Notes
- Although there is no fixed definition of a bach, historically it can be said to be a very small house, built by the occupants (often from reclaimed materials), and sited along a sea frontage. For most New Zealanders, the word ‘bach’ nostalgically evokes those cottages built between 1945–1955, many of which strongly express qualities of the rustic or colloquial. However enough baches exist in the form of converted trams, railway coaches, built-in caravans, or old army huts, that a conclusive architectural description is impossible. Consequently the bach is often referred to as a type of living, rather than a type of building, a paradox this paper discusses.
- Thompson , Paul . The Bach Wellington : V.R. . Government Printer, 1985, p 10.
- Thompson . The Bach 7
- Thompson . The Bach 11
- 1997 . The Dictionary of New Zealand English: A Dictionary of New Zealandisms on Historical Principles Auckland : Oxford University Press . Harold Orsman (ed)
- Orsman cites: “Henry…was made acting secretary to the Brigade, and was given the key of a room in the ‘batch’ formally occupied by Munn.” Truth, 28 January 1911, p 6; “The ‘bach’ said the doctor was absolutely unfit for human inhabitation.” Truth, 24 February 1912, p 6; and “Some suburban bloods lately gave a more or less ‘fancy dress’ ball at a ‘bach’, where six young men and a housekeeper managed to keep the wolf from the door.” NZ Observer, 5 April 1913, p 16, Each of these examples should be considered an important precursor to the widespread adoption of the word to refer to a particular architectural type. But the use of quotation marks points to the provisional nature of its authority at these times, and alludes to a slippage in use between verb and noun. This shift is illustrated in Orsman's example for the formally similar ‘crib’: “When the mater returned to Dunedin after her holidays…I determined to try ‘baching’, and after having been six months in my crib at the top of the hill, I am more than ever resolved not to descend again into town level…My ‘bach’ is perched…about 7000ft above sea- level.” O ta go Witness (Dunedin), 9 October 1912, p 79. See Orsman, entry on ‘Bach’, The Dictionary of New Zealand English.
- Guardians of the Mistake: The History of the Taylor's Mistake Surf Lifesaving Chib, 1916–1991 Christchurch : Raven Press . I am indebted to Ray Caims and Barry Tuipin, upon whose history of the Taylors Mistake surf life saving club I have relied. It may come as a surprise to them that so much of their material was directly architectural, as well as meticulously researched. See Ray Cairns & Barry Turpin, 1991. The title of this book utilises an apostrophe in reference to the original naming (See also ‘Where did that Name Come From?’, New Zealand Memories, 3, 15: 53). Throughout this essay I will omit the apostrophe for consistency, as is the custom today.
- Thompson . The Bach 66
- Quoted in Cairns & Tnrpin, Guardians of the Mistake, p 23. The surf-life saving club had been created twelve months earlier when a near drowning had made apparent the dangerous nature of an un-supervised beach.
- Cairns & Turpin, Guardians of the Mistake, p 13. The first of these baches is attributed to Tom Archbold who built a dwelling in one of the coast caves in 1879. Its site was well south of Taylors Mistake. Cairns and Turpin describe this cave-house as having bunks, a fireplace with chimney, and a rain tank water supply. Archbold is also recorded as having used natural stones to build an outside ‘bath’ at the water edge. It is probable that the inhabitation of these caves began with eighteenth century fishermen who required overnight accommodation and slowly brought in material to make the caves more comfortable for inhabitation.
- Smith suggests that Osborn may have been visiting Taylors Mistake for ten years before building his house. Jo-Anne Smith, ‘The Pilgrim's Rest at Taylors Mistake’, The Press [Christchurch], 18 January 1996, p 16.
- Cairns & Turpin, Guardians of the Mistake, p 13. Osborn would go on to be the first president of the Taylors Mistake Surf Life Saving Club and later patron. He was also responsible for the erection of a memorial sundial next to the surf club to commemorate those killed in World War 1. The most famous of the recorded cave houses was The Hermitage, belonging to Jack and Jesse Worgan and constructed from materials salvaged from the 1906 Exhibition and Fuller's Old Theatre in Christchurch. The main room of the ‘cave’ measured 12 metres deep by 6 metres wide, and fittings included bunks, a sofa bed, duchess and drawers, large sideboard complete with dinner set, dining table and chairs, kerosene heaters, an Edison phonograph and an upright piano. Notes the son of one of the original owners: “Although the ceiling and part of the walls of the cave dwelling were formed by the natural rock (white washed) the exterior wall were well designed and constructed. In the main these were comprised of a 3ft base wall of rock and concrete surmounted by timber and stucco. These varied in height where they met the rock ceiling. The walls included two sets of double glazed doors with adjoining windows which opened onto a large tar-sealed terrace. A smaller space to the right of the main room was partitioned off and was known as the Ladies room.” J H B Worgan, ‘Taylors Mistake’, New Zealand Memories, 2, 14: 841 & 855–857.
