New Zealand novelist Maurice Gee has written a book based loosely on Cawthron, called “Prowlers”. In it there is a lovely section describing the director of the research institute teaching a young very junior assistant how to analyse for metals using a platinum wire and a Bunsen burner. I’m almost certain it must be modelled on Eric Chittenden. He had been taken under the wing of the early directors, Sir Thomas EasterField and Sir Theodore Rigg, from whom he learned most of his chemistry and research skills.

I did not know him personally very well at all, having met him only a few times when he attended the annual Thomas Cawthron Memorial Lectures. By that stage he was already in his 90s. I learned a great deal more about him from the various eulogies, from his family, friends and one former colleague (Paul Gillespie, who joined Cawthron just before Eric retired).  Of course he had outlived most of his colleagues – it would have been fascinating to hear some of their stories! He had obviously been a very strong, energetic man, a keen tramper, mountaineer, photographer and gardener. He was apparently one of the very first people to try snow skiing in the Nelson region and was a key figure in establishing the huts on Mt Robert for the Nelson ski club.

His contributions were recognised when he had a mountain named after him! Mt Chittenden (2205m) lies to the south of Lake Rotoiti in the Nelson Lakes National Park.

So it was very clear that the life of this man, who reached 101 years, had been “a life well spent”.

The problem involved a young Ph.D. student from Japan. He had just discovered that his supervisor back in Japan had done something dishonourable, something which he felt would be to the disadvantage of his New Zealand hosts. He became deeply depressed, stuck in a dilemma which he eventually confided to another Japanese researcher working at Cawthron at the time: Dr Kawamura.  Kawamura-san then spoke with the student’s Cawthron supervisor, who felt he was out of his depth and brought the problem to me.  They were both extremely concerned with the student’s state of mind, even mentioning the ‘s’ word.
I won’t go into the act which precipitated all of this. It was a concern, but nowhere near as serious as he thought.  I felt that relationships were strong enough that we could work through  it.  The immediate need was to communicate to the student that he should not feel shamed and that we would support him. But how to do that? His English language skills were not too flash. I thought hard about that and organised the meeting with the four people involved:  the student, his Cawthron supervisor, Kawamura-san who also could act as an interpreter, and me.

I had decided to use my authority position. After all, I was a close friend of Kosuge-sensei, a very important man. So I sat on one side of my small coffee table with three expectant people lined up on the other.  “I wish to tell you a story and I would like Kawamura-san to translate this so that you understand”. Everyone nodded.  “Once upon a time” I began. Surprise from Kawamura-san and the supervisor.  “Go on, translate that please”. So he did. Then the story continued.

“Once upon a time, there was a man who had twin sons. One of them had been born an optimist, the other a pessimist.  It was Christmas morning and the man heard each of his boys wake early and jump out of bed looking for their present.  He heard cries of sorrow and disappointment from one room, shouts of joy from the other. He sighed, got out of bed, put on his robe and went to the room of the pessimist. Here was his six year old son sitting in the middle of the floor amidst the wreck of a new train set.  “I’ll never get this going, it’s broken” sobbed the child. “I’ll help you” said his father, “but first I’ll check that your brother is okay”.

He opened the room next door to find a great pile of steaming horse manure in one corner, stretching from floor to ceiling. The boy was using his beach bucket and spade to dig away at the pile, singing happily to himself. When he saw his father he jumped up and down.  “This is the best Christmas present ever!” “You like it?” asked his father. “Oh yes!  With such a big pile, there’s got to be a really big pony in here somewhere!”

(Needless to say, this was quite a challenge for the interpreter and took considerable time and repetition.)

A long silence, me sitting facing the student. “So, we must find pony!” I said.

In intake of breath from the student:  “soo desu ka (really?)” “I think so” from me.   I felt like a Buddha sitting there.  Then he gave a small smile and I knew we had got there. Phew!  Eventually we did get it sorted.

A few years later, I had to visit Japan to make a presentation to Kosuge sensei on his birthday. The same student, now doing a post-doc, had been appointed my assistant and minder. It felt very good indeed.

