Hazel passed away on 8 January 2021 in Taupō aged 90 years. A wool classer, agricultural researcher, Italian interpreter, prioneering historian - Hazel saw it all.

Hazel leaves behind an immeasurable legacy not least as a fearless academic who not only saw darkness in New Zealand's 19th century, but who also reproached historians for their reliance on unsatisfactory sources when seeking to represent the views and action of rangatira.

Along with her 3 siblings Hazel spent her childhood in Wilton, Wellington.  After leaving Wellington Girls' College in 1947, her love of the countryside took her to the Waiarapa to work on a farm.  In 1949 she began a diploma in agriculture at Massey Agricultural College, one of only 3 women to enrol and the first to finish in 1952.  A course in sheep farming followed, which included a thorough grounding in wool management.

In 1954, Hazel became the first woman to qualify as a wool classer.  She then undertook 2 years of shed classing in Waiarapa and Southland.  Much later, she would remember these years fondly, especially working with Māori shearing gangs.

Thereafter, she headed for farms in Britain, before returning to Massey University and an appointment as a technician in sheep husbandry, working with Dr Francis Dry in his development of the Drysdale breed.

In 1960, Hazel travelled to Italy.  She lived in Perugia and, acquiring fluency in Italian, found work as an interpreter in a medical centre in Rome.  After 5 years, she returned to Massey, analysing wool for carpet manufacture.  But she was lured to Tongariro by an Italian construction company which needed interpreters.  With the project finished, Hazel travelled to Western Australia, but soon returned, settling in the central North Island.

Living among Māori, working alongside Māori shearers and women wool classers, Hazel had been comforted, she would later recall, setting out on a career somewhere in the farming industry.  Now drawing on time spent with Māori, she enrolled in Māori language papers.

Returning to Massey, this time as a student, she received scholarships to eventually complete an honours thesis which utilised Italian language sources to represent the view of Italian priests working with Māori in Taranaki between 1860 and 1880.

The research was game-changing, she said.  A further scholarship enabled her to undertake a PhD which, staying with Taranaki, examined the events leading to the invasion of Parihaka in 1881.  Hazel had attended the 1981 centenary of the invasion and, as she would later recall, she had been "shocked and dismayed, not only by the histories, but also the claims of ill-informed historians."

Her PhD was published in 2002 as Day of Darkness: Taranaki 1878-1882.  The book was generally well received.  But some prominent historians took issue with her insistence that Pākehā historians could not tell the histories of Māori, which were enshrined in cultural devices such as waiata, tauparapara (incantation) and whakapapa.  Eminent journals published unfavourable reviews.

Hazel was unfazed.  In 1993, she opened a seminar series at Parihaka, presenting a critical paper entitled Parihaka and the Historians. The house - Te Niho o Te Ātiawa - was full to capacity and she received an amazing reception.

Now appointed as a lecturer in history at Massey, she presented popular courses examining New Zealand's difficult 19th century.  Earlier, she had worked alongside Professor Mason Durie as administrator in his fledgling Māori Studies department.  She had also undertaken research for the Waitangi Tribunal.

In 1996, Hazel retired to Pukawa on the southern end of Lake Taupō, building a striking home with a lake-facing wall featuring a huge glass waka prow.  Though retired she continued major research projects sponsored by the tribunal.  She also often returned to Massey, teaching holiday courses.  Her lecturing style was heartfelt; she often cried during lectures.  Hazel felt and lived her love of history with a passion, inspiring others.  She especially felt the hurts inflected upon Māori.

By 2000, she was drawn back to her interest in farming.  In 2006, she published Ngamatea: The Land and its People, a book about the Nga Tamatea Station in Kaimanawas, which she first visited in 1959.  The book rekindled her interest in the lives of musterers, cooks, shearers and shepherds.  As she wrote about the station's environs, "the vastness somehow enfolds you and the tussock gets into your blood."

Two years later, Hazel received an award to research a new book, this time on the shearing industry.  Shear Hard Work, published in 2010, chartered the rise of shearers from "colonial dregs" to men and women setting world records and shearing sheep around the globe.  

During her last years, Hazel became active in conservation.

After her death, she was taken to Parihaka, with a service held on 12 January.  On the morning after her 1993 address at Parihaka, over breakfast, Hazel had turned to Parihaka kaumātua, Te Ru Kokiri Wharehoka and asked if he would care to write a short dedication for a published version of her paper.  Te Ru thought for a second, then asked for a pencil and paper and wrote the following words for Hazel:  He Maru Ahiahi, Kei Muru te Maru Awatea, He Paki Arohirohi, kei Mua:  After the shades of evening, comes the dusk of dawn, whilst before lies the shimmering glory, of a fair day.

By Dr Danny Keenan, 30 January 2021, Stuff online news