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The Otago Boys' High School Foundation
PO Box 11,
Dunedin, New Zealand
Tel +64 3 477 2546
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Donald George Alfred Munro MBE (1927) died in Adelaide on 18 January 2012 - the following obituary appeared in the ODT on 28 January and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the paper
Donald Munro, the Mosgiel born baritone who died last week just days after his 99th birthday, was known as ‘‘the father of New Zealand opera’’.
Munro died in Australia, where he had lived for the past 40 years.
He returned to his homeland every year until 2010 and had told friends he planned to celebrate his 100th birthday in New Zealand.
Munro was born in 1913 and educated at Otago Boys’ High School.
He started his career as an opera singer in Dunedin in 1938, before braving wartime London to study for four years at the Royal College of Music.
He won the college’s prestigious Tagore Medal, which is awarded annually to the outstanding student of the year, before joining Sadler’s Wells Opera in 1942, where he earned a considerable reputation as a lieder singer.
At the end of World War 2, he moved to Paris to study with distinguished French baritone Pierre Bernac, from 1946 to 1948.
He left Europe in 1951 to return home to Dunedin, for family reasons, where he began teaching.
He moved to Wellington in 1954, where he continued to teach and established the country’s first opera company.
His aim in forming the company was ‘‘to take opera to the people’’ and he was passionate about taking productions to rural areas, as well city centres.‘‘He wanted to create an opera company which could provide work for New Zealand singers to come back to from Europe and which would support professional singing careers in New Zealand,’’ said veteran Dunedin singing teacher Honor McKellar, who sang with Munro in the opera company in Wellington in the 1950s and 1960s.‘‘He was tremendously important to opera in New Zealand. He mortgaged his house and worked on the wharves to keep that company going.’’
Munro had wanted to return to Dunedin from Australia for Ms McKellar’s 90th birthday, in November, 2010, but was denied permission by his doctor.‘‘He said he was determined to come back for his 100th birthday,’’ Ms McKellar said.
Munro’s company performed an average of three productions a year and, within just a few years, had graduated from staging operettas in the Wellington Concert Chamber to producing major three-act classical operas in the Opera House.
Munro was awarded an MBE for services to opera in 1960. He gave up singing roles in 1962 to concentrate on the artistic direction of the opera company and was the first person to produce George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess outside the United States.
The production, with its Maori cast, was critically acclaimed and helped establish the careers of many Maori singers, including a young Kiri Te Kanawa, who was making her professional debut.
He also produced many other significant New Zealand works, including Ngaio Marsh’s A Unicorn for Christmas, which was performed for the Queen during the 1963 Royal Tour of New Zealand.
In 1967, he accepted a senior lectureship at the University of Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium of Music, where he was Dean of Music from 1974 to 1978. During this time, he also served on a number of Australian government arts funding bodies. He was named a New Zealand Arts Icon in 2005 and continued to teach singing until he was 97. Munro spent the last two years of his life living near his daughter, Lucinda, in Willunga, South Australia.
- Nigel Benson, Otago Daily Times
On January 7, 2012
Rodney Bernard French Eastgate (1929-1932) passed away aged 95. Known always as a true gentleman, Rod had lived in his own home until very recently, and was very independent. The following obituary is from The Press, and was downloaded via www.PressDisplay.com
An aunt of Rod Eastgate worked as a governess in Rome. She arranged a penfriend for her young nephew from her employer’s family. Years later, Eastgate, by then a NZ Army officer, arrived in Rome. He went to his penfriend’s address, hoping to meet him. But it was wartime. The house was deserted.
The New Zealanders pushed up through Italy. Stopping in a town on the north-eastern coast, Eastgate commandeered a vacant villa as accommodation for his men. There, on a table, he spotted an envelope and recognised the handwriting on it. The letter was addressed to someone who must have lived in the villa. Eastgate turned it over and found the sender’s name. The letter had been sent by his old penfriend. The sender’s address was in a northern town. When the war ended, Eastgate took a car and found the address. There, too, he found his penfriend.
Eastgate told this story to army historian Peter Coster. But he never talked about fighting. He preferred to remember the war as ‘‘a trip to hear the second-best orchestra in the world’’. The orchestra, playing in Cairo, comprised Jewish refugees. Eastgate, a classical music lover, was fit to judge its performance.
All who knew Eastgate speak of ‘‘a very private man’’. Friend Peter Scott says he was ‘‘determinedly independent’’. He lived alone in his Christchurch flat well into his 96th year. He never married and few people knew much about him. Family lore includes a pre-war girl friend who married another man while Eastgate was overseas, which he never got over. Relatives wonder why he carried the paybook of a dead German soldier in his pocket until his own death, three weeks ago.
Yet Eastgate was no iconoclast. Niece Jillian says he was ‘‘a gentleman of the old school’’.
His parents emigrated from Scotland and he was born in Melbourne. They moved to Wellington in 1920 and then settled in Dunedin, where his father had an electrical store and his mother taught elocution. Jillian thinks he inherited his mother’s liking for correctness. After primary education at Maori Hill School, he attended Otago Boys’ High School from 1929 to 1932. He then started a 40-year career, interrupted by World War II, with stock and station firm Dalgetys, becoming its accountant. He transferred to Nelson, then Christchurch, where he retired in 1978.
As a young man, he enjoyed tramping and cycling trips around the lower South Island with a brother. This sparked an interest in native birds, which he passed on to his nieces and nephews.
Eastgate joined the territorial army before the war and was commissioned as an officer of artillery. Thinking he could get overseas faster in the infantry, he enlisted in the 20th Battalion on New Year’s Day, 1940. However, his gunnery experience led to a posting to Waiouru to prepare recruits for tank warfare. The 20th Battalion would convert to tanks in 1943. He sailed for Egypt at the end of 1942, to rejoin it. After fighting in the African campaign, he helped with tank training.
Eastgate commanded a tank squadron through Italy. His men were in the thick of fighting at Cassino, where he won promotion to captain. He became a major later in 1944 and was assigned to regimental headquarters.
He took part in control of Trieste at the end of the war, when New Zealand troops stayed to prevent the Yugoslav army taking the city over.
Former Italy Star Association president Jack Cummins says Eastgate was a loyal member of the veterans’ organisation and its highest ranking officer in later years. He was a patron of the 20th Battalion Association. Jillian says: ‘‘the war was a big part of his life, right to the end’’.
Eastgate was a ‘‘favourite uncle’’, Jillian says. He gave carefully selected books for presents. He took his nephews and nieces to the museum and talked about the bird exhibits.
He attended classical concerts and had a huge collection of records. His only non-classical albums were recordings by Peter Sellers and Eartha Kitt. Sellers was a natural fit for Eastgate , who had a clever wit and loved to joke about literal errors he spotted.
He was associated with Ferrymead Heritage Park for many years. He was a Defensive Driving instructor, though, Jill says, anyone travelling with him might wonder about that.
Eastgate was a devout Anglican. He attended St Mary’s in Merivale, until a woman vicar was appointed. This he could not abide.
