Passionate geographer, academic leader and councillor
Robert Miller “Bob” Kirk was, in 1944, the first child born to Norman Kirk, New Zealand’s 29th prime minister (1972-74), and to Dame Ruth, and moved with them from Katikati to Christchurch, where his father assumed several high-profile political roles, in 1948.
The young Bob Kirk was raised in an intensely political family which nurtured and developed his innate sense of social justice.
He met his future life partner, Judy Gough, at Linwood High School (now Te Aratai College) in a physics class when both were 16. A wonderful partnership was established which, they joked, resulted from studying magnetism in the lab.
The pair married in 1967 and established a strong family of three children and diverse mutual careers. Judy comments that “we gave each other the freedom to pursue our own professional interests”, and she was Kirk’s best friend and pillar of support.
Judy, a skilled science educator and advocate for students with learning difficulties, came from a strongly National Party household (her father, lawyer Ken Gough, was divisional chairperson for MP Bert Walker) and Kirk had matured in a home steeped in communal Labour Party values. His father, when mayor of Kaiapoi (1953-58), was elected the MP for Lyttelton in 1957 and took over as Leader of the Opposition and the Labour Party from Sir Arnold Nordmeyer in 1965, in advance of the 1966 Vietnam War election. Labour lost that election to Sir Keith Holyoake a year after New Zealand troops were despatched to Vietnam under cover of SEATO obligations.
At Linwood, Kirk became entranced not only by Judy but also by the study of geography and, possessing a first-class mind, together they both attended the newly chartered University of Canterbury (UC) from 1963, where Kirk was mentored by the avuncular and astute W.B. ‘Barry’ Johnston. Under the supervision of Dr Roger McLean, he pursued a master of arts degree (with honours) in geography, writing a superb thesis on the coastal dimensions of the Canterbury Bight.
At the end of 1965, Kirk ran a weather station and closely observed a beach and penguins at Cape Royds, Antarctica.
He then embarked on a PhD (1970) on wave dynamics, again under McLean, and was soon to become a pre-eminent New Zealand coastal process geomorphologist, whose research focused on the always dynamic interface between land and sea, specifically examining and quantifying the evolution and shaping (building and erosion) of coastal platforms and beachscapes.
Kirk was appointed a lecturer and, taking up that role in 1971, contributed massively to the teaching of physical geography at UC for decades, running legendary field trips, principally at Cass, Pareora and Kaikōura, and being very dedicated to serving his students, supervising over 120 masters and doctoral theses. Kirk deeply revered his parents and strove to be worthy of them (as the first member of his family to attend a university), developing a phenomenal work ethic, producing a multitude of scientific papers as well as a clutch of technical reports on coastlines, river mouths and breakwaters for local authorities and government bodies. He was passionate about protecting Lake Manapouri from a smelter development, served as the UC representative on the Canterbury Museum Trust Board, assisted archaeologists on the Chatham Islands, and conducted research in Rarotonga.
As his friend Dr David Harrowfield has noted: “Bob had a rare gift - he could explain aspects of landscapes in a simple yet very accurate manner.”
Kirk loved the outdoors and was a “mountain man”, possessing shooting skills (honed with his father and grandfather on wallaby hunts in the backcountry of his father’s birthplace, Waimate), but his academic focus was centred on downland lake and beach shores.
An intensely practical man fascinated with radio and gadgets of many kinds, he designed and built his own remarkable measuring equipment to conduct original research, which eventually took the young Kirk to Antarctica and later, in his post-doctoral studies, to the University of Calgary (where he taught a summer school), the University of Aberystwyth and, finally, the University of Uppsala (Sweden), where he spent five months.
There he became well informed about structuring a modern physical geography programme, acquiring practical knowledge in establishing labs and facilities, which he was able to apply to UC’s Geography Department moving to Ilam from 1974. Kirk played key roles in helping to settle and develop the arts faculty on that new university site.
He also served as a JP and in the Avonhead then Riccarton Rotary Clubs for some time, widening the links between town and gown. Kirk rapidly gained promotion and eventually became a professor and then the head of the Department of Geography at UC (1993) where he served and mentored generations of students before moving to a senior leadership role as deputy vicechancellor under Professors Darryl Le Grew and Roy Sharp. In that governing and academic leadership role, he overviewed new developments in Māori and Pacific studies.
He was a man very much on the spot when the momentous Joel Hayward Holocaust-denial thesis controversy erupted in 2000 and convulsed the university and wider New Zealand community. Kirk would have found this lapse of effective supervision unsettling, as he was a clear and decisive manager but also a smooth mediator, problem-solver and settler of fractious disputes, as when protesting students occupied The Registry regarding rising fees. Kirk met them in the council room and listened to their grievances so they left feeling understood, and the tension was defused.
Kirk also oversaw Le Grew’s restructuring of the university into four colleges with a stand-alone School of Law; the UC Digital Strategy and establishment of the HITLab; the MacDiarmid Centre of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology; the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Biology and Evolution; and the arrival of the unpopular PBRF (Performance
Based Research Fund) scheme and the development of the UC Research Office.
As he wrote in 2003: “The University of Canterbury has long seen itself as a research-led teaching institution where high quality research and scholarship permeate teaching and learning at all levels.”
It was unfortunate that Kirk, a man of action and contemplation, was never appointed vice-chancellor after Le Grew’s departure in 2002 when he had executed that role as a caretaker (helping Roy Sharp ease into the position). In 2002, Kirk was appointed by the university as its representative on the Christchurch Area Committee of the regional council, so when he retired from the university in 2004, at the request of former parliamentarian Sir Kerry Burke, Kirk stood for election with him for South Christchurch onto the regional council (later Environment Canterbury), where from 2004 to 2010 Kirk contributed to the development of a key Water Plan until it was shelved when central government dismissed our elected regional councillors.
In September 2013, the Emeritus Professor received the Gold Medal, as a Distinguished New Zealand Geographer, from the New Zealand Geographical Society “for exemplary and long-standing services to the New Zealand Geographical Society and the New Zealand geographical community”.
Kirk was a vibrant, witty, and compassionate man who probably never fully recovered from the loss of his beloved father in August 1974 when the younger Kirk was a rising professional with two young sons.
That bereavement added to his humanity and generosity towards others struggling with life’s often cruel challenges.
Kirk, the dynamic and collegial man with a stellar career, also respected and loved to nurture the talents of others striving for high standards as well as deploying his own finely honed analytical intelligence for the betterment of society. He was a passionate, principled New Zealander whose multiple contributions will long outlive him. As son James has said, his father was “a legend”.
Kirk is survived by his wife Judy, sons James (Imke) and Dan (Sarah), daughter Kristina (Nick), five grandchildren, and his sisters Margaret and Robyn, and brother Philip (his brother John deceased).
Chapel, Rossburn Receptions,