9 minute read
A Day in the Life Of
SEAN RICHARDS
A Day in the Life Of... Hoody Time
Joey Talmage (AKA Hoody Time) is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who has made Nelson his home since 2017. You may have seen him on-stage at various festivals and events around town including Bay Dreams and Nelson city’s New Year’s Eve party. He runs us through his typical day.
8am
…ish. I usually wake up initially at a reasonable hour. Check my emails/socials, decide if my existence is actually required this early. Today it was not. Back to sleep.
10.09am
My alarm has already gone off and now the first, and hopefully the only ‘snooze’ follows suit. Yes, I’m getting up. And don’t let anyone tell you the only way to be successful is to wake up early and… blah blah blah. People ain’t the same!
10.14am
Shower and skin care routine. I use a regimen by Native Junkie featuring hemp and native NZ botanicals. Every day. It’s why I shine.
11am
Great. I’m alive again, my teeth are brushed, the plants are watered, my clothes match, I’m not garbage. If it’s a weekday, I’m putting in the yards for HotHouse Creative where I work as a writer and digital marketing specialist. But today is Saturday so I’ve finally made it to the Saturday Market with my fiancée, Liat. Time to order a Chicksilog from Arnel’s Filipino joint.
12pm
Oops. We bought more plants (thank you Hope Nurseries)…
1pm
The plants approve of their new home. I’m off to Room Twenty5 in Richmond to record some music with the wickedly talented Bosho. Bo – if you’re reading this and we have not finished tracking my EP, my bad. Call me. Chur.
5pm
To cook or not to cook? Nah. Just kidding, I already called Yuki and got a spot for Liat and myself at Wafu Bistro.
7pm
Yes, sometimes you do spend two hours eating world class sushi. And would you look at that? It’s magically Thursday, so naturally the move is Kismet on Hardy for open mic night. I’m gonna slam a few tunes with Genre Fluid, Ben Dixon will probably play my favourite tunes of his, some gin will be responsibly consumed.
9.30pm
I’m quite the night owl so I get some of my best work done in the three - four hours before I call it a day. This time of year, that means booking tour dates and securing some festival appearances. I run the three-screen offensive: bookings on a laptop, socials on the phone, and some documentary about whales on the TV in the background. Mmm. My retinas.
1am
(Sunday) It’s bedtime. Between HotHouse and Hoody Time I actually work quite a bit, so when I wake up on Sunday I don’t want to do anything. Or maybe I want to do something that feels like doing nothing. Sometimes that’s a quick stroll to Eclectic and Rack Diggers for some antiquing and vintage streetwear shopping, sometimes it’s a drive to Kaiteriteri Beach and a day in the sun. No matter what’s on the schedule though, it’s great to wake up every day in Nelson.
Cawthron’s legacy
From humble beginnings as a teenage early Nelson settler, Thomas Cawthron ended up donating an equivalent of $100 million to the city with an impact that is tangible with just a short walk around the CBD. On the 100th anniversary of the founding of his crowning achievement, the Cawthron Institute, Charles Anderson looks at his legacy.
It was an unexceptional beginning for young immigrant Thomas Cawthron when he boarded a ship for his new life on the other side of the world.
He was only 15 and a middle child when he climbed onto the Mary on October 27, 1848. His father, an oil and paint salesmen, his stepmother and five siblings were all with him. It’s not clear what propelled his father, James, into the decision to make the largely unknown journey across treacherous seas. But England, and Europe, was in the midst of an economic slump known as the ‘Hungry Forties’, and that was enough to propel them to travel from their home in Surrey to London and then onto New Zealand. The passage took four long months amid wild weather and less than favourable conditions. But, eventually, Thomas and his family stepped off the Mary and onto new shores. It was February 1849, in the very early years of European settlement of Nelson. Those settlers were told that area was ripe for reward, with just a bit of hard work and dedication. Only a year earlier a local firm began to issue their own onepound notes under the name of the so-called ‘Nelson Bank’. Opportunity was there for opportunists, it seems. The problem, for Thomas, was that when he arrived the only hard work available to him was manual labour on a farm. He found that his body was ill-suited to such an occupation. So, instead, he sought out a distant relative, William ‘Barney’ Rhodes in Wellington. He was said to have “shrewd judgment, unflagging energy, and sheer determination”. Rhodes was known for his frugal ways and ability to create wealth, and had done exactly that in Wellington and the wider region. So, Thomas travelled there to learn about the merchant and trading industry, the fields where Rhodes had built up his business. But only three years later gold was discovered in Ballarat in Australia’s Victoria and Thomas smelled his own opportunity. It was one, however, that did not eventuate. He did not strike it rich there. But he did learn about prospecting and became a successful contractor supplying necessities to miners there. Thomas took that concept and returned to Nelson in 1854, largely due to the bad health of his father and the death of his brother. The plan, however, was always to return to Australia, but he never did.
