey) on 21 May, the Taramakau on the 26th, and the Arahura, their furthest point south, the next day. Local Maoris gave them much important information, including details of the greenstone route over the Alps, but could not be induced to accompany them. The heavy return journey past flooded rivers, bluffs, and hampering tides brought the party back to Nelson by the same route in late August.

On 11 December the indomitable Brunner set out on his third expedition for the year with Kehu and his friend Pikewate, both of whom were accompanied by their wives. Dillon and Stafford's run on the Motueka was their last contact with civilisation, Fraser, the manager, accompanying them to Rotoiti. Brunner explored Rotoroa in more detail and spent February 1847 in the Murchison-Matakitaki area. Below here the Buller offered only weeks of hunger and danger in its gorges, with the added risk of crossing tributary streams between rain-sodden hills. Progress was painfully slow through bad weather, difficult travelling, and halts to allow the Maoris to snare birds. So desperate was their situation at one stage that Brunner consented to the killing of his dog for food. On 4 June they reached the deserted pa at the river mouth. Continuing south they were at Mawhera on 1 July, and nine days later arrived at the Taramakau. Here, to Brunner's disappointment, the Maoris insisted on remaining for the winter as there were no supplies of food further south. Eventually, on 12 October, in company with four local Maoris, he set out to explore the coastline. The mouth of the Hokitika was crossed on the 15th and the Okarito on the 22nd. On 19 November, while passing Titihaia Head (Tititera), and encumbered as usual with a heavy pack, Brunner slipped on the rocks, crushing his foot and twisting his ankle. He managed to return to Paringa where he rested, but on 11 December, to ensure Maori assistance up the Mawhera and to avoid a second winter, he reluctantly decided to return. The party reached the Mawhera mouth once again on Christmas Day and, until the end of January, the time was passed in small excursions south to Hokitika, Lake Kaniere, and elsewhere.

Finally, on 26 January, Brunner and his four Nelson Maoris set off up the Mawhera as part of a minor Ngai Tahu expedition of four canoes. Some 6 miles upstream he sighted a coal seam, now part of the Brunner coalfield, and continued up the tributary stream, now known as the Arnold, to the lake, later to be named after him. Brunner noted his impressions of the Maori route over the pass, but was obliged to return to the main stream. The Ngai Tahu contingent returned at this point, except for one who acted as an additional guide, and the party set off up the main stream. On 18 February they left the Grey for the tributary Mawhera-iti up which they made good progress through open bush and grass flats, crossing a low ridge into the Inangahua valley on 7 March. From the summit of a hill above the valley floor four days later Brunner was certain he could see the plains of Port Cooper – which at best may have been the Maruia flats. On 23 March they were at the Inangahua-Buller junction, Brunner having linked by exploration the Buller and Grey systems.

Two months of heavy exhausting labour in retracing his steps up the Buller still lay ahead. On 15 April, after a particularly wet spell, Brunner found that he had lost the use of his leg and was mortified to hear Pikewate urging Kehu to leave him. Although Pikewate and his wife departed, the faithful Kehu remained to help Brunner during the week he lay crippled. He was still limping badly when Maruia was reached on the 26th. At last, on 5 June, they were back at Rotoroa and, eight days later, at the Buller outlet from Rotoiti. Next day, in the Rainy River, they pushed on steadily to reach Fraser's late on the 15th.

Brunner was unjustifiably modest regarding the positive results of his journey. His only instruments were a compass and a sextant, soon damaged by water. His sketches were lost and he regarded his journal, later published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, as an imperfect record. He was ignorant of geology and was certainly in error in believing that there was nothing on the West Coast worth the expense of exploration. Although he was 550 days on the journey, the actual time spent in travelling was less than half the period of absence. However, in addition to the inevitable delays through bad weather, it is difficult to see how Brunner could have done other than he did. Once he had committed himself to travelling in company with Maoris he could have left them only at his peril, because he was without access to any supplies sent by sea from Nelson. Time and again survival depended upon the bird-snaring skill of Kehu. History supports his claim that he had accomplished a great work in tracing the two main rivers of the coast from source to mouth and “having maintained myself for eighteen months on the natural products of this island”.

The struggling settlement of Nelson sought to raise £25 by public subscription to buy him a small flock of sheep, but he found work difficult to obtain. Late in 1848 he was temporarily employed in surveying the line of road between Nelson and the Wairau, but in May 1849 he went to Canterbury in search of work. Back in Nelson in mid-1850, he was glad to accept a position on meagre terms; in the following year he was appointed a Government surveyor at £100 per annum. In 1856 he was appointed Chief Surveyor of the province and, later, Commissioner of Public Works, which positions he held until 1869 when he retired, but retained a part-time position as consulting surveyor. He died in Nelson on 22 April 1874.

What modest recognition he received was for his work of exploration. There is clear evidence that he was not good at administration. Thus J. C. Richmond, while at Nelson in 1863, commented sharply on Brunner's jealousy of later explorers' efforts to find alternative ways through the country over which he had travelled. His fame firmly rests on the epic quality of the journeys which he had completed and survived. The Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the recognition of some of his contemporaries and, more fully, of posterity, must be his justification.

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

• Early Travellers in New Zealand, Taylor N. M. (1959)
• The Great Journey, Brunner, T., Pascoe, J. D., ed. (1952).

