A 100-year contribution to education and culture
Aletter from the Queen marked the 100th birthday of Jack Walls at the Golden Bay Community Hospital. Reaching a century is an achievement in itself, but especially so when it’s been a life selflessly devoted to his family, education and the passionate promoting of cultural understanding.
Jack and wife Hazel, who lived to 991⁄ herself and passed away only last year, never blew their own trumpets as they actively involved themselves in teaching, coaching, archaeology, weaving, advocating for native flora, and promoting peace, with much of their time freely given.
Jack Young Walls was born on July 21, 1922 in Wellington. Raised in the hilly, bush-clad suburb of Wadestown, the family home featured a tennis court in the backyard, dug by hand out of the greywacke bedrock.
Jack got his middle name from his father, Joseph Young Walls, a career teacher. Tragically, Jack lost his mother, Emily Walls (nee Minney), after an illness when he was 14. His only sibling was his younger sister, Joan.
Jack’s secondary school years were spent at Scots College before he enrolled at Victoria University, where he was capped with a BSc in Maths in 1945, having spent short spells of his uni years during World War II driving army trucks around the country as a reserve.
Jack was sporty in those younger years, being a Varsity Blues football and tennis player and competing in football teams that played in Australia.
After qualifying as a postgraduate teacher, Jack taught maths at Wellington High School.
In 1949, he married Hazel Florence Carton. Their first three children – Kathryn, Geoffrey, and Josette (Geoff’s twin, who did not survive birth) were born in Wellington prior to the family shifting to Motueka in 1953.
The move to the South Island was a lifestyle change for the family. Jack initially found work on Lofty Moran’s orchard, but he later returned to teaching maths, at Nelson College, which he commuted to daily.
Two more children, Fiona and Simon, were born in Motueka, but in 1956 the family moved to their newly built house in Hill St, Richmond, after which Jack secured the job of head of the maths department at the newly built Nayland College. Jack and Hazel’s youngest child, Angela, was born at Nelson Hospital in 1963.
As if senior teaching at Nayland was not enough, Jack made time to not only coach the school’s tennis teams but football as well.
On weekends and holidays, he would cart his family around in the family’s Holden station wagon and Land Rover, forever imparting his enthusiasm for native plants, gardening, tramping, archaeology and tennis.
Early on, family holidays were mostly spent in the Marlborough Sounds, at Te Towaka, Waikawa, and Patuki on northern D’Urville Island, and in Golden Bay.
Long-time members of Forest and Bird, Jack and Hazel also became active supporters of the peace movement, marching in one of the anti-nuclear protests in Wellington in the early 1980s.
But it was his inspired interest in archaeology that Jack would devote much time to as he got older.
This began when he joined the Nelson Museum Archaeology Club, getting involved in club excavations around Golden Bay, Nelson and Marlborough, inspired by his daughter Kathryn’s growing passion for anthropology.
Jack struck up a good friendship with Nelson Museum curator Jim Eyles, who no doubt encouraged him to embark on what became one of Jack’s definitive works – a detailed survey and study of all the argillite (pakohe) quarries throughout Nelson and Marlborough, D’Urville Island in particular.
This holiday focus for the family changed in 1970, when Jack and Hazel purchased 37ha of land at Waiua at inner Port Hardy on D’Urville Island, which they later QEII covenanted.
In 1979, Jack took early retirement, with the family moving to their new house on 5ha of land at Onekaka.
The couple enthusiastically launched into small farming, putting in gardens, raising chooks, ducks and sheep, and planting an apple orchard. They kept daily weather records for temperature, wind and rainfall.
Jack continued to play friendly competitive tennis, mostly on the courts beside Puramahoi Hall.
Early retirement in Golden Bay really gave Jack the opportunity to pursue his passion for archaeology. Working with Manawhenua Iwi (later Manawhenua ki Mohua), he spent thousands of hours surveying virtually every archaeological site in Golden Bay and along its western flank, often accompanied by his son Simon.
Trina Mitchell worked a lot with Jack in those early days, and remembers him as a meticulous record keeper.
‘‘I learnt so much from him. He engaged best one to one ... he had a humility to him. He became our kaumatua.
‘‘Hazel’s involvement in our [Onetahua] marae enriched us also, sharing her remarkable harakeke weaving skills and planting out different varieties of flax for us all to use.’’
This pa harakeke – the Rene Orchiston Collection, originally from Gisborne, which features over 100 varieties of weaveable harakeke – was also replicated at Paines Ford Reserve near Tākaka.
In his later years, Jack became file keeper for the New Zealand Archaeological Association, and in 1989 he was awarded a Certificate of Merit for Outstanding Contribution to the Preservation of New Zealand Heritage by thenConservation Minister Philip Woollaston, and became chairman of the NZ Historic Places Trust.
There are so many other memorable things, like Jack’s years of contribution to the Golden Bay Community News (precursor of the GBWeekly) in the form of his informative Native Plants of Merit column – hundreds of them, with the foliage pictures always drawn by Hazel.
Hebe became his favourite plant genus, and he grew thousands in their home nursery, which he donated for Golden Bay Peace Group fundraisers.
Jack remained an avid reader of books, both fiction, and non-fiction. He also enjoyed a good sponge cake, openly admitting that his favourite occupation was boiling the billy for a cuppa.
An ardent conservationist, Jack opposed the proposed Onekaka Energy hydro power scheme because he wanted minimum stream flows maintained for the resident short-jaw kokopu.
It was a battle he did not win, but in 2003 Jack and Hazel took great satisfaction from covenanting the wetland part of their Onekaka land, along with four neighbours.
The couple’s conservation message was one they lived and breathed.
Jack and Hazel got to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary while they were both in care at Golden Bay Community Health, but Hazel died later that year.
On July 21 this year, Jack was presented with a letter from the Queen congratulating him on turning 100.
Without a doubt, a colossal contribution from this husband and wife team. Jack and Hazel’s kids are their best testament, all becoming conservationists in their own right.
Jack spent thousands of hours surveying virtually every archaeological site in Golden Bay and along its western flank.