Paperback(None)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781927322048 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Otago University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/01/2015 |
| Edition description: | None |
| Pages: | 284 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
FORMATIVE YEARS
EARLY YEARS AND SCHOOL
I was born the second child and only son of Cyril and Eva Mark in June 1932 – towards the end of the Great Depression – to a low-income Dunedin family who were strongly affected by the Depression. As work picked up, Dad was employed as an electrician with A & T Burt and worked both locally – particularly on post-War government houses – and further out on country jobs.
Cyril left A & T Burt in 1957 and went to work for the Dunedin City Corporation's Transport Department. In 1959, just after he finished wiring my older sister Elaine and her husband Keith's new house in Hocken Street, Kenmure, Dad suffered a stroke and never worked again. My early years were modest, to say the least, but living near the edge of town in Mulberry Lane, off Kaikorai Valley Road, and with loving parents and three doting grandparents nearby, I could have had a much worse life.
A two-kilometre walk to Mornington School took me past the Roslyn Woollen Mills where, each day, the Kaikorai Stream was crossed at Stone Street just below the mill's dye-house discharge. There was an almost daily change in the colour of the stream, depending on the most recent batch of dyed wool, so there was no playing in this stream except at weekends, when it sometimes ran clear; not surprisingly, it was lifeless.
During the week, Elaine and I usually had our midday meal with our grandparents, the Marshalls, who lived within easy walking distance at 32 Beaumont Road. Grandad Frank was a retired watchmaker-jeweller who had owned a shop in Oamaru before retiring to Dunedin. He used to spend much of his time at the Athenaeum, a rather fusty spot in the lower Octagon, where he mostly played chess with friends and read. Mum would join us for midday dinner on Fridays before she went to town for the week's shopping with Grandma Jane. Afternoon tea at the salubrious Savoy tearooms between the Octagon and Moray Place South was usually included, an event that Elaine and I also shared during school holidays.
Dad's mother, Emma, lived alone in Gamma Street, Roslyn, having come to town from Lawrence, where Grandad Tom had been a miner at Blue Spur gold mine. He died before I was born, and we usually visited his grave in the Lawrence cemetery at Easter when we drove up and stayed with Dad's cousins, Mabel and Bob Walker, who lived near the edge of town in Whitehaven Street. Easter frequently involved a day at the Beaumont races, doing the round of Uncle Bob's rabbit traps on the hills about town, and a visit with Jimmy Chou Shim, the last of the Central Otago–Tuapeka full-blooded Chinese gold miners.
Jimmy Chou Shim had worked with Grandad Tom at Weatherstons gold mine and Blue Spur, where he was co-owner of a claim. Apparently gold was found at this claim shortly after it was sold. When I visited Jimmy he was living alone in a small galvanised-iron hut with a mud floor, not far from the Walkers' house, and worked his adjacent market garden. Jimmy died in 1945, aged 96.
Some of Dad's country electrical work and most long holidays took us a modest distance into the country, first in the 1925 Chevy Tourer and later in the much prized 1932 Chrysler, with our limited camping gear, including a standard 9 × 9-foot tent. Our Christmas holidays were mostly spent alongside one of Dad's favourite trout-fishing rivers, most often the Catlins or Owaka rivers, with a five-gallon keg of Speight's draught picked up from the open goods shed at the nearest railway siding. Occasionally we ventured as far as Omarama in the Mackenzie Basin to fish the Omarama Stream and Ahuriri River, and to Garston in northern Southland to fish the still-famous upper Mataura River. Fly fishing had its frequent rewards, and many a trout breakfast was enjoyed under canvas. Rabbits shot with the family's .22 Winchester repeater were also regularly on the field menu.