After a tour of Cawthron, I invited Prof Kosuge to join our meeting (Who’s he?  Read here). Our visitor was very deferential and respectful. With amazing candour he explained that he had left his job as head of a large family business in Japan, having shamed himself and his family. He was now a recovering alcoholic, trying to rebuild his life in ” clean and green” New Zealand. Much to our great surprise, he suddenly whipped out a cheque-book, knelt down and on my coffee table wrote out a cheque for $20,000!  The next morning Prof Kosuge asked me “Did you understand that man? He has much money, now he seeks honour”.

On the advice of the Professor we commissioned a local artist to prepare a beautiful illuminated scroll, signed by the Bishop of Nelson and declaring him a “Friend of the Cawthron Institute”.  He was living at the Academy Motel across the road from Canterbury University so, in the staff room of the School of Engineering, I presented this to him in person. When he unwrapped it, there was an audible intake of breath, he jumped to his feet, bowed deeply and started to cry.  What a moment!

That was it, or so I thought. It was the end of our communications. But exactly 12 months later an identical cheque arrived in the mail. The third and last one appeared on the second anniversary, $60,000 in all.  The money was used to buy new microscopes, which we could not have afforded otherwise and which gave a huge boost to our research on phytoplankton and marine biotoxins.

We bought a very fancy Olympus inverted microscope, a bit like this one

It’s successful turnaround in the early 90s owes a lot to many different people. One of them celebrated his 70th birthday a few years back, an occasion we thought important enough to celebrate with an appropriate gift. We chose to give the commission to Darryl Robertson, another painting on ceramic:

Again, the back story is fascinating. Read on if you are interested.

My first year at Cawthron Institute was spent almost entirely in crisis mode. We were still making large financial losses, most of the remaining liquid assets had already been sold and, not surprisingly, staff morale was very low. In the middle of this mess, we had a visit from a person who over the next few years was to make a very great contribution to Cawthron.

Professor Takuo Kosuge was an acclaimed chemist and pharmaceutical researcher, former head of the Pharmaceutical Sciences faculty of the University of Shizuoka. (He is also the named inventor on the original patent for Greenshell mussels as an anti-inflammatory agent – see here).  He also did significant work in identifying carcinogens, for which he appeared on the front cover of the American Journal for Cancer Research in 1991. As I recall, when I first met him he was president of that University, a position from which he was soon to retire. His son was living in Nelson and I think he was expecting a grandchild. At the time we had 32 staff rattling in a building that could accommodate 60 or more. So it was no great hardship to offer the Professor office and laboratory space, an offer which was accepted. So Kosuge-sensei came to spend the next three years dividing his time between Nelson and Japan, in three-month blocks.

I learned that Kosuge-sensei had spent decades researching traditional Chinese medicine.  His goal was to understand why these traditional medicines were effective. He knew they worked, but the technologies and philosophies had remained unchanged for several thousand years, confined to the materials available to the Chinese back then. If we could understand them, then the principles could be applied to a much broader range of materials. Especially marine organisms, a particular interest for him.

His financial contribution to Cawthron came in the form of an outrageous rental for laboratory space and office services, funded from his new ‘Maripharm’ project. It was enough to make the difference between profit and loss at that critical time. Although it was never discussed directly, I’m sure this was his intention.

His indirect contribution was even more important. A new research project was started in 1990, “MedinzaHerbs”, a joint venture with four partners: the NZ Trade Development Board, the Crop Research Division of DSIR, MAF Technology and Cawthron. Its aim was to develop a new industry for New Zealand growing eastern medicinal crops. The annual research budget was more than $500,000. Cawthron received $67,000 of this to provide marketing support and develop quality assurance techniques. We quickly found that the world market for such crops was a dangerous place for small players. The best strategy was to find a significant end user: trustworthy and large enough to take all of New Zealand’s production.

Rather surprisingly such a user did actually exist. A company called Tsumura had about 80% of the Japan market for medicinal herbs, a turnover of around $2 billion with about 70% of their sales into hospitals. The president of the company at that time was Akira Tsumura, from the founding family. Our Kosuge-sensei was a great friend of the president’s father and had been instrumental in persuading the company to enter this market 20 or 30 years earlier. His introduction was a guarantee that we would always be treated fairly and honestly. That was demonstrated on many occasions in subsequent years.

