Donald John McKay
Photographer
Le Bons Bay, Banks Peninsula, New Zealand
A Brief Profile written by Don McKay, July 2011.
I
was born on the 10th January 1934 and lived on my parent’s farm at
Le Bons Bay, Banks Peninsula.
My father was Donald
Leicester McKay [1] – always called Leicester – son of Donald McKay and grandson of
William Mackay who came from The Kyle of Tongue in the north of Scotland and
settled above the Summit Road overlooking Duvauchelles, near the top of Little
Akaloa. Dad’s
mother was Elizabeth Haakensen, whose family originated from Denmark and Sweden.
My
mother’s maiden name was Gladys Coade whose father was Isaac (John) Coade, an
Australian miner and prospector. While he was working around New Zealand,
including Banks Peninsula he met and married Rachael Reynish, daughter of
George Reynish, Pigeon Bay. After
living and working in the bush at Mokau in the North Island he took his family
back to Australia where he part owned a coal gold mine.
He
was a sapper in the Australian Army in WW1 and together with Spr. T.F Burke was
awarded the Military Medal for helping a large proportion of about 80 soldiers who
couldn’t swim to withdraw across the River Yser under heavy gun fire. Sadly, he
was killed just before the end of the war. After
John’s death, near the end of World War One Rachael returned to Banks Peninsula
with her three children and later married Jim Mackay, whose wife Annie, (nee
Reynish, Rachael’s sister and aunt of my mother) had died during the 1918
plague.
To
further complicate things Jim was a younger brother of Donald, my grandfather. All
this has lead to me having a great number of relations on the Peninsula. When
first married, my father and mother lived with the family in the original
Haakensen homestead, which is situated near the top of Le Bons Bay, down a
steep hill about 300 or 400 metres from the main road.
When
Mum went into labour Dad had to yoke up the bullocks and take Mum up to the
road on a sledge! I
am not sure how she got from there to Akaroa, but it may have been by the Indian
Chief motor cycle and sidecar. However,
I was eventually born at Lyndhurst Hospital in Christchurch.
My
primary schooling was at Le Bons Bay School at the bottom of the hill, about
two miles away. I
think there were about eighteen or nineteen children at the school when I
started in 1939, but the roll went down to about nine or eleven by the time I
left at standard six. For
a while there were three children in my class, Janice Crotty, Jean O’Dell, and
me, but most of the time there was only Janice and me. This was quite good, as
I was always first, second, or third in the class. (I have never achieved that
since.)
During
World War 2 days I sometimes used to go to Home Guard training with my father on
Saturdays, and I remember one day being given a .22 rifle to train with and
take home. How excited I was – I was only about 8 to 10 years old!! But my
excitement soon changed to disappointment, because on the next Saturday it was
taken away from me and I was given a wooden gun instead. However I did follow
the signallers around a bit and learnt Morse code and semaphore.
I remember one incident at the end of the war – either VE Day or VJ Day – when there was a celebration dance at the Gaiety Hall, Akaroa, and at about midnight some of us boys decided to ring the Fire Brigade Bell. Two or three boys gave it a good ring and then we saw the policeman’s car coming along the street. The others took off like lightning, but the hill behind the bell tower was steep and covered in brush, and it was quite dark. I slipped, and the constable caught me. He threatened to lock me up in the cell for the night. I hadn’t even rung it, but as I was the only one there when he arrived he didn’t believe me. He probably had a chuckle, but I certainly got a fright.
After
eight years at Le Bons Bay Primary School I spent three years at Christchurch Boys High
School during which time I learnt the bagpipes from Andy Shirlaw and Ken Boyce,
and continued my piano lessons under the tuition of Claude Davies. All
of these teachers had some connection with Banks Peninsula.
The
other big thing in my life, and my parent’s in those days was grasseeding. At
that time our whole farm was in cocksfoot and I remember my father anxiously waiting
and watching for the bloom to “go off”. It
would start in December with what looked like a small wisp of smoke which would
then spread out and cover the whole hill side and work up the hill as though
the whole paddock was on fire. I think this would happen three times and was a
great sight. This was a good indicator as to how good the crop would be. Then,
a few weeks later, after the kernels had set hard, men would arrive and our
house would be full grasseeders, some staying until the end of reaping and some
until the end of threshing.
