2008: Harawene Immortalised

March 28, 2025

By AHNZ

She was a little stray dog named Harawene very well known in her time. So much so that when she died in April 2008 the community put up a bronze statue. Fiona Cairns led the erection of a cairn topped with the statue (it’s ridiculous how often people’s names match what they do…)

I stumbled upon the statue myself in 2019 and puzzled about it.

Cairns told Radio New Zealand the homeless dog patrolled Te Ngae Road (Rotorua) for 10-15 years until dying in 2008. She did not like people and could not be approached. She just liked to watch. People watched her little face watching the world go by and gave her a name. They were sorry when she was gone and created the monument.

We do have this rare phenomena in our culture that some stray animal becomes a spontaneous mascot of people and place. Often it’s a cat such as the one we had at Devonport Library, Benjamin, who has also been immortalised in statue. Or, there are several hospitals with cats that made themselves part of the facility. I think there must have been many more such pets in workplaces in our history before the Labour 3.0 Cat War of 1974 which banned pets on the basis of “Food Hygiene.”

A very famous one named Red Dog lived an unowned life yet was domesticated and part of the community of the Pilbara in Western Australia in the 1970s. This one has a statue, books, and even a feature film.

When I took my 2 photos in 2019 I named them Rotorua dog that will be forgotten soon_20190426_039.jpg and Forgettable Rotorua dog_20190426_039 (1).jpg

The reason I did that was because, having mulled it over, I decided that emotion had evidently gotten to a group of people with access to several thousand dollars for a statue. Memories fade and sooner or later something would happen to the statue and it wouldn’t be restored. Accidents happen. Vandals come. It might take 15 years or it might take 50 but sooner or later there would not be enough people alive who remembered that cute little face. So when vandals tore out the statue in 2024 I congratulated myself for being a good student of Ozymandias.

Then, blow me down if Fiona Cairns and her people didn’t raise another $10,000 or so and restore Harawene’s statue! This time with CCTV security!

“Harawene was a Rotorua icon. A stray dog that decided to make her home on the side of busy Te Ngae Rd. Her death has touched a nerve. Why?” Ref. Rotorua Daily Post (2008)

“This afternoon Rotorua residents are turning out to witness the unveiling of a replacement statue of a beloved city dog. ” – RNZ (2024)

“After reading the Rotorua Daily Post’s story yesterday about the $10,000 statue being cut off its base at the paws, Alan Cato has pledged the funds for another Harawene statue to be made, saying: “She has got to go back where she belongs”.” – Rotorua Daily Post (2024)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Obviously the locals didn’t have a personal connection to this dog. It didn’t love them or like them or let them get near. It lived off things like pies people threw out the window. So what’s going on in the land of social psychology here?

Harawene was a mascot, a symbol of something. A living, shared idea that was acutely local. Something of the vintage of the old corner shops before they were replaced by the MacDonalds and the neighbourhood changed. Something other than the weather that people could talk about as a shared experience about the place they lived in. People who live and work around that location at Te Ngae Road, like so many other places, are atomised compared to how human groups usually live. We don’t live in a village or tribe anymore and have no reason to know who our neighbours are or get to interact with them. Most of what we used to do together has been taken over by The State. We crave that missing connection of working together as a community. It’s even a relief when there’s some civil emergency or power cut because at least in that there is a channel to connect with others again.

So, Harawene served as a focus for this local civic energy. It was projected upon her rather than something she generated; Parasocial. On the other hand, something about her private little life battle and the way she was baring it is probably essential. Plenty of non-villages with a hunger to rally together might have a tree or a stray animal that couldn’t bare being imbued with this meaning. Here was a dog that could and did. And, with a statue to conduct the gaze, that part of her survives beyond death.

—
Image ref. AHNZ Archive (2019)

Ref. Radio New Zealand (2024)

Like    Comment     Share