I have been looking for one of these for a long time. Pipiriki House was a hotel on the banks of the Whanganui River, 79 km upriver from Whanganui, providing accommodation for passengers travelling by river boat from Whanganui. Constructed 1899 – 1903 it burnt down 10 March 1909. It was rebuilt , and burnt down in 1959, never to be rebuilt again.
The Pipiriki Post Office opened 1/11/1896 and closed 31/7/1973. It was in the store of Mr. G. Manson. The mails arrived by river steamers and were distributed by Mr. Manson who was the local postmaster.
I have always had a close association with the Māori people. When I went to primary school at at Wakaretu where my parents farmed, this was a small district on the coast between Port Waikato and Raglan, west of Huntly and Ngaruawahia, New Zealand. The day I started school there were three Europeans at that school, and the day before I started, there was one. So, I grew up being very aware of Māori culture and their ways of life.
This exhibit shows through Picture Postcards, Maoritanga, or the culture of the Māori people. I have enjoyed putting this exhibit together, and look forward to extending it to 8 frames. I have a collection of approximately 1800 different Māori postcards, and am currently n the process of creating a database of Māori postcards with scans of both sides and an accurate description of the postcards with as much information that I can glean.
One potential future project is to use facial recognition technology to put names to more of the people depicted in postcards.
Any viewer with a collection of Māori postcards, I would like to make contact to see if any additional items can be added to the database.
Awards for this exhibit have included:
Thailand World Stamp Show 2013 87 points Large Vermeil
This is an exhibit of Early New Zealand Railway Postcards which is being shown for the first time in Perth Stamp Show 2023. The postcards are mainly from the first two decades of the 20th Century.
The New Zealand Railways were an essential mode of transport for a developing nation. There were a number of problems associated with this in that the railway had to traverse the King Country which the Māori King Movement had been banished from the Waikato, and agreement had to be sought from the Māori people to build the railway. Also, the terrain was very difficult, and a number of world-class engineering problems had to be solved, including building the Raurimu Spiral, several large viaducts through the Central Plateau, and building the Rimutaka Incline.
I bought this item recently on E-bay. It is significant for two reasons.
Mail from New Zealand to the Far East WWII is scarce. Very few New Zealand people were in the Far East when the Japanese invaded, so mail is scarce. This item is to a British Civilian Internee from New Zealand.
The Japanese Red Cross roundel is scarce because with very few exceptions, it was used only only one batch of mail sent through Tokyo.
Welcome to this page! These are items that have been added to my collection which have a story of their own.
Maori Council Frank
I recently purchased a collection of stamps, postcards and this Maori Council Frank from a British Auction House.
The Maori Councils were originally set up in 1902 by the Government to control the “Health, Welfare and Moral well-being of Maori”. They operated at regional level, laying down rules of social control through bylaws which were valid in their own areas. They were partly funded by a “dog tax” imposed by the Government which was not universally acceptable. There were eventually 25 Maori Councils.
The Chairmen of the Maori Councils had “Free Frank” privileges, and could post letters and postcards without charge on official Maori Council business. The Maori Council Frank for their area was applied and signed by the Chairman. This is signed by Haparota Pore Pukekohatu.
Most surviving Maori Council Franks are cut-outs from covers and postcards.
Interestingly this item was featured in “The New Zealand Bulletin”, Campbell Paterson’s Newsletter, Volume XXIII, Number 12, July 1986. They state that “these franks, although actually of 20th century origin, must be among the scarcest of all N. Z. postal markings. No doubt because of their scarcity, reference information is very sketchy indeed”.
See Maoritanga, Frame 3, pages 3, 4 and 5 for other examples, and Council franks on cover and a postcard.
First Recorded Type 6 Officially Sealed Label on Cover
This cover was recently purchased on the internet. It is the first that I have seen on a cover, although there is the possibility of another reported by Andrew Dove.
The cover is registered from Mapua (Tasman Bay) to Dunedin. Postage and registration is paid with 4 x 1d Dominion stamps cancelled with 2 x “MAPUA 23 MR 26” G-class datestamps and one for the registration label. Label applied to bottom of cover, endorsed “torn” and initialed by two officers. The flap of the cover is also sealed with five selvedge pieces from a stamp sheet, one with part sheet number N58…
The Type 6 Officially Sealed label has Mail 76 (old No. P.O. 134) outside the frame of the label, bottom left.
The four other recorded Type 6 labels are undated. The challenge is to find more of these Type 6 labels on cover. While it is conjectured that these followed the type 5 labels, they are likely to be dated 1924. Because Mapua is a small Post Office, old supplies of labels were probably used.