For me personally, the chance to share morning and afternoon tea with someone of such wisdom and experience was a wonderful opportunity to learn about Japanese culture and Japanese ways of doing business. An example came when I visited Tokyo on behalf of the MedinzaHerbs partners to sign a research agreement with Tsumura. As we waited beside the elevator in Tsumura’s imposing building in downtown Tokyo, Kosuge-sensei came over to me quietly and said “when we go up, you walk as you own whole building”. “Really?” “Yes, I think so”. So when the elevator doors opened at the top floor to reveal a Picasso, I said to myself “I’m really glad we bought that painting, it’s been a good investment”. Turning left, we passed a giant Bruegel. “Pieter Bruegel’s always been one of my favourites” I thought to myself. I walked into the giant boardroom with the New Zealand trade commissioner as my flunky, got through the signing ceremony and managed to get back to the ground floor before the adrenaline let down kicked in. “Very good ” was the comment from Kosuge-sensei. Phew!

When I heard that the professor’s 70th birthday was coming up, I immediately thought of Darryl Robertson. Darryl had created a work for an earlier gift and had a strong Cawthron connection. More importantly, I knew that he had been to Japan several times and worked in the studio of one of their “national treasures”.  So I provided Darryl with various reseasch papers by the professor and asked him to prepare a suitable gift.  The result, shown at the start of this post, was a wonderful mixture of Japan and New Zealand. A very Japanese, evening sun illuminates the depths of the ocean and the various organisms down there.  What about the title?  I remembered when I had asked the professor for some Japanese characters for our 1990 annual report. “My favourite word” was his description when he handed me a piece of paper on which he had drawn these characters:

“Shizen” means nature,  he explained.  The image above is Kosuge-sensei’s calligraphy used directly in that annual report. We managed to find a local Japanese calligrapher to put the title on Darryl’s painting.

The actual presentation was quite an elaborate affair.  It took place at the birthday banquet in Shizuoka: over 230 guests, most of whom were former Ph.D. students of Kosuge-sensei, plus a scattering of pharmaceutical company presidents and university professors. It was an honour for me to be there at a wonderful celebration of the life and work of a great man!

By the way, I mentioned in an earlier post how the ‘mana’ of Darryl’s works went up when our Prime Minister chose one as New Zealand’s gift to the Emporer of Japan.  That happened only six months or so after the banquet.

Postscript: a joke nearly goes wrong
We were very excited when we learned that Tsumura wished to send a delegation to New Zealand to talk about a joint research project. The visiting group would include Dr Nagasawa, a director of this very large company. I pulled out all stops for a dinner in Nelson. The guest list included two mayors and a bishop (all members of the Cawthron trust board). Dr Nagasawa was the guest of honour, seated next to the Bishop, while as the lowest ranking person I was put on the opposite side of the large round table, next to Kosuge-sensei.

During dinner, I noticed that the professor was not eating everything on his plate. At home he was required to eat his vegetables but when dining out he could please himself, so preferred to avoid them. As a joke, I leaned across and said quietly “eat your vegetables!” Unfortunately, at that moment there was a lull in the conversation so my instruction was heard by everybody at the table. (Shocked looks from Dr Nagasawa and the other members of the Tsumura team.) “No!” was the reply in a loud voice. That really surprised me. They never said the word “no”, I didn’t even learn the Japanese word for it until lesson 5 or 6 of my Japanese language classes.  “What on earth is going on here?” I wondered. Then I thought I understood. “Eat your greens!” I said firmly. “Well, half of them?” was the reply. “OK, half of them”. And the professor did eat half of them.

What I had not realised at the time was that we had the pecking order all wrong. Dr Nagasawa had actually been Prof Kosuge’s Ph.D. student, so he too used the term sensei (master). Not only that, Kosuge-sensei’s friendship with the founding family of the company gave him a special status. He out-ranked everyone in the visiting team, by a long way. So my joke could have been a major gaffe (and the gamble I took in continuing with it had a higher risk attached than I realised at the time).