There were shooting trips once or twice a year, usually to rough farmland at Tuapeka West, but occasionally across the other side of the Clutha River to the Blue Mountains. Here, as a nine-year-old, I was given my first shot from a .303, a BSA sporting rifle, one of Dad's most-prized possessions. I dropped a young fallow stag with that first shot along one of the many firebreaks in the plantation forest there. My first rabbit had been shot at a somewhat earlier age – my interest in and love of the outdoors began early in life, even if the terrain was modest. Frequent shooting companions were Dad's close friends Harold Fountain, Bill Crowe and Ralph Allan, after whom (plus Grandad Frank) I was named.
A growing interest in farming and the outdoors was kindled by these many enjoyable times spent camping in various parts of the southern South Island – particularly on farmland in the Catlins – and shared with my folks and sister. When it was time to choose a high school in 1945, I was easily persuaded by the agriculture-horticulture courses being offered at Mosgiel District High School on the Taieri Plain. Commuting daily by bus or train was free to any townie who had made this choice – we amounted to about a busload, most but not all of us boys, over each of the six years when I attended. I was allowed to ride Dad's ex-racing 1926 Rudge Whitworth motorbike, and regularly rode it to Roslyn to catch the bus or train to Mosgiel. I even took the bike to school on rare occasions.
Low levels of academic achievement were accepted for those of us doing the rural courses at Mosgiel, so by the time I passed School Certificate in 1947 (with good passes in agriculture, horticulture and chemistry, but a pathetic 34 in English), I had come to the end of the available training for these courses. But my teachers – notably Jim Cumberbeach and Jack Davis for agriculture-horticulture, as well as Ted Farrant (chemistry), Alan Sewell (English) and Frank Gaston (geography) – persuaded me to join the sixth-formers at Otago Boys' High School the year after to progress my secondary education.
In the event, this proved too much for an ex-MDHS pupil. The several new subjects, as well as all the new teachers and classmates, and a 'Colditz Castle' atmosphere, were more than I could handle at this time. So in desperation, after just three days, I returned to discuss prospects with the teachers at Mosgiel District High. I was not disappointed, and they willingly accepted me back as their first and only sixth-former.
It was decided I could register with correspondence school (and catch up on some courses that I had to date avoided, notably mathematics), but continue attending Mosgiel District High and receive personal tuition and direction from some of the teachers. Alan Sewell in particular, aware of my needs in English, was most generous with his time. Meanwhile, I enjoyed the company and sports offered by the school, despite my diminutive size associated with late maturity, and was given the responsibility of head prefect for the year. I finally made it to the First XV as hooker, and even played one match on Carisbrook, against John McGlashan (which we lost), as a curtain-raiser to an eventful Otago versus Auckland game. I also managed to win the cross-country in my final year. Even though I qualified for Endorsed School Certificate at the end of the year and was accredited for University Entrance in English, chemistry and botany (all with A passes) in 1949, I was not well prepared for the next major step in my education.
NEW ZEALAND TERTIARY EDUCATION
An agricultural course at Lincoln College was out of the question in terms of costs to my struggling family. Nevertheless, my teachers strongly encouraged me to proceed to tertiary-level study. Otago University in my home town was the only viable option, but the liaison officer, Basil Howard, was anything but encouraging during our opening discussions. He strongly advised an additional upper-sixth-form year at high school to better prepare me for my first-year university courses. To me it was Hobson's choice, and I decided on the university courses that most interested me: botany, zoology and chemistry.
These subjects were all absorbing, and living at home allowed me to devote the time I knew they demanded if I was to have any chance of success. Surprise, surprise – I passed all three courses that year, even managing an A pass for the plant course. With first-year geology in my second year, I continued with botany and zoology to third year, enlightened and encouraged by the heads of these departments, professors Geoff Baylis in botany and Brian Marples in zoology.