Following a fall, and the Canterbury earthquakes, Eastgate went into a rest home. Looking back at his flat, he spotted his hymn book and retrieved it. It was the last thing he took with him.
Professor James Lawrence ("Laurie") Wright passed away in Dunedin on 8 September 2011 at the age of 96. The following obituary by Eileen Goodwin appeared in the Otago Daily Times on 10 December and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
Whether delivering babies, guiding nervous rural GPs, or serving as an army doctor in World War 2, Prof Laurie Wright was guided by a sense of duty.
Professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Otago Medical School from 1951 until he retired in 1980, Prof Wright died in Dunedin in September, aged 96. James Lawrence Wright was born in May 1915, the eldest of William and Helen Wright’s five children, whom they raised in Forbury, Dunedin. After attending Forbury School and Otago Boys’ High School, he attended Otago Medical School, enlisting with the Otago University Medical Company in 1932. After leaving medical school he worked at Dunedin Hospital for two years, and then as a locum GP in Westport, before being awarded an obstetrics and gynaecology scholarship in Melbourne.
The war prompted his early return to New Zealand, to join the air force, but he was seconded to the army because of its need for medics. Dunedin lawyer Bill Wright said his father was not entirely happy about the secondment, having gained his wings. However, he distinguished himself as an army doctor in the North African campaign, and later in Italy. He attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was mentioned in dispatches.
In Italy, he married Belle Henderson, a New Zealand war nurse, near Naples in April 1945. Mr Wright said his mother, who was from Central Otago, had followed Prof Wright, determined not to be parted from him. ‘‘When he was posted overseas she determined to follow him and enlisted with the army . . . she followed him through Africa and Italy and ultimately got her man at the end of the war.’’ Unusually, the two were allowed to serve together for several months, before they were discharged and travelled to London by ship in December, 1945.
After several years at St George’s Hospital in London, life back in Dunedin was characterised by hard work, and long nights away delivering babies. His father never glorified his war years, seeing it as a duty, Mr Wright said.
He had an excellent recall of detail, and had hoped to write of his war experience, which did not come about.
His stories of well-known campaigns instilled in his son a life-long interest in history.
He was strong on ethics, and was not moralistic or judgemental. ‘‘He once told me you should not have to ask what is the correct thing to do. You should instinctively know.’’
He related well to people from all walks of life. He made time to speak to people, regardless of their place in the hospital hierarchy, Mr Wright said. Former patients had contacted him since his father’s death — more than a dozen — to thank him for his father’s care. On professional visits to Wellington, he stayed in a state house with his World War 2 driver, with whom he had a firm bond, rather than at a hotel.
Fly fishing was Prof Wright’s main passion, although he was also a rugby man, a supporter of Otago rugby, both the university, and the province.
Emeritus Prof Richard Seddon, of Queenstown, said Prof Wright largely dedicated himself to clinical practice, rather than research. However, he was a leader in promoting maternal and perinatal mortality documentation and review to improve clinical safety. Establishing a clinical and academic unit of excellence in Dunedin was his focus, Prof Seddon said. ‘‘He was a stickler for form.’’ He was very interested in supporting the role of GPs in obstetric practice, Prof Seddon said.
Dr Brian McMahon, a student of Prof Wright’s in the 1950s, who worked as a GP in the 1960s in Cromwell and was superintendent of Cromwell Hospital, said his old teacher helped him with difficult and stressful births. Transport was an issue in those days, and GPs had to cope with a greater number of difficult cases. Dr McMahon served in the Vietnam conflict, leading to a close bond with his old teacher. University students of the 1950s lacked awareness of the older generation’s war service. ‘‘If only we had known that as students, I think our attitudes would have been different. We would have had a rapport.’’
In retirement, Prof Wright did not give up medicine, becoming a surgical assistant at Mercy Hospital for a decade, his friend, former student, and colleague, Dr Alan Donoghue, recalled. Prof Wright did not work in the private sector pre-retirement, and thus had no ‘‘cushion of continuing practice to soften the abrupt transition’’. The other doctors at Mercy, nearly all former students, greatly enjoyed his wisdom, humility, and good humour. ‘‘He was a marvellous raconteur, and enlivened many hours with fascinating historical anecdotes.’’
Mrs Wright died in 2008, shortly after the couple moved to Ross Home in late 2007.
Prof Wright is survived by two children, Bill and Cathrine, six grandchildren, and one great grandchild.
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The following obituary by David Richmond is reprinted from the Athletics New Zealand website....
With the passing of Les Bradshaw in Dunedin on 7 September 2009 at the age of 87, Athletics Otago lost its longest serving and best known administrator. Les attended Otago Boys High School from 1935 to 1938 and in his third year there joined the Civil Service Club. He was to remain a loyal member of the club for the next 72 years. Initially Les’s focus was that of a competitor. In 1941 he won the Otago junior 800 metres championships, his only centre title. Athletics was halted by World War II. Les enlisted in the NZ Army on 8 July 1941, being posted overseas in July 1943 where he joined the 4th Field Regiment. He rose to the rank of Captain and was put in charge of the signallers and surveyors in support of the frontline units. Twice he was mentioned in despatches, the first at Cassino, the second at Gaiana River and Villa Fontana, later in the Italian campaign. After the war Les continued to compete, being a member of some of the successful Civil Service teams in the late 1940s. Although he remained active in harriers for many years it was as a social runner. Administration was his forte. In 1949 Les was appointed Civil Service delegate to the Otago Centre, joining his wife Kath (nee Burns) who was then th Les was appointed to his first Centre committee at the 1953 AGM, joining the Cross Country (then called Harrier) committee. He remained a member of that committee until about 2003 when he gradually faded away from attending meetings as a life member. Rarely in those 50 years did Les miss a meeting. At the 1954 AGM Les was appointed a winter selector, a position he held for the next 15 years. At the following AGM Les was elected one of the three Vice Presidents. When Jim Holley moved to Wellington and Hec Mackenna declined the Presidency because of ill health, Les quickly found himself in 1957 in the key Centre office. He was president for the next two years until 1959. Les became a member of the Track and Field committee in 1959, joining his wife Kath who had been a member since 1952. Again he gave sterling service, attending meetings until his gradual withdrawal in the last few years. With his accountancy background (Les had graduated with a BCom from Otago University), he was first elected to the Finance Committee in 1954 and again served on that committee for almost 50 years. However, the position that Les is best remembered for is as Otago Centre Secretary from 1974 until 1998, some 25 years. Les never used computers and his typed and gestetnered minutes (always on foolscap at first) and annual reports are uniquely Les’. In 1957, as President, Les made his first trip to Wellington as one of the two visiting delegates from Otago to the then NZAAA AGM. It was a trip he was to make 16 times in two distinct phases, 1957 to 1963 and from 1981 to 1989, the latter usually with another good friend Ron Cain. Les was President of the NZAAA in 1966-67 and was a cross country selector from 1957 to 1975. In 1969 Les managed the New Zealand team to the World Cross Country Championships in Glasgow. Les remains one of New Zealand’s few administrators to be involved at IAAF level, serving on their Cross Country and Road Racing Committee from 1981 to 1991. It is probably not coincidental that the only time that New Zealand has hosted the World Cross Country Championships was during Les’s time on the committee, in 1988 at the Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland. In 1992 he was the first New Zealand official to represent the