Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 517
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[Page 517]
[The images on the following Pages 517 to 599 are duplicate copies of Pages 433 to 515.]
(1)
THE EPILOGUE
Immediately after landing in Welliington, from the S.S. "Makura", I booked into the "New Occidental", one of the less pretentious city hotels ; and one favoured by master mariners temporarily ashore : bluff friendly fellows, two of whom took me under their wings and soon dissipated the feeling of extreme loneliness that had assailed me on leaving the ship.
Wellington, though it was the capital city of New Zealand, seemed small and quiet compared with Sydney. Many of the large buildings were entirely of wooden construction to minimise the risk of earthquake damage, including the huge three-storey principal governmental administration centre. The network of steel fire-escape ladders draped down the front of all hotels was an unsightly architectural feature. Because the heart of the city had been built on reclaimed land nearly all the business streets were very narrow. The inner residential suburbs were on steep hills rising, almost sheer, from the sea-shore.
As soon as I was well settled into my new quarters, I began systematically canvassing likely sources of consulting work, helped by the advice of an architect friend whom I had met in Dunsterforce during the war years. Though I obtained no immediate engagements, I located a few good prospects and was well received wherever I went. One concern I interviewed was the Shell Company of New Zealand, where it was explained to me that it was not their policy to use consultants, but that there was a vacancy occurring in their engineering staff in which I might be interested : in the meantime I prosecuted my inquiries farther afield. About two months after I arrived in New Zealand, the devastating Hawkes Bay earthquake occurred, in which just over three hundred people perished, mostly in the small seaside city of Napier, whence I had departed only ten days previously to return to Wellington.
On the morning of that fateful day I happened to be standing near the end of one of the long and massive jetties that projected into Port Nicholson (Wellington harbour). Suddenly