Despite my initially greater interest in zoology, particularly in wildlife management, which I had always idealised as my vocation, I was led into plant ecology for several reasons: the lectures, labs, field trips, my fellow students – one of whom was my wife-to-be, Patricia Davie – and a sense of the increasing importance being ascribed to this subject. With several other students, I managed to get summer work assisting the Forest Service on their National Forest Survey, based at Bell Hill near Greymouth over the first summer and at Maungarakau near Collingwood in Golden Bay during the second. By this time I had bought a new 500cc BSA motor cycle – though I can't recall the source of funds – which was my means of transport to the West Coast and also for my M.Sc. fieldwork that was to follow.
My folks had to be convinced that two more years of postgraduate research towards an M.Sc. degree was both within my grasp and in my long-term interest. I remain forever extremely appreciative of the efforts that Geoff Baylis made in visiting home and talking them through their general ambivalence and reluctance to let me follow such an option. My father, in particular, was keen to see me usefully employed and earning my keep as soon as possible.
With fellow student Peter Wardle already a year into a plant ecological survey of the higher hills north of Dunedin (Mount Cargill, Flagstaff,Swampy Summit and Silver Peaks) under Geoff Baylis's supervision, Maungatua (Maukaatua), the 900 m-high range to the west of the Taieri Plain was suggested for my complementary research project. This was a great choice, aided financially by a university senior scholarship and a Blair Trust fellowship (eligible through my secondary schooling on the Taieri Plain). The Maungatua area turned out to have a wide range of indigenous vegetation types and ecological issues: podocarp–broad leaved and beech forests with different regeneration patterns, mixed shrublands, tussock grasslands and low-alpine cushion bogs that appeared to be encroaching on the snow-tussock grassland; two permanent quad-rats established in 1953 and resampled at decade intervals later confirmed this. There were also palaeoecological issues in the form of remnants of an earlier forest and woodland cover. These included totara logs scattered among the tussock grassland, and tangles of bog pine and pink pine dead stems in areas of exposed peat on the summit, as well as localised areas of beech stumps and numerous 'forest dimples' (small mounds and adjacent hollows where trees had been wind-blown in the past) on the tussock-clad western slopes. There were also clusters of moa gizzard stones (gastroliths) of polished quartz pebbles located among the peat and woodland remains on the crest. Various impacts of pastoral farming – burning and grazing by sheep – also presented themselves, with some distinctive fenceline contrasts of vegetation to explain, and so the dynamics and varying vulnerability of upland tussock grassland and shrubland communities became patently obvious. The local farmers, particularly Bill Kofoed in the south and the Reid brothers, Archie, Ken and Ron, in the north, were most helpful, providing encouragement and information on their past farming practices, which assisted my understanding of the distinctive vegetation patterns.
This project was a wonderful introduction to many of the ecological issues of the day, both in New Zealand and abroad. In particular, it gave me a much clearer insight into the strongly prevailing view of the Forest Service's Chief Ecologist, Jack Holloway, following analyses of records of the National Forest Survey that I had been employed on in the West Coast and northwest Nelson during the long vacations.
During the May vacation, I was entrusted with Dad's Chrysler to drive to the road-end in the lower Hollyford Valley with fellow student Bill Croxford for a deer-stalking trip. We climbed into the upper Olivine Valley via Lake Alabaster and Alabaster Pass, returning laden with skins, which were fetching premium prices at the time, in demand for use as self-sealing fuel tanks in American planes during the Korean War. I also borrowed the family car for an equally successful deer-shooting trip in the upper Dart valley, where the herds were even larger.
The encouraging results of my M.Sc. project (First Class Honours), and publication of the main findings, sustained my enthusiasm for the subject. Peter Wardle had headed to England, as was traditional for New Zealand graduates at this time, for a Ph.D. research programme at Cambridge University. Fortuitously, world-renowned biogeographer Professor Pierre Dansereau was visiting his colleague Geoff Baylis in the Botany Department during my final M.Sc. year in 1955. I spent some time with Pierre on Maungatua and in other parts of the southern South Island, during which he encouraged me to continue with my studies, but in the United States, which he knew well, rather than in England.
