AUSTRALIAN PM JULIA GILLARD BONDS WITH GREEN GINGER-GROUP IN NZ
According to Dominion Post reporter Kirsty Johnston: ‘Flame-haired Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has found a kindred Celtic spirit in Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
‘Ms Gillard was so delighted to find a fellow redhead meeting her off her flight into Wellington on the 16th February that she reached out to stroke the mayor's auburn hair during their brief chat on the airport tarmac.
"She told me it was a good hair colour," Ms Wade-Brown said after Ms Gillard had left the military terminal. "And we agreed that Celtic heritage is an important part of Australia and New Zealand." Ms Gillard, who was born in Wales, flew into Wellington just after 5.30pm in her Australian Air Force plane, on the second leg of her trip to New Zealand.
‘She was welcomed with a brisk Wellington wind along with the mayor, reporters and an official entourage, including the Australian deputy high commissioner. "We also talked about the wind, actually," Ms Wade-Brown added, saying she had told Ms Gillard how it was a good source of renewable energy.
And, later in Parliament, as reported by Martin Kay:
‘How many Aussie Gingas does it take to make history? Two it seems – one to give the first speech by a foreign leader to Parliament and the other to dictate when it happens.
All eyes were on russet-haired Greens leader Russel Norman as Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard came into the House to deliver her historic speech. Norman, born and raised in Australia, vetoed plans for Gillard to give the speech while Parliament was formally in session, insisting it would mean any world leader could then get the same privilege.
But as Aussie's most powerful redhead entered the chamber, Norman rose with other MPs and applauded politely. He beamed as she was brought along the front benches after her speech, and greeted her with a warm "Gidday". He said later the issue of him blocking Gillard from speaking to a formal session of Parliament hadn't come up.
"They're not really bothered about it. It's just not a big deal for them."
Another redhead missed his chance to get in on the act. Labour whip Darren Hughes, who sits in the second row behind leader Phil Goff, would have normally moved into Goff's seat as he paraded Gillard down the front benches. But he was out of town on another engagement, and instead clearly delighted first-term list MP Stuart Nash, who had moved into Hughes' seat, took the opportunity to meet Gillard with gusto.
Jokes about Aussies nicking our stuff were running thick and fast throughout the day, and even Prime Minister John Key joined in, saying we considered it a mark of respect when our cousins across the ditch claimed Kiwi icons such as pavlova (a meringue dessert), Phar Lap (a famous racehorse) and Crowded House (a trans-Tasman pop group).
Yesterday, another name was added to the list when former trade minister Hugh Templeton, widely regarded as a chief architect of the Closer Economic Relations free trade deal, was formally invested with the honorary Order of Australia. In her speech to Parliament, Gillard said CER was a major step in cementing the close ties between two nations bound by shared beliefs, values and ambitions.
"Australia has many alliances and friendships around the world, economic and defence partnerships of every kind, but New Zealand alone is family.
"Here, under the Southern Cross – emblazoned on both our flags – we have created two of the most successful societies in the contemporary world. Two advanced multi-cultural democracies tied by tradition and affection to the Old World, but anchored firmly in the new. This is our time – a time for optimism, because our best days lie ahead."
Well, self-congratulation and mutual admiration aside, I find myself spurred on to add a little on the origins of Australasia’s Anglo-Celtic red-headed heritage.
I start though by paying a little personal homage to the Anzac Spirit – and WWI where the Southern Hemisphere red heads more than played their parts. And what better way here than to quote from C.J. Dennis and ‘The Moods of Ginger Mick’?:
‘A flamin' 'ero at the War, that's Mick.
An' Rose - 'is Rose, is waitin' in the Lane,
Nursin' 'er achin' 'eart, an' lookin' sick
As she crawls out to work an' 'ome again,
Givin' the bird to blokes 'oo'd be 'er "friend,"
An' prayin', wiv the rest, fer wars to end’.
SURVIVAL OF THE REDDEST
Looking beyond Australia and New Zealand, Celia, Julia and Russel are in mixed company as far as their top flags are concerned. Just to recapitulate:
The Biblical figures King David, Mary Magdalene and Esau were reputedly red-headed – the latter having his entire body covered in russet fur. Judas Iscariot is also often represented with red hair. Among mythological heroes, both Achilles and Menelaus were powerful and temperamental red heads and the Norse gods of lightening and fire Thor and Loki were credited with fiery locks.
The Greek historian Dio Cassius apparently described Boudica, the famous Celtic female politician / Queen of the Iceni of eastern England who revolted against the Romans, as "tall and terrifying in appearance... with a great mass of red hair... over her shoulders." The Roman author Tacitus also commented on the "red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia (Scotland)".