Once
reaping started gangs of men could be seen reaping around most of the hills in
Le Bons and the other bays. It
was hard work, but I think my mother worked hardest of all. She
used to provide a full cooked breakfast, prepare and take morning tea, lunch,
and afternoon tea out to the paddock for the men. The tea was always taken out
in those clay jars which I think vinegar and whisky used to come in.
Morning tea and afternoon tea were called smoko’s. It was often my job to help take the lunch / smoko food out. She would then have to prepare a big cooked dinner with pudding. After doing the dishes she would darn the men’s socks, patch their trousers and shirts, and do any ironing that was needed. Baking and washing was squeezed into the day too. No washing machine in those days.
Morning tea and afternoon tea were called smoko’s. It was often my job to help take the lunch / smoko food out. She would then have to prepare a big cooked dinner with pudding. After doing the dishes she would darn the men’s socks, patch their trousers and shirts, and do any ironing that was needed. Baking and washing was squeezed into the day too. No washing machine in those days.
She
had to light up the fire in the copper and boil the clothes, wash clothes in the
tubs using a scrub board, then wring them out with a hand wringer and peg them
on the clothes line.
I
must say that work of this type was typical of the work that most farmers wives
did in those days. Many used to make their own bread, and we still had an
outside oven house, quite a large brick oven just for baking bread. Mum
also used to make enough butter to last us throughout the winter. This was kept
in a barrel of brine. During
the year any extra hen eggs were rubbed with Ovoline and stored away for the
winter. Ovoline
was a paste which was bought in jars and rubbed into the egg shell to seal it. Later,
we used to cut the tops of four gallon kerosene tins and have two or three of them
full of eggs in a solution of Norton’s Egg Preserver.
The
cupboards were always filled with bottled fruit, sauces and chutneys for the
winter. Somehow,
the women used to do all these things, and still find time to help on the farm
when an extra hand was needed. Rolls
of bacon and ham would be hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen, and these
would keep for very many months. We
didn’t have a refrigerator, so Mum used to put her jellies etc. in the running
water of our near-by creek to set. It
did get too much for her and for some years Dad did employ a girl to help
during grasseeding.
When
I was about seven or eight I was often the billy boy. It was quite hard work
lugging the big billy of water, usually with a cup or so of oatmeal mixed in,
around the steep hills through the stubble. Then,
at about nine or ten years of age I got my first reap hook and I probably
thought that I was a man. After
that I used to tender for the right to cut cocksfoot on the roadsides. The
roads were divided into sections for the tender process and I always tendered
for Dawber’s Road and sometimes for the main road to the foot of the hill. I
think I used to tender about 30 shillings per section, depending how much cocksfoot
was growing there. This
was threshed with a flail, often with Dad’s help.
Next
came threshing time and Dad would yoke up our working bullocks and drag the
threshing machine out to the various threshing floors in the paddocks. The
crackle of non silenced threshing machines used to echo around the bay. Our
old threshing machine is now in Orton Bradley Park’s Museum at Charteris Bay. Sometimes
there were also the thuds of flails, as a few people did not have threshing
machines or only had a small amount to thresh.
After
threshing was finished the seed had to have an initial riddle, and be bagged to
remove the larger straws and rubbish, and then transported to home sheds by
bullocks and sledge for final cleaning and bagging up. This was all done by
hand. If
the seed contained fog grass we would riddle it by the edge of the threshing
sheet so that the wind would blow the lighter fog grass away and leave the
heavier cocksfoot on the sheet for bagging. Dad
would then take a sample to Wright Stevenson & Co. in Christchurch and they
would offer him a price per pound. After
it was sold Bert Williams used to transport it to the Little River Railway
Station where it was transferred to the train to be taken to Wright Stevenson’s
in Addington, Christchurch.
Contrary
to what many people seem to be saying now, I remember the summers being much
hotter and drier then than they are now. The
grass used to get so dry that we used to sledge down the hills on snow sledges
that we used to make. I
think the winters were colder winters though, with more snow and frosts. In
1939 we had an extra big snowfall and it was up to the top of the fences on the
flat at the bottom of the hills.