IAAF at the World Cross Country Championships when they were held in Japan. Les also devoted an enormous amount of time to the Civil Service Club holding many offices. Indeed he was made a life member of the club as long ago as 1957. Life membership with the Otago Centre followed in 1977 and with Athletics New Zealand in 1982. His contribution to our sport was publicly recognised in 1990 when he was awarded the OBE. Les was proud of his wife Kath and her achievements both as an athlete and an administrator. In 1969 Kath became President of the Otago Centre, making her and Les the first husband and wife to be President. Kath died in 1980 of cancer. How many meetings Les attended is difficult to accurately ascertain but he attended over 600 Otago Centre meetings and at least 1000 sub-committee ones. Les did not attend meetings to make up the numbers. He was not afraid to speak up, always from a position of knowledge and conviction. He was a private conservative person but not unwilling to change provided he could be convinced that the change was better than the status quo. In the realm of competition he was a stickler that the rules were strictly and fairly enforced. He certainly had plenty of chances at the latter, being Track Referee and Race Referee at harrier events for decades. No-one knew the rules better than Les. He held strong convictions, none stronger than his anti-drugs stand. Les considered those who took form enhancing drugs as cheats and was very disappointed that his proposal of a four year ban for such offences was not accepted at the 1987 IAAF congress at Rome. As a younger man Les was a keen basketballer (indoor basketball then). He closely followed cricket and rugby and was often a spectator at Carisbrook. Les worked for many years as the accountant for DW Johnston bacon company and then for many years with Tonkinson and Woods solicitors, before retiring in his seventies. In 2007, he was presented with a rare 60 year membership certificate by the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants. |
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Bill Cowan
(notes downloaded from Adelaide University website)
William Albert Cowan was born in 1908 in Dunedin, New Zealand, and educated at Otago Boys' School and the University of Otago, graduating with first class honours in Latin and French despite struggling financially. He gained a further degree in classics at the University College, London, also with first class honours. On his return to New Zealand he taught for a short time in at Wellington College in NZ before being appointed University Librarian at the Barr Smith Library in 1933.
In 1935-1936, a study grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York enabled Cowan to attain his Bachelor of Library Science degree at the Library School of the University of Michigan, and also to visit university libraries in Great Britain, Europe and North America. The Carnegie Corporation was at this time generously promoting growth of Australian libraries, resulting in a renaissance of librarianship in Australia. Bill Cowan thus became one of the first professionally trained Australian librarians.
During his administration, the Barr Smith Library grew from approximately 90,000 to over 300,000 volumes despite limited financial resources. The Medical Library grew to be regarded as one of the strongest in the country, while Cowan tirelessly built up the periodical collection through an exchange programme using the Australian Journal of Experimental Biology and Medical Science.
His period of administration was an eventful and arduous one, covering the difficult years of the Depression followed by World War II. The post-war years and the influx of students brought new stresses for university libraries, and it was not until the Murray Commission Report that funding increases became available for the purchase of books and periodicals. In addition to his Librarianship duties, Cowan lectured in the Dept of Classics until 1955.
Bill Cowan took an active part in the Australian Institute of Librarians and its successor, the Library Association of Australia. He was an examiner of university librarianship for many years, and was the university librarians' representative of the Australian Unesco Committee for Libraries from 1954.
After 30 years as Librarian, he retired in 1964 due to ill health and was awarded the title of Emeritus Librarian. He was a well-respected scholar of the classics, a perfectionist, and lived rather frugally.
Bill died in 1984 but he and his wife Marnie Cowan both believed in the benefits of tertiary education, so in 1994 Marnie established a trust to help students financially. Since its inception the Bill Cowan Barr Smith Library Fellowship has provided over $1.2 million of grants and scholarships.
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1940-43), an internationally acclaimed poet, novelist and playwright of Cook Island and European descent died in Wellington on 16th August 2009, aged 84. Alistair wrote four novels and produced 17 works of poetry - and received many awards including a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2005.
Below is reproduced an entry from the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature:
Alistair Campbell |
Campbell, Alistair Te Ariki (1925–2009), poet, playwright and novelist, was born in the Cook Islands and spent his first seven years there. His mother, a Cook Islander, married his father, a third-generation New Zealander from Dunedin, when he withdrew from post-war society, after experiencing the World War 1 trenches, to become an island trader.
The Polynesian and the European strains in Campbell’s personality and work are inseparable. Although his early poetry makes little mention of Polynesia, in its romantic and musical tone and its intense attachment to landscape it is hard not to detect something of those origins, while his later work, more directly Polynesian, nonetheless has the form and tone provided by an education in English and classical poetry.
Although the poet lost his parents at an early age, their personalities and romantic attachment pervade his writing. His father was said to have a good command of various Island dialects and to have been consulted on them by Sir Peter Buck. As a successful trader he achieved considerable social status in Rarotonga.
Campbell’s mother, Teu, revealed in photographs as a shy beauty, was remembered for her kindness and Christian piety. Her father, the Bosini mentioned in his grandson’s poems, was said to know the Bible by heart. The term ‘Te Ariki’ which the poet now uses in his name points to the chiefly origins of Bosini’s family. Campbell later admitted that he knew his mother too little, and much of the melancholy in his personality and poetry is due to that. His father had seemed even more remote, leaving the women, family and servants to raise the children. Campbell’s recorded memories of these first seven years are of South Sea warmth and a certain inner darkness, poetically personified as ‘The Dark Lord of Savaiki’. As Peter Smart wrote: ‘His memories included nightmares as well as dreams.’
Teu died of tuberculosis in 1932, aged 28, and Jock Campbell rapidly became addicted to alcohol. He died within a year. In interviews, Campbell confessed that the next years were a blank in his memory, a grief he had repressed. Much of his later work can be interpreted as an effort to fill that gap, although there are many less personal echoes as well.
In the New Zealand Railways Magazine of 1 July 1933 there is a photograph of two small boys in big hats and coats, with luggage labels attached to their lapels. The taller is Alistair Campbell and the smaller his brother Bill, sent virtually as human packages from the Cook Islands to join a brother and sister in New Zealand. The next years were spent in Dunedin, the South Seas idyll replaced with an orphanage in a provincial town close to Antarctic seas.
Socially too, the boy’s status had changed, from a loved member of a respected family to a child in an orphanage in the years of the Great Depression. The sense of abandonment must have been increased by the fact that he spoke little English, Penrhyn Mäori being his native language. Rather than breaking him, this situation made him determined to succeed in this new competitive world. Within a few years he was top of his class and successful at sports (he represented Otago in soccer). Nonetheless he remained a ‘loner’ at school, and found a warm refuge only in the home of friends in the Cromwell Gorge, Central Otago. His first important poems reflect that landscape: ‘This is the kiln / That fired my shaping mind.’ In 1943 he moved on to Otago University, but the strain of competitive living told, and after a minor breakdown he suddenly moved to Wellington.
