Literary Views And Reviews DUNEDIN-100 YEARS

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 4

Literary Views And Reviews DUNEDIN-100 YEARS

[Reviewed by AR] City of Dunedin. A Century of Civic Enterprise. By K. C. McDonald. Dunedin City Corporation, 446 pp. The author of this fine history of Dunedin, Mr K. C. McDonald, was for many years the senior history master at Waitaki Boys’ High School. In that capacity he wrote the history of that school and a good history of North Otago, “White Stone Country.” Now, in his retirement, he has produced his most notable book, a municipal history which is at once scholarly and readable, comprehensive and informative.

While “City of Dunedin”! will remain of very special interest to the citizens of the capital of Otago, it will also make some appeal to the very large number of New Zealanders who at some time or another have resided there. As the author points out, the University of Otago has been attended by medical, dental, mining and home science students from all over the country with the result that “thousands of professional men and women, both in New Zealand and abroad, carry throughout their lives memories, generally nostalgic, of their years of training in Dunedin.” This book shouldl also appeal to and be of some I value to those who aspire to I hold office in city councils or related local bodies: it certainly covers thoroughly many | of the problems encountered! by the old Town Board and the Dunedin City Council dur-1 ing the latter’s hundred years | of responsibility for the various aspects of the city’s de-| velopment. For example, all' who seek public office in a! democratically elected body should ponder long the points set down on municipal government by W. Downie Stewart, when he was Mayor of Dunedin, and reproduced verbatim (p. 283 by Mr McDonald. The first of these gives the flavour of the analysis: “The errors of a municipal body are magnified, and appear more heinous than is the case with almost any other class of mistake, either public or private. Its shortcoming are closer at hand than those of a State department.” Although in his preface the author contends that the history of a municipality must he prosaic since “there is little drama in drains or glamour in gaspipes,” he himself has given a lively and interesting account of the evolution of a city. Possibly, at times, he has been overromantic or too generous in his interpretation of the actions and policies of the City Fathers—certainly he rarely strikes a harshly critical note—but, in the main, he has been scrupulously fair. Above all, he has been determined to set down as complete a record as was possible in one book of the century of continuous civic government completed in 1965. Indeed, if this book has a fault, it is that the author has sometimes been too cpncerned about details. The researcher living with his abundant source materials is always confronted with the problem of what to include and what to leave out: the

great temptation is to include as much as possible to keep The record straight; the daniger is that the general I reader will be intimidated by ithe facts and figures about finance, sewers, transport I systems and water supplies. I Mr McDonald has conceived it as his duty to consider “the growth of the physical fabric and the experiences and influences that have moulded the community” as well as to describe the civic administration of this first city in New Zealand to cele-j brate a century of unbroken! ! government as a city. His! ' conception is to be applauded.! .After setting the scene, geoI graphically and historically, he examines the life of the| Town Board which preceded! the City Council. In those: days “Dunedin remained a i depressing little huddle of] primitive buildings in a I muddy hollow” but some pro-i gross of note was made before the discovery of gold in 1861 gave an impetus to further and fuller developments. In addition to giving the detailed accounts of the planning of the city, its streets, reserves, drains and various amenities, Mr McDonald tells many good stories about the ! more prominent mayors, councillors and officers of the city I corporation. His admirable I pen portraits are cleverly (supplemented by extracts ifrom either official files or : contemporary newspapers, I with the result that the (reader acquires a pleasing ! acquaintance with the men who made Dunedin. I The author’s turn of I phrase is often appealing. i For example, how apt is the (picture of the council “eternally chasing solvency, in a sort of fugue, a pursuit, like that which Tennyson attributed to Ulysses”! The grimmer side of the city’s life is not concealed, as is shown in this description of “the Devil’s half-acre”: “a brokendown, filthy warren occupied mainly by Chinese, sometimes with white women companions; here they lived in an environment of opium dens, fan tan schools and rank human degeneracy that could well have been drawn from the darker pages of Dickens.” There is pleasant music as well as memory-stirring magic in this description of the days when hundreds and hundreds of horses gave employment to many people: “The noises of the streets were the clatter of hooves, the rumble of iron-tyred wheels, the jingling of harness, and the shouts of the drivers.” Later the electric trams replaced the horsedrawn vehicles: “For over 40 years Dunedin’s streets were to be plangent with the clang of warning bells and the anguished shriek of metal | wheels rounding metal | curves. But somehow it was ! an impressively busy sound, a sort of strident proclamation of progress. The peculiar bucketing action of some of the cars took time to get used to, but at least gave excellent preparation for sea voyages.” Those with an eye to the profit and loss of publicly owned transport systems will find the whole story here, of

how handsomely the trams paid the city in most years, and particularly in the year of the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition when the tramways contributed £38,176 profit, and then of how private cars produced the problem of fewer passengers and consequent losses. Dunedin and students of its past have been fortunate in obtaining such a worthwhile history, so full and so well proportioned. While the author makes few comparisons, he does point out that “Auckland has independent transport and electric power boards; Christchurch has a separate transport board; and Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch all have private gas companies. Dunedin on the other hand provides a full range of services through the municipality itself.” Dunedin retains traces of its Scottish origin in its accents, its placenames, its religion and some of its traditions. While it lacks the historic buildings of Edinburgh, it remains “a very beautiful city, certainly one of the loveliest in New Zealand.” This story of how a city was created on the steep hillsides, swampy flats and salt marshes of Dunedin is worth reading, even if some of the details of the drains and the debates have to be skipped. Its historian has been responsible for an achievement which will not easily be surpassed. “City of Dunedin” is well illustrated by some splendid photographs of both old and new Dunedin. This applies particularly to the black-and-white illustrations; some of the others are much too highly coloured —“The Council Room” and “Interior of Town Hall” have a garish quality, while none of his friends will accept that the former Mayor, Mr T. K. S. Sidey, is quite as cherubically pink as the frontispiece portrays him.