The
climate did change about 1950 though. In
the mid 1950s our neighbour, bought a farm which included quite a bit of low hill
country at Motukarara. Everybody was commenting that it was a bad move, as the
grass dried up so much in the summer and he would not have enough feed for his
stock. Lo
and behold, after he shifted there the seasons changed and lack of grass didn’t
seem to be a problem. One
of his daughters mentioned this to me just a few years ago, confirming my
memories.
In
1947 I started secondary school at Christchurch Boys High School, and while I
was there I joined the school camera club. We
had some really good instructors, including Len Casbolt and Frank McGregor. Also
I used to spend a lot of time at my Uncle Stan MacKay’s as he was the “Star Sun”
photographer and his son Ross was a skilled horse racing photographer. I
used to admire their beautiful cameras and enlargers, - Graflex’s, Speed Graphics.
Leica, Contax, Retina etc. New
photographic equipment was virtually unavailable to the general public and even
films were rationed, as it was still not very long after the Second World War. Imagine my excitement when
I spotted a second hand Ensign Tropical camera in the window of H. E. Perry
Ltd. in Colombo Street. From memory I think it was
£13/10/00. I had to have it. It used
120 size roll film as well as 2¼ x 3¼ inch glass plates.
I
sold my beloved push bike and returned a photo book that I had just purchased,
but sadly, still not enough money. I was able to get just the right amount by
selling my best pair of shoes to a shop in Sydenham. Many years later my mother happened to mention
about that pair of shoes that had been stolen from me while boarding at Adams
House. I just could not remember having any shoes stolen. Then suddenly it hit
me and I felt very guilty.
I
used that camera for two or three years photographing various events, weddings,
and children. Of course, the exposure and distance had to be estimated as it
had no range finder or exposure meter. I
believed in processing my own films and prints, so in the beginning I used to
black out the bathroom window and develop them there. However,
this didn’t last very long, as Mum wasn’t too happy with the brown developer
stains in the bath and on the lino, so the next job was to build a dark room
which Eric Cairns, the local electrician wired up. It
didn’t have running water so I used to wash the films and prints in the washhouse,
and for very large prints I used the cow bails.
In
those days photographers used to mix all their own chemicals – developer, stop
bath, fixer, intensifiers, reducers, toners, emulsion hardeners etc. from the
basic chemicals. The
darkroom would look a bit like a chemist shop of the day with rows of shelves stacked
with chemicals and a large cask/barrel of hypo crystals, and of course chemical
scales and glass measuring utensils. I
can still remember the chemicals and the purpose for which they were used in
the most common developers, such as D72, D76, ID36, ID11 etc. The
chemicals I mostly used are listed below, but I used to experiment with many
others for different effects, contrasts, and lighting conditions.
Developer:
Metol
- sometimes called Elon - (developer for shadow detail)
Sodium
Sulphite (preservative)
Hydroquinone
(developer)
Sodium
Carbonate (alkali / accelerator)
Potassium
Bromide (restrainer)
Dissolved
in water in the order listed.
Stop
Bath:
Water
with Glacial Acetic Acid
Fix:
Hypo
(Sodium Thiosulphate)
Potassium
Metabisulphite
Water
My
first wedding job was for Ron Grant and Dawn Crotty at St. Andrews Church, Le
Bons Bay on the 23rd. September 1950.
At
some time during that period I purchased a second hand Thornton Pickard ¼ plate
single lens reflex camera. This
was similar to the Graflex cameras with a focal plane shutter to 1/1000 sec. These
cameras were fairly slow to use as you had to focus, and then close down the
lens to the correct aperture before taking the photo. Nevertheless professional
photographers like my Uncle Stan, George Weigel, Charlie Waters and many others
were able to take excellent sporting pictures with them. A little later the
Graflex came with a pre-set diaphragm, which meant that they could be focused
with the aperture wide open and the diaphragm would close automatically when
the shutter was released. Then
one just had to change the plate, wind up the shutter, which also lifted the
mirror, and open up the diaphragm again. This was marvellous as it was a nice
bright view on the ground glass!!