After initial difficulties he obtained a room at Weir House and was accepted as a student at Wellington Teachers’ College. Considering his later major contributions to educational publishing, it is ironic that he failed to complete his College studies. He was distracted, he has said, by ‘personal doubts and fears’, but also by women and poetry. He helped to edit Spike and found Hilltop and Arachne, publishing verse in all of them. Writing became his way of life, rather than an ‘interest’. With his young friend, Roy Dickson, he travelled to familiar places in Otago and explored new ones such as the Hollyford Valley. In 1947, on another expedition, Dickson was killed, and this tragedy gave rise to the greatest of Campbell’s early poems, ‘Elegy’, published in Mine Eyes Dazzle (1950). It reflected the darkness that was to characterise much of his poetry, and, typically, projected it onto the landscape. At the same time Campbell was developing another theme that was to accompany him throughout his life: the beauty of inaccessible women. Many of the later attempts to order his poems into a coherent whole were to be introduced by ‘Green’, just such a poem written at this time.
In these early poems Campbell largely ignored his Polynesian background and wrote and argued as an inheritor of the European tradition: he was studying Latin and the history and culture of Greece, while the poet he most admired was W.B. Yeats. Together with James K. Baxter, Louis Johnson, Peter Bland and others, Campbell was a member of the (informal) Wellington Group, who felt that the Auckland poets around Allen Curnow were trying to stifle originality by focusing on ‘the New Zealand thing’. This was not a question of subject matter—all of the Wellington poets wrote of local subjects—but of literary orientation. Awareness of international developments seemed essential to the Wellington Group.
After various casual jobs, Campbell found employment as a gardener in the grounds of a Red Cross hospital, an ideal combination of outdoor work and opportunity to write and read when the weather turned sour. Many of his finest early poems were written in the gardener’s hut. He continued to haunt Central Otago whenever possible and on one occasion was followed there by a Wellington student named Fleur Adcock. They courted and wed. Campbell returned to the Teachers’ College and was more successful this time, partly because of the support of friends among students and staff, some of whom were also poets: Anton Vogt, Barry Mitcalfe, Baxter and Johnson. Douglas Lilburn, John M. Thomson and Erik Schwimmer were also among the friends of that time. Literary conversations were intense, but Campbell was not especially productive in the 1950s. It seems that he was preparing for a later phase, and periods of silence have been typical of his career. Nonetheless the hard monosyllables of ‘Aunt Lucrezia’ (1954), the vision of a walking skeleton—the past recovering life—in ‘Bones’ (1956) and the mystery of death in ‘Bitter Harvest’ (1957) suggest, at least with hindsight, that the new themes of (Polynesian) childhood and death and a new harshness in style were being prepared. There is also sufficient evidence that he read widely and with passion in local and international poetry.
Having acquired his degree, Campbell worked as an editor for School Publications and wrote a novel for children, The Happy Summer (1961). He also edited the first Poetry programme on radio (1958). In his personal life great changes were occurring. Fleur bore two sons but his attention turned to Meg Andersen (see Meg Campbell), a beautiful young actor. Campbell divorced and remarried in 1958. Nonetheless, beneath the surface, there were tensions, and in Meg post-natal depression merged into a deep and prolonged nervous breakdown. Campbell suffered stress of his own and in 1960 he, too, suffered some kind of breakdown. For many years he had been subject to nightmares and depression—found partly in his poetry but more explicitly in his plays and later fiction—and in exorcising his devils he turned to memories of childhood. All of this is now more than a personal matter, since it has coloured his writing thematically and emotionally ever since. The poet even found something of value in his attendance at a mental hospital. In an interview with Sam Hunt in 1969 he said: ‘It was almost as if the springs of creativity had become iced over … my nervous breakdown cracked the ice and allowed the spring to flow once more.’
Perhaps the most important component of his therapy and of his poetic development was his acceptance of his Polynesian background. For years, in covering the wounds of childhood, he behaved like a ‘European’ poet; but now he thought and wrote of the Polynesian strain. In the first major instance, Sanctuary of Spirits (1963), he chose to write of the Mäori history which surrounded his home at Pukerua Bay, near Wellington. A year later this sequence opened Wild Honey (1964), a collection published in Britain. The protagonist of the radio play The Homecoming (1964) is a Maori writer who resents his outsider status. The awakening of the Polynesian strain in his work was not all therapeutic joy: in 1965 he said, ‘I am of mixed race. The years of solitude get you down. You are different. You are without a tribe.’ He identified with the Ngäti Toa tribe of the area of his current home, but later he was to return to his original home, the Cook Islands, and find a new sense of identity there.
The Homecoming was the first of six plays for radio, a form peculiarly suited to a poet whose words resonate so musically. The best-known of the plays is When the Bough Breaks (1970), of which a stage version was produced and published in Howard McNaughton’s Contemporary New Zealand Plays (1974). It is an expressionistic exploration of a stressed mind. Similarly The Suicide (1966) presents schizophrenia by letting an actor play each part of the personality.
Sanctuary of Spirits was also first conceived as a radio play.
The struggle to define the best version of the poetic vision originally conceived much earlier continued into the 1970s. In 1971 these poems were collected with new ones as Kapiti. This book sold remarkably well and constituted a statement of where Campbell had come from and where he had arrived. The early love and nature lyrics, again revised, were accompanied by poems of social awareness. Dreams, Yellow Lions (1975) was a more mixed collection, suggesting that the poet was experimenting with themes and forms. Personally, too, Campbell moved out to face the social world, taking part in TV documentaries on Kapiti Island and on his own life and poetry. In 1979 he took part in the ‘Four Poets’ tour of New Zealand with Hunt, Hone Tuwhare and Jan Kemp. He tutored creative writing nationally and internationally and was president of PEN for a year.
Of special significance was his return to Rarotonga in 1976, a return to the experiences of his own childhood. Together with his brother Bill, who had also been in the photo with the railways baggage labels, he travelled to Tongareva (Penrhyn), his earliest home.
The collection The Dark Lord of Savaiki (1980) showed that the poetic experiments and new life experiences had had a profound effect. These were poems of a different kind, with a different voice and a different subject matter: poems of celebration and of love for the Polynesian ancestors. They called for another reassessment, which took place in Collected Poems (1981), where the earlier verse was printed in definitive versions and The Dark Lord of Savaiki, together with some similar poems, was added. The new strain was developed into something even more relaxed in manner in Soul Traps (1985), published at the author’s Te Kotare Press.
Work in various genres deepened this ‘Polynesian strain’. The autobiographical Island to Island (1984), a narrative search for origin, was followed by a mythic-comic trilogy of novels: The Frigate Bird (1989), which was regional finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Sidewinder (1991) and Tia (1993). At the same time, Stone Rain: The Polynesian Strain (1992) consolidated and highlighted these elements and concerns in the poetry.