As for female rulers, both Mary Queen of Scots and her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England were redhead monarchs, and during the Elizabethan era in England, red hair was, not altogether surprisingly, fashionable for women. In modern times, there are plenty of famous red-heads – including actresses Lindsay Lohan, Marcia Cross and Nicole Kidman and celebrity males like Prince Harry and Ewan McGregor.
So where does the red hair originate?
Professor Walter Bodmer and his team at Oxford University are currently involved in a 3,500 sample, US $4.5 million study of the genetic make-up of the people of the British Isles, principally as an aid to identifying disease prevalence and risk markers. This ‘People of the British Isles project’ is also throwing up interesting information on the frequency of physical attributes and the probable migration pathways of ancestral lines.
Preliminary results are available for the distribution of red hair in the British Isles. Testing their white cell samples for two of the half-dozen red-hair versions of the MC1R gene, the team was able to show their frequency in each area of the British Isles. The results were intriguing.
The absolute minimum value was nil in Cumbria (with Lancashire also recording low values). Low values were also dominant in southern and eastern England with values of 0.07 for Oxfordshire and Lincolnshire, 0.11 for northeast England, 0.13 for Sussex and Kent and frequencies of 0.16 and 0.23 for Cornwall and Devon.
In Wales the figure was 0.21, and in Orkney a high 0.26. Scotland as a whole also has a high rate. But the highest was in Ireland. Using data from other research studies, the team got a figure for Ireland of 0.31, confirmation of the stereotypical image of the red-haired Irishman.
Sir Walter, the Oxford geneticist leading the project, acknowledges: “I was amazed - I didn’t expect to see something like this. The research gives us, for the first time, an insight into the startling numbers of native people who have been described as having red hair in ancient times”.
But why red hair is so common in Scotland and Ireland? The answer, says Bodmer, is that red-hair genes were common among the first Britons and that populations in the archipelago’s fringes still carry their bloodline.
The Genes for red hair first appeared in human beings about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and these genes were then carried into the islands by the original settlers – by men and women who “would have been relatively tall, with little body fat, athletic, fair-skinned and who would have had red hair”.
Redheads therefore represent the land’s most ancient lineages. So if you want an image of how those first people appeared, don’t think of a hairy savage with a mane of thick black hair. Contemplate instead a picture of a slim, ginger-haired individual: Prince Harry, perhaps, or the actress Nicole Kidman who has Scottish and Irish descent.
Why did those early Britons have so many redheads in their midst in the first place?
Is there an evolutionary advantage to having red hair in this part of the world? The answer according to the medical scientists may be yes.
The MC1R variants that cause red hair also have an effect on the skin. As a result, redheads do not make enough of the dark pigment melanin to protect them against the sun’s powerful ultraviolet rays. Their skin rarely tans. It just burns or freckles.
In Africa, where modern humans first evolved 150,000 years ago, this would have been fatal. In northern Europe, however, melanin-free skin could have provided an advantage because we make vitamin D in our skin when sunlight shines on it.
Dark-skinned people were protected against the African sun, but their ability to make vitamin D would have been badly affected in relatively gloomy northern Europe. This could have caused rickets, resulting in weak bones and curved legs — bad news for a hunter-gatherer.
Rickets is particularly damaging for women, as it increases pelvic deformations, raising the risk of death in childbirth. So, the theory goes, we evolved white, melanin-free skin that has no dark pigment to block sunlight and cause rickets. Red hair was a side effect.
So there it is: being a redhead could mean you possess an evolutionary advantage over non-red-haired people – as long as you stay in the gloomy boreal latitudes (better news for Celia Wade-Brown than Julia Gillard here!).
The maps show the distributions of the three gene variants that are associated with red hair in the British Isles. The MC1R gene is the common version that is found across Ireland and the UK, but that are particularly associated with the ‘Celtic’ countries. There are also two rarer versions (called 150C and 161W) that are associated with the red hair found more frequently in eastern and southern England.
One particular version (M17, shown in red in the lower diagram) tells an interesting saga. This variant is found in about 20% of Norwegians and is also found in North Eastern Europe and Asia from Russia to Central Asia. It is, however, very rare in north western Europe. The exception to this is in the Orkney Islands, where about 30% of men have this version of the Y chromosome, which supports the folk history of Norse Viking men settlement.
M17, however, is not found in the area where the Danish Vikings settled (e.g. Northumberland) and is also rare in Denmark. This suggests that the Danish Vikings were different ancestries than the Norse Vikings. It is likely then that the Danish Vikings came from the same area as the Anglo-Saxons (Jutland and north western Germany), only 200 years later.
[For further information see Sir Walter Bodmer at: www.peopleofthebritishisles.org]
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