My
next camera was a 120 Twin Lens Rollieflex and over time I think I had three. These
were great wedding cameras as the shutter was very silent, so did not interfere
with wedding ceremonies. Also,
later on I had some Twin Lens Mamiyaflex cameras with interchangeable lenses.
About
this time too I obtained a flash gun and was able to take photos in the dark!! This
was wonderful, and fairly new, having taken over from flash powder, which I
never used, but there were a few people still using it in the 1940’s. I
would go to functions with my pockets bulging with flash bulbs and of course
always an empty pocket or two for the used bulbs.
When
I was about 16 my cousin Ross MacKay got me to help him at the horse racing
taking photos at the turn into the final straight for the “Friday Flash” paper. For
that I used a ¼ plate Graflex and a Speed Graphic. After
a couple of years Ross sold me one of his Speed Graphic cameras so at last I
had my own.
At
18 years of age we all had to enlist in the Compulsory Military Training scheme
(CMT). I
enlisted and chose the Photographic Section of the RNZAF. However,
they only took five recruits twice a year, and to complicate things I could only
go in the winter because of the farm work. (We also milked about 35 cows at
this time). Luckily, my uncle Stan and Flight Lt. Stan Brown – who lived in Le
Bons at that time – knew the right people and I was put on hold until a space
became available, when I was 20.
Trapping
possums in the winter and working around a few shearing sheds during the
shearing season added to my income. At
times I used to play the piano for dances and march around the hall playing the
bag pipes with the people tagging on behind. One
night, about midnight, we marched from the Akaroa Volunteer Fire Brigade hall
to the end of the main wharf, with many of the Akaroa Silver Band members
playing their instruments. I
think Ted McNabb was playing drums and Pat Higgins the cornet, and maybe Murray
Brown the trombone. It was a very still calm night and we thought it sounded
great. However, Pat Mora didn’t think so, as his wife was very sick, and we
woke her up!
Electronic
flash became available about this time and I remember my first one was a Dawe
with a huge power supply involving massive capacitors and Sealed Lead Acid Gel batteries.
I think it weighed about 20 pounds. There was also a booster set that came with
it which weighed about the same. It had two heads with reflectors which were
about 200mm in diameter and I used to take all of that with light stands,
tripods, and camera on my father’s 1928 AJS motor bike. (Later I bought a new 1954
Twin AJS) Before
that I used to use 500 Watt and 250 Watt photoflood lamps in large reflectors.
Over
the next 17 years I had several more cameras including a later model 4x5 Pacemaker
Speed Graphic with the Graflite Flash Gun with two reflectors to accommodate
the different sized flash bulbs, and Grafmatic Cut Film Holders which held six
sheets of cut film each. I still have that outfit. These
cameras had two shutters - a front between the lens shutter and a back focal
plane shutter. The focal plane shutter was not self capping, so one had to take
the photograph, change the film or plate, close the front shutter so as not to
fog the film, wind up the back shutter, and open the front shutter. This action
became automatic and in fact only took about eight seconds or less. (Now we can
take eight photos in one second).
Sometime
in the late 1950’s I purchased an 8mm movie camera. This
was the start of my movie, and then video phase. Up
until the mid 1980’s I only made family/holiday films, but when video became
affordable??? it was the start of several years making videos for medical teaching
and videos of bands etc. It was very hard to keep up with the latest cameras
and editing equipment (even at the prosumer level), as standards kept
progressing upwards so rapidly.
Throughout
the 1950’s I was busy photographing all sorts of events, school groups,
debutante balls, weddings, children, and hundreds of aerial photos of Banks
Peninsula bays, farms, and houses. Store
keepers in most of the bays used to display samples and take orders for me. Mr.
Archie Brown, the local barber acted as an agent for me in Akaroa, and later
Mr. Jack Harvey.
During
this time the 35mm camera format was becoming more popular with the advance in
film speed and finer grain films, and I had various brands of these until the
Nikon F became available about 1960. I purchased one of these and from then on
I have stuck with the Nikon brand for my private 35mm work.
