Denton, Ross Ackworth Interview

Today is 14th of February 2017, and I’m interviewing Ross Denton of Havelock North, a retired pharmacist, and Ross is going to give us some history on his family. Thank you, Ross.

Well, originally I suppose it’s fair to say that the family was a Wellington family, in that my great-grandfather came out on the ship ‘China’, in 1856 and settled in Wellington. He came through firstly at Nelson, and then went to Wellington and worked in Wellington for an ironmonger; and also out in the Hutt, he worked for a general store. His actual training was as a watchmaker, and so he spent a fair amount of time repairing watches and so on in his spare time.

He eventually had eleven surviving children of twelve; my grandfather was the youngest of those. In about 1860 or so … 1861, ’62, about then … he returned to England to set himself up as an ironmonger, which he settled back in Wellington in Willis Street, and conducted a business there as an ironmonger for many years – ironmongery, sports goods … as I understand it, jewellery and Māori artefacts. He was very successful. He built himself quite a substantial house on The Terrace in 1873, and he finished his life there and he died in 1910.

My grandfather was very much the youngest of the family; his brothers were much like older siblings to him. He married Nellie Daniell of Masterton, where he’d been working at the time for Levin & Company. For some reason or other he decided he wanted to be an accountant, and he spent some time getting his exams; and I understand he wasn’t allowed to pursue Nellie ’til he’d got them. [Chuckles] [Clock chimes] And he decided he was going to ship out into this general neck of the woods to set up a practice, despite being told that it was very parochial and he wouldn’t get a look-in. But he was looking apparently at Waverley on the other coast, and Wairoa and Hastings, and settled on Hastings for whatever reasons at the time; and I imagine all those places wouldn’t have been much bigger than each other at that time.

And he set it up; it was quite a struggle. He married my grandmother in 1911; they first set up house in Brooklyn while he was looking around for what he was doing, and eventually got here in 1912, set up his practice, and that practice is still going, although under the name of Markham’s. So he was a sole practitioner for many years. He lived in various houses in Hastings. My grandmother, being the daughter of a timber merchant, would never look at a house without ripping it to bits and starting again, [chuckles] which she did several times. And eventually they bought a house that they had their eye on at Chambers Street in Havelock North. They bought that in 1932, just after the quake. They’d had their eye on that particular house for some time, and apparently it came up and so they bought it. And that house is still in the family – my sister and her husband have it still, so since 1932 to the present day it’s still owned; what’ll happen in the next generation, who knows?

What is your sister’s name?

Judie Webster. Judie and Robert Webster – Webster’s Lime Works.

Yes – that’s a grand home with a beautiful big section.

Yes. Three quarters of an acre; there’s not too many three-quarter-acre sections round. Fortunately in some ways. I was to’ve got that place but the timing was wrong in terms of my father’s retirement and so on, and it’s probably just as well because I probably couldn’t have afforded to keep it up the way the Websters have done it; so that’s fine. I’m welcome in their house; they’re welcome in mine, but we don’t bother each other too much, [chuckle] sort of thing, so we’re perfectly happy where we are and we’re staying where we are.

My father in the meantime had grown up. He’d decided to be an accountant and he studied in Wellington for a while, and then came up just before the war to join his father. Then he got called up for war service and so he was away from the business for about four or five years I gather. And then – and this is the reason I was personally born in Palmerston North, ‘cause he was stationed at Linton at the time. He was apparently fairly shy; my grandmother was a bit of a force to be reckoned with. She couldn’t see that either of the kids could possibly marry out of the family, sort of thing. [Chuckle] They both did, of course. But they used to go for a holiday down in Paraparam, [Paraparaumu] and Dad caught a sight of these three rather smashing looking girls, and was too scared to think about it ‘til one of my aunts, who was a very forceful character just like my grandmother, basically twisted his arm and made him write my mother a letter, and the rest is history; that’s why I’m here.

He never actually left the country; he was in the army for that length of time and he was trained for the desert but never left. He was an accountant; they needed him in the Pay Corps and various things like that. And also his eyes weren’t too good … bad eyesight, which I’ve inherited … so he stayed the entire war in New Zealand and then rejoined his father. He took early – what is it? It’s not retirement from the army; early dismissal, whatever the word is – because the war was winding down, you could see it. And he said some of his mates could see it as a good job for the future sort of thing, but as far as he was concerned he wanted out, so he got early out of it. He became commissioned as a first lieutenant in that time, and came back and rejoined his father and worked there for the rest of his working life.