It was a year or so before I managed to bring myself to ask Kosuge-sensei about that night. Yes, I had got right, we were indeed on the same wavelength. By his response, he was saying to them “Look here, you would never dream of treating me with such disrespect. But I am OK with it. This is New Zealand, people behave quite differently from what you expect in Japan. Remember that when you do business with them!”

So his use of the incident to help facilitate future communication certainly saved my bacon. Not only that, my status with the Japanese team immediately rocketed. So much so that it took a lot of effort on my part before Nakamura-san, their official contact person, could unbend and relax sufficiently for us to interact anywhere near normally.

Can you understand why I am so fond of Kosuge-sensei?

Professor Takuo Kosuge

]]> http://www.new-zealand-pictures.com/2010/05/prof-t-kosuge-cawthron-fellow/feed/ 0 http://www.new-zealand-pictures.com/2010/05/sir-ian-axford/ http://www.new-zealand-pictures.com/2010/05/sir-ian-axford/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 22:25:11 +0000 Graeme Robertson http://www.new-zealand-pictures.com/?p=1206 In March I read of the passing of Sir Ian Axford, a scientist who spent much of his working life outside New Zealand but nevertheless made a huge contribution to this country. I met him briefly when we invited him to present the annual “Cawthron Lecture” in 1996. It was the 75th anniversary of the official opening of Cawthron Institute.

To grab your attention, I’ve included a photograph of the present we gave Sir Ian that night. You may well think that’s a bit crass, but the story that goes with it is well worth telling. Here it is:

(c) Darryl Robertson

First though, Sir Ian’s lecture: “Our Understanding of the Solar System”.  Sir Ian was a very highly regarded space scientist and at the time was Director at the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy.  Just a year before he had been named “New Zealander of the Year”. The Nelson School of Music, the usual venue for those lectures, had a capacity audience of 350 that night.  His lecture was just great. You will get the flavour of it from his preface to the published version, which I’ve included at the end of this post.

But now to the present, a painting on ceramic by Nelson artist and potter Darryl Robertson. I had been very impressed with Darryl’s work and approached him about the commission.  He was very interested. Much to my surprise, I learned that Darryl’s father had worked at the Cawthron Institute for many years. In fact much of Darryl’s pocket money throughout his schooldays had come from mowing the lawns in the Cawthron grounds. So he was very happy to take on the commission.

We were delighted with the result, as was Sir Ian.  Just in case it was to be taken to Germany, where Sir Ian still spent much of his time, there is a reminder of New Zealand in the form of the Southern Cross prominently displayed in the painting.

A couple of years later there was a sequel to this presentation. Our Prime Minister at the time, Jenny Shipley, visited Japan where she had an audience with the Emperor and a meeting with the Prime Minister. Guess what she gave the Emperor?  A painting on ceramic by Darryl Robertson!

From the Preface to Thomas Cawthron Memorial Lecture Number 54, May 1996  ” Our Understanding of the Solar System”:

“It has been a great honour and a pleasure for me to be invited to present the 1996 Cawthron lecture during the Cawthron Institute’s 75th anniversary year. The Founder of the Institute obviously had the best possible motivation, namely to contribute to the advancement of our knowledge and understanding of the world at large. I think he would have approved of the theme I have chosen for this lecture, namely the origin of our solar system and the development of our ideas concerning the place of the Earth and ourselves in the external Universe. Some of these ideas may appear rather bizarre according to our current understanding but they should be treated with respect, since they show us how we arrived at this point and remind us of the frailty of our thought and logic. It has been said of today’s theoretical astrophysicists that they are “often wrong but never in doubt”; the fact that this has always been and will continue to be the case should not be allowed to drift out of our thoughts. Both doubt and certainty can contribute to progress. ”

Note: the lecture was published and a hard copy or pdf file is available from the Cawthron Institute (they used to be freeware).

PS: the lectures are still going strong and they have now reached number 66 (see my earlier post).