In 1996 the Wai-te-ata Press published a finely printed and exquisitely bound version of a new poem, ‘Death and the Tagua’, filled with intimations of mortality, a dream of a ship carrying persons familiar to readers of Campbell’s poems towards some realm of death. It makes a sombre-ironic conclusion to Pocket Collected Poems, also published in 1996, the most recent attempt to present the complete poetic persona, introduced with a major essay by Roger Robinson. It seems designed as a farewell, but it is accompanied by several new poems, and others that have been difficult of access, and the work of shaping a now large oeuvre into a coherent whole seems to be ongoing. Despite the hint of death, Campbell’s readers are hoping that the work will be extended even further and that this dream-filled craftsman will continue to delight them.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park GCB, KBE, MC & Bar, DFC, DCL, CdeG
"If any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did. I do not believe it is realised how much that one man, with his leadership, his calm judgment and his skill, did to save, not only this country, but the world." Lord Tedder – Chief of the Royal Air Force, speaking about Air Chief Marshal Keith Park in February 1947.
Sir Keith Park |
Sir Keith Park attended Otago Boys’ High School and forged a career perhaps like no other through two world wars.
A decorated fighter pilot in World War One, he was Commander of the RAF during the Allied evacuation from Dunkirk (France) in the early part of World War Two and was in charge of defending London and southern England from German bombing raids during the Battle of Britain. He went on to organise the Defence of Malta.
World War One Flying Ace
Born in Thames on June 15th 1892, the son of Scotsman Professor James Livingstone Park and his wife Frances, Keith Park was educated at Otago Boys in 1909-1910. At 19 he began working for the Union Steamship Company, gaining promotion to purser within 12 months.
When war broke out in 1914 he joined the New Zealand forces and served with the New Zealand Artillery in Egypt and Gallipoli. He transferred to the Royal Artillery in September 1915 and served in France for two months where he was wounded on the Somme in 1916 and classed as 'unfit to ride a horse'. This allowed Park to become a fighter pilot on the Western Front.
"It may seem strange that I was considered unfit to ride a horse but fit to fly an aeroplane. But tradition was still strong in those days of horse-drawn artillery - and an officer and gentleman was expected to ride into battle on a charger", he is quoted as saying in Scars of the Heart - Two Centuries of New Zealand at War.
Two months later he joined the Royal Flying Corps, where after flight training and accumulating 100 hours of flight time he joined 48 Squadron in July 1917.
By the end of the year the Bristol fighter pilot had scored 20 victories, despite being shot down once by anti-aircraft fire, and later by the German ace Kurt Ungewitter of Schusta 5. Park was the highest scoring ace to serve with 48 Squadron and for his displays of skill and gallantry was awarded the Military Cross and Bar, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre.
After the First World War he remained with the RAF, passing through the RAF Staff College, becoming an air attaché in Buenos Aires (while there marrying an Argentine woman) and a Commanding Officer at one of Britain’s peacetime fighter stations, before eventually ascending to the rank of Air Vice Marshall. He was also chosen to be one of King George’s VI’s four aides-de-camp, riding behind the King in his Coronation procession in 1937.
Vital World War Two Campaigns
Prior to the second world war, Keith Park was appointed senior air staff officer to Hugh Dowding, who developed the utmost respect for Park, appointing him Commander-in-Chief of 11 Group, the most important in Fighter Command.
Group 11 was assigned to not only protect the southern coastline of Britain and south-east England from enemy attack, but to protect London, which it was obvious that at some stage in the war would be the prime target of the Luftwaffe.
His first experience of action in WWII came when he was in charge of organising air-protection for the Allied evacuation of Dunkirk on the French coast. The British Expeditionary Force and the French First Army had become cornered by the advancing German armies and between 26 May and 4 June 1940 nearly 350,000 people needed to be evacuated by ship from Dunkirk. The air support’s job was to intercept the Luftwaffe before they could attack the tired and exhausted Allied troops on the beaches. It was a juggling act that required shuttling fighters, often crewed by pilots with limited experience and at the end of their fuel range, back and forth across the English Channel.
Park was often in the air himself over Dunkirk, spotting weak enemy positions and taking note of targets for his own pilots. When the order came to evacuate, Park was up in a Hurricane fighter making reconnaissance missions within range of German guns. He watched the last two British ships set sail while making a final survey. He was the last airman to leave.
Luftwaffe Repelled
With the Dunkirk evacuation at best a dignified retreat, Park’s real reputation was to rest on "the resounding success" of the Battle of Britain campaign.
"Operation Sealion" was the codename for Germany’s intended invasion of England. The plan was for the initial air attack to destroy vital airfields, radar stations, ports and aircraft factories, and pave the way for a sea/land invasion. When the Luftwaffe attacked Britain in 1940 (flying nearly 1,500 flights over England), Park controlled the urgent defence hour by hour, organising and managing his squadrons and men brilliantly.
Using an innovative radar defence system at Fighter Command, Park with the help of the Observer Corp tracked German aircraft and passed on information to British fighters enabling them to intercept the raiders.
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When the early raids proved indecisive the assault switched to London. The Luftwaffe' s efforts intensified, but so did its losses.
On 17 September Hitler postponed Operation Sealion indefinitely. It was at the conclusion of the determined warding-off of the German attack that Sir Winston Churchill was to memorably proclaim, "Never in the history of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".
Variously credited with "saving Britain" when it was most directly under threat from invasion, his successful repelling of the German air attack was attributed to his leadership, calm judgment and exemplary co-ordination skills.
Elevated in stature as well as esteem (he was 6ft 5, deserving credit for merely fitting in an aircraft cockpit), his judgment was based not only on astute decision making, but also a willingness to gain crucial information first hand.
Often making reconnaissance missions within range of German guns and fighters, Park was at one point forced to land when a British pilot mistook his plane for one of the enemy. His service was recognised with the Order of Commander of the Bath.
Defence of Malta
After campaigning in Egypt in 1941 Park’s next big achievement came when he was charged with defending Malta.
Just as the British Isles had been threatened earlier, Malta’s fate was now hung in the balance. Malta was of strategic importance, controlling the vital sea-lanes between Italy and Africa. Its natural rocks and deep inlets concealed anchorages and submarine bases. Fighter planes based on Malta were also strategically positioned to defend convoys in the Mediterranean Sea.
When Park, now Air Marshal Park, arrived on the island he found scarce food supplies, insufficient planes, and petrol supplies dependent on tankers getting through without being attacked by German fighters. In April 1942 the island suffered merciless air attacks from the Luftwaffe and Italian bombers attempting to make the island "free for the storm" and open supply routes to Rommell's army in North Africa. Instead of trying to defend the island, Park, in the best All Black tradition, determined to counter-attack. The fighters that were sent out to intercept the German attack inflicted such heavy losses on the incoming German planes that Malta was saved.
Man of Action
Park’s temperament meant that he was never confined behind a desk in some buffered HQ.
His willingness to take to air himself, and forcefully state his opinions regardless of rank meant that his colleagues found Park "fearless in words and deeds". As Eugene Grayland states in Famous New Zealanders, "the tall, lean New Zealander displayed the unusual combination of intense individual activity and initiative with a capacity for teamwork and co-ordination".