Early discharge.

Early discharge – that’s the word. And I’ll say discharged – not dishonourably, [chuckle] I’d better say. But he had always maintained that my grandfather’s business, while it was a good business, really never got going until he did, and he was very good at getting new business and so on. The business gradually grew, and Brian McKay was a partner; Paddy Donovan was a partner right through; Ernie Williams, who eventually left under a bit of a cloud; and at [an]other time Eric Anderson, who was getting old and wanted to retire but he still had his son coming on, so E D Anderson & Company joined the firm. My father always maintained that at that point the business got less personal because it became so much bigger. They were one of the early ones with a computing system, but I gather Dad didn’t see eye-to-eye with that, [chuckle] but … of course nowadays we can’t get on without computers.

So he worked through ‘til he was sixty-five, which would’ve made him … by about 1977 or thereabouts he retired; and then lived through to … he died eventually in 2003. So he had quite a good innings as a retired person. And he had a very good business and good contacts and so on, and kept going in that way.

And I was born in Palmerston North as I said, in 1943, but the family at that time came to Havelock North – probably would’ve been ’44 I suppose, but when I was about one or thereabouts. In those days I understand the population of Havelock was about fifteen hundred. I always understood it was about two and a half thousand, but I gather it was smaller than that. So I grew up there, went to the local Havelock public school, but I was a scholastic disaster area which my parents were very concerned about; quite rightly so, too. [Chuckles] So they sent me to Hereworth for a couple of years; in those days it was Form 2 and Form 3, and so I did those two years, and it gave me – one year I dropped back in arithmetic and English and then sort of doubled up, so by the time I got to the end of Form 3 I was about where I should’ve been. One thing I was very grateful for is that I had one year of Latin, and that was so much help with my English later on – it’s absolutely brilliant. I think I was a bit privileged to have that.

So, two years at Hereworth and then – my father had gone to Wairarapa College, mainly because his father was on the Founding Board of Wairarapa College – his grandfather was; he went to Wairarapa College. And I think he felt that boarding school was desirable, right or wrong, and they couldn’t afford Wanganui or Christ’s so I finished up at Nelson College, and was there for four years. A bit of a square peg in a round hole, but however that’s ancient history, ‘cause not all of us enjoy these things much. But however, I was there and survived so that was that.

But eventually, for no particularly good reason I decided I wanted to be a pharmacist, and there’s absolutely nothing in the family to point me in that direction. But in fact I ran into a bit of opposition from the family with that one, but I went ahead and did it. And it took me three years for a two-year course, and a couple of years apprenticeship under – well, I started under Nate Richardson in Richardson’s Pharmacy in Hastings, but Nate died half way through that, and I finished up under his son, Graeme. And during that time my now wife [chuckle] – she was working for Trevor Willis during the school holidays – so she wanted to be a nurse, and left school early. And then one of her best friends who eventually became one of her bridesmaids decided she wanted to become a pharmacist, and persuaded Anne to do that. But she had to go back to school, so she did a bit of extra … science I think it was; so she went back and it caused a bit of a stir at school when she went back in the second term; got right through and went to Pharmacy School, and she got through in two years which was probably fairly equivalent to [chuckle] what was fairly normal. [Chuckle] Then she came back and did her apprenticeship under Ian Kerr in … it was Ian Kerr Pharmacy … in Heretaunga Street. So anyway Anne … during this time she’d come in, and I think she may’ve spent a very short time working at Richardson’s. I asked her out, and she wouldn’t come [chuckle] of course, and it took about a year before I could persuade her to come out. It just so happened that there was a Pharmacy School Ball on in Petone, and … well, Anne had a regular boyfriend at that time; for some reason or other she didn’t have a partner and neither did I, so we teamed up; and so the rest’s history really, so we’re still together after … coming up fifty years, not quite, so forty-seven, forty-eight or whatever it is. We married in 1969, and went to Melbourne for nearly three years. And that was a great time, we loved it there, and the only reason really we came back is because we’d planned to come back when we left. And we came back, and my father had sounded out a few pharmacies around about, and so he pointed me in the direction of one in Wadestown, in Wellington, which – probably in hindsight I should really have come back and worked for a while here before I did that, because we were there for many years and although we absolutely loved it, it was a brilliant place to work; brilliant place. We started our family there, all three children; Jane, our eldest daughter, was born in Melbourne, the other three were born in Wellington. So while it was a brilliant place to be, it wasn’t a good business, and in fact doesn’t exist any more, you know, it closed up about ten years ago.

