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In 2021 the Southern Bays Historical Society lost one its founders and life members, Mrs Patricia Hutchinson. She died in her hundredth year.
Pat moved to Island Bay with her parents John and Emily Nicol (nee McCalman) in at age four. The family home was at 183 The Parade.
The society came into being because of Pat's initiative to gather people to gauge interest. She was the Archivist of the Society and for several years built up what became our collection, now available to the public every Friday and the Community Centre. She had taken advice on what a professionally-managed archive would be like and how it would operate and firmly upheld this approach as the only responsible way of handling our material. She was disappointed with the change to a more loosely-managed collection but the Society continues to uphold her concern for original documents and artefacts.
Pat made a number of contributions to our written history. She was well-known to generations of boys at St Patrick’s College for her work there as an administrator, board secretary and supporter. She wrote two histories of the Catholic Parish of St Francis de Sales.
I was privileged to be asked by Pat to edit and expand on her history of the Island Bay Returned Services Association and Services Club. She had a deep empathy for returned soldiers while remaining acutely aware of the problems they, and their families, experience.
During World War ll Pat worked in the essential shipping industry. Her uncle Tom fought in World War l but lived with the effects of being gassed. Two other uncles, Joseph McCalman and Chanel McCalman were killed in World War ll: Joseph in Crete and Chanel in Florence, Italy as a rare Pākehā member of the 28 Māori Battalion to which, by one account, he had transferred ‘to see more action’.
Pat had four brothers, Ian, Desmond, John and Brian in uniform in world War ll. All survived, as did her husband, Major Clifford Hutchinson, who was awarded the Military medal for ‘outstanding courage and initiative’ during an infantry attack in the Italian campaign. He was injured on the very last day of the war. Cliff and Pat made their home at 301 The Parade.
Pat had an interesting approach to writing local history. She wrote as she thought, in vignettes, small glimpses of the past that were offered without an underlying framework. There is nothing wrong with this approach of course, but it can make the production of books and articles difficult as readers unused to the format may be distracted looking for an underlying narrative that is simply not there. Some others who have written Island Bay recollections have taken this approach – maybe it’s a local thing!
Pat presented me with a manuscript full of detail and stories. Together we produced the version that became War and Peace in the Southern Bays: A History of the Island Bay RSA 1933-2002 and the Local Communities in Wartime. I added details about the people named on the Band Rotunda war memorial. And I suggested the title. Pat liked it but required reassurance that the estate of Leo Tolstoy would not object to the ‘War and Peace’ bit.
Some local sensitivities were important to Pat. She was at pains to highlight the contribution of those of Italian descent who fought for New Zealand and its allies. She acknowledged, but without excessive elaboration, the impact the war had on the mental health on some former fighters and their families who had to face the impact of the RSA drinking culture.
There is little in her book about what Island Bay soldiers, sailors, and aircrew were doing during the war but she provided some fascinating glimpses of life back here:
During this time New Zealanders were urged to grow their own vegetables, a scheme which was called ‘Dig for Victory’ and, with rumours abounding, many took this a step further and dug deep holes as air-raid shelters, which fortunately no one was required to scramble into as probably they would have become a small reservoir of rain water…Not only did we dig for victory and work for victory, people prayed for peace, particularly in May 1942, [at the time of] the Battle of the Coral Sea, the battle that was the slow and arduous turning point of the war in the Pacific. Various organisations packed and sent parcels to the men serving overseas. In Houghton Bay the scheme was organised by the Hall Committee, Red Cross and the School. In Island bay members of the various Church organisations packed and posted and did members of the Island Bay/Berhampore Townswomen’s Guild.
Pat recalled the strange experience of war-time censorship under which people saw things but they were not reported by newspapers of radio: “Those young American lads who had arrived in this country quietly and unexpectedly, left just as quietly and unexpectedly. Wellingtonians had noticed the steady build-up of shipping in the harbour – one evening the ships were there in their numbers, the next morning they had all gone and taken those young servicemen with them. Just slipped away silently during the night. They would engage the enemy at Tarawa and Guadalcanal.
Pat also wrote two histories (one an update on the first) on the Catholic parish St Francis de Sales. She collected a wide range of photos and detailed brief histories of he several congregations of religious sisters in the Bay, the schools; St Madeleine Sophie (later St Francis de Sales) and Sacred Heart (later Erskine College), the parish priests, first from the Marist order and later diocesan priests and the organisations such as the Society of Mary, the Hibernians, and the Tennis Club. She also included brief accounts of elderly long-standing parishioners still active at the time of publication (1990) such as those from the Anton, Beveridge, Dowling, Galvin, Gill, Hoskins, Kraus, Krihn, Maher, Nicholl, Nolan, O’Brien, O’Donnell, O’Regan, Redican, Ross, Ruocco, Stempa, and Walker families. And of course she featured the work of Suzanne Aubert and the Home of Compassion.
Pat wrote for Southern Bays as well – there’s been recent interest in the Humber St Hall, now in a somewhat reduced state so we here reprint her article from 2007, which notes the hall has been a community centre, a theatre, a billiard hall, and a church – sometimes all at once!
Patricia Hutchinson was the mother and mother-in-law of Steve and Kathy, Janet and Geoff (Slater), Dennis (deceased) and Jan. She was a much loved grandmother to her nine grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
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