With Malta saved, he was promoted to the post of Allied Air Commander-in-Chief, South East Asia, where the air force performed a vital role supplying stores to ground forces in testing jungle terrain where it was often difficult to find landing strips. Regularly flying into black monsoon nights and through enemy fire, Park summed up the achievements of the campaign with the telling phrase "the army of the jungle advanced on the wings of the air force".
Hero Retires to New Zealand with Honour
After World War Two Park was decommissioned and went to Argentina to work as trade ambassador to South America for the Hawker Siddley Aircraft Company.
An opportunity arose to return to New Zealand as the company’s Pacific representative, and in 1948 Park came home to Auckland, eventually retiring and taking a prominent part in the Auckland City Council and other local body affairs.
He died on the 6th February 1975, aged 82.
A section of the Auckland Museum of Transport and Technology is named in his honour, as is the ‘Sir Keith Park IHC School’ in Auckland.
He received honorary degrees and doctorates from Oxford University, was created a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and was knighted twice – as well as being one of three distinguished men of the time (along with Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook) to have locomotives named in their honour by the Great Southern Railway in Britain.
Sir Keith Park - one of Otago Boys' finest.
Archibald McIndoe (1914-18) was one of the great medical men of the 20th century, pioneering surgical techniques in the early years of WWII and transforming men’s lives as a result.
Sir Archibald lends his name to the Foundation’s Bequest Society, with its first member being his daughter Mrs Vanora Marland. Sadly, Mrs Marland died on 9th January this year after a long and courageous fight with poor health.
As a tribute to her and the work of her father, we reproduce an Otago Daily Times article penned by Barry Cardno in November 2006:
At a town 50 kilometres south of London, surviving members of an exclusive club formed during World War 2 join together in an annual reunion.
With few exceptions, entry to this club is restricted to British and Commonwealth aircrew who had cheated death by the narrowest of margins, being either horrendously burned, crushed or frostbitten in aircraft crashes; also — to this rule there were no exceptions — they had to have been treated in Ward 3 at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, by pioneering plastic surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe.
Homage was paid to the late Sir Archibald for restoring the faces and lives of his patients — his guinea pigs — in speeches and a rendition of the Guinea Pig Club anthem:
“We are McIndoe’s army, We are his Guinea Pigs.
With dermatomes and pedicles, glass eyes, false teeth and wigs.
And when we get our discharge, We’ll fight with all our might: Per ardua ad astra.
We’d rather drink than fight . . .”
Clockwise from top: An RAF pilot prepares to take off during the Battle of Britain; members of the Guinea Pig Club share a few jokes; Sir Archibald McIndoe is surrounding by airmen on whom he performed groundbreaking reconstructive surgery. This photo was taken at the 1948 club reunion. |
Sir Archibald rose to be revered by the injured airmen, fellow surgeons, matrons, nurses and hospital orderlies alike, for his innovative techniques, skill, and constant search for improvements on repairing hideous wounds — and also for his tireless efforts to restore his patients’ confidence and will to live.
He went on to have many honours bestowed on him, including a CBE in 1944 and knighthood in 1947. He died on April 11, 1960, at the age of 60.
The second child of four, Sir Archibald was born in Dunedin on May 4, 1900.
Schooled at Otago Boys’ High School, he studied at the University of Otago Medical School. After graduating with a MB (ChB) in 1924, he was appointed house surgeon at Waikato Hospital.
On July 31, 1924, Sir Archibald married Adonia Aitken, whom he had met in Dunedin. They later had two daughters, Adonia and Vanora.
That same year, Sir Archibald was awarded the first New Zealand Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in the United States to study pathological anatomy.
From January 1925, the aspiring surgeon got to watch and assist brothers William and Charlie Mayo perform hundreds of abdominal operations at their clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
When Sir Archibald began operating in his own right, he became noted for his quick, cool judgement and smooth precision in the theatre.
Encouraged to pursue a career in the United Kingdom and keen to fulfil an ambition to build a practice of his own, he moved from the United States to London in 1930.
However, to his dismay, work did not come as he had expected. He contacted a distant relative of his in Britain whom he had never met, plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, 18 years his senior and also Dunedin-born.
Sir Harold is considered the father of 20th-century plastic surgery because of the methods and innovations he perfected. He and his team of surgeons performed nearly 12,000 operations, often involving gruesome facial injuries caused by shrapnel and bullets during World War 1. He was knighted in 1930 for his work.
Under tuition from Sir Harold, Sir Archibald learnt the skills of plastic surgery.
At the outbreak of World War 2 in September 1939, Sir Harold was appointed principal plastic surgeon for the army, and Sir Archibald was sent to East Grinstead, where he was entrusted with the task of founding a unit to provide specialist treatment for an entirely new and devastating form of injury unique to airmen, the “Hurricane Burn”, caused by exploding aircraft fuel.
During the Battle of Britain that raged in the skies over southern England between July and October 1940, 35 Hurricane and Spitfire fighter pilots who suffered horrific burns to their faces and hands were taken to the Queen Victoria Hospital for surgery by Sir Archibald.
The standard treatment for a serious flesh burn had been to spray the wound with tannic acid, thus completely drying it out. But because of the drying process, and method of plucking the dead skin off, patients would endure excruciating pain. And the result would leave them looking quite ghastly.
Sir Archibald was convinced there must be a better way.
Noting that the burns of men who crashed in the sea looked to heal better, he switched to bathing his patients in saline water at body temperature. That way, dead skin could be peeled off in a relatively painless manner and, months later, he could set about performing the necessary skin grafts.
In July 1941, some of his patients were chatting, and decided a club would help pass their time in hospital. The name “Guinea Pig Club” was suggested, as a likeness to those animals used for medical experiments.
Under the guise of a drinking club, a committee was duly formed. Sir Archibald was made president. As his patients were all enduring the same hardships, Sir Archibald knew keeping them together would be crucial. He realised that the psychological injuries were as much a concern as the physical ones.
“The Boss” or “Maestro”, as he was known, would chat with “his boys”, join them in singing and playing the piano in the ward, take them for drinks in town, and encourage them to get out in the community. There were times he even took them into London to meet film stars and other celebrities. Even a barrel of beer was kept in the ward.
Sir Archibald, they said, did more than just get them back on track. The plastic surgeon restored their faces and hands, their will to live, and did all he could to get them back into life and achieve the best they could. Relationships between patients and nurses blossomed. Quite a few went on to marry. Others met women from East Grinstead, a place the guinea pigs referred to as “the town that never stared”.
Sir Archibald told his boys they could wear their Royal Air Force uniforms, as opposed to the standard hospital blues, and in doing so retain their proud identity.
When asked at the reunion what the Guinea Pig Club meant to him, a patient of Sir Archibald’s, William “Bill” Foxley (84), replied in one word: “Everything.”
Mr Foxley signed up for the RAF in 1943 at the recruiting centre in Lord’s Cricket Ground, London, and was sent to the Initial Training Wing at Scarborough. He was kitted out and completed 12 hours of flight training in Tiger Moths. When it came time to be posted for the next phase of training, he recalled, “being so upset . . . when I saw my name was not in the pilot category, but in the navigator category instead”.