Lake Brunner, named after Thomas Brunner, has the Maori name Moana Kotuku, meaning “lake of the white heron”. It lies in a glacial basin, 280 ft above sea level, 17 miles west of Greymouth. Elongated north-north-east, with a maximum length of 5.6 miles and a maximum width of 4.4 miles, the lake has an area of nearly 15 square miles. For the most part the depth of the lake is more than 100 ft. the maximum being 357 ft. The basin was formed during the Last Glaciation by glaciers that spread northwards from Taramakau Valley on either side of Mt. Te Kinga, between Hohonu Range and the Southern Alps. Crooked River, draining from the Alps, has a large, growing delta that fills much of the eastern side of the basin, and the small Orangipuka River is building a delta out from the glacial valley between Hohonu Range and Te Kinga. East Hohonu River, draining from the granitic Hohonu Range, has a much smaller delta. The mountains and high morainic country to the west of the lake are covered with native bush; tussock and grass cover the morainic country to the north and east, and the extensive deltas are mainly swamp. Arnold River drains the lake into Grey River, hydro-electric power generated at Kaimata being based on a normal flow of 1,200 to 1,500 cusecs. The minimum discharge is 700 cusecs and the maximum measured discharge is 5,500 cusecs, but in extreme flood the discharge is likely to be about 8,000 cusecs.

by Frederick Ernest Bowen, B.SC.(DURHAM), New Zealand Geological Survey, Otahuhu.

Brunner is situated on the banks of the Grey River, in Westland, inland about 5 miles east from the sea. The residential portions of the borough occupy mainly narrow river flats and terraces between the Paparoa Range on the north and steeply rising hill country on the south. The borough boundaries of Brunner enclose also the separate townships of Stillwater (1½ miles east), Wallsend (almost adjoining on the west), Dobson (1 mile south-west), and Taylorville, opposite, on the north bank of the Grey River. The Reefton-Greymouth section of main highway and the Otira-Greymouth section of railway pass through Brunner along the south bank of the Grey River. By road Brunner is 7 miles east of Greymouth (8 miles by rail).

Farming is unimportant in the district and comprises a few scattered dairy farms. The main primary industry is coal mining, which is now concentrated on the colliery at Dobson. Indigenous timber is milled in the eastern parts of the district. There is a hydro-electric dam and power station on the Arnold River near Kaimata (about 8 miles south-east) and a coal-fired plant near Dobson. Brunner and its components constitute a small social, market, and accommodation centre for a coal-mining community. (It has been estimated that more than 90 per cent of the borough's male population is employed in the coal-mining industry.)

Thomas Brunner, during an intensive exploration of the West Coast, travelled with Maoris up the Grey River by canoe on 26 January 1848 and camped at Motutapu Island near Brunner. He discovered the coal seam, subsequently named after him, on the north bank. In 1857 Captain John Peter Oakes and his brothers Thomas and Joseph, who entered the Grey River in the schooner Emerald Isle, found Brunner's coal seam and thought they were the first to discover it. Other visitors to the locality included J. Mackay in 1857, the squatter G. W. H. Lee in 1858, and surveyor John Rochfort in 1859. James Mackay passed through the locality to complete the purchase of the West Coast in 1860. Reuben Waite, of Greymouth, was the first to exploit Brunner coal commercially. He shipped 40 tons, mined by Matthew Batty, to the Nelson provincial authorities. Various changes in mining ownership occurred until the old mine closed in 1906. In the meantime other local areas of the same field were opened up, but Dobson is the only colliery being worked today. On 26 March 1896 the Brunner mine exploded and killed the 65 men then working in it. Thirty years later an explosion at the Dobson Mine killed nine miners. The railway from Greymouth was built in 1876 to serve the Brunner coalfield. It was extended to Reefton in 1894 and to Otira in 1900. These lines were opened throughout to Christchurch in 1923 and to Westport in 1942. Brunner was constituted a borough in 1887. The original name of the town, which commemorates Thomas Brunner, was Brunnerton. Dobson was named after George Dobson, a surveyor, who was murdered there on 24 May 1866 by a member of the Sullivan, Kelly, Burgess, and Levy gang in mistake for a bank official carrying gold from the Ahaura diggings. Taylorville was named after Joseph Taylor, a pioneer resident. Wallsend was named after the town in Northumberland. Stillwater is a descriptive name.

POPULATION: 1951 census, 1,113; 1956 census, 1,144; 1961 census, 1,072.

by Brian Newton Davis, M.A., Vicar, St. Philips, Karori West, Wellington and Edward Stewart Dollimore, Research Officer, Department of Lands and Survey, Wellington.

(1897–1957).

Rugby footballer.

Maurice Joseph Brownlie was born at Wanganui on 10 August 1897 and was educated at Hereworth School and St. Patrick's College. He served with the Armed Forces during the First World War. Maurice Brownlie first came to notice when he was playing in the Hawke's Bay XV in 1921. He represented New Zealand in the All Black teams of 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1928. During these years he played in 61 All Black games and scored 63 points for his side. In his time he played in 119 first-class football matches and was captain of the team which toured South Africa in 1928. After this tour he retired from international rugby. He died at Gisborne on 21 January 1957.

(1896–1954).

Rugby footballer.

Cyril James Brownlie was born at Wanganui in 1896 and was one of three brothers who represented New Zealand on the rugby field. He first attracted notice when he was playing for Hawke's Bay in 1922 and was a member of the All Blacks in 1924, 1926, and 1928. Cyril Brownlie represented New Zealand on 31 occasions and scored a total of 33 points. He retired from football in 1930. Like his brother Maurice, he was an outstanding forward. He died at Wairoa on 7 May 1954.