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Not many people know but the origin of the so famous fireshow is New Zealand. Here it is called POI, which in Maori means “ball” on a cord. Originally POI didn’t include fire – it was made from stone, which was held by Taro leaves. Later instead of leaves a simple linen rope was used. Maori Used Poi for equitable development of hands strength, coordination, and feat.

One of the Maori legends tells us about how the fireshow (or fire dance) appeared:
During the ceremonial dancing, in which shaman danced with torches, lightning struck and inflamed the other end of the torch, but shaman didn’t stop his dance. Maori warriors inspired by this spectacle, imitated shaman by lighting their staffs from both sides and doing all his moves. Since then shaman used to select capable and natty young men and trained them in handling the flames.

Maori have continued to develop this union of man and fire, bringing to the dance new moves and experimenting with different items instead of torches and sticks. This training of strength and feat soon evolved into a dance and the accessories became more and more decorated.

Women danced POI to their slow and plaintive songs making the female POI soft and slow, which used to hypnotize the spectators. Male POI was more stringent from the very beginning, it incorporated some rhythmic strength moves. Nowadays, in addition to basic rotation, masters of the fireshow “swallow fire”, make their poi imitate butterflies, waves, fountains, crossers, windmills, stalls, and wraps.

The first tourists who saw this wild dance brought it with them to their homes. Growing popularity of POI is obliged to the shows in Australian circuses, and also to its adaptation by “hippies” all around the world.
Though the popularity of the fireshow grows rapidly all around the world, New Zealand remains the best source for everything that has to do with it.

New Zealand is still POI world centre, it makes the best equipment for the fireshow, trains the best POI dancers, and hold the largest POI festivals, in which in addition to fire you can see also use of ultraviolet and LED lights.

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My wife and I, both in our late 60s, toured the South Island in December 2006 and January 2007. Our son, who lived in Christchurch at the time, drove us and, although we didn’t get as far south as the Fiords, we did a fairly extensive tour, plus we spent quite a bit of time in Christchurch.

We went more or less where the spirit moved us but I was always conscious that my wife and son, neither of them interested in photography, would have become bored and frustrated if I had stopped for every shot I saw; I quickly formed the idea that I needed to be on a motorcycle and alone to do such an expedition justice.

All that said, New Zealand is so spectacularly beautiful that it’s difficult to make bad photographs.

Quite a few of my photographs are untitled since they weren’t intended for anything more than my own selfish amusement. i.e. I was on holiday, not working.

We stayed in the North Island during February and March of 2008, based in Napier, and I took a few more photographs there, although I was ill for much of the time so we didn’t tour as extensively as we would have wished.

All-in-all then, NZ is a photographer’s and naturalists paradise and I would recommend anyone to visit.

Click on the thumbnails to view larger photographs.

If you liked Mark’s photos, you can see more of them at his Flickr page

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Dear Merrill! Please accept my sincere condolences for death of uncle Pete. Be strong buddy. Forgive me for not writing for a while. I hope that Ingrid is fine. Kiss daughter for me, she must have grown much. Yours Evgeny.

Then he sealed the letter, on the backside of it wrote his own real address and send this letter.

The unexpected answer
About two months passed since Petrov sent the letter, but it didn’t come back so he decided that it was lost and forgot about it… But came August and something came back from New Zealand. But it wasn’t the letter Petrov sent! It was an answer! At first he thought that someone played with him in his own way, but when Petrov read the address of the sender he almost got a heart attack – it was “Hideberdville, Rathbeach st. 7 from Merrill Eugene Wellesley” And there was a real blue stamp of New Zealand’s post on the envelope. The text in that letter was as follows:

“Dear Evgeny! Thank you for your condolences. It took as half a year to overcome the ironic death of uncle Pete. I hope you can forgive me for delaying this answer. Ingrid and me often recall those two days that you were with us. Glorya is grown very much and this autumn will go to the second grade. She still keeps that teddy bear you brought her from Russia. Sincerely your friend.”

Petrov have never been to New Zealand, and he was even more amazed to see in the photograph that was in the envelope a stranger hugging him! On the back of this photograph a date was written – 9th October 1938. Petrov recalled that at the same date he was in hospital unconscious with severe pneumonia. At that time doctors fought for his life for a few days and already told his relatives that his chances to survive are very small.

The second letter which came too late
In order to understand and sort this out, Petrov wrote a second letter to the same address in New Zealand, but he didn’t live enough to receive an answer. On first of September a second world war began and from the first days of the war he became a military correspondent for two main Russian newspapers “Pravda” (the truth) and “Informburo” (bureau of information). His colleagues said that he changed since that letter. He became enclosed, thoughtful and even stopped joking at all. In 1942 the plane on which he flew to the front of the war got lost. Most likely it was shot down. At the same day Petrov’s wife received the news about the airplane, a letter from Merrill Wellesley came to his address in Moscow. It was translated to Petrov’s wife, in it Merrill was fond of the courage of Russian people and expressed concern for Evgeny’s life. He wrote:

“When you were with us, I got scared when you went to swim in the lake. The water was very cold. But you said that your destiny is to die in a plane crash and not by drowning. Please be careful and fly as little as you can… “

What a mystical story! To tell you the truth I found hard to believe it when I heard it myself. I even tried to find Hideberdville in New Zealand and didn’t find it… This story maybe isn’t real but Evgeny Petrov is a very real and famous person (in Russia), and it is a fact that he died in a plane crash.

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One of New Zealand’s main sources of income is tourism, hence there are many businesses that rely mostly on tourists, and among such businesses there are many photographers. I saw hundreds of photos from different photographers across New Zealand and I must say that not all of them were professional, not all at all! But the photographs of Lindsay McLeod touched something deep inside of me, and made me realize from within that they were real works of art. I wish him many more years of photography and health.

Thank you Lindsay for sharing your photographs with me!

Greg.

P.S. If you would like to see for yourself the photography of Lindsay McLeod, please visit: Lindsay McLeod Photography

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