WELLINGTON

Ka mura, ka muri: Walking backwards into the future

These words, in the foreword to Mana Tangata People of Action, from the Rt Hon Sir Anand Satyanand (GNZM) and Bill Boyd (CNZM), mark the centenary of Rotary in New Zealand in June 2021.

Rotary is a familiar presence in the New Zealand landscape. Its emblem welcomes you to towns and cities, heritage places, parks, walkways and buildings of note, and in a wide range of community activities.

Both Sir Anand Satyanand, former Governor General of New Zealand, and Bill Boyd, former Rotary International World President, have been outstanding Rotary leaders in New Zealand and on the world scene. Through Mana Tangata, the history of Rotary leadership in businesses – especially in the early 1920s – is told, commemorating and celebrating a great legacy of achievement as part of our nation’s heritage.

Founded in Chicago in 1905, Rotary was the first service club organisation in the world. It arrived in New Zealand and in Australia in 1921, with its motto 'Service above Self', and was well received by businessmen and professionals looking for a new way of fellowship post-World War 1.

Catching a wave of post-war optimism, the first Rotary Club in New Zealand was formed in Wellington at a luncheon meeting held at the Wellington YMCA in Willis St on 7 June 1921. A week later, the second was formed in downtown Auckland. By the end of the 1920s there was a club in every major town.

The atmosphere at the first meeting in Wellington was one of great enthusiasm amongst 36 prominent Wellington businessmen and community leaders, including: Sir Harold Beauchamp, Chair of the Bank of New Zealand and father of writer Katherine Mansfield; Sidney Kirkcaldie, recently retired Managing Director of the city’s department store Kirkcaldie and Stains, now a Category 2 listed building; Charles Norwood, later Sir Charles, who became Mayor of Wellington in the mid-1920s and who launched the Wellington Free Ambulance Service; and scientist Professor Ernest Marsden.

At 39 years of age, a young businessman, Alex Roberts, later knighted, was appointed Club President, an office he held for the Club from 1921-23. Roberts was Managing Director of wool brokers Murray Roberts Ltd, a New Zealand wide business, and became mayor of Lower Hutt in 1929. The heritage listed former Murray Roberts Building stands in Featherston Street, Wellington. Roberts headed the New Zealand contribution to the 1924 London Empire Exhibition and was also director of New Zealand’s 1940 centennial exhibition.

Under Alex Robert’s leadership the Rotary Club of Wellington did some quite remarkable things, including putting up a substantial sum of money for the construction in 1926 of a Karitane Hospital in Melrose, Wellington. At the start of the 1920s, Dr Truby King, the founder of the Plunket Society in New Zealand, sought community help to build a new hospital to arrest a high infant mortality rate of 30 deaths per 1,000 births. The Karitane Hospital in Melrose was a significant heritage landmark in the capital until its recent demolition by a property developer.

Charles Odlin, President of the Rotary Club of Wellington in 1923-24, was a major player in the New Zealand timber industry and his name lives on with the refurbished timber store in the capital, first constructed in 1906. The Category 1 heritage listed Odlins Building sits at the centre of three buildings on Cable Street, with the former Wellington Free Ambulance (Category 1 listed) on one side and Shed 22 (Category 2 listed), to the east, together making for a significant heritage streetscape. Sir Charles Norwood, who became Rotary President in the early 1930s, inspired the formation of the Wellington Free Ambulance Service, a much needed and admired community service which continues today. Sir Charles, Wellington Mayor from 1925-27, was Managing Director of Dominion Motors, importers of Morris cars from Britain and the founder of the New Zealand Crippled Children Society, a national service which Rotary funding launched in New Zealand. Other outstanding contributors to New Zealand society, and founding members of the first Rotary Club included Will Herbert President (1925-26), and founder of Bowen Hospital which was for many years on the corner of Bowen Street and The Terrace, before the new hospital was built near Crofton Downs, and Sir John Illott (President 1929-30), a founder of the advertising industry in New Zealand and – together with his son John, a long-serving Rotarian – a founder of philanthropy in New Zealand.

Mana Tangata People of Action is published by Rotary Oceania Operations Ltd. Available through the Rotary Oceania website rotaryoceania. zone and at offthepress.co.nz

William Gray Young was also a member of this esteemed 1921 group, and became one of our nation’s most noted architects, known in particular for his design of the heritage listed Wellington Railway Station and the Wellesley Club, both Category 1 listed buildings, among many other buildings of significance. George Troup, later Sir George, Mayor of Wellington (1927-31) designed the Category 1 Dunedin Railway Station and was a key mover in the Kelburn tramway company, establishing Wellington’s airport at Rongotai and the car tunnel through Mt Victoria.

Ernest Marsden, the founding head of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), J.R. McKenzie, who founded the McKenzies’ variety stores across New Zealand as well as a Youth Education Fund and the J.R. McKenzie Trust, and Hope Gibbons, Managing Director of the Colonial Motor Company, assembler and distributor of Ford Motor cars, were also founding Rotary members. Gibbons initiated two of the largest buildings in the 1920s, the several storey assembly plant, the CMC Building in Courtenay Place, and the Hope Gibbons Building on Taranaki Street, both heritage listed.

Rotary celebrates these achievements through outstanding business acumen and an ongoing commitment to providing a wide range of community health and welfare services for our country. In May, an exhibition celebrating Rotary’s centenary was launched at the National Library in Wellington and will tour New Zealand in the months ahead. n

Writer: David Watt

TOP LEFT: Category 1 heritage listed buildings on the Wellington waterfront. The former Wellington Free Ambulance Building in the foreground and the Odlins Building behind.

TOP RIGHT: Kirkcaldie and Stains Building and tower, Category 2 listed.

BELOW: The former Murray Roberts Building in Wellington.