Wakatu have recently been talking with government about support for their joint initiative with Cawthron and Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT): the Horoirangi Centre of Seafood and Aquaculture.  This is an ambitious $10.5 million plan to integrate research and education with the commercial application of the research scientist’s efforts.  The creation of Spatco, demonstrating a commitment from the bulk of the NZ mussel industry, will not have done their application any harm.

(If you don’t know where the industry gets its baby mussels from right now, read this post!)

A few weeks back, Cawthron announced that work had started on new research and educational facilities, at a cost of $2.4 million. Today the Economic Development Minister Gerry Brownlee announced that the government would stump up with $1.7 million to further develop these facilities.  NMIT plan to begin a Diploma in Aquaculture course from next year, based at the Glen.

This is all great news for aquaculture, signalling a new commitment from government to help the sector achieve a much greater contribution to the nation’s economy.  There is still a lot of water to go under the bridge: people are anxiously awaiting results from last year’s reform of the regulatory environment for aquaculture.  Such a reform was well overdue: the whole sector has almost been marking time since the disastrous Aquaculture Law Reform exercise of the early 2000′s.

In my view it is a no-brainer.  Aquaculture has a huge potential for New Zealand, providing export earnings as well as jobs in areas with relatively few other employment opportunities.  It’s just a matter of choosing the right products and the right locations.

Shellfish farming in particular can play an important role in environmental protection. In New Zealand, the supply chain for shellfish goes directly from the marine farm to the market. We don’t use depuration (where the shellfish are transferred to holding tanks and kept in clean, filtered water for several weeks to flush out unwanted bacteria and toxins), relying instead on our pristine water conditions.  World-leading surveillance systems have been set up to convince regulators in the countries we export to that our shellfish really are safe. So marine farmers are the first to sound the alarm, for example,  if some bach owner’s septic tank is not working properly.

Finally, the environmental impact of new aquaculture projects is easy to monitor and if any unwanted effects are observed they are very reversible: stop the activity and within a year or two things are back to the way they were.

So it’s exciting times for Cawthron.  It’s hard to believe these developments have come from such modest beginnings.

PS  22 May 2010 – good piece on the breeding programme in the Nelson Mail

Encouraged by her mentor, Dr Lesley Rhodes, Dr Alison Haywood was the first of these in 2001.  Much to everyone’s surprise and delight, she was one of only 10 women worldwide to be awarded the $US 10,000 international fellowship (and the first ever from the southern hemisphere!)  Alison was a research scientist in the Biosecurity Group, where she completed a Ph.D. programme from Auckland University in molecular systematics (supervised by Prof Pat Bergquist). Her project was to rapidly identify, using molecular probes, toxic algae which can cause serious food poisoning.

With the help of the fellowship, Alison was able to visit MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) in California. She then gained a post-doctoral appointment at the Florida Marine Institute, working on putting into practice the biosensors developed during her fellowship.

The following year,  Lesley persuaded another of our bright stars to apply for the award.  I’m told that there was some consternation amongst the judging panel when it became apparent that Dr Jenny Smith also hailed from the same small, obscure research institute at the end of the world. But they decided that her application should be decided solely upon its merits, so she won!

Jenny was also a research scientist at the biosecurity group at Cawthron.  She discovered a new enzyme in the intestine of 10 herbivorous fish. This type of enzyme, which breaks down algae, is of interest to industry for the development of gels and emulsifiers.  Jenny used her fellowship to spend time at the Station Biologique de Roscoff, CRNS, France.  Sometime after the arrangements had been finalised, she was advised that the award was no longer $US10,000. It had been doubled, to $US20,000.  A typical unselfish scientist far more interested in her research than personal gain, Jenny chose to use the money to bring a scientist from Roscoff to Nelson.

So in the first three years of this initiative by L’Oreal, amongst the 30 young women selected there were three from the southern hemisphere, two of those from Cawthron Institute!  At the time the awards had a high profile.  The winners had to travel to Paris to collect the cheque (at L’Oreal’s expense of course) and were profiled in popular magazines such as North and South and the Air New Zealand in flight magazine.  Great PR for Cawthron Institute too!

