2014 in blog posts

As the blogging year draws to a close, it’s time to review 2014. The goal of this blog is to share stories I come across during my research for the forthcoming 150th anniversary history of the University of Otago, and to elicit more information on Otago’s past. Now in its second year, the blog has been more succesful than I could have imagined – thanks very much to all who have provided feedback, helped identify photos, come up with new information and shared your own memories, both on and off the blog.

Here are the top ten of the 47 posts published on the blog this year (as measured by “hits”):

1. Our oldest building (the hunt for the oldest building on campus – Mellor House was the winner)
2. Naming flats (entertaining names which have been given to student flats over the years)
3. Promoting Otago, 1980s-style (the 1982 film which promoted the University of Otago – some fascinating scenes of student life back in the day)
4. A tale of 10 libraries (how one bookshelf expanded into 10 libraries on 4 campuses)
5. Our oldest building – some runners up (more stories of old houses which were integrated into the Dunedin campus)
6. Building for the arts (the history of the Arts Building, opened in 1969 and now scheduled for replacement)
7. 25 years of Cumberland (the unlikely beginnings of one of Otago’s residential colleges)
8. Eating at the union (the joys of student cafeteria food)
9. Maori Club – the early years (the beginnings of one of the most significant student clubs, featuring some great 1970s photos)
10. Allen Hall turns 100 (celebrating the centenary of the first student union building, now the home of theatre studies)

One story from 2013 also continues to attract lots of readers. The vanishing hall of residence is the story of Helensburgh House, which was open from 1984 to 1991. It has been lovely to read of the fond memories some former residents hold of this distinctly non-elite residential college!

I’d like to put a word in also for a couple of my personal favourites. The stories of individual departments don’t attract as many readers as tales of buildings or student life, which more people can relate to, but they are just as interesting to research and write. A favourite of mine this year was The gift of music, which explores the connection between turnip seeds and the Department of Music! Our oldest alumnus? shared the story of the remarkable Ian Chirnside, whom I had the privilege of meeting early this year. Ian, who died in September aged 106, started working as a technician at the dental school in 1922, eventually becoming an associate professor of dentistry.

A big thank you to all those people who have helped share blog stories through social media and in print this year, especially the staff of the Hocken Collections, Department of History and Art History, the Alumni Office and Marketing and Communications; Vaughan Elder of the Otago Daily Times; David Murray of Built in Dunedin and Upright! Exploring Dunedin’s Built Heritage; and Owain Morris of Growing up in Dunedin in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s & 90’s. Thank you also to the university departments who shared stories of their own departments. Top marks as social media whizz must go to Sarah Gallagher of the Dunedin Flat Names project.

Many of the stories on this blog were sparked by interviews I carried out for the oral history project attached to the 150th anniversary history. I am truly grateful to all those people who have shared their time and their memories with me – it has been a privilege to meet so many interesting people from Otago’s past (and present!). A special thank you to those who shared images from their personal collections. For images I am also grateful to various university departments (most notably Marketing and Communications), the Alexander Turnbull Library, Te Papa Tongarewa and, especially, the Hocken Collections (with a special shout out to Richard Munro from reprographics).

Above all, I would like to thank all of you who read this blog – without you there would be no point. And remember, I am always keen to hear more about any topic featured here (as comments on the blog or, if you prefer, by email, letter or in person). Corrections are especially welcome!

I’m now taking a wee break from blogging, but will be back in February 2015 to share more stories from the University of Otago’s fascinating past. Have a great Christmas and New Year!

Ali Clarke

Assistant blogger Minerva McGonagall (aka Minnie) prepares to lend a paw.

A home away from home – the Maori Centre

Tags

1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, Maori

Students outside the Maori Centre in 2002. Can you identify anybody? Photo courtesy of the Maori Centre.

