Here be dragons

I spent much of today with TV's Heritage Rescue team at Port Chalmers museum, where manacles from local slave ship the Rosalia - mistakenly named the Don Juan by museum staff - are proudly displayed next to a pair of egg cups. Artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby is an Australian South Sea Islander - that is, a descendant of Pacific people brought to Australia as slaves - and after we'd done our interviews at the museum she and I hunted the Rosalia along the shore of Otago harbour, where wrecks rise from the mud at every bend. 

It was a strange journey: my pleasure at finally meeting Jasmine, whose art I have long admired, was mingled with the memory of the instruments of restraint and torture at the museum. 

At Carey's Bay Jasmine and I found a wreck. Two rows of splayed, sharp-ended timbers poked out of the mud. The wreck was at once pathetic and fearsome, like the ribcage of a legendary dragon.

I'm flying back to New Zealand's humid zone tomorrow. Heritage Rescue are taking a Xmas break, then filming more episodes at more struggling museums in the New Year. They are a great team of scholars, renovators, and educators; I hope they can help the volunteers at Port Chalmers.