All Black as Far as the Eye Can See: Greg O'Brien on New Zealand and the Rugby World Cup

Gregory O'Brien

With its mild climate, golden beaches, sparkling waters and surrounding citrus orchards, the Bay of Plenty city of Tauranga is home not only to a vast population of retirees, but also a bustling surf community. On 11 May 2009, however, from out of nowhere a massive amount of snow-like ice fell on the city, closing roads and railways, and collapsing the roof of a shopping centre. On account of this ‘freak weather incident’, the beach was soon half a metre deep in a snowy whiteness (which some inventive surfers, being towed behind cars or motorcycles, immediately set to riding). I sat for hours at Tauranga airport, waiting for the runway to be cleared, feeling sorry for the city’s many palm trees which looked like they didn’t know what had hit them.

On shelter belt and More FM
a snow-like falling—
on television news and

migrant labour; on Gloria’s
orchard, truckloads of white
unseasonal fruit.

In recent weeks the beaches around Tauranga have been given a different kind of makeover. They have been visited by a lamentable and tragic blackness: tonnes of oil leaking from the 236 metre cargo ship Rena, which slammed into Astrolabe Reef, 12 km offshore, on October 5. Now the golden sands of Mount Maunganui and environs have clumps of toxic oil to contend with. Hundreds of dead, oil-covered birds, which look as though they have been dipped in black chocolate, have been washing up. The disaster - arguably New Zealand's worst-ever environmental tragedy - has added another layer of blackness to the gloom New Zealand, as a nation, has been feeling since the Canterbury earthquakes and the Pike River coal mine tragedy.

Artwork by Graham Percy

About the only thing that has gone right is the All Blacks, who managed to take home the Webb Ellis Cup after a laborious showdown with the French 15 at Auckland’s Eden Park. But that was about the only palpable reward from a sporting event which was supposed to bring with it great economic and cultural rewards. With art gallery admissions majorly down during the Cup, inner city bookshops deserted and even the hospitality industry in the doldrums, the event was certainly not the opportunity to present a wider New Zealand culture ‘on the world stage’ that we were told it would be.

Artwork by Graham Percy

Cultural events timed to coincide with the Rugby World Cup weren’t allowed to even mention the hallowed (and trademarked) Cup. Hence, as Bill Manhire noted on this blog a few weeks back, a rather spurious ‘Real New Zealand Cultural Festival’ was invented - to little effect, generally. The only exception I’m aware of was the Graham Percy exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery (pictured, above and right), which attracted large, enthusiastic audiences for two reasons: (1) no one was allowed to go walking on the oil-splattered beaches and (2) everyone desperately needed something to cheer them up (and Percy’s drawings were well suited to that task).


In recent months it felt as if marketing departments had well and truly taken over the World Cup experience. Weet Bix packets were printed an oily, authorised black. The All Blacks legal squad seemed to devote a lot of muscle and tactical thinking to stopping anyone from so much as mentioning the trademarked team, without first paying an inordinate sum. A purveyor of extremely fine feminine apparel in downtown Wellington was threatened with legal action for displaying a sign in the front window of their shop: ‘20% OFF ALL BLACK LINGERIE’. By the time the Rena was on Astrolabe reef and just about every living creature in the surrounding sea had been coloured ‘all black’, the lawyers seemed prepared to let the matter rest.

Gregory O'Brien is a poet and artist based in Wellington, New Zealand. As well as numerous pamphlets, he has published seven collections of poetry, including News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore (Carcanet 2007). In February 2012 a new collection will appear from Auckland University Press, 'Beauties of the Octagonal Pool', and he will be reading at the Cork Spring Literary Festival.

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