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Landmarks - The Main Trunk Line
Television (Full Length) – 1981
This eighth episode in the Landmarks series was the first episode filmed, to test how geographer Kenneth Cumberland handled being in front of the camera. On a Cook Strait ferry in a southerly, he begins exploring how trade and people have gotten about Aotearoa: from the “Māori main trunk line” (beach, water), sailing ships, Cobb & Co and ‘Shanks's Pony’, to the railways and Bob Semple’s roadmaking bulldozers.The episode ends with the national grid and airways, with a rocky landing at Wellington airport demonstrating that the wrestle with place is an unresolved one.
New Zealand history has few big moments, but the crowds who came to this remote spot in special trains from Auckland and Wellington to watch Sir Joseph [Ward], surely witnessed one of them.– Kenneth Cumberland, on the 6 November 1908 driving of a silver spike to open the main trunk line, at Manganuioteao
Key Cast & Crew
See all 11 credits
Music
Composed and performed by Bernie Allen, and performed by the NZ Symphony Orchestra
Categories
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