Te Huka Matauraka – the Maori Centre – has contributed to a quiet revolution at Otago. The university had a few Maori students from the 1890s onwards (I’ve written about some of the earliest here), but numbers remained very low until the late 20th century. The Maori Club, founded by Maori students in 1960, became a focus for cultural and social activities, while the local Maori community also provided informal support to students. With just 20 or 30 students identifying as Maori in the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn’t difficult for them to all know one another. Numbers steadily grew through the 1980s – in 1987 Otago had 171 Maori students, representing 2% of enrolments. This was an improvement, but still a great under-representation of Maori, and students and the community campaigned for action by university authorities. The 1987 Watts Report on New Zealand universities commented, “The low participation of the Maori people in university studies is of very real concern.” While there had been recent positive initiatives relating to Maori in the universities (mostly beyond Otago), the report commented that “the Maori struggle for recognition in many aspects of New Zealand life is far from won either in the universities or elsewhere. We think that universities have a responsibility to give a lead to the rest of the community.”

In response to the Watts Report, the government released special equity funding. The University of Otago used its share to appoint its first Maori liaison officer, Khyla Russell (then Khyla Camp), in 1988, and to open the Maori Centre in 1989. The centre opened in an old house which had been a student flat, on the corner of Castle St, Montgomery Ave and St David St. At the end of 1989 the first administrator, Winsome Dacker, reported in newsletter Mea Maori that the centre was already a hive of activity. It had three main roles: to assist and retain existing university students; to provide a link between the university and the Maori community, including bridging programmes for adult students; and to support Maori school students “to stimulate a desire for further study” and help them qualify for entrance (the Watts Report had identified the small proportion of Maori completing higher secondary qualifications as a key factor in low university enrolment). It had also become more than this: many people turned to the centre for advice on things Maori, including advice on establishing bicultural approaches and providing translation. “Wherever possible we have assisted or been able to delegate the task”, reported Dacker.

Students from Bluff School outside the Maori Centre in 2000. Instilling a desire for tertiary education in young Maori was an important part of the centre’s work. Image courtesy of the Maori Centre.

For 15 years the Maori Centre also provided a home for Arai Te Uru Kohanga Reo. The language nest had started at Arai Te Uru Marae and then moved to the Otago Polytechnic’s Maori Centre. It’s move to the new university Maori Centre fitted well with the needs of the many parents who were university staff or students. It also “enriched the centre with the living Maori language”. The young kohanga children provided “an obvious source of potential students who are completely ‘au fait’ with the University” and also drew “many Maori people who have not previously been on Campus”. As a bonus, the “two dedicated kaiako” (teachers) – Nanny Aya and Mereana Smith – were always ready to assist university students with their te reo Maori skills. The kohanga moved to Ravensbourne in 2004.

Health science students at a tutorial in the Maori Centre, 2000. Image courtesy of the Maori Centre.

Tutorials were always at the heart of the Maori Centre’s work. They assisted students with study and exam skills, as well as with information relating to specific university courses. While the students were Maori, the tutors came from a wide range of backgrounds. “We look for the best,” regardless of ethnicity, comments current manager Pearl Matahiki. Among the first tutors were Mua and Linda Strickson-Pua, who were tutoring in the Department of Education and saw a need for additional support for Maori. Mua was a New Zealand Samoan studying theology; Linda was of English descent but raised among Maori in Ruatoria. “It is no mean feat dealing with students who are daunted by the University,” reported Mea Maori, but “this pair made study enjoyable and stimulating. Laughter was a feature of their group.” The tutorials took place – and when possible still do – in the Maori Centre itself, where the students could feel comfortable.

