Brian Challinor — a man of many talents
It is no exaggeration to say Dr Brian Challinor, who has died aged 89, lived a full life. The Huntly pharmacist was at various times a glider pilot, photographer, twitcher, astronomer, and internationally recognised palaeontologist.
From a working-class Auckland background (his father Arthur was a labourer, his mother Nora an office worker), Brian got his start as a messenger boy for a pharmacy.
He obviously impressed his employers as he was offered a pharmacist apprenticeship and studied at night at Seddon Memorial Technical College. After completing his apprenticeship, he did relief pharmacy work in Auckland and Tasmania.
In 1954 Brian married Patricia Venn and the couple moved to Huntly when Brian acquired an interest in a pharmacy partnership. Subsequently he bought out his partners and moved to new premises, setting up as Challinor Pharmacy in Main Street.
Around this time, Brian became interested in gliding as well as the earth sciences, often spending his weekends fossicking for fossils in the Raglan and Kawhia areas.
Any finds were carefully documented and photographed in a makeshift darkroom in his bathroom. In 1978 Brian, now in his 40s, enrolled part-time as a mature student at Waikato University to study geology.
Brian was to serve the Huntly community as a pharmacist for 30 years until he retired, aged 60, when the couple moved to Hamilton.
For many retirement is a chance to slow down but Brian’s was an opportunity to segue into a second career. A committed lifelong learner, Brian took his studies further than most, travelling to Indonesia and Antarctica as a researcher, and earning his Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1998, becoming along the way an internationally recognised authority on belemnites – fossils whose closest living relatives are squid and cuttlefish.
In an interview in 2015 Brian reflected on his academic career.
‘‘I first met John McCraw [Waikato University Dean and a monumental figure in New Zealand geology] when he was in charge of the DSIR Soil Bureau at Hamilton in the late 1960s. I had developed an interest in geology, particularly in the Jurassic beds between Port Waikato and Kawhia Harbour. I attended Waikato University as a mature student between 1978 and 1980, graduating BSc in earth sciences and biology.
‘‘At the time of entry I did not have the required educational standard and Prof McCraw arranged a provisional entry during which I was required to demonstrate that I had adequate knowledge to cope with the lectures. Professor McCraw at that time lectured [to] the first-year students on introductory earth sciences and I will never forget how he made the subject so alive and fascinating. I was able to assist the Earth Sciences Department by supplying a selection of fossils from Kawhia Harbour as teaching specimens.’’
Brian went on to co-author an academic book on his subject, and to become a globally-recognised expert in belemnites for the Southwest Pacific, Indonesian, and Antarctic regions with 26 refereed academic papers to his name.
Along the way he named fossils for his daughters Deborah and Anne, and John McCraw.
University draughtsman Frank Bailey met Brian when commissioned to do the drawings for a series of papers Brian was writing.
‘‘It was then that we realised we had a mutual love of birds and we joined the Waikato branch of the NZ Ornithological Society,’’ Frank said.
‘‘Besides attending lectures, we volunteered to become ‘beach patrollers’ charged with doing counts of bird wrecks on the west coast.
‘‘On one occasion it was all hands to the pumps when a wreck of some 3000 Broad-billed Prions appeared near Kawhia. Often, it was blowing a gale and teeming down. Handling fly-blown stinking bird corpses is not everyone’s cup of Darjeeling but, hey, to each their taste?’’
Waikato Times journalist Denise Irvine interviewed Brian in Hamilton East Cemetery in 2012 when he was listening for the brown owl, or morepork. At the time Brian was counting urban morepork as part of a five-night
Hamilton-wide acoustic survey. His ornithological and paleontological pursuits, while slow paced in many respects, were not without danger. Frank Bailey recalls, while twitching with Brian on the treacherous Ruapuke beach, that they were engulfed by a rogue wave ‘‘up to our necks’’ while attempting to round a bluff.
And Brian told his granddaughter Rachael Anderson, of the time in Antarctica when he and a fellow scientist had nearly asphyxiated themselves using a Primus stove to melt ice in an airtight workroom.
But Brian’s interests extended beyond the earth’s history and birdlife – he was also fascinated by the universe and built, in his 20s, a couple of telescopes.
A board member of the Hamilton Astronomical Society, he got enormous satisfaction discovering deep sky objects for himself, once describing to Waikato Times readers how he had witnessed the Shoemaker-Levy comet crashing into Jupiter, causing a ‘‘cluster bombing’’ effect on the gigantic planet’s surface.
‘‘A huge black patch appeared, there was a string of impacts over a period of some hours.’’
Brian is survived by daughters Anne and Deborah; brother Maurice and sister Kerry; five grandchildren; and two great grandchildren.
A Life Story tells of a New Zealander who helped to shape the Waikato community. If you know of someone whose life story should be told, please email Charles. riddle@wintec.ac.nz