A short while later, the copper mines on Nelson’s Dun Mountain and the coal mine in Enner Glynn opened. Thomas leaned in with what he had discovered in Victoria and began contracting work with the miners. Soon he began loaning money to them and his wealth began to grow. By 1859, Thomas had shifted his attention to Nelson’s ever-increasing shipping trade. He found himself in charge of several shipping companies for the next 25 years. He acted as an agent, collector of wharfages and a trader. Then, when the Union Steam Ship Company bought out the company Thomas was working for, he also acquired a monopoly of agencies. Again, his wealth grew. Thomas controlled the shipping of coal between the West Coast and Australia and also invested heavily in property, shares, mortgages and other institutions. He had become a tall, broad-shouldered man, somewhat stooped and slow of speech. But no-one could deny his influence in the burgeoning city of Nelson. By 1884, Thomas was retired and began to think about his legacy. He relied on his friends to suggest ways to spend his money to benefit the city of Nelson. He had built up a reputation of being somewhat of a recluse. However, Thomas did have friends, so when deciding on where to put his wealth he turned to well-known locals, Fred Gibbs, the headmaster of Nelson College, and Joseph Cock, a fellow businessman who made his money in Dun Mountain mining. Cock had described Thomas Cawthron as “the personification of compound interest” and now it was time to put that to work. The pair were so prominent in the community they were able to encourage Thomas to invest his money in projects for the benefit of many future generations of Nelsonians.
Thomas Cawthron, Nelson Provincial Museum, FN Jones collection 6x8_8
RICH HAY
The Cawthron Institute today – In 1902 Thomas Cawthron bequeathed practically the whole of his estate to the development of an “industrial and technical school, institute and museum to be called the Cawthron Institute”. Above is the institute’s world-class aquaculture facility at The Glen.
These projects included the financing of the Church Steps in 1912-1913, costing £1800; the gift of an £1800 organ to the Nelson School of Music in 1913 and the 1913 purchase of over 2000 acres near Dun Mountain for a nature park, to be named Cawthron Park.
He also paid for part of the Rocks Road chains, made donations towards a public hospital and a nurses' home, and smaller donations towards the Nelson Institute.
However, his greatest memorial is the Cawthron Institute, which was established after his death.
Following a suggestion from Cock and Gibbs, Thomas, in a will drawn up in London in 1902, bequeathed £231,000 – practically the whole of his estate. It was tagged to the development of an “Industrial and Technical School, Institute and Museum to be called the Cawthron Institute”.
The total of his donations is thought to have exceeded $100 million in today’s money. However, he wrote that he was shocked at the “blazoning forth in public print” of his benefactions. However, Thomas wrote to a friend of Sydney that he hoped “the clamour…will have died down before I return”.
The Cawthron Institute was officially opened in 1921 with Thomas Easterfield, emeritus professor of chemistry at Victoria University College, as its first director. The delays were largely due to the New Zealand government's insistence that £40,000 in stamp duty was owed on the bequest. This decision was disputed and was subject to repeated legal challenges over the following 18 years. Fellworth House was purchased in 1920 as the Institute's temporary premises. It remained the home of Cawthron Institute for the following 50 years, before moving to Halifax St.
The work of the Cawthron Institute has included major research in the areas of soils, agriculture and biochemistry, and it has played an important role in stimulating government scientific research. With more than 300 staff spread out over several facilities, the Cawthron Institute has made its name from being at the cutting edge of the science of water in New Zealand. As the aquaculture industry has grown over recent decades, Cawthron’s work in researching the growth of shellfish and finfish breeding, as well as managing marine pests and diseases has led to better productivity across the industry. It has also helped create new technologies to put New Zealand and the region at the forefront of aquaculture. But now, after 50 years, the Cawthron has outgrown its Halifax St premises. It has partnered with Port Nelson and the Nelson City Council to look at developing a Science and Technology Precinct at the port. Overseeing the next stage of Cawthron’s legacy change is new chief executive Volker Kuntzsch, who was appointed in February with a background of more than 30 years in the marine science and seafood industry. The vision for Cawthron's future would be as a hub to bring different groups together to help solve problems for industries and the environment. These would range from big environmental challenges such as climate change, to developing green protein from the ocean as a more sustainable alternative to land-based protein. Thomas Cawthron never got to see his most significant donation come to fruition. He died at his Examiner Street home in Nelson, on 8 October 1915, six years before the institute fully opened. But, now, 100 years on, it’s a legacy a 15-year-old boy from Surrey, England could scarcely have imagined.
