John Hawley
I live in New Zealand, in Algies Bay which is an hour's drive north of Auckland.
Brenda and I moved to Algies Bay in 1996. We’d had enough of the wind in Palmerston North and I remembered Algies from spending a university holiday in 1957 adding two bedrooms to a friend’s bach in Gordon Craig Place.
I haven’t always been a geotechnical engineer. On graduating in Civil Engineering from the University of NZ in 1960 I was appointed Director of Music at Wanganui Collegiate. After four years of that I took two years leave for OE which became five years at King’s College Cambridge from where I emerged with their undergraduate degree in Engineering (MA) and a research degree (PhD) in Soil Mechanics. After a year there I’d run out of money and NZ’s DSIR put me on staff and on study leave in one smooth wave of the pen, and under bond. I returned and worked off that 10-year bond initially in DSIR’s Soil Bureau and then in setting up a research centre near Palmerston North for the Country’s 22 catchment authorities.
The Earth sciences include a wide range of disciplines and specialisations. Real geologists would not call me a Geologist and the same goes for Soil Scientists. And even they are divided into specialties like Mineralogists and Soil Chemists. In Palmerston North my job was to recruit whoever was needed to tackle the issues faced by NZ’s catchment authorities. I inherited several plant scientists, a botanist or two and geographers with a variety of special skills because the Centre began with two established groups - one bringing poplars, willows etc into NZ for erosion control and the other working on one of NZ’s primary land-resource bases, the NZ Land Resource Inventory. This integrated existing information relevant to catchment authorities, plugged gaps in coverage with field work and thereby created an inventory covering the whole of the country at “mile to the inch” scale and list of categories of geological classes and soil classes erosion types etc which were consistent nation-wide. They put the whole thing onto computer thereby creating a land-resource database which was/is in several respects a “World First”.
An even broader variety of scientists was recruited. There were 38 of them and 18 technicians and 29 supporting staff when Richard Prebble MP et al disbanded the Ministry of Works through which the research centre was funded. When amazingly-generous golden handshakes were offered by the Public Service in 1989 I jumped ship.
The bureaucracy then did the obvious thing and sent the geologists to what is now GNS (Geological and Nuclear Sciences), the forestry people to FRI (Forest Research Institute) and so on. Our Regional Councils and Unified Councils were once again without a research group. They could ask GNS and others to do things but not direct them to look at the issues they were concerned about.
Since leaving the Public Service I have worked as a sole-practitioner Chartered Professional Engineer, mostly examining ground proposed for subdivision or as building sites and drawing up specifications for on-site wastewater treatment/disposal systems. A far cry from designing the 50m high embankment and 50m deep cutting for the Main Trunk Railway at Mangaweka – my biggest job in my DSIR days.
Providing Expert Evidence for what is now the Environment Court has provided some variety in my post Public Service days. Diverting the headwaters of the Whanganui River into Lake Taupo and identifying who was responsible for the leaks in Wellington’s newly-constructed water supply dams in Upper Hutt were the two biggest ones.
I am now retired but still maintain a keen interest in all things geotechnical.
John Hawley
Brenda and I moved to Algies Bay in 1996. We’d had enough of the wind in Palmerston North and I remembered Algies from spending a university holiday in 1957 adding two bedrooms to a friend’s bach in Gordon Craig Place.
I haven’t always been a geotechnical engineer. On graduating in Civil Engineering from the University of NZ in 1960 I was appointed Director of Music at Wanganui Collegiate. After four years of that I took two years leave for OE which became five years at King’s College Cambridge from where I emerged with their undergraduate degree in Engineering (MA) and a research degree (PhD) in Soil Mechanics. After a year there I’d run out of money and NZ’s DSIR put me on staff and on study leave in one smooth wave of the pen, and under bond. I returned and worked off that 10-year bond initially in DSIR’s Soil Bureau and then in setting up a research centre near Palmerston North for the Country’s 22 catchment authorities.
The Earth sciences include a wide range of disciplines and specialisations. Real geologists would not call me a Geologist and the same goes for Soil Scientists. And even they are divided into specialties like Mineralogists and Soil Chemists. In Palmerston North my job was to recruit whoever was needed to tackle the issues faced by NZ’s catchment authorities. I inherited several plant scientists, a botanist or two and geographers with a variety of special skills because the Centre began with two established groups - one bringing poplars, willows etc into NZ for erosion control and the other working on one of NZ’s primary land-resource bases, the NZ Land Resource Inventory. This integrated existing information relevant to catchment authorities, plugged gaps in coverage with field work and thereby created an inventory covering the whole of the country at “mile to the inch” scale and list of categories of geological classes and soil classes erosion types etc which were consistent nation-wide. They put the whole thing onto computer thereby creating a land-resource database which was/is in several respects a “World First”.
An even broader variety of scientists was recruited. There were 38 of them and 18 technicians and 29 supporting staff when Richard Prebble MP et al disbanded the Ministry of Works through which the research centre was funded. When amazingly-generous golden handshakes were offered by the Public Service in 1989 I jumped ship.
The bureaucracy then did the obvious thing and sent the geologists to what is now GNS (Geological and Nuclear Sciences), the forestry people to FRI (Forest Research Institute) and so on. Our Regional Councils and Unified Councils were once again without a research group. They could ask GNS and others to do things but not direct them to look at the issues they were concerned about.
Since leaving the Public Service I have worked as a sole-practitioner Chartered Professional Engineer, mostly examining ground proposed for subdivision or as building sites and drawing up specifications for on-site wastewater treatment/disposal systems. A far cry from designing the 50m high embankment and 50m deep cutting for the Main Trunk Railway at Mangaweka – my biggest job in my DSIR days.
Providing Expert Evidence for what is now the Environment Court has provided some variety in my post Public Service days. Diverting the headwaters of the Whanganui River into Lake Taupo and identifying who was responsible for the leaks in Wellington’s newly-constructed water supply dams in Upper Hutt were the two biggest ones.
I am now retired but still maintain a keen interest in all things geotechnical.
John Hawley