But the man who had it before me, he was a very good operator – David Donald – and there was no room for expansion at all. So after about ten or eleven years I decided it was too small and time to move on, which brings my father back into the picture again because I was looking round and the professional literature was there and all the advertising and that; and I’d been looking all over the country for something. And my father, being an accountant and having some pharmacist clients, sounded them out; found out that Denis Goldman was on the market and so I finished up buying that. Once again I probably bought a bit too small, but on the other hand as it turns out it’s worked out fine.

And we came back up here in ’82, and we were there in Havelock Road until December 2000, when the opportunity arose to go into the Medical Centre in Havelock North which is where we’ve been ever since, and which I’ve basically retired from, in quite happy circumstances, I think.

Suppose I should talk about the kids.

Let’s go back to your school days and sports – did you swim or play cricket?

In terms of sports I would try anything, but I wasn’t particularly [chuckle] good at any of them. So I was probably – in terms of my peer group I was probably better at swimming than anything else, I would think, so I used to swim a bit competitively in those days. But I played rugby, as we all did in those days, and had a lot of fun doing that. Wasn’t too keen on tennis, ‘cause my parents thought tennis was a great game for somebody to play, which it is, no doubt; but on the hot sweaty days when I wanted to do something else I had to play tennis – it put me off a bit. [Chuckles] So, I didn’t do that. Had a bit of a go at cricket; and as far as I’m concerned cricket is one of those games … long hours of boredom – bit like the army – long hours of boredom and a few seconds of utter terror. [Chuckle] So I was never much of a cricketer. But I tried a lot of things over the years and had a lot of fun with them – one of the sports I really did love was after I left Pharmacy School actually, and a chap – Peter Benson – was rowing on the Clive River. And so I rowed there for a couple of years, and we went down to the New Zealand Champs [Championships] down at Lake Waihola. Tony Bone was rowing in those days; he was well-known. And various other people, and I actually loved it, and so after … almost semi-retired, I took it up again for two or three years. And then other things’ve got in the way so I stopped doing that. But it was a great sport. So what sport did I enjoy the most? I suppose rowing, I think; would be the one I think, but I took it over too late. But I went through with Ross Collinge who went to the Olympics, and – Pharmacy School I mean; and there was one other, Mark Irwin, who was also in … I think he went to the Mexico Olympics, I think.

It’s never too late to take up something because …

No.

… it’s too late when you’re sitting there wishing you had.

Wishing you had a crack at it, yeah; that’s right, yeah. I decided I was going to get a motorbike when I was … probably twenty or something. And I went to buy it, and they had this whacking great big something … I don’t know motorbikes, but some great big British enormous, huge, heavy thing. So I hopped on this thing and drove it straight through a [?] bush, fell off, and that was the sobering thing … [laughs] … as far as I was concerned. [Laughter] I haven’t ridden a bike since, but the little Jap jobs that are … but that thing was … must’ve weighed as much as a small car; it was huge.

Coming back, where did Anne grow up?

Anne grew up in Hastings, so she went to Raureka School I think it was, for primary school, and then Hastings Girls’ High. And as I said, she left school early because she was going nursing and didn’t need a higher qualification. But to do pharmacy you needed, I think it was physics and biology or something, and she didn’t have that; so when Rosie Lattimer (she was at the time), said she was doing pharmacy in Melbourne, “You should join,” and Anne decided, ‘That’s a good idea.’ She had to go back to school, and she was actually stood up by – I won’t mention the name of the headmistress ‘cause she was a highly respected headmistress; Anne was stood up – and said, “This is the girl who couldn’t make up her mind”, in assembly; which Anne’s never forgotten, and never forgiven her for, you know, but [chuckle] that old girl died, not too many years ago, quite recently. But she went to Pharmacy School and did her apprenticeship under Ian Kerr, and she’s never actually not worked, so she’s always had a small job. At the moment she’s got a bigger one than me; but when our kids were born and we’ve got four children, three boys and a girl, she always kept a morning a week somewhere, or something like that, which gave her a bit of pocket money and kept her hand in.