You can read more about the “Young Women in Science” program here (click on <International fellowships> and you will be able to track down the entries for Alison and Jenny. )

In 2007 there was another (slightly more remote) connection between Cawthron and L’Oreal’s efforts to promote women in science.  Prof Margaret Brimble, Chair of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at Auckland University, became one of the five Laureates for that year.  Margaret relied upon Cawthron as the source of the biotoxins (spirolides and pectenotoxins) which were the focus for some of her synthesis work.  Cawthron’s contribution was far from trivial: it was the only laboratory in the world where some of these compounds have been isolated.

Finally, another connection provides a nice circularity.  The Hon Margaret Austin, UNESCO’s representative in New Zealand at the time, was understandably delighted with these successes.  Ten years earlier, as Minister for Research Science and Technology, Margaret had presided over the fundamental reform of the science system in New Zealand which had been a key factor in Cawthron’s success.  Without that reform, these two women would never have been employed by Cawthron.

 photograph copyright G Robertson 2002 Not to be reproduced.

When I started at Cawthron Institute in 1988, I had not anticipated being landed with responsibility for the largest single private collection in New Zealand of Maori artifacts. This was the “Knapp Collection”, well over 5000 artifacts from NZ  (mostly) and Polynesia. It had been left to Cawthron Institute back in the 1940s, probably because at that time the institute ran a museum, open to the public. Little or no effort had been made to preserve the whakapapa of the items, they were almost all anonymous. The museum had been closed and the taonga had been stored in various places since then. But I want to concentrate on just one of them, that hei tiki.

Kept apart from the rest, living in the vaults of the Bank of New Zealand in Nelson, it was made from greenstone (“pounamu”). It was obviously regarded as something very special, even though no-one appeared to know anything about its origins. It was large, appeared to have been made from the bottom half of a ceremonial adze, and was not completely finished. The quality of the pounamu was superb, a beautiful translucent green.

Because of its sacred nature, every handling or movement of the taonga was preceded by a formal ceremony carried out by priests and elders (“kaumatua”). This sometimes caused the bank staff to be freaked out. I recall one occasion when we were all left alone in the bank vault to “do our thing”, surrounded by shelves full of brown envelopes containing goodness knows what!

I knew the importance of the whakapapa of a taonga like this, so in my naivety distributed photographs in the hope that some information would surface. I suspect now that this offended some. I had consulted with only a few people on that step and, as I was later to learn, this taonga roused strong and sometimes opposing feelings. But nothing much came in over the next few months and years.

Quite a few years later, however, we struck the jackpot! The curator of the huge photographic collection at the Nelson Provincial Museum, Maurice Watson, came across a picture of a high ranking Maori woman wearing a kiwi feather cloak and a large hei tiki. He thought it looked vaguely familiar, and found my picture of the hei tiki in Cawthron’s care. It was identical! Right down to the highlights and shadows – the light was coming from the same quarter in both images. (You can read more about the image that Maurice found here, on the NZ National Library website).

Merenako of Motueka, ca 1880s. Turnbull Library, Reference Number: PAColl-7344-44

The woman in the picture is Mere Nako, a high-ranking kuia from the Te Atiawa tribe (who had married a chief from the Ngati Rarua tribe). On that NatLib web page they simply refer to her as “Old Biddy”, no other details.  Rather offensive, don’t you think? She may well have been called that by some settlers but she was a person of great importance and authority. (see this page for an interesting aside!). She reached a great age, dying in 1888.

There are many, many descendents of Mere Nako still living. Not very long after Maurice Watson’s find, I was asked to bring the hei tiki along to the museum, to an evening meeting of some of these descendents. (By this stage, I had been through a rather longer ceremony which had granted me the right to handle the taonga, with safety.) Partway through the meeting, feelings started to hot up. “But this is ours!” “This belongs to us!” “Why do we have to ask you for permission to see it?” – the questions mounted. I didn’t know what to say, they were good points. So I shut up and said nothing (not my usual mode of behaviour, I must say!) It was the right thing to do.  Eventually a question popped up: “why was it given to Cawthron?” This set off a new round of discussions, more questions and few answers. Finally one woman turned to me and said “We’re pleased that you’re taking good care of our taonga for now. Thank you.”