In 1991 administrator Miria Thorn noted that 60 students had used the Maori Centre tutorial programme in 1990, and all but 4 had passed their exams. An independent survey by the Department of Maori Studies also reported an increase in Maori pass rates. The centre was clearly contributing to Maori success, though it still ran on a shoe-string budget with volunteer tutors. The staff gradually expanded as the Maori roll grew. A tutor co-ordinator was appointed in 1990 and a part-time secretary in 1991; from 1991 the Maori liaison officer, previously based in the registry, also moved into the Maori Centre. The centre expanded into another old Castle Street house, leaving the kohanga in the original building. It eventually made its long-term home in two adjacent houses, linked together and refurbished with an attractive entrance; a third house is shared with Te Roopu Maori (the Maori Students Association). The centre’s original te reo Maori name, Te Hunga Matauranga, was later changed to Te Huka Matauraka to promote the local Kai Tahu dialect.

Poet Hone Tuwhare, awarded an honorary doctorate, with young graduates Rachel Potae (medicine) and Craig Campbell (dentistry) at the Maori Centre’s pre-graduation celebration, December 1998. Image courtesy of the Maori Centre.

By 1994 there were 877 Otago students who identified as Maori, making up 5.9% of the roll. Godfrey Pohatu, who headed the Department of Maori Studies, was delighted, giving kudos to Maori liaison, which took “the University of Otago to the people and to potential Maori students”, and “the excellent support networks”. Maori liaison officer Luella Narayan commented that “much of the credit should go to the Maori Centre Administrator who gives academic, psychological and social support to Maori students”. Maori student growth continued to stay ahead of the overall growth in the roll: by 2000, 6.2% of students were Maori and in 2013 there were 1682 Maori students, accounting for 9.2% of Otago’s domestic students. Celebrating Maori achievement was an important part of the centre’s ethos, and from 1996 it arranged special Maori pre-graduation celebrations for Maori graduates and their whanau.

Catering for all this growth of course required more resources. In 2000 the centre was restructured with permanent staff replacing contract positions. The dynamic Pearl Matahiki – known to many as Auntie Pearl – became manager, as she remains today. The staff also expanded to include a community liaison officer and counsellor (there are now 2 counsellors) as well as administrative staff. Two new programmes commenced in 2002 thanks to the Ministry of Education’s special grants to support Maori and Pacific Island tertiary students. These were Turaka Hou (Maori orientation) and Ka Rikarika a Tane (a mentoring programme). Eventually funding for these was added to the university’s regular budget. The orientation programme, designed to help first-year students with their transition to the university with tours and advice and a chance to meet local Maori, incorporated a powhiri on local marae.

A welcome for Maori students at Kati Huirapa Marae, Karitane, as part of Maori orientation in February 2007. Image courtesy of the Maori Centre.

Te Huka Matauraka is now 25 years old. It will be holding joint anniversary celebrations next year with Te Tumu – the School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, which is marking the founding of the Department of Maori Studies in 1990. The centre certainly has great cause to celebrate, for it has played a big role in one of Otago’s greatest changes of recent decades: the massive growth of Maori participation. Do you have any stories to share of the Maori centre?

Staff outside the Maori Centre in 2014. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

The janitor’s tale

Tags

1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, general staff

William Harris, complete with his trademark umbrella and straw hat. Image from the Otago University Review, September 1923.

‘Professor’ W.H. Harris had no academic qualifications, but he was once Otago University’s “best-known personage”. The title of professor was bestowed on him by generations of students who encountered this great character in his daily work as the university janitor, or as he strolled up to town in his distinctive straw boater, always carrying an umbrella. His 30 years on the staff provided a peaceful end to a life full of adventure.

Born in Kent in 1852, William Henry Harris went to sea when he was just 9 years old. He joined his father, a marine sergeant, aboard HMS Rattler, serving as powder-boy and captain’s boy. Young Harris roamed all over the world, visiting Europe, South America and Asia, and famously getting lost in the streets of Shanghai during the Taiping rebellion. On his return to base he had a try at the printing trade, but after just a year on land he re-joined the navy. He served on various vessels, including HMS Cumberland and HMS Cossack. Aboard the Cossack, Harris took part in the supression of the slave trade off the coast of Africa, of piracy in the China Seas, and of blackbirding in the Pacific Islands. He was “a type of the old die-hards who composed the old-time Imperial Navy,” reported the Evening Star in 1919.

