A City was Born

This book comprises a civic history of Dunedin from the time of settlement till the present day; and one takes it to be a commissioned work. Thus the author has produced it, as it were, within a double frame – the limitations entailed by the somewhat narrow theme of civic Government, and a further necessity that the finished work should be acceptable to those who commissioned it.

One cannot fairly expect the diversity, the play of ideas, or the dramatic development of a piece of unconditioned historical research, such as (for example) John Miller’s book on the founding and first growth of Wellington. It is apparent that Mr McDonald himself has been irked from time to time by these limitations. He frequently digresses along some interesting by-path involving biographical or political comment, and draws back from further exploration with an audible sigh – ‘I would like to have told you more about this, but it doesn’t quite fit into the box of civics.’

One is able to conclude that Mr McDonald has done the best he can with the material at his disposal. Inevitably the first part of his book deals more with people and less with the mechanics of civic administration, for it describes the time of actual settlement. A curious worm’s-eye view of the city of Dunedin emerges from these pages – for one sees the gradualpage 734 transformation of bogs into roads and a most detailed picture of the growth of sanitation. It is almost as if the successive layers of the actual physical town were being dug up and revealed.

The endless financial wrangles between the Town Board and the Provincial Government, and the duck-shoving for position of men prominent in local affairs, supply the ironic drama of this phase of development. The later parts of the book, dealing with the development of transport, water supply, gas and electricity, and the amalgamation of various autonomous areas into the city proper, are necessarily more abstract.

I do not propose to offer a synopsis of Mr McDonald’s closely linked chain of facts – it would be no help to the prospective reader, who would be better advised to browse through the book and pick up whatever suits his particular interests. But I admit a certain bias against the educational and social assumption which must have motivated the assembling of a jigsaw of twenty thousand pieces – an assumption that material progress is in itself admirable and a measure of man’s stature.

When one compares the early town, sprawling, insanitary, and frequently ramshackle, with the monotonous, undistinguished settlements that plaster the hills of modern Dunedin – one of the most valuable features of this book is a series of photographs showing the town at various points of its history – one’s deepest reaction is not euphoria but sadness. A community died and a city was born. It is perhaps a microcosm of changes which the world is obliged to endure.

1965 (356)