Peter Chin

My time at Otago Boys’ High School wasn’t distinguished by academic or sporting triumph, and were it not for the fact that I now wield the Mayoral gavel I doubt anyone would ask me to contribute the ‘Thoughts of Chairman Chin’ to this website.

But life is full of such amusing voltes face – and as Mayor of Dunedin, I’ve become one of them.

Such happy anomalies now allow me to express my gratitude to a school which took a bewildered young boy and turned him, in five short years, into an even more bewildered young man.

Not for me the glory of the 1 st XV or glittering scholarships. My days at Otago Boys’ did nothing to develop relationships with the Caucasian fairer sex and my early days at Otago University were spent in open-mouthed wonder at the easy command of social skills displayed by my peers – and in catching up on their admirable examples.

What Otago Boys’ did give me was a career path in the Law – identified by that gentlest and wisest of teachers, Keith Robinson – which I never regretted, and a life-long sense of belonging to a great educational tradition, Otago Boys’ High School.

I commend all Old Boys to acknowledge their educational heritage by supporting this worthy Foundation

Peter Chin (1954-58)

Mayor of Dunedin

Foundation Fellow