ON THE SHOULDERS OF A GIANT
‘Puke hahaka, ko pae tata ka kitea. Maunga teitei, ko pae tawhiti ka kitea.’ So goes the proverb in te reo Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. The saying was composed by Sir Pou Temara; his rendering of it is: ‘A low hill only allows limited vision. A high mountain gives distant vision.’
This aligns with a widespread Maori belief that we go into the future on the shoulders of others – the giants, our ancestors.
It certainly applies to the artist Sarah-Jane Blake, the creative, visionary daughter of Sir Peter Blake, one of New Zealand’s greatest sailing sons, who won the 1995 and 2000 America’s Cup as well as the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race and the 1994 Trophée Jules Verne.
‘I was brought up with parents who weren’t doing your typical 9-5, my mother being an artist and my dad a yachtsman,’ explains Sarah-Jane. ‘We were used to long periods of Dad being away or being on the road following him or joining in. Holidays were spent on sailing adventures and even the