- Smith . ‘The Pilgrim's Rest at Taylors Mistake’ 16
- The Heinemann Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations Auckland : Heinemann . D'Arcy Cresswell, writing during his visit to New Zealand in 1933 stated: “I am writing snugly in bed in my new apartment, what they call a bach in this barbarous land, though it's simply a self-contained room like many I've had in London…” D'Arcy Cresswell, as quoted in H Orsman & J Moore (eds), 1988, p 199. From this statement it can be suggested that the difference between an apartment and a bach is its location. Contextualized within a ‘barbarous land’ the apartment becomes the bach, providing domestication in the face of a savage environment.
- Treadwell , Sarah . ‘Bordering the Grotesque’ unpublished paper, courtesy Sarah Treadwell.
- Harpham , Geoffrey . “The Grotesque: First Principles.” . Journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism , 34 197.
- Mitchell , David . “The Ugliest House in the Bay”, Architecture New Zealand, (May/June 1992): 28–33.
- Mitchell . “The Ugliest House in the Bay”, p 32.
- Austin , Mike . ‘Architect's Statement’ Architecture New Zealand, (May/June 1992): 33
- Wigley , Mark . 1992 . The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's-Haunt. Cambridge , Massachusetts : MIT Press . p 137.
- As one French general of the seventeenth century observed: “suburbs are fatal to fortresses.” Quoted by Horst de la Croix, “Military Architecture and the Radial City Plan in Sixteenth Century Italy,” Art Bulletin, 42, 4 (December 1960): 273–274.
- Colomina , Beatriz . ‘Domesticity at War’ . Assemblage , 16 20.
- It has been observed that New Zealand is quite unusual in identifying its nationalism with a martial disaster, most countries preferring to celebrate victories.
- Shadbolt , Maurice . 1988 . Voices of Gallipoli. Auckland : Hodder and Stoughton . pp 7–8.
- 1987 . Behind the mirror glass: the growth of wealth and power in New Zealand in the eighties. Auckland : Penguin . Bruce Jesson has documented the development of the New Zealand economy and points out that the legacy of British colonial development is still active today. However Gallipoli is generally recognised as the most important cultural event in the development of an independent nationalism in New Zealand, Bruce Jesson
- 1956 . Gallipoli London : Hamish Hamilton . Alan Moorehead names Lance Corporal W C Beech of the 2nd Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, as the inventor of the periscope rifle. Its design is said to have been a trench adaptation of periscopes used by British soldiers. Alan Moorehead, p 147.
- 1993 . Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley , California : University of California Press . Martin Jay has noted that to generalize on the effects on visual experience and the discursive nature of that experience stimulated by World War I is hazardous. But he points to several recent commentators who have made suggestive starts. Trench Warfare, they argue, created a bewildering landscape of indistinguishable, shadowy shapes, illuminated by lighting flashes of blinding intensity, and then obscured by phantasmagoric haze. The outcome of which was more visually disorienting than any other effect of the modern condition. The trench soldier's view of the world was limited to the sky above, and the mud underneath. The development of camouflage and the increasing similarity of uniforms, whether between officers and men or one side and another, or indeed between men and the earth, further blurred visual distinctions between reality and illusion. Martin Jay, p 213.
- Eric J Leed, as quoted by Jay, Downcast Eyes, p 213.
- The only Victoria Cross awarded to a New Zealand soldier at Gallipoli was conferred to Cyril Bassett of the NZE Divisional Signal Company for his work in maintaining the telephone line communications. of the award Bassett would later state that the only crosses his mates got were wooden.
- Leed, as quoted by Jay, Downcast Eyes, p 215. One backlash to the debasement of vision happening in the trenches poses a particular irony to architecture. Jay states that the willed return to visual lucidity and clarity m opposition to what had become known as ‘the Cubist war’ saw the development of a new nationalistic-inflected classicism in the arts that would eventually culminate in the uncompromising Purism of Amédée Ozenfant and Charles Édouard Jeanneret by 1920.