In
1961 I obtained a job as Medical Photographer at Burwood Hospital,
Christchurch, but continued to travel back to the Peninsula in the weekends to
photograph various events and process my films, as at that time I didn’t have
my own darkroom in Christchurch. The
hospital job involved keeping a photographic record of patients admitted for
Plastic Surgery, Dental, Orthopaedic and Surgical Operations, hospital events,
and teaching slides (transparencies) for projection. I processed all of these
on site. (Later on the colour slides were sent out for processing.) For this
job I also had to do some study and sit examinations to become a Qualified
Medical Photographer.
There
I used Nikons and then the faithful Pentax K1000’s. I always used two cameras –
one for black & white and the other for Ektachrome colour slides. For
groups and display photos a Linhof 4x5 or my Speed Graphic was used.
In
1962 I married Denyse Gunn, and then in 1965 we built a house in the
Christchurch suburb of Redwood. We had four children; Judith, Elizabeth,
Stuart, and Patricia. During
this time I still worked privately from home in Christchurch in the weekends
and evenings where I had a nice dark room and a small studio. At that time too,
I was employed part time photographing weddings for two of the larger studios
in Christchurch. About
1963 I got my Amateur Radio Operators Certificate and that hobby took up a lot
of time, continually building and experimenting. Other
interests were welding and metal lathe work.
In
the late 1970’s the ACC (Accident Compensation Commission) began sending me their
clients to have scars and lumps, etc photographed. I
estimate that I photographed about 7,000 clients for the ACC. I didn’t have any
contract or receive a wage from the ACC, but charged for each job separately. I
managed to procure that job as there weren’t any other qualified medical
photographers set up to work privately in Christchurch.
It
was quite difficult as I still had a regular job at the hospital so I had to
photograph in the evenings, sometimes at lunch time, and on Saturdays. My
wife used to make the appointments, finish, pack, and deliver the photos to the
various ACC branches. It
was very important that I kept this work completely separate from my hospital
work. I
left the hospital job in 1992 to work full time with the ACC photography, which
finished about 1997, with the end of the lump sum payments. By
then I was processing and printing all of my colour negatives.
My
cameras through this time ranged from Nikon, Bronica, Mamiyaflex, Mamiya
RB 67 with various lenses, and of course the Speed Graphic. Then
along came digital. As
I had many Nikon lenses I stuck with that brand, progressing through four
models to the full frame D700. This
has been another big learning curve – especially the computer editing of these
files.
Sometime
in the 1980's I purchased a Sinclair ZX-Spectrum computer to make titles for
video. I am not sure whether it had 48KB of RAM
or the massive 128 KB that it could be upgraded to!!! Data
was stored on a tiny tape called a Sinclair Microdrive which could store about
85KB of data. This was terrible, as the tape tended to get tangle up. The
titles were very crude, but it was the start of a seemingly never ending
episode of upgrading and building computers. I could never have imagined what
they can do today. Wonder what tomorrow brings?
Now,
at 77 years of age I try to keep my hand in by photographing and videoing a few
church, family functions and bands, and digitising some of my thousands of old
negatives for Jan Shuttleworth’s collection. What
I really need though is a younger brain.
Note:
[1] It may be noticed that McKay is spelt several different ways. The original was Mackay. A mistake in the spelling was made when my grandfather’s birth was registered in Scotland and it was never corrected. Ross changed his back to the original, and his father Stanley used to spell his MacKay.
[1] It may be noticed that McKay is spelt several different ways. The original was Mackay. A mistake in the spelling was made when my grandfather’s birth was registered in Scotland and it was never corrected. Ross changed his back to the original, and his father Stanley used to spell his MacKay.
5 comments:
Mistake:- I believe that it was a gold mine, not a coal mine that Isaac (John) Coade part owned in Korumburra, Victoria, Australia. Sorry about the mistake,Donald McKay
thanks Donald, I have made the correction,
My father had an accident in the 70s and Donald apparently used to go into Burwood and photograph patients. Any idea what might have happened to those? My dad still talks about it and I'd love to get hold of them for our family history.
Hi, you could ask the hospital if they still have the x-rays, don't know how long they would hold them for.
Hi, Don McKay gave his negatives to Akaroa Museum in 2018 - about 40k negative images (but not of patients at Burwood etc.!). The Museum is working on digitising the collection and cataloguing it. There was an exhibition of a small selection from the collection in the summer of 2018-19 titled 'A Photographer's Eye: Don McKay's 1950s'.
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