And that was actually quite useful, because what happened to me … when I first came up from Wellington we inherited one of the staff who finished up robbing us blind; nearly put us out the back door, and we almost went broke; and so it’s the only time we’ve ever cashed a cheque and it bounced and so on. But there was a bit of family money; and Anne going back to work, which she did. At that time she’d been doing a bit of voluntary work at Cranford, and Cranford decided they needed to have paid pharmacists, which actually they insisted on being paid anyway. And so Anne had a twenty-four year career in Cranford, and finished up with a New Year’s Honour and a fellowship in the Pharmacy Society and so on, for the work she did. So she juggles; so it’s funny what comes out of bad things. I always think of that Kipling poem, ‘If-’. One of the stanzas is: ‘Meet those two great imposters, triumph and disaster; treat them both the same’. [Correction: ‘If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same’. And out of that disaster Anne’s had a very distinguished career in our field since then. And so – it took us about seven years to get over that, the impact.

So about eight or ten years ago, the Cranford Board – now I would regard it as ignorance – decided they were going to set up a specialist; they had a lot of specialists in Cranford. But they didn’t take any notice of the then culture, and basically they blew the place apart. And that’s why Cranford was closed up for six months. And it was closed up … whenever it was that happened. But as it happens, Sue Ward, who was on Planning and Funding – there was [were] two Sue Wards in Hastings Hospital at the time – and the one involved in Planning and Funding knew of Anne. And they wanted to set up a … and I gather this was one of Kevin Snee’s ideas from England … was to introduce pharmacists into General Practices, because the feeling is that the GPs were trained to diagnose – fair enough; they’re trained to chart a course of action – fair enough. They have their sort of set drugs that they tend to use, because that’s what they’re familiar with; but their knowledge of pharmacology was poor. It was very poor, but they didn’t necessarily recognise that, and so Kevin Snee wanted to set up and introduce pharmacists into General Practices. And so Anne was invited to do it; she started off with two pharmacists over four practices – Havelock here, and Greendale, and one or two others – and she set up two, and then after about a year or so the powers that be discovered that (a) they saved them half a million dollars straight off, and they were getting better patient outcomes. Anne’s problem at the start was the doctors didn’t really recognise where their lack of knowledge was, ‘cause they’d always been one-man bands, and they were god. But after a while … they were there, and they were receptive enough to accept them into the practices, and then realise, maybe these guys did know something.

So Anne retired from that after, oh, I don’t know – a few years – and then she was invited back again to expand it because the lady that [had] taken over … hell of a nice woman, and I won’t mention names ‘cause [it’s] not fair; very nice woman; very, very competent woman, super bright, but not a people person. And so what you needed to do was someone – Anne’s got the skills, and she’s got a PhD; and she’s got all the skills, a record at Cranford that doctors know, and she’s a people person. And so they invited Anne back again to expand it. Now she’s got eight … I think it might’ve gone to the ninth person now … spread in between Hastings, Napier, Wairoa and down into Waipuk [Waipukurau] I think, and so it’s highly successful. And so Anne’s been pounding away at it; in theory it’s twenty hours a week, but … [chuckle] yeah, right! Twenty hours going on whatever. But no, she’s salary driven; she’ll probably pull the plug about the same time as me. She’s just turned seventy, so there’s a time to say, “Okay – time to move on”, or “Time to let somebody else have a go”, sort of thing.

So … children?

Children. Okay, we’ve got four kids. Jane was born in Melbourne, so she returned to New Zealand with us when she was six weeks old. And as happens – often medical families have terrible accidents, so [chuckle] Stuart came fourteen months later, [chuckle] and he turned out to be probably the most talented of our children, but I wouldn’t tell him that to his face; he’d get big-headed. [Chuckles] But he’s a pretty great cook. He’s currently in Hong Kong with a family of three daughters, and I don’t know if we’ll ever see him home ‘cause his wife is Bolivian, and so while she doesn’t want to go to Bolivia – no way does she want to go back to Bolivia – but she’s not too keen necessarily to come back here; she’s a big city girl. She was a … hell of a nice girl … international model, and absolutely gorgeous but very practical. But she is a big city girl, so to come back to Havelock might be a bit [chuckle] … of a shock for her. [Chuckle] But they have three small children up to the age of eight, I think it is.