Harris left the navy in 1872 – still only 20 years old – and proceeded to work in a great variety of jobs in Australia and New Zealand: wool-pressing, harvesting, tin-digging, bush-felling, sailmaking, stone-breaking and gold prospecting, among others. But the sea continued to draw him, and he served aboard various vessels of the mercantile marine around the coasts of Australasia. In 1893 he finally settled down in Dunedin, winning the job of university janitor over 90 applicants. Perhaps it was his wide and varied work experience that made him the most attractive candidate; in any case, he proved ideal for the role, and remained until his death in 1923, aged 70.

Harris revelled in his position as janitor. As an ex-navy man he appreciated order and ensured things were kept according to the rules: he didn’t hesitate to throw the Chancellor out of the library when it was time for closing. Maintaining the coal fires which heated the university was an important part of his duties. Agnes Blackie, who commenced as a student in 1915 and went on to a long career as physics lecturer, recalled that nothing annoyed “Prof ‘Arris” more “than for students to go into a lecture room between classes to sit by the fire. To prevent this he conceived the idea of hanging rows of cast-off coats and hats outside the room doors. This shabby collection certainly gave support to the idea that students were always poor.” She also remembered, though, his kindness to students.

Harris’s feats of memory were legendary. He quickly learned the names of all new students and told them tales of their parents’ activities on campus. He proved “an inexhaustible mine of information” for anybody wanting to track down former students. His naval experiences remained fresh in his memory and he enjoyed recounting tales of his many adventures, sometimes writing these down for newspapers or the Otago University Review. Agnes Blackie wrote that “now and then a quaint letter with one of his reminiscences would appear in the press, but first he would bring it to one of his friends among students and staff for comment and correction of spelling and wording.” You can read an example here; this letter written to the Otago Daily Times in 1914 about exploded British naval vessels was sufficiently interesting to be republished in the Hawera and Normanby Star. It must have been a proud moment when Harris was introduced to the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary) during their Dunedin visit in 1901, and told them he had served on HMS Hero when the Duke’s father, later King Edward VII, travelled to North America in 1860.

The university has employed many interesting and charismatic people over the decades, but in his day William Henry Harris stood out as “a rare personality, as outstanding in his way as any professor.” He earned several paragraphs in the 1919 jubilee history of Otago, and an obituary as long as that of the classics professor in the student publication, the Review. That obituary commented, “No man loved the University more than he. His monument will be the heart of every student who knew him.” There can no longer be any former students alive who knew the wily janitor, but we can pay tribute here to one of the great characters of the university’s early decades.

 

 

Castle Flats and Union Court

Tags

1930s, 1970s, 1980s, flatting, human nutrition, international students, physical education, Toroa

Union Court from Union Place, photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

From refined apartments to student flats to university offices, the building now known as Union Court has seen many changes. There are few university buildings dating from the 1930s – others are the former Queen Mary Maternity Hospital in Cumberland Street (now home to the School of Surveying and Department of Marine Science) and one wing of Cumberland College (formerly the Dunedin Hospital Nurses Home) – so the art deco style of the period is rare around campus. This two-storey brick building presents a dramatic contrast to the adjacent large wooden villas and the multi-storey concrete 1970s Science I Building opposite.

The building dates from 1930 and was a project of some innovative property developers, Castle Buildings Ltd. The company included builders Frank Lawrence and George Lawrence, who carried out the construction, and various Dunedin businessmen, including a quarry owner, a tannery manager, an accountant and two butchers. They set up with a capital of £8000, apparently with the sole purpose of financing this project. The Evening Star commended the project because it had, among other things, “helped considerably to keep a large staff of men in constant work”: this was, of course, a time of economic depression. The architect, William Henry Dunning, had designed various well-regarded Dunedin buildings; the Star suggested that his involvement was “sufficient in itself to guarantee the Dunedin public something of no mean order”. (There is an interesting piece about another of his designs, Barton’s Buildings, on the Built in Dunedin blog).