- According to Moorehead, the name ANZAC was forged by accident. Two Australian Army sergeants at the Australian Army and New Zealand Corps headquarters at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo cut a rubber stamp with the initials ‘A & N Z A C’ for registering papers. When a code name was needed for the Corps, a British officer suggested ‘ANZAC’. Moorehead notes the irony of the unfortunate resemblauce to the Turkish ansae which means ‘almost’. Moorehead, Gallipoli, p 92.
- Bean was born in Australia in Melbourne : Oxford University Press . 1879 to British parents who return to England when Bean was twelve. He would not return to his birth land until 1905 and consequently his formal education and family life were well versed in the British public school model of serve, honour, patriotism and valour. This preparation would express itself during the war when he was a vocal advocate promoting Australian soldiers to vote for conscription. As Australia's official war correspondent based with the Australian Imperial Force, he was responsible for a prodigious output including national press reports and AIF newspapers. He also edited a series of ANZAC annuals and published his own 1916 press reports in Letters from France. See Alistair Thomson, Anzac memories: living with the legend 1994, pp 46–72.
- This reputation founded by the behaviour of soldiers in the streets of Cairo. ‘Larrikin’ is considered by the OED as being a distinctly Australian word, the equivalent of ‘Hoodlum’ or ‘Hooligan.’ Robin Skinner has observed the significance use of this term to describe a small group of New Zealand architects who presented their work overseas. Robin Skinner, ‘Larrikins Abroad: International Account of New Zealand Architects in the 1970s and 1980s’, Papers from the Sixteenth Annual Conference, Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Launceston: SAHANZ, 1999, pp 301–306. For an account of Charles Bean's selective representation of the ANZAC soldier, see David Kent. ‘The ANZAC Book and the ANZAC Legend: C E W Bean as Editor and Image Maker’, Historical Studies, 21, 84 (April 1985): 376–90.
- Thomson . Anzac memories 66
- The origin of this term is thought to have been taken from a directive from General Ian Hamilton. In response to Australian and New Zealand claims that the beachhead at Gallipoli was an untenable position, Hamilton wrote: “Your news is indeed serious. But there is nothing for it but to dig yourselves right in and stick it out…. You have got through the difficult business, now you have only to dig, dig, dig, until you are safe.” Moorehead, Gallipoli, p. 201.
- Distance Looks our Way: The Effects of Remoteness on New Zealand Auckland : University of Auckland . “In New Zealand, thanks to a literary tradition…we are tuned to 3-D ‘hack’ and ‘dig’ cues in both literature and architecture. Thus, for us, the digging of a basement, something we haven't bothered with much, takes precedence over its imaginative aspect.” John Dickson, ‘The History of Entrapment: A Reading of Architecture's 2-D Accessory’, Interstices, 4 (1995): npn. “Life, real life, was physical. To live was to dig, hack, hit, shove, sail, swim, kick.” K Sinclair, “Life in the Provinces: The European Settlement”, 1961, p 179. Compare this to the front line observation of William Malone: “We go on digging under shell fire and rifle fire night and day, but thanks to our excellent digging our casualties get less.” As quoted by Christopher Pugsley, Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story, Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984, p 171.
- 1986 . The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict Auckland : Auckland University Press . Although it is a contentious point, New Zealand military historian James Belich has argued that the modern military trench has its inception with the New Zealand land wars of the 19th century. See James Belich
- Dickson . ‘The History of Entrapment’ notes Vitruvius who mentions “others dug caves on mountain sides” and goes on to describe the trenches dug by Phrygians who lived in open country, Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, (translation by M H Morgan), New York: Dover, 1960, pp 3940. Ironically, the excavation of antiquities at Gallipoli became somethiug of a sport amongst French soldiers stationed at Cape Helles where Turkish artillery unearthed relics. Similarly French soldiers digging trenches at Hissarlik exposed stone sarcophagi which disclosed vases, lamps, statues, and bones. Moorehead, Gallipoli, pp 196–197.
- 1988 . Images of Gallipoli: Photographs from the Collection of Ross J. Bastiaan. Melbourne : Oxford University Press . P A Pederson, p 17.
- Moorehead . Gallipoli 160 – 161 .
- Moorehead . Gallipoli 161
- Moorehead . Gallipoli 160
- Raumplan verses Plan Libre: Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, 1919–1930 New York : Rizzoli . “Today we pay more attention to cleanliness. Even in the trenches the American soldiers built bathrooms. And what happens then? People said: ‘And you call them soldiers?’ Why? Because, for us Europeans, the image of a good soldier is bound indissoiubly with that of a dirty soldier. Adolf Loos, “Regarding Economy”, in Max Risselada (ed), 1989, p 139.