Stuart was born in Wellington, St Helen’s Hospital, as was Hugh, the next one who’s now just on forty, or just forty-one, I think. And he met a young girl at university and married her, and they have two children. His job – I can never quite work out what it is. It’s – I do know it’s legal – systems documents; as I understand it, if you want a standard operating procedure or some sort of systems document written, he’s the man for the job. And I wouldn’t have thought there’s a living in it, but apparently there’s a huge living in it, and they’re expanding into Melbourne and goodness knows where else; talking about expanding into Singapore, and so … what they do, it’s all a bit of a mystery to me. His wife is … if you google ‘Jane Denton’ you’ll get … the older Jane Denton is our daughter who’s an occupational therapist, but also you get the other Jane Denton who’s my daughter-in-law; she’s an artist basically and she does – I don’t want to call it tapestry – she does patterns and pictures with wool on canvas, and she’s doing very well out of it. And so they’re doing very well, and they live in Wellington.

And the third boy, fourth child, is Alistair; he always wanted to be a vet. He’s now thirty-six or thirty-seven; he always wanted to be a veterinary surgeon so he went to Massey to do that, but I think he was too busy chasing the high life with girls, [chuckle] and so he missed the cut; got a degree, went to England and spent the next several years using his degree to move furniture and dig holes and things, [chuckle] and so he came back, decided he still wanted to be a vet so he went back to Massey and when he was probably just about thirty-ish he qualified as a vet, worked in Hong Kong and Wellington, and then decided he was going to set up in Clive. So he’s in Clive, setting up his vet surgery there. And so he’s just twelve months there and at the moment it’s going like a rocket. He worked briefly here for one particular company – once again I won’t mention names, it’s not fair, but it wasn’t the only experience. So he set up on his own in Clive, with a bit of help from the old man of course. I would’ve thought it’d be too small, but it’s actually worked.

Interesting, because Clive has never historically had a vet.

No, never.

But over time Clive has grown.

Well, he reckoned that there was about twelve hundred in Clive itself; about two thousand or thereabouts going down Haumoana, Te Awanga; and then if you take Pakowhai district you’ve got six thousand. But he just commented to me just the other day that he’s also now drawing from both Hastings, Havelock and Napier. ‘Cause I suppose being on the road … And basically, we were very fortunate with the place we bought because as you come off the bridge you can see him – coming this way, from Napier – he’s just behind the War Memorial and he’s probably the most prominent building there. And so he set up there; he went into partnership with a [?] vet nurse to get established, which is not in the way ‘cause I’m entirely happy with him nevertheless. So it’s working very well, and I think it won’t be too long before they’ll have to employ someone to help them, because he’s actually only just completed his first year. And so he’s got to mark time a couple of years, and then he’s got as much work as he can handle.

It’s an area in society that’s grown, especially small animals, it’s amazing.

And he’s not too keen on the big ones actually, [chuckle] he likes small ones; so they need men to look after the cows and horses and everything, but he’s not so interested in that.

Once upon a time our vets, which were always Blue Callaghan and …

He was the only one round, wasn’t he?

That’s right. He was a great friend of Snow North’s.

And Helen Callaghan was a great friend of – same age as Anne; they were great friends; she can attest to this. Everybody went to everybody else’s weddings, you know. There was a group of them.

So travelling. Obviously you’ve done …

Yes, we’ve done a fair amount … bit of a surprise. None of it happened really … I mean we simply couldn’t afford to with a family. The three boys went to Rathkeale and Jane went to Woodford, so we were broke for a good many years. [Chuckle] So then all that went off our hands, and we started off by going to Tahiti; we’ve done that twice.