The building was originally named Castle Flats and included 14 self-contained flats, mostly with 2 bedrooms, built around a courtyard. Two separate blocks were connected by “well-fitted washhouses and archways.” Purpose-built flats were rare in Dunedin at the time, but the Star believed that the “demand for residential flats planned on modern lines is increasing daily in view of the great difficulty in obtaining a dwelling at a moderate price within the city.” These were no cheap or poky apartments, being “artistically designed, and beautifully finished,” with rooms spacious and well lit and tiled fireplaces in living rooms. The target market was “Varsity graduates and professional men whose near abode to the University class rooms is so necessary.”

The front entrance of Union Court, looking through to the courtyard. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

At least one early resident worked at the university: Dr Morris Watt, who lived in Flat 6 for a few years, lectured in bacteriology at the medical school. But most of the flats were occupied by people with no obvious link to the university: 1932 residents included a police sergeant, a warehouseman, a clerk, an insurance manager, a couple of railway employees, and various single and widowed women (street directories of the day assigned them no occupation). In 1950 Flat 6 was the home of Sister Mary Ewart, a former deaconess of Knox Church. Other residents at that time included musician Rodney Pankhurst, teacher Rae Familton, Victor Castleton, who was manager of the Octagon Theatre, civil servant Augustine McAlevey, driver Alex Borrell, and various people without occupations listed. Elizabeth Noble lived in Flat 12 for at least 20 years.

By the 1970s, the Castle Flats building was becoming rather run-down. In 1977 it was purchased by the Otago University Development Society, founded in 1948 for “the rendering of assistance and support to the University of Otago”. Until it wound up in 2002, the society raised money for various university projects. It also invested in buildings – including student accommodation – which would help the university. As an extensive renovation programme to Castle Flats began, society president Maurice Joel suggested that they would “provide pleasant and comfortable accommodation, primarily for staff, and are ideally situated at the centre of the complex.” But by 1978 the society was finding that there was great demand for all its properties from students; the 1979 report commented that Castle Flats were “particularly valuable as accommodation for married post-graduate students from overseas.”

Soon most of the flats were occupied by international students. Some lived there with their families, while others shared with fellow students. OUSA president Jon Doig noted in 1988 that this was a “supportive environment” for students from overseas, who were “often under great financial hardship” and had “trouble finding other flats of suitable standard and price.” A list of 1988 tenants is dominated by Indian, Arabic and Chinese names; most of the residents were undergrads at the university or polytech. Doig was acting as an advocate for those students, who were about to lose this accommodation option. By the late 1980s the rapidly-growing university was desperate for space. In early 1988 the university asked the development society for use of one of the flats for “a university related business venture,” but by the end of the year wanted the entire building for the mushrooming Commerce Division, whose new building was not completed until 1992.

Since the Otago University Development Society’s sole object was to assist the university, it was not about to turn down such a request. Accordingly, late in 1988 the university purchased the building for around $365,000, a price determined by an official valuation. It was converted into offices, and later the university added an extension at the back (facing the University Union), designed to blend seamlessly in style with the original building. These days the building, now known as Union Court, is occupied by the Department of Human Nutrition, the School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences, and the administrative offices of the Division of Sciences. Meanwhile, there were plenty of international students looking for accommodation. In 1996 the university opened a new place for them in upgraded blocks of flats in Queen Street. Toroa International House, as it was known, provided self-catering flats in a supportive environment complete with communal areas and computer facilities (it is now Toroa College).

Do you have any stories to share of Castle Flats/Union Court? I’d especially love to hear from anybody who lived there when it was an international student community. I’m also on the lookout for earlier photographs of the building!

Looking from the west towards Union Court. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.