Memories from Our Visit to Aoraki - By Wayne

Memories of my First Project

Spending Easter at Aoraki bought back a number of memories.  Firstly, I had completed numerous tramps in the area as a Scout.  Secondly, Julie and I used to come here for Sunday lunch at the Hermitage during our first year of our marriage.  It was only a short drive from Twizel, where we worked on the Upper Waitaki Power Project. Lastly, it was the location of my first project for Opus (previously the Ministry of Works and Development).

My first project was to prepare a set of drawings for the Hermitage water supply scheme.  I started this project on my first day in the Christchurch office, being the first Monday in June 1975 after attending the company’s Draughting Training School for six months in Wellington.

Memories of my First Work Challenge

As I was placing my first piece of drawing paper on my first drawing board, a draughtsman in his late 50s interrupted me.  After abruptly introducing himself as Denis, he challenged me to a simple speed test.  The test was to see who could solve a series of arithmetic tasks the quickest. 

He would use his battered old slide rule, which was nearly twice as long as any other slide rule I had seen.  Developed in the 17^th century by Reverend William Oughtred, the slide rule contains at least two rulers, each with a logarithmic scale.  While the slide rule was used primarily for multiplication and division, it could also be used for square roots and trigonometry.  Engineers used slide rules before the invention of the electronic calculator in the 1960s, although the pocket calculator only became available in the 1970s.   

I would use my brand new HP-21 electronic calculator which was launched in 1975 and cost me NZ$250 - about five times the cost of conventional calculators at that time.  Updating the earlier HP-35 model, these calculators were the first pocket calculators that incorporated scientific functions that could replace the slide rule. They were also the only pocket calculators that could perform trigonometry calculations to the same accuracy as seven figure log tables: critical for an Engineer undertaking highway design.

Unlike other calculators of the day, it incorporated the sophistication of reverse Polish notation.  For those readers who do not know what reverse Polish notation is, it is one of those frustrating calculators that you may have tried to use that does not have a ‘=’ sign.  But for those, like me, who have owned and used such a calculator, there is nothing better. 

I can’t remember whether it was the trusty slide rule or the sophisticated calculator that was the quickest; but that’s how I met Denis.

Memories of my First Work Colleague

Denis and his boss had a falling out a few years earlier.  No one in the office could recall what it had been about, but as a result, his boss refused to give him any new projects.  As a consequence, Denis would spend his days just looking out the window or reworking calculations and drawings for a major subdivision he had completed ten years earlier for the Chatham Islands.  Just why this subdivision was never built will remain a mystery, but it must hold the record for the most redesigned piece of infrastructure in NZ History. 

Memories of First Office Entertainment

Denis become a regular source of entertainment for the 30 of us in the office. One particular repertoire he performed was to slowly walk to the end of the office while pretending to throw a ball into the air, and catch it, all with one hand.  When Denis started this routine, we all watched him; our pencils poised in mid-air anticipating the experience to come. When Denis got to the end of the room, he would run along the office and pretend to be bowling the ball as if he was a famous All White bowler in the final moments of an a test match.  He would then slowly walk back to his desk, throwing and catching the same non-existent ball as he walked. No eye contact was ever made during this routine.  And Denis would return to his window gazing, and rework his drawings as though nothing had happened.

Denis would also quietly stroll over to his boss’s office when he wasn’t there and completed ten chin ups on the door jam.   Again we would all pause from our work; counting the chin ups, pretending we had not been counting as he quietly returned to his desk.

The Sabbatical

Our sabbatical is a time of firsts: new information, fresh experiences and rekindled memories.