And yes, so I was going to start expanding; Anne had an aunt … she was a war bride, never had any children. And Bob, her husband, had been away to the war and been shot at an awful lot, and he didn’t want to leave, he was quite happy to be back in New Zealand; he wasn’t going anywhere. So Anne was asked, ‘would she accompany Joan?’ So the first trip I think was, oh – twenty-something years ago. She went to Hawaii with her and then subsequently to England. Anne professionally went to England after that. And then since Stuart’s in Hong Kong, we’ve done Hong Kong many times, and as a family, try to get there once a year, and they try to get back here at least once a year. And so we’ve been to the UK; France a couple of times. [A] couple of years ago we went up through Central Europe. It’s always great if you’ve something to go to – we had a wedding to go to in [?], and that was great, and then we carried on up to Berlin and around there. One occasion, ‘bout the time we had been in trouble, I desperately needed a holiday. Anne had just started off basically her present job, so she couldn’t get a holiday, so I went with [??] [?Kennedy?], and I went to Cambodia with them. That was … we went to [?] and we went out into the country and that. That was very interesting. And we did China a couple of years ago, and India last year, almost exactly twelve months ago; in fact I think we were away twelve months ago, and boy! That was an experience. We were very fortunate – Anne has an English cousin who goes to India several times a year and buys up ethnic stuff and takes it back and sells it in various venues in England, so she knew the Indian ropes pretty well. So we accompanied them; we did all the touristy things, but we also did a lot of stuff that the average tourist wouldn’t do, and I think because of that we enjoyed that trip more. Don’t get me wrong – the Chinese trip was a great trip; it really was a great trip … thoroughly enjoyed it. But the Indian one was better.

What about in New Zealand? Do you have any favourite areas you keep going back to?

Well as a child we used to spend a lot of time in Paraparam [Paraparaumu] and Waikanae, and my brother-in-law had a place in Waikanae. But no, we tend to get round. The only bit of New Zealand I haven’t visited is in the Catlins down the South Island, and I keep saying to Anne, “We must do that”; see the country before you see the world, sort of thing. But I have a sister in Whangarei, and so we get up there on very rare occasions.

And we have an apartment in Wellington. Anne has a very dear friend in Wellington, and various other people. In some ways, although we’ve been here for thirty years, she’s never really left. [Chuckle] So after much resistance, and I resisted for years and years and years, eventually an apartment came up on The Terrace which I couldn’t say no to. So we bought it and spent … for the next ten years we’ve been renting it out so we could keep the thing. [Chuckles] So finally we’ve got past that, and so we go down there; probably go down to Wellington more than anywhere else. Anne, when she did her PhD … she got her Masters Degree in Primary Health Care in Adelaide; did that extramurally in Adelaide … and then she did her Doctor of Pharmacy through Auckland University, so she spent a lot of time up there. So, while I was a bit sniffy about Auckland – I was never really keen, I must admit I started to warm to it a bit after five years of Anne going up there and me accompanying her on occasion; I started to warm to Auckland a bit. But I reckon we live in probably the best country in the world, and probably the best part of the best country, so I’m perfectly happy here. So while Anne wants to go down to Wellington quite a lot, I’m perhaps digging my toes in.

You’ve got the best of both worlds, haven’t you?

Well, we have. We have, and we’re very lucky with the Wellington apartment ‘cause there’s Body Corp [Corporate] fees and all that sort of stuff, and it just so happened by a series of coincidences there’s a lady – works with the Public Service Association – she wants it Wednesday and Thursday nights every week for most of the year, and the Public Service pay for her. She’s absolutely fanatically tidy, and so she has a suitcase that she keeps there, and there’s one cupboard that’s assigned to her; otherwise we wouldn’t know she was there. And so she pays Body Corp fees for us. And so the arrangement is that we can bounce her any time we like, but as it happens with Anne working, we tend to go down for weekends – weekends and the days either side of the weekend, so the Wednesdays and Thursdays … with only one exception over several years has been free for us, so it’s worked out ideally for both sides.

Now, historically you must have seen some major changes in the pharmaceutical ..?

Oh, it’s a different game. It’s fundamentally a different game. When I started off, or the year before I was there … two years before … everybody went through an apprenticeship, which was night classes and … go down to Wellington for block courses … things like that. I think I was the third year intake, and it was a professional course; the first year which was taken up with non-pharmaceutical matters, and two years apprenticeship. And basically they gave us a little bit of what pharmacology, which is the [?action?] of drugs; pharmacology was the recognition of raw drugs like herbal stuff and so on; and a bit of pharmaceutical chemistry. But really it was a pressure cooker course which as much as anything else told us how to make suppositories and how to make up emulsions and that sort of stuff; now I haven’t made a suppository in [chuckle] twenty, thirty years.