Still, orders were orders.
At 11.20pm on March 17, 1944, at RAF Training Base Wymeswold, Leicestershire. the Wellington bomber he was in crashed on take-off. It immediately caught fire. Miraculously, Mr Foxley, his American pilot and an Australian bomb-aimer got out unscathed.
“When it hit, I got out pretty quickly, but remember hearing the wireless operator and rear gunner screaming their heads off for help.”
He ran back into the blazing wreck to try to get them out.
“The last I can recall before losing consciousness is thinking ‘the metal looks white hot’.”
His mates perished.
Mr Foxley, who was 20 years old at the time, was taken to the RAF Hospital, Cosford. There he was bandaged and cared for the best they knew how. About two weeks later, while on one of his regular inspections of the four RAF hospitals, Sir Archibald found Mr Foxley and had him moved to East Grinstead immediately.
The fire had burned all the skin on his face; he’d lost sight in one eye, and much of it in the other; he suffered severe contracture of his hands, and his fingers were reduced to stumps. Mr Foxley said a month passed before he regained consciousness. He could not see anything at all for three months, and his hands were kept bound for much longer.
He said his hands felt like they had been melted solid. “My only thought while I was blacked out was ‘when am I going to get flying again’. I had no idea of the extent of my injuries until seeing myself in a bathroom mirror. My initial reaction was ‘who the hell is that?’.”
Sir Archibald used a pedicle skin operation to transfer healthy skin from his chest to his face. Mr Foxley underwent 40 operations and was in and out of the Queen Victoria Hospital for three and-a-half years.
Mr Foxley says three of his closest mates are also Guinea Pigs, and they plan to keep meeting regularly.
“We all enjoy life,” he says, with a twinkle in his good eye. “We are Peter Pans — we’ll never grow up.”
And despite this 65th annual reunion having been called the last, many of the men present finished the weekend festivities by saying: “See you again next year.”
Although the war these men fought has lasted a lifetime, their indomitable spirit, it seems, will not weaken.
Michael Guest (1963-67), a former lawyer and District and Family Court Judge, pays tribute to A C Hanlon, who attended Otago Boys’ High School in 1881.
Driving through Waitahuna and parts of the Manuka Gorge, I still catch glimpses of the faint ribs and arteries of the old railway embankments which supported the steam trains of yesteryear, meandering back and forth with cargo and passengers. Similar embankments spring to the eye up the lower stretches of the Pigroot.
I think not of boyhood train sets and memory laden trips to Oamaru on the limited express but of Alfred Hanlon, the eminent King’s Counsel who so graced the Dunedin bar from 1888 to 1944. Indeed, it is 120 years ago this very month (December 2008) that he was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the then Supreme Court.
King's Counsel A C (Alf) Hanlon |
Alf Hanlon was pre-eminent as a defence lawyer for almost 50 years, although was only appointed a King’s Counsel in 1930, 42 years after being admitted to the profession. He was over 6 feet tall, fair haired and drew distinct comparisons with those greatest of all barristers of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, Sir Edward Carson, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, and Mr F.E. Smith, later Lord Birkenhead. The rather sycophantic description given to Sir Edward Marshall Hall by his adoring biographer, ‘‘This Roman head on Saxon shoulders sat’’ could equally apply to Alf Hanlon, because his grace and explosive appearance in our courts and tribunals was simply second to none.
The link between this great King’s Counsel and the railway remnants I mention above becomes evident when you read his detailed memoirs Random Recollections, written 69 years ago about the endurances he suffered using public and private transport to get to his outlying courts and tribunals.
Mr Hanlon was well known throughout New Zealand for his colourful murder trials. He appeared for the defence in 18 murders and 22 manslaughters in his career. This was thought to be something of a record but it is a sad sign of modern violent times that Alf’s tally paled beside the late Mike Bungay’s record of more than 130 homicides.
In his first homicide trial, his client Billy Fogarty struck little Jimmy Fiddis who fell over, hit this head and died. Billy was charged with manslaughter and was found guilty but was sentenced to just one hour in custody. You see, Billy was only 12 and Jimmy barely 11. They were fighting over a kite. Youth of that age, even today, can be charged with murder and manslaughter.
Alf Hanlon lived in the grand house which still stands on the lower corner of Pitt and Elder Streets in Dunedin and he maintained his offices on the first floor of Eldon Chambers on the northern corner of Princes Street and Moray Place across the road from the Savoy, where he frequently dined.
But it was Mr Hanlon’s early days as a general or ‘‘taxi rank’’ barrister that stirs the memories of train travel to judicial outposts in Otago and provides a wonderful insight to the way justice was administered 75 years ago.
Hanlon KC died well before I was born but I can remember a number of country courts and tribunals now closed but which provided a true community-based judicial system. Courts at Palmerston, Ranfurly, Milton and Lumsden were held regularly into the early 1880s, with the local constable frequently acting as prosecutor, registrar and probation officer all at the one time, and the magistrate usually met police and counsel for ‘‘one noggin’’ at the local pub after the sitting.
In his memoirs, Alf relates many such travels. They are all comfortable drives by car today, but in those days more advanced planning was needed. He wrote pre-war, ‘‘there were factors of hazard and inconvenience with which the modern lawyer no longer has to cope’’. And then, presumably feeling very modern, he continued: ‘‘Railway services link nearly every centre in the Dominion and, where the iron horse does not penetrate, powerful service cars speed along on balloon tyres on well-formed roads, replacing the old but sure stage coaches.’’
Alf relates the misery of his travel. In August 1895, after he had finished a case in the Invercargill Court having travelled to that outpost on the limited express from Dunedin, he then had to travel to the Queenstown District Court. He retraced his steps on the express to Gore, boarded a side train to Kingston and then waited for a cold and wet journey up the lake on a steamer. Of course, after the case he reversed the same travel arrangements back to Dunedin.
He tells of attending the District Court at Naseby, long since closed. The closest railhead was at Middlemarch so horse and carriage was the only way to go and the whole journey took a full day of cold and wet travel.
Mr Hanlon frequently appeared in the Warden’s Courts which were abolished in 1971. They resolved disputes about mining claims and sat at the goldfields. One of his most miserable trips was to the Warden’s Court at Macraes. This was not the pleasant 30-minute trip from Outram today in a comfortable car complete with iPod and cell ‘phone.
His travels began with the limited express to Palmerston, stopping at three stations between here and Port Chalmers, then the Gums, Purakaunui, Waitati, Warrington, Seacliff and a few more besides. He would change to the side line up to Dunback to be met by a welcoming client with a couple of nags to bump and grind the final stretch to Macraes.
Even then, returning two days later by reversing the process, he arrived many hours later at the Dunedin railway station in the rain. A Hansom cab had to be hailed but it could not manage the muddied incline up Pitt Street and Alf had to trudge in the snow up the last stretch to his home before reading his briefs for the next morning’s Magistrates Court.
