We are the Ocean
The first image that springs to mind when I think of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival, is the warm grow of varnish on timber as the sun rises over Sullivan’s Cove, packed gunnel to gunnel with fascinating craft. But this, the most public facing part of the three day festival, gives no hint of the breath and depth that Paul Stephanus, the festival director has created for 2025
Traditionally, each festival has been allocated a theme based on a specific country. This has worked well, giving the exhibits a purpose and direction, without which the event might spiral down into just your average boat show.
For 2025 Paul has broadened the idea of featuring a individual country, and made the festival about an Ocean, The Pacific, and the maritime nations that surround it. SWS is not the place to explain the complete program.
Its done brilliantly by the AWBF on their website HERE
But we would like to alert you to perhaps one of the more cerebral aspects on the long weekend, Wooden Boat Symposium, sponsored by Australian National Maritime Museum. We have to declare an interest here, as three of the symposium events are being facilitated and hosted by your editors at SWS. The line up is impressive including Tom Robinson (Maiwar), Leo Goolden (Tally Ho), John Welsford (designer), and a host of others.
But the Symposium event that seems to creating the most excitement is entitled “We Are The Ocean- Voyaging the Pacific”
"Where is Tupaia? Meretoto June 1773" (2019) and "Cookie in Te Wai Pounamu meets Cook Strait" (2011) by Michel Tuffery.
The vast Pacific Ocean covers one third of the world’s surface, and the story of its exploration and settlement is an epic tale of human endeavour.
The three key speakers are a fascinating mix.
Dame Anne Salmond has won many international awards, and written a series of prize-winning books about Māori life, European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific. Her latest books include Tears of Rangi: Experiments across Worlds, which investigates cross-cultural experiments in New Zealand, including innovative approaches to land, the ocean and fresh water; and Knowledge is a Blessing on your Mind: Selected Writings 1980-2020. She has a lifelong engagement with te ao Māori, working alongside kuia and kaumātua and presenting evidence in the Muriwhenua Land and Fisheries Treaty claims, the Ngāpuhi claim for Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the first test case of the Treaty clause of the Resource Management Act.
Michel Tuffery is a Polynesian artist born in Wellington, New Zealand to a Samoan mother and Rarotongan and Tahitian father. He works in a number of media including printmaking, posters, woodcuts, lithography, sculpture, set design and performance pieces. Explaining his choice to work in many media, he comments ’I’m fascinated by everything I see around me. I like to have a go, interpret how I see things, because if you don’t try you’ll never know.’ Tuffery draws on his Pacific Island heritage in his art practise. Awarded a MASPAC Queen Elizabeth II study grant in 1987, he travelled through the Pacific Islands numerous times running art workshops for local children and has visited Melanesia. Visiting the Pacific Islands has helped Tuffery understand and value his Pacific heritage. ‘I used to hate the whole (Samoan) cultural thing’, says Tuffery. ‘I was really anti-fa‘a Samoa. What turned me around was going to Samoa. I wasn’t ashamed to be Samoan after that because now there were things to be proud of. But being born in New Zealand, that separation really makes it hard for us here to understand.’
"Tupaia’s chart Cook and Banks/Tupaia’s and Parkinson’s paintbox" (2004) by Michel Tuffery
Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr (Tainui) is the captain of the oceangoing waka Haunui. He is the son of Wharetoroa and Ngarungatapu Kerr, is married to Kim and has five children: Namaka, Turanga, Rangiiria, Noenoe and Hinemanu. Hotu has been sailing around the Pacific for more than thirty-five years. He paddles waka, sails waka, teaches waka. Hoturoa grew up with his numerous elders who nurtured and cared for him on the many marae of Waikato. He is a native Māori speaker and spent the first six years of his life with the Tuhoe people in Rūātoki, where his parents taught at the Rūātoki District High School. When he and his mother moved to Auckland when he was six years old, he learnt only the English language. Hoturoa recalls how the children laughed and mocked him for his inability to speak English when he started school in Auckland. His Master’s thesis investigated how the waka is a symbol of mana in the twenty-first century. He was a lecturer at Waikato University for over nineteen years. More recently he has specialised in education and leadership programmes that use the waka as a platform for learning and development.recount and relive this incredible story in writing, artworks and waka voyaging.
The work of all three of these three inspiring experts, celebrate the achievements of the original Pacific explorers, voyaging in wooden watercraft, guided only by the stars and their intimate knowledge of the sea.
It also provides new insights into contact history, and the key role played by charismatic individuals, both Polynesian and European, in creating cross-cultural understanding.
The conversation will be facilitated by Kate Fullagar, ACU history professor, specialising in eighteenth-century world history, especially British Empire, North America, and the Pacific
Theatre Royal, Hobart
DATE: FRIDAY 7 FEBRUARY 2025
TIME: 18:30
DURATION: 2HRS APPROX.
TICKETS: $35/$30 CONCESSION
BOOK HERE as I’m told tickets are selling fast!
And thanks to The Wooden Boatshop in Sorrento for sharing this montage of boats that they either built or have worked on, that are all crossing Bass Strait to attend the February Festival… An impressive achievement!