The old pharmacist was basically the doctor’s cook, and the ‘℞’ sign … the ‘Recipere’ sign that the doctors always did … it actually spells ‘Recipe’ and that’s the recipe of what the doctor wanted, and then we would make that. And so to a degree, and it was dying – and in fact I just saw him; I had to see a doctor over a certain matter while I was doing it, and he said, “What on earth are you doing? Pharmacy – it’s finished.” And to a degree he was dead right because we just don’t make the stuff any more.

So then we spent probably a good chunk of my career being a professional looking for a job, or an answer looking for a course you need. But it really has been answered by – in a sense what Anne’s doing now, inasmuch as the clinical knowledge the young pharmacists coming through … the technical [?] ones … now they wouldn’t have a clue how to make things. In fact we’ve [chuckle] got a young pharmacist who came in; she managed to break two, … putting them in the microwave … managed to break two mortars and a measure [chuckle] over a very short order of time and at vast expense, [chuckle] because she really didn’t know how to make things whereas that’s fundamental to what we were taught. But her technical knowledge on the pharmaceutical side just knocked me out of the park. And so it is a different game.

And the way the pharmaceutical field is going – when I started off when I first owned a pharmacy, they used to have girls – they’d come as a shop girl, usually reasonably bright. And after a while … you know, small business … they would show a bit of an interest; so they’d probably type a few labels, something like that, or they’d help the pharmacist unpack stuff. And they gradually worked themselves into the dispensary; being a help in the dispensary, which is probably technically illegal at the time. But anyway, that’s what happened. And in recognition of that the powers that be set up a Pharmacy Technicians’ course, and so we started training these girls to … certain minor technical matters – put it that way – so they could actually read a prescription, and so it gave them a certain amount of legality and authority. And that has actually expanded over the years – expanded, expanded, expanded, expanded; and so nowadays they look at me, for argument’s sake; even in my day, always was, the pharmacist was responsible for everything. Nowadays they’re reaching the point where they’re getting – well it’s just starting out now, hasn’t really got underway yet – but having checking techs who are trained to the point where they check other people’s work, and that sort of thing. And so in many ways those technicians will be almost full circle back to where the old apprenticeship-type pharmacist was. Because they do block courses; what they do is probably, I wouldn’t say it’s too far from what I had to do in my two-year full-time course in Petone. I did my course in Petone, in the Tech there. And so the idea is that the pharmacist … when a prescription comes in the pharmacist will check it, sort of vet it, make sure everything’s all right with the mix; the drugs they were on and so on and so forth; and then possibly or even probably, pass it over to a technician to actually do the job. And – ‘cause there’s very little manufacturing nowadays – very little manufacturing.

Computerisation must’ve played a major part …

Oh yes.

… in being able to record, and record histories of clients as well.

Absolutely fundamental. And back at the start I probably had more involvement than most in computers. In fact the first time I struck it was back in 1974 or 5 when it first came out, and people said, “What on earth do you want a computer in a pharmacy for?” You know, it really was like that. That particular one was an online system, but the personal computer revolution killed that one. For a while, as I say, it was speed and accuracy of prescriptions, and record-keeping, because we used to have to record everything longhand in a book, which I … [?] story on that one is, my first pharmacy I ever managed was in Willis Street in Wellington, on the corner of Abel Smith Street and Willis Street. Doesn’t exist any more. And my grandparents had built where Dixon Street joins The Terrace, is where they built; and they were obviously patronising [?patronised?] because I got hold of the books, that I wish I’d stolen actually, ‘cause one of them was cannabis cigarettes for my great-grandmother [chuckle] for asthma. They were cannabis cigarettes.

So that would’ve been fifty-odd years ago …

No, a hundred years ago. She died about 1920. And I wish I’d stolen that book – that was 1967 or ’68 or something like that, and so that was talking fifty years prior to that. And she was the strictest … strictest Methodist. [Laughs] So she was probably smiling all the time, but apparently my great-grandfather – he was, as people were at the time, a strong church man, but not like her. And apparently his mother, she’d been a publican for part of the time in England; and apparently he never drank except at Christmas-time; he’d call the maid – they had a maid – he’d call the maid, “Little tipple of brandy, please”. And apparently my great-grandmother was very squiffy. [Laughter]

Anyway, nowadays we can’t … it’s getting more and more and more involved, even since I basically retired; the expansion is huge.