Again chance played its hand. Fulbright Travel Grants – an American scheme proposed by Senator William Fulbright for funding educational exchanges with allied countries as a means of repayment for World War II surplus goods left there – had just been initiated. The grants were being advertised and candidates advised to attempt to secure adequate financial support from an academic institution for the costs of residence and study. For New Zealanders like me, the grant would cover only return travel to the US. My offer of a Fulbright Travel Grant, however exciting, was conditional on obtaining the necessary further support.
My original prospect, the University of Michigan, was no longer eligible for financial support as Pierre was transferring to the University of Montreal in Canada. He suggested that I apply to both the University of California at Davis, to study under world-famous evolutionary plant geneticist G. Ledyard Stebbins, or to Duke University in the southeastern state of North Carolina, to work with Professor Dwight Billings, an up-and-coming community and physiological plant ecologist.
Responses from both Davis – which had received my application but no supporting references – and also the University of California at Los Angeles – which had received references but no application – arrived some days before an offer from Duke University of a graduate assistantship, which I accepted immediately. I reluctantly declined a somewhat more generous offer from Davis when it arrived a few weeks later. As it turned out, I made the right decision; I've had no regrets.
THE USA: POSTGRADUATE STUDIES AND MARRIAGE
Highly excited but rather nervous with my first venture abroad, and sad to leave my family and friends, particularly my fiancée Pat, I left with a dozen other New Zealand Fulbright fellows on the M.V. Rangitane for a leisurely cruise across the Pacific to Panama. Here we were all thoroughly examined by US officials, an ordeal that included a full-size chest x-ray, before taking a flight to Miami. One of our contingent was rejected in Panama on the basis of his suspect chest x-ray and so had to re-embark for Southampton.
From Miami we went our individual ways, and I traded an air ticket for the option of seeing some new country with a Greyhound bus ride (and eventually recovered the balance in cash) non-stop over two days to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, some 40 km from Durham, where Duke University and the Leggitt & Myers Tobacco Company both had their homes. While waiting to be met in Raleigh by another Kiwi, Patricia Roberts, ex-Canterbury University, who had been in the Botany Department one year earlier, I was traumatised by the display of live snakes at the Raleigh Museum, where I filled in time before being met. Among the 'Poisonous Snakes of North Carolina' were some very impressive anacondas from the coastal plain, as well as several rattlesnakes and copperheads from the mountain region where I was hopeful of spending some time, if not most of my field time, on my main research topic.
The collegial welcome at Duke was equally warm, but dormitory life was an entirely new experience that took some adjustment. The campus was most impressive, with its main (west) campus buildings strongly reminiscent of Otago University, being of similar gothic design and built of bluestone (basalt). The university grounds and gardens were extensive and immaculate, particularly the main campus, thanks largely to the cheap Negro labour. The Botany Department was housed in a separate red brick (east) campus some 2 km distant. Traversing the campus drive between east and west campuses by bicycle (or bus) along with many other students allowed me to adjust to the new road rules before venturing into four-wheeled transport.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Standing My Ground"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Alan F. Mark.
Excerpted by permission of Otago University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Front Cover,
Title Page,
Copyright,
Foreword: Sir Geoffrey Palmer,
1 FORMATIVE YEARS,
2 RESEARCH FOR THE HELLABY TRUST,
3 THE SOUTH ISLAND HIGH COUNTRY,
4 THE NARDOO TUSSOCK GRASSLAND DEBATE,
5 SAVE MANAPOURI – AND BEYOND,
6 QUANGOS I HAVE KNOWN,
7 ROYAL FOREST AND BIRD PROTECTION SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND,
8 OTHER RESEARCH ACTIVITIES,
9 ENGO AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENTS,
Epilogue: Rewards and Recognitions,
Appendix: Wise Response Inc. Oral Submission to Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, 1 July 2015,
Acknowledgements,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,