- Pugsley . Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story 171
- Murray , J . Gallipoli, 1915, London, 1977, p 60, as quoted by Pederson, images of Gallipoli, p 17.
- 1989 . Behind the Lines: The Lives of New Zealand Soldiers in the First World War Wellington : Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press . Nicholas Boyack, p 47.
- Stewart , Susan . 1986 . On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection Durham & London : Duke University Press . p x.
- Finch , Private . 1990 . Anzac and Empire: the tragedy & glory of Gallipoli Richmond : Hamlyn . as quoted by John Robertson, p 82.
- As quoted by Robertson, Anzac arid Empire, p 82.
- Compton Mackenzie quoted in Moorehead, Gallipoli, p 188
- Paekakarike is a small coastal town very close to Wellington on the Kapiti Coast, so called after the island of the same name. Captain Harry Palmer, as quoted by Pugsley, Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story., p 213.
- Mosse , George . ‘Two World Wars and the Myth of the War Experience.’ . Journal of Contemporary History , 21 (1986): 491–513. The most central myth of the war experience is that of the glory of death. In order for the death of a nation's young men to be an acceptable loss to a culture the myth of war experience cloaks this ruin with a pretext of patriotic sacrifice for the collective good. Death in this model is a joyous self-sacrifice where soldiers do not die but ‘live on’ as a part of national purification.
- Mosse . ‘Two World Wars and the Myth of the War Experience’ 491 – 492 .
- Thomson . Anzac memories 111
- Sex and Secrets: Crimes involving Australian Women Since 1880 Melbourne : Oxford University Press . Thomson notes that in Australia the national divorce rate doubled between the censuses of 1911 and 1921, and that women brought the majority of petitions for the first time Thomson, Anzac memories, p 111. Historian Judith Allen has summarised the impact of the war on Australian women: “The interpersonal brunt of the First World War and of the inadequacies of public provision for this population of disturbed young men fell disproportionably on Australian women. Women's bodies and minds absorbed much of the shock, pain and craziness unleashed by the war experience.” Judith Allen, 1990, p 131.
- Thomson notes the large increase in trade union involvement reflecting the desire of returned servicemen to address the conditions of conditions, pay and industrial power which they lost during the war. As Terry Ring records, wherever there were returned soldiers there was also “a scent of trouble, a whiff of impending mob violence, a vague sense of things being out of control.” As quoted by Thomson, Anzac memories, p 115.
- Another account of the sea view from the bach is given by Christine McCarthy, ‘A Summer Place: Postcolonial Retellings of the New Zealand Bach’, Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2, 2: npn.
- New Plymouth is situated on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The coast line in this area contains some of the last bach communities that remain relatively unaltered from the 1950s bach building boom. However in part this may be the greater result of relative isolation and a low socio-economic population. I was accompanied by my colleague Jeremy Treadwell (School of Architecture, UNITEC Institute of Technology) who offered his own, quite different, version of the bach based on his research with the remaining baches on Rangitoto Island in the Hauraki Gulf, Auckland. This material is part of Treadwell's doctoral research.
- Goldsmith has the distinction of being conceived at Taylors Mistake. I take this opportunity to apologise to him for my flippancy in asking whether his conception was in fact the ‘Mistake’, and thank him for his generous recollections.
- Today there exists a great deal of uncertainty about the future of the Taylors Mistake baches. In 1976 the Christchurch City Council voiced a concern about the threat to public health posed by the Taylors Mistake baches. It proposed the removal of all seventy baches but then agreed to a ten year stay of execution if electric toilets were fitted. By 1986 only thirty-eight baches remained at Taylors Mistake when the Council proposed a permanent stay in response to the response from bach-holders. This was overturned by the town planning commissioners on the grounds that zoning this area ‘residential holiday’ intruded on the integrity of the area as a natural reserve. An independent working party formed in 1991 recommended a compromise arrangement where those baches not deemed to interfere with public access or enjoyment may stay, while the others will be either destroyed or removed to another site set aside away from the beach. These are only recommendations and it remains to be seen what will finally happen to one of New Zealand's most important architectural communities, but it seems unlikely that the Taylors Mistake baches will survive as a ‘living’ architectural record. See David Close, ‘The City Council's Efforts to Fix the Taylors Mistake Row’, The Press [Christchurch], 8 July 1993, p 12. David Round, ‘The city council's failure in the Taylors Mistake row’, The Press [Christchurch], 29 July 1993, p 12.