We do look after a number of rest homes, and with the exception of one now, the doctor goes in there, basically writes his prescription on the computer, we get that immediately, and so we don’t have to wait for paperwork or anything like that. Ultimately there has to be a paper trail in the end, so ultimately a doctor has to write the prescription. But we act on that, so the rest home notes and our notes: they’re the same notes, and so communication and all that sort of thing. There were one or two fish-hooks, and one was – I’ve got a senior tech, Tracey Coles, who I’ve got a lot of time for; she picked up a major hole in the system which she rang and told me about. And I said, “No, it can’t be so.” And it was there all right. [Chuckle] ‘Cause nowadays when you type something up it will come up with incompatibilities – this isn’t good with that – or whatever; it just warns you. The doctors’ll have the same thing of course. But I sit down – one of the few jobs I still do is when I go in on a Thursday there’s a stack of notes from various rest homes, and I go through those notes checking for incompatibilities. But as I said, my trade is probably about the … okay, I’ve been in the game for fifty years; you know, I’ve got a bit of knowledge. But I always, always, put the mix through … whatever they’re taking … through the measure of to see what pops up.

I suppose having systems like that, anyone can step in as long as they keep using the same system there won’t be any mistakes.

Oh, I wouldn’t say there’s no mistakes, but … [Chuckle] See we’ve got a robot; we’ve got a dispensing robot there, which … it’s not a little man with little … it looks like a broom cupboard but it is a dispensing robot. And it spits the mixes out like a long ribbon with all the pills in them, and every one of those little – like a series of pillows – but every one of those pillows has to be checked. ‘Cause it’s a long, long time since I’ve seen a medication error as such. The girls are very good at loading things right, and it’s a long time since I’ve see that. But the machine will put an extra one from time to time, or it will put through a broken one or it’ll be mashed up, so each of those little wallets has to be checked, and that’s one of the boring things I do every Thursday. [Chuckle] But certainly, the computer system – currently, if the computers blow up, we blow up.

Tell me, what is an apothecary?

It’s just another name for a pharmacy. Well an apothecary probably has more manufacturing connotations, shall we say, but I think it’s just the language. If you go to … and I’ve seen it in a Czech, and Berlin … you’ll see, through Central Europe anyway, you’ll see ‘Apotek’. It’s the same word, except that ‘Pharmacy’ is a registered name. In fact, every now and again you get someone who’ll open up a health food shop and call it a pharmacy, and they can get rapped over the knuckles very quickly. [Chuckle] It’s the same; anything apothecary – it’s more old-fashioned; I sort of think of someone with a witch’s hat on or something, but I think it’s probably more the Germanic name.

Now is there anything else that you think is worthy of your …?

I think I’ve talked an awful lot, haven’t I? So …

The book that you did, that will be printed, and because it fills in the detail, we really have a very full history, which is wonderful. We also have your voice talking about the family things.

Yeah. Yes, yes. Well all I can say is that, as I said in the book, my parents’ marriage was a very long and happy one, even if it was a bit fiery from time to time. And Anne and my marriage has been long and happy, and we’re not quite so fiery I don’t think, but if you never have an argument there’s something wrong. [Chuckle] But no, it’s all been good actually, and so life’s been good to us. Mind you, you work at it, don’t you? So you don’t sit and wait for everything to come to you, you’ve got to go out and meet it.

Well, thank you very much, and thanks for the opportunity; and all the best for all the years that you’ve got looking out at this grand view.

Yes – oh, we love it. We bought it for the view. You really could pop the house into a subdivision anywhere, and it’s another house. We bought it for the site; and also why we’ve got that window there … [Chuckle]

You’ve brought the outdoors indoors, haven’t you?

Yeah, that’s right. Actually it lends itself very well to winter and summer living. It’s not a hot house in the summer, but neither is it cold in winter.

Well it’s sheltered from the south.

Those are not the original doors when we came here, but those doors were put in by the previous people so you could heat the house – virtually heat the lot. You’d think with all this glass it’d get cold in the winter, but … Anne and I like to think we’ll be here ‘til we go out with our feet first sort of thing, but whether it’s practical I don’t know, but we’ll … time will tell.

Thank you, Ross.