All these images flash through my mind merely at the sight of one of these almost hidden embankments but they are constant reminders of the transport network of yesterday and Alf Hanlon’s own 1939 autobiography Random Recollections is well worth a read.
We must remember the great characters in our local history. They are the ones who did much to shape our life many years on. They planned and built the facilities we enjoy today. They planted and preserved the Gardens, seeded the oak trees at Jubilee Park in 1897 and supported hundreds of other community projects. Alf Hanlon was a giant in the law and the community and his life must be celebrated.
In the early-morning darkness of December 19, 1941, HMS Neptune sailed into an uncharted minefield just off Tripoli. At 2.10am a mine exploded off her starboard bow. Three more mines went off before the cruiser sank with the loss of 763 lives. There was just one survivor.
How this tragedy occurred has been the subject of much speculation. The details were hushed up by the Admiralty and researchers down the years have never come up with a satisfactory answer. The secret went down with the ship.
The reason for 150 New Zealanders being aboard Neptune was that she had been intended to join the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy in the Pacific. However, increased enemy activity in the Mediterranean caused a change of plan.
Just before the disaster, Neptune had been based at Malta.
The 30 young men from Otago were almost all trained at HMNZS Toroa and on the upper harbour. The proposed memorial will be so sited that those reading the inscription will, as they lift their heads, look across a stretch of water where those whose names are listed rowed and sailed.
The only two New Zealand officers on HMS Neptune were Paymaster Lieutenant Bruce Thomson (1924-27), of Mornington, and Midshipman Brian McPherson (1936-40, Head Boy 1940), of Macandrew Bay. In 2004 Nigel McPherson (1943-47), younger brother of Brian, and Royden Thomson (1953-58), son of Bruce, decided that there ought to be public recognition of those who died.
Bruce Thomson 1924-27 (second from right) and standing in a cutter on Otago Harbour |
After school at Mornington and Otago Boys High School, Bruce studied accountancy. He qualified and took his skills with him into the Naval Volunteer reserve where he served through the 1930s.
After war broke out he sailed for England early in 1940, spent some months aboard HMS Manchester and was posted to HMS Neptune in February 1941.
His letters home were full of news of events on shore and at sea. One mentioned acting as escort to High Commissioner Bill Jordan, who was immensely popular with New Zealanders who served in Britain.
Mid Brian McPherson also attended OBHS. He was the middle son of three born to John and Dora McPherson. His father was badly wounded at Gallipoli but was later prominent in the territorial force in Dunedin. Lieutenant-colonel McPherson commanded a battalion and was awarded an OBE. Brian’s mother was well known in musical and theatrical circles. She had the devastating experience of losing her father, her husband and a son within the space of two months.
Brian McPherson, Head Boy and athletics champion 1940 |
Brian McPherson was a bright student and excelled in athletics and rugby. His all-round ability resulted in his being appointed head boy when he was only 16. He was also a top St John Ambulance cadet. He was still at school when accepted as a special entry cadet and headed for the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, in England.
Like Lt Thomson, Brian experienced numerous air raids. The anti-aircraft guns at Dartmouth were regularly in action. Perhaps this influenced the young man’s enthusiasm for gunnery. When he passed his examinations and was gazetted as a midshipman his gradings included an excellent for gunnery.
He was posted to HMS Neptune, a Leander class cruiser of 7200 tons, launched in 1933 and commissioned in 1934. She was the first of a ‘‘family’’ that included Achilles and Ajax of River Plate fame. Indeed, Neptune was also on South Atlantic patrol at the time the German battleship Graf Spee was engaged.
From May 1940 Neptune was under the command of Captain Rory O’Conor. She was then serving with the Mediterranean fleet. Following her Atlantic stint she was based at Malta and it was from the George Cross island that she sailed on December 18, 1941, leading a six-ship flotilla ordered to intercept an enemy convoy.
HMS Neptune |
In the early hours of next morning the flotilla steamed into the unknown minefield off Tripoli. At 2.10am there was an explosion off the starboard bow of Neptune and HMS Kandahar also struck a mine. Capt O’Conor went astern, only to strike another mine which blew away the screws and most of the stern. Next came another blast, this time on the port side.
The only survivor, Able Seaman Norman Walton, was an Asdic operator who had already been on two ships which had been sunk. After the second blast he and six others were ordered forward to prepare a tow rope. But when the fourth mine went off the order was given to abandon ship.
‘‘I saw a Carley raft and, jumping in, made the raft easily, took a tow rope and swam back to the others,’’ he said, years later.
“We cheered the ship as she went down . . . and then picked up Capt O’Conor.
The commemorative scroll sent to Brian McPherson's family |
We secured a cork raft to the Carley. On the raft were the captain, the A/S officer, a commissioned gunner and one other officer whom I believe was the Paymaster Lieutenant.
‘‘A few died that night and at daylight there were 16 of us left,’’ he recalled.
Among them, he thought, was Lt Thomson. By the fourth day only four were still alive, including Capt O’Conor who died that night. The only words he spoke were on the first night when he said ‘‘We were only four miles from Tripoli when we were sunk.’’
By Christmas Eve Walton and Leading Seaman Price were the only two still alive. They were picked up by an Italian destroyer. Price died but Walton was taken to hospital in Tripoli. He was blind for some days, his tongue was swollen to twice its size and he was black with oil. He was well treated, recovered and was then sent to a prison camp in Italy.
Norman Walton and his wife were invited by the Nelson RSA to come to New Zealand when the 50th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Neptune was observed. They also came to Dunedin early in 1992 and were entertained by the Ex-Navalmen’s Association.
Unfortunately, neither the Thomson nor the McPherson families were aware of this visit. They still know little about the sinking other than the grim fact that Lt Thomson and Mid McPherson were among the greatest number of New Zealand naval casualties in a single incident.
For some reason the disaster was hushed up. Commander John McGregor, a retired Royal Navy officer whose father was lost in the Neptune, says that his mother tried for years to find out what happened but met with a wall of silence.
Commander McGeorge tried through much of his career to unravel the knotty problem of who laid the mines, why the field was not discovered and how Neptune and the others entered the area. When a report was released after a 30-year embargo it answered few questions. It was simply a record of the ships that entered the minefield and the damage inflicted.
The Neptune memorial nearing completion at Dunedin's Customhouse Quay |
Recalling another occasion, when Winston Churchill ordered no publicity about the sinking of the HMS Glorious, to save the blushes of the High Command, McGregor formed his own theory. He surmised that Neptune was also lost because of an embarrassing error in high places. He discovered that the Italians had laid the mines but when he finally gained access to secret minutes at the Admiralty he found that Neptune was not even mentioned. The thought persists that lives were needlessly lost. The lack of information added poignancy to the grieving of those who mourned the deaths of family members.
The tears are now dry but the public memorial stands as a reminder of brave men.
e Otago Ladies Athletic Club’s delegate. The other Civil Service delegate was Ray Geddes, a life long friend of Les’. Indeed, they compiled the highly detailed and very readable 50th Anniversary booklet for the Civil Service Club in 1955.