Lone last stand at One Tree Hill

Pictures of One Tree Hill as it has been in recent years, and is without its tree today, dominated news columns last week. But what did the hill look like when the first European settlers arrived on the Auckland isthmus?

An ink and pencil drawing done around 1842 and on sale in Auckland shows that the original one tree - a totara - was not on the summit but down the slope, on the second-highest of the Maori-built terraces that so distinguish Maungakiekie.

There it would have been more sheltered from the winds that sweep the top of the mountain and whose force - coupled with the attacks of Maori activists - led to last week's removal of the dangerously leaning 125-year-old Monterey pine that replaced the totara.

The drawing, on sale at the John Leech Gallery in Remuera, is by the early surveyor Joseph Jenner Merrett (1816-1854) and is thought to be the only known image of the original tree. Merrett arrived in Auckland from New South Wales in 1839 and worked for successive governors, including Fitzroy and Gray.

He also documented many aspects of Maori culture, including a celebrated feast held in Remuera in May 1844, given by Ngatiata to three other tribal groups and attended by 4000 Maori (Merrett's lively watercolour of the occasion is in the Hocken Library, Dunedin, and has been reproduced many times).

He illustrated A. S. Thomson's The Story of New Zealand (1859) and at one time advertised himself as "Portrait and Landscape painter to His Excellency the Governor."

At other times, he referred to himself as "a Pakeha-Maori" and evidently spoke the language well.

The small collection at John Leech, which surprisingly turned up in Chile, shows his skill as a draughtsman and his sympathy for Maori culture.

As well as the One Tree Hill picture, two drawings of young Maori women take the eye as sensitive works with - costumes aside - a surprisingly modern air.

If you want to buy this very early representation of a famous Auckland landscape, the gallery is asking $35,000. The portraits are $18,000 each.

These are works that should really be in a public collection.

Herald Online feature: Tree on the Hill

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Should we replace the tree on One Tree Hill?

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