"Celebrating Waitangi Day today in New Zealand" Topic

I've posted on my blog to celebrate Waitangi Day here in New Zealand:

link

Waitangi Day is our national day, the day we celebrate (or, for some people, the opposite) the signing in 1840 of our founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi.

My most memorable Waitangi Day was back in 1990 (ooh err – that's 24 years ago now!), when I took part in a major reenactment of the signing of the Treaty. I played the part of one of the five NSW Mounted Police troopers who accompanied the British party.

More pics here: link

… and here: link

Have a good one today Roly. My favourite Waitangi Day is any one when I don't watch the TV news and see the protests, whinging and white guilt – not necessarily in that order.

That 'shako' looks dodgy for the period. In 1840 the principal mounted police force in NSW was the Military Mounted Police, composed of infantrymen seconded from the garrison regiment. In the field they wore slouch or straw hats. Their full-dress headgear is less certain, but would probably have been the regulation infantry shako or a cap of the flat style then popular with imperial police forces. The other mounted police force, the Border Police, were a shabby looking lot of time-serving military offenders who – as the name suggests – only served in newly settled/conquered country on the fringes of settlement.

A source I've seen says that the NSW Mounted Police used a light dragoon uniform. They are also referred to as wearing 'cabbage-tree hats'. I interpreted this term to mean an informal straw hat, not the leather shako that my colleagues interpreted it as. Unfortunately I lost the argument!

So I fully agree with your opinion of the "dodgy" shako, Henry, not too mention our whole mock uniform itself!!!

EDIT: Here's the source – I just Googled it now after not seeing it for more than 24 years!

'… the uniform worn was very much like that of the 14th
Light Dragoons, consisting of a shell jacket with white
facings, blue pants with white stripe, and a cap without a
peak. This was for full dress order. When accoutred in
bush uniform the men wore a patrol jacket and trousers, and
a cabbage-tree, or Leghorn, hat.'
link

So indeed our outfit was very dodgy!

Dodgy – but good looking!

Happy Waitangi Day!

Is waitangi a kiwi word for shaving cream or barber day?

Yeah something like that troopwo
Its kinda that special day of the year when we have a shower with soap, much like your "Canada day" I'm guessing.

:P

The cabbage tree hat is no great mystery. It was an extremely popular form of civilian headgear in Australia until the 1860s, and is widely referenced in the historical literature – so your friends' misinterpretation is hard to fathom.

It was essentially a straw hat, made from the fibres of the head of the Cabbage Tree Palm, and was made in a variety of styles, the most common being similar to a wide-awake: low circular crown and medium width brim – often with a silk puggaree tied around it.

No troopwo Waitangi is the NZ word for protest.

Robert

My daughter made a cabbage tree hat the other morning, I didn't know they were used by the imperials.

There was a variant that seems to have been particularly popular with explorers, if the paintings I've seen are anything to go by: similar to a ten gallon hat, with a tall, conical crown.

Also, the book 'Remote Garrison; the British Army in Australia', by Peter Stanley, has two plates of Military Mounted Police, one of which matches the description given here. Apart from headgear the uniform described above is essentially the same as that later worn by the first civilian mounted police forces in South Australia and Victoria.

Stanley believes that circa 1830 the MMP were in a dark green uniform with the aforementioned headgear standardised, but I suspect this idea might be entirely based on a well-known newspaper depiction of the Waterloo Creek Massacre; never the most reliable of sources.