Controversial mayor loved his town, lived rough and talked tough
The mayor who brought Westport its clock tower and council chambers and who had them sited next to his garage business was a controversial character.
Jack Kilkenny was described as a man of many parts.
He was born in 1888 in Progress Junction, near Reefton, the eldest of six children. His father died of miner’s phthisis and as the eldest in the family Kilkenny had to leave school and work as a blacksmith to support his mother and siblings. When the family’s financial struggles continued, Kilkenny went underground in the mines to perhaps face the same fate as his father. When his mother remarried, he saw his opportunity and fled the quartz mines of Reefton forever.
In Wellington he secured a job stoking coal on the vessel Tongariro that sailed around Cape Horn, stopping at South American ports. When it docked in London Kilkenny and an Australian
Visionary: comrade disembarked and joined a group of immigrants sailing for New York. The pair tried to cycle from the Big Apple to Detroit, but gave up on the bikes and jumped a train to Buffalo where Kilkenny lived in a hobo camp in an old timber yard. When he and his travel companion became separated, Kilkenny joined the Seaman’s Union of the Great Lakes of North America and spent a couple of years working on the lake boats. Eventually, friendless and homesick he headed toward the West Coast looking for a passage back to New Zealand. During the winter he holed down in a shelter with a group of men in Vancouver, who cut and sold firewood to feed themselves.
Kilkenny made his way to San Francisco where he discovered a Union Steamship boat named Moana. After several attempts he managed to stow on board the vessel, but soon gave himself up and was set to work paying his fare.
On arrival in New Zealand he settled in Westport. With the same savvy and streetwise methods he used while travelling, he went into a profit-share arrangement with the owner of a taxi. From a small acorn came a big oak tree – the building of his own motor garage, Kilkenny Motors, and the label ‘‘Ford King’’. The garage was on the corner of Palmerston and Lyndhurst streets. A branch of the business was set up in Murchison.
He was voted on to the Westport Borough Council. Legend has it that one day he stood in a pothole and remarked – ‘‘I think I’ll stand for mayor and fix these streets’’. He won the mayoral election after the resignation of James Harkness. His first official meeting was May 10, 1933, and the first matter he sorted out with the council was that he was not to be called ‘‘Your Worship’’, he was to be known as ‘‘Mr Mayor’’.
Nobody was ever left in doubt about Kilkenny’s feelings over any matter – he couldn’t abide fencesitters and took instant action over anything he felt disadvantaged Westport. When the town was left off the list of places to be visited by the Duke of Gloucester, he quickly made contact with the Minister of Internal Affairs. Westport was slotted into the Duke’s itinerary.
Kilkenny made his feelings known once again when a letter from the local National Party requested that the mayor preside over a meeting to be addressed by the party’s Buller candidate. Kilkenny said he wouldn’t do it. He said the Labour Government had served Buller well andMP Paddy Webb had done great work for the district. Westport owed a debt of gratitude to the Government and Savage, Kilkenny said.
Following World War I many New Zealand towns embraced the idea of an aerial station (later known as aerodrome). Kilkenny was an enthusiastic supporter of Westport’s aerodrome. In 1929, with four other men, he had invested in a kitset aircraft with a Model A motor and a sawn-off broom handle for a gear stick.
The council established the first air landing strip at the North Beach and it paid out residential property owners for their land. The landing ground for aeroplanes was laid out by the New Zealand Defence Department.
In accordance with Kilkenny’s election pledge, a loan was taken out for the tarsealing of the borough roads and footpaths, grass frontages were laid out in front of residences and trees were planted. Loans were also taken out for the building of 11 state houses.
Further beautification schemes took place. A band rotunda was built in Victoria Square and the St James Theatre was opened in 1935. Kilkenny’s second garage, which extended from Palmerston St through to Russell St, was opened in about 1936. In typical visionary fashion, the complex had an aviary and a pond with large orange goldfish and a road leading to a platform on the roof for viewing activities in Palmerston St.
His greatest legacy, however, was the Clock Tower Chambers.
Kilkenny’s life was the stuff of legend. For some councillors, he wasn’t remembered so much for his adventuring but more for the fact he borrowed £15,000 in the heart of the slump for sealing the streets and then let the contract to an outside firm.
Socially, Westport had advanced under Kilkenny; an air of optimism and activity buffeted it along even during the aftermath of the Great Depression and high unemployment in New Zealand. With the outbreak of World War II, some people in Westport felt Kilkenny was not doing enough for the war effort.
In 1939 The Press reported: ‘‘Quite a sensation was occasioned this afternoon when it became known that Westport’s popular and progressive mayor Mr J Kilkenny tended his resignation to the Town Clerk.’’ He attributed his resignation to pressure of business.
Kilkenny remained in Westport for the rest of his life and continued with his business and his interests. He married Mary Phibbs in 1916 and they had four children – John, Mary (Molly), Richard and Doreen. He died in May 1972.