Reference: “Post Office “Found Open – Officially Sealed Labels Part 3: 1903 – 1920 Types 4, 5 and 6 Labels” Alan Craig, Lindsay Chitty; The New Zealand Stamp Collector Vol. 97 Number 4, Dec. 2017.
Cover to meet the “Gripsholm”
When the USA entered WWII after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, WWII, there was a need to repatriate diplomats, civilians caught in the Far East at the wrong time, and sick and wounded prisoners of war. The USA sent a message 8th December 1941 to the US Charge d’Affaires in Berne, Switzerland to start negotiations through their Tokyo Embassy. The result of this was that the M. V. Gripsholm (a vessel from neutral Sweden) was chartered by the USA for transfers of prisoners, mail and supplies. It was agreed that the first exchange would be at the neutral port of Lorenço Marques, Portuguese Mozambique.
The Japanese had two exchange vessels. The M. V. Asama Maru left Yokohama with 416 repatriates, picking others up at Hong Kong and Saigon. The Conte Verde left Shanghai with 640 repatriates and picked others up at Singapore.
This cover was purchased in a lot of three, on E-bay. With the COVID-19 lock-down and disruption of international postage, the item was sent March 18th from the USA, with a transit time of 9 weeks.
This cover is addressed to Wilhelmina Kuyf who was a passenger with the first Diplomatic Exchange voyage leaving Lourenco Marques July 28th 1942 arriving New York August 25 1942. The passenger manifest lists her as United States Citizen. Her passport was issued Tientsin, China March 21 1941, recorded as a female aged 41.
Her address was recorded as 626 W. Allegheny Ave Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, the return address given on the cover.
The cover has a 3c USA adhesive with “PHILADELPHIA PA AUG 16 1942” slogan cancellation; Cover opened by Customs and resealed with brown tape; Purple boxed cachet “PORT of “NY” AUG 19 1942 Examined and passed “152” U.S. Customs Officer”.
First Recorded Type 6 Officially Sealed Label on Cover
This cover was recently purchased on the internet. It is the first that I have seen on a cover, although there is the possibility of another reported by Andrew Dove.
The cover is registered from Mapua (Tasman Bay) to Dunedin. Postage and registration is paid with 4 x 1d Dominion stamps cancelled with 2 x “MAPUA 23 MR 26” G-class datestamps and one for the registration label. Label applied to bottom of cover, endorsed “torn” and initialed by two officers. The flap of the cover is also sealed with five selvedge pieces from a stamp sheet, one with part sheet number N58…
The Type 6 Officially Sealed label has Mail 76 (old No. P.O. 134) outside the frame of the label, bottom left.
The four other recorded Type 6 labels are undated. The challenge is to find more of these Type 6 labels on cover. While it is conjectured that these followed the type 5 labels, they are likely to be dated 1924. Because Mapua is a small Post Office, old supplies of labels were probably used.
Reference: “Post Office “Found Open – Officially Sealed Labels Part 3: 1903 – 1920 Types 4, 5 and 6 Labels” Alan Craig, Lindsay Chitty; The New Zealand Stamp Collector Vol. 97 Number 4, Dec. 2017.
My interest in Stalag VIIIB, German Prisoner of War Camp, started with the fact that many New Zealand POWs ended up here, including some friends of my family.
Stalag VIII-B Lamsdorf was a German Army prisoner of war camp, later renumbered Stalag-344, located near the small town of Lamsdorf (now called Łambinowice) in Silesia. The camp initially occupied barracks built to house British and French prisoners in World War I. At this same location there had been a prisoner camp during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
It was opened in 1939 to house Polish prisoners from the German September 1939 offensive. Later approximately 100,000 prisoners from Australia, Belgium, British India, British Palestine, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, the United States and Yugoslavia passed through this camp. In 1941 a separate camp, Stalag VIII-F was set up close by to house the Soviet prisoners.
In 1943, the Lamsdorf camp was split up, and many of the prisoners (and Arbeitskommando) were transferred to two new base camps Stalag VIII-C Sagan (modern Żagan and Stalag VIII-D Teschen (modern Český Těšín). The base camp at Lamsdorf was renumbered Stalag 344.
The Soviet Army reached the camp on 17 March 1945.
Later the Lamsdorf camp was used by the Soviets to house Germans, both prisoners of war and civilians. Polish army personnel being repatriated from POW camps were also processed through Lamsdorf and sometimes held there as prisoners for several months. Some were later released, others sent to Gulags in Siberia
