I Remember When
Retired vicar Ross Allen talks about childhood in Sumner, travelling by tram, faith, spirituality, and the best ways to stay fit and healthy.
Retired vicar Ross Allen discusses healthy living, faith and spirituality
ROSS ALLEN IS 84 BUT LOOKS A LOT YOUNGER.
He was born on 24 May, 1936 in a world that was about to be plunged into the chaos of World War II. Ross and his younger brother, Lloyd, grew up in Sumner. ‘It was a great place to grow up because we had the sea and the hills – going up onto the hills rabbiting, down to the sea, where we learnt to swim. We didn’t have swimming pools. It was a very stable, self-contained community.’
Some of Ross’s earliest memories are of the army, which in 1940 established ‘quite a substantial presence’ in Sumner, taking over local schools. ‘I can remember a large house opposite where we lived being set up as some kind of command centre. We came straight out of the gate and there was the sentry in the sentry box. I can remember the band playing – I think I first heard “The Invercargill March”.’
The army also built gun emplacements along the foreshore as New Zealand was expecting a Japanese invasion. ‘There were sandhills that ran from the clocktower at Scarborough right through to Cave Rock, and the sandhills were considerable. They didn’t have a paved footpath as there is now, they were all sandhills, and during the war they built what they called the tank trap. It was hardly going to stop anything whatsoever that might have come across out of the sea!
‘As a child I suppose you don’t realise the seriousness of it. I picked up snippets of information. I heard my parents talking about it, I think it was the sinking of the battlecruisers HMS Repulse and the HMS Prince of Wales in the South China Sea.’
Because the school was closed, Sumner children were bundled onto trams for the afternoon session at Woolston Primary School. Trams were pivotal to getting around Christchurch, and Ross’s father scheduled the tram timetables. Ross also took a tram to get to Christchurch Boys’ High School – first to Cathedral Square, and then by bus.
By the mid 1950s the trams had gone. ‘My father always said it was a shame,’ says Ross. ‘He said they were a far more efficient way of transporting people than buses. But you could never replace them again because they took all the rails up. There were trolley buses, too, on some routes, up to North Beach and Brighton.’
At Boys’ High, Ross played rugby and tennis and studied French, but found it ‘useless, because you didn’t come out with an ability to speak French’. He switched to science and did a science degree at Canterbury College (now University of Canterbury), graduating with a BSc in 1958. The following year he began training as a secondary school teacher but halfway through the course, had a change of heart.
‘I joined the youth group at the Anglican church – there was a very strong emphasis on youth work – and Christian groups within the university. I can remember one Easter when we had a house party for young people on Cashmere hill at Tyndale House. I came away from that with a strong conviction that this was something that I should explore.’
Ross studied at College House, and was ordained as a deacon and then as an Anglican priest in 1960. He was appointed as a curate to the Parish of Timaru for two years
and then a further year as curate in the Parish of Geraldine. This was followed by a time establishing a church in the new housing area of Bishopdale, before being appointed with his wife and young family to the Church of the Ascension in the Diocese of Singapore, where he served for seven years.
‘I was ministering to largely Chinese, some Indians, one or two Europeans, mainly all young. We had a youth group of 50 or 60 young Chinese and that was quite an experience. We were not part of an expatriate community like many people who went out and worked in business situations, so our children went to the local schools. It was really a very significant time, being exposed to a different culture, a different way of life.
‘I was involved in a school of 3,000 students. I used to do what was called a civics class where you talked about being a good citizen and that sort of thing, and values and morals. These were the equivalent of sixth and seventh formers, and I’ll never forget the first time I went in. Because I’d been trained as a teacher, you do a presentation and then you ask for questions – nobody had a question. Because the teacher was the one who imposed information or taught you, you didn’t have to ask any questions. It was a Confucian way of learning, where the teacher taught and you imbibed whatever was being taught – and that was hard going for somebody who came out of a culture like ours, where you could question things and talk about them and discuss it! It didn’t happen amongst the senior students there.’
Ross enjoyed the people and culture. ‘The marketplace was just down from where we were living. You could get a meal for a few dollars and sit around, and it was never cold. All we had was fans, no air-conditioning, but it was a very exciting time.’
On returning to New Zealand, Ross served as vicar in the Parishes of Amberley, Shirley and Cashmere where he was also appointed as the Archdeacon of Irakehu, until his retirement in 2000.
His role was sometimes challenging, but always varied. ‘There was a pastoral side of things where you were dealing with all the kinds of conditions and situations that human beings faced, from very sad situations with illness and hospitals and funerals to very happy occasions like weddings. There was the challenge of presenting every week something that had to be relevant.’
Ross has always been fascinated with spirituality and faith, which he contrasts with religion.
Going to church used to be almost a cultural thing. ‘There’s always been a section of population who are interested in exploring a spiritual dynamic to their lives in what was, as my ministry went on, an increasingly secular society.
‘I always find the concept of religion a very negative kind of a thing. I’m always very much happier to talk about having a faith. I think people can live, apparently quite happily, without a faith dimension to their lives, but I think there is something within every sort of human being which needs to find expression within a spiritual realm. I think we’re made that way; I don’t think we’re just body and mind; we’re body, mind, and spirit. I think that the very fact that we can enjoy things which are beautiful, is a spiritual thing.
‘I think the challenge within the Christian church is: What do you make of Jesus? That’s a fundamental issue and the enormous claims that this historical figure – which we can establish as having been a real figure, in a real place, living
‘I always find the concept of religion a very negative kind of a thing. I’m always very much happier to talk about having a faith.’
a real life – and the challenge of a figure who died and rose. That in itself is an enormous claim for anybody to make … And that’s where the faith thing comes focused in terms of a person, rather than in a whole lot of code of ethics.’
Our society has also become more multicultural. Is that a good thing? ‘Oh absolutely, I mean that’s the world, isn’t it? They say it’s the global village, where all sorts of people exist in this village; it’s not just one grouping of people. We may have started off that way, with two major cultures, the Māori and the western culture, but it’s certainly not that anymore.’
After retirement, Ross and wife Hilary moved to St Martins, which gives them the opportunity of walking on the Port Hills. ‘That’s one thing I try and do every day – a major walk for at least an hour, possibly (and not always) but trying to do uphill. The Harry Ell track is quite a favourite, but we do the Rāpaki and I sometimes walk up Huntsbury and do a bit of that if I feel really energetic.’
At age 82, Ross did a big tramp with one of his daughters (Ross and Hilary have three daughters and three sons between them) in Fiordland, which included a tough eighthour walk out.
‘I play golf twice a week out at Rawhiti golf course, at Brighton, and I meet with three other guys and we put the world to rights.
‘I like to keep myself mentally stimulated so I belong to a group which is very strong here in Christchurch, called the University of the Third Age. I enjoy going to musical concerts, mostly classical, and mostly chamber music.’