There is a strong belief that such taonga will always find their true home. I knew that the true home of this hei tiki did not lie with the Cawthron Institute. A path needed to be found which would satisfy the Cawthron board (who in legal terms had ownership), but return the taonga to the descendents of Mere Nako. It was a slow process. Then there was the huge Knapp collection, which also needed to “find its true home”. Board meetings started to hear the words “taonga” and kaitiaki, kaitiakitanga (guardian, guardianship or stewardship) rather than “artifact” and “ownership”. We made progress, levels of trust rose, and relations continued to improve. When I left in 2005, the kaitiakitanga passed from me to the Chairman of the Cawthron board, Oliver Sutherland. I was confident that he would continue the work.

Well, he certainly did! I was delighted to receive an invitation in early 2009 to attend a ceremony at the museum, the signing of a formal memorandum of understanding between Cawthron, the museum,  local iwi (Maori tribes) and the descendents of Mere Nako. Through that document, the whole of the Knapp collection was passed over to the stewardship of the Nelson Provincial Museum and local iwi. Rules are set out which define who can access the taonga and under what circumstances (e.g. for special occasions). All were in agreement.

The signing took place in the museum, in front of a display case containing that photograph of Mere Nako and the hei tiki itself. No longer was it being shut away in a bank vault. One of Mere Nako’s descendents spoke, lots of us did. I found it an extremely moving experience, one which brought back memories of the kaumatua I had dealt with over 20 years, many of whom are now gone.

Perhaps this is just a temporary stop, not yet the true home for the hei tiki and other taonga. But it’s a good one, one which demonstrates how differing belief systems, concepts of ownership and values can be reconciled.

Lorraine, another Facebook friend, definitely does fit the usual definition.  I was her boss for quite a while, at Cawthron Institute where she rose from a lab technician to manager of an analytical department of almost 100 people.  She was superb, responsible for creating a customer driven culture that differentiated us from nearly all of our competitors.  I watched her leadership skills and network grow as she joined Toastmasters, the Chamber of Commerce (where she became president) and various professional bodies.  Then she was gone!  She had fallen in love with a Spanish sailor (a sailmaker for one of the America’s Cup challengers), married him and moved to Valencia. What a disaster! (for Cawthron)

But not for Lorraine, who has a new and exciting life.  She is now media correspondent, international consultant and sailmaker’s assistant and has started a PhD in environmental management at an Australian (?) university.  She is my insider for the 2010 America’s Cup Deed of Gift challenge, posting regular reports from Valencia.  See this one, for example, on the Sailing World website.

Isn’t that a romantic story?

Unfortunately, Peter was terminally ill with an inoperable brain tumour by the time  the big event arrived.  He was receiving palliative care at his home, up on the hill overlooking the Glenhaven research centre.  He couldn’t leave the house.

We were able to alter our plans and arrange for the official morning tea to be served at Peter’s home instead.  This would give Peter, a long time and very active National party supporter, a chance to meet the Prime Minister.  Local photographer Harold Mason had been covering the official proceedings, so he was invited up for morning tea as well.  Well, he didn’t get any.  He was flat-out photographing Peter and Jim Bolger, and of course the rest of the family had their turn as well.  But fairly quickly, once everyone had their chance to stand beside the PM,  Jim Bolger did something that really impressed me.  ” That’s enough of me” he said, ” why not get some family shots now?”  And that’s what happened. Peter’s whole family: mother, wife, children, brothers and in-laws all had a series of family portraits taken.  Something no-one would normally have organised at such a distressing time.  Jim Bolger talked with those family members who were not in that particular frame: real conversations, not small talk. Finally (and the process took quite a long time), the official party packed up and we left.

Peter died only a week or so later.  Because of Jim Bolger’s willingness to give up some of his very valuable time, and to put himself right into an emotionally charged situation, Peter Dixon had a great morning and  his family were left with a series of images that they value highly.