Posts by Joe Wylie
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Access: Some aspects of New Zealand's…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
t must be acknowledged that those former residents are from a section in our society who are routinely dismissed and their veracity undermined.
Then, and now.
Like any group they're a mixed bunch. To acknowledge that is to acknowledge their humanity. For example, the former Kimberley inmate in the link you provided appears to be telling a rather different story from the gentleman whose book Hilary Stace recommended upthread. Then there are people like this, who provide a disturbing reminder that not everyone with an intellectual disability can be safely condescended to.
I'm a firm believer in the post-institutional promise of the 'ordinary life' offered by Pathways to Inclusion. I also believe that we're still a long way from achieving that promise, and that pointlessly denigrating our historical treatment of the intellectually disabled is a self-serving distraction.
When I attended a parent teacher meeting at the then Avondale College special class back in the late 80s I was brought up short by the veteran teacher's casual mention of how she'd taught the mother of one of her current pupils. It was presented without judgement, but with the clear understanding that the disability was congenital. Despite claims to the contrary, the darker aspects of pre-WW2 eugenics have never prevailed in this country. We're far from perfect, but it would be a pity if we lost sight of our humane achievements by giving credence to unsubstantiated tales of skullduggery.
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Access: Some aspects of New Zealand's…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Joe, I only know what I’ve read…and occasionally there is a hint that there are unmarked graves at the Kimberly site.
Apart from Hilary Stace's repeated allegations, based on unsubstantiated rumour? Seriously again, have you thought through the implications? In pretty well all of its incarnations Kimberley had a medical superintendent, a live-in doctor. Whose watch might these allegations have happened on? What about the head attendant and matron, who also lived on site? If anyone's having trouble naming them I could help with a few.
As someone who grew up on the Kimberley site, and having what the events of the past year have confirmed as a lifelong involvement with someone with an intellectual disability, I've been broadly supportive of Hilary Stace's work. I'm dismayed, however, by what appears to be a condescension born of self-serving snobbery towards those who worked there. When I think of someone like Cath Page, who went way beyond the call of duty to introduce Montessori methods at Kimberley in the 1960s, equating the psychopaedic nurses of yesteryear with concentration camp guards seems utterly horrible.
With the claim that bodies are buried on site, presented initially as if it were somehow sanctified by genuine research, is an unfortunate move into the murky world depicted in Lynley Hood's A City Possessed.
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Access: Some aspects of New Zealand's…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
When a bunch of guys from Lions or Rotary would rock on up and say, “hey, we’ll get the gear together and do the job on the weekend”.
Ladies, a plate.
Presumably that's how they buried the bodies at that little kiwi answer to Auschwitz, the hapless Kimberley Centre, back in those good old days. Seriously, part of me is still spewing over that vile piece of fantasy. Self-serving nonsense like that only degrades PAS.
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Capture: Laneway 2015, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
…especially such a gem as that 3Ds threeway pun
(the trinity of Hey Zeus, Jesus & Theodor ‘Dr Seuss’ Geisel
- The Father, the son and the Holey Gosh!)Oh very nice, thanks for that.
Here's an old fave from the Good Doctor's foray into feature filmmaking. While he kind of exited trousers on fire from what turned out to be an overblown debacle, the good bits are very good indeed: -
Hard News: Friday Music: Wild in the…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Kim Fowley has died
I liked the story about him chasing a bunch of noisy kids away from the back of Stebbing Studios during the recording of Street Talk’s album – “Small boys got no part in this hustle”.
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If there are any graves on the site of the old state farm they may, for all I know, date from the time when the place was used as a reformatory or borstal prior to WW2.
If they exist they're unmarked. -
Access: Some aspects of New Zealand's…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
My information comes from People First who are not happy about the use of this site.
It’s not so long ago that unhallowed human remains could be found around the Kimberley area. On a trip to nearby bushland in the late 1950s a party of inmates from the then Levin Hospital and Training School discovered the skeleton of someone who’d apparently climbed a tree and died there. An indication of how long it had been there was that the tree had partially grown around the bones.
Human bones were often washed onto the shingle banks of the Ohau River at the Tararua end of Kimberley Road. I remember a picnic taking a sombre turn when my mother shouted at my brother to drop the human femur he was innocently waving about. As kids we’d assumed they were animal bones, but a trained nurse knew better.
Those bones dated from the time of Te Rauparaha’s wars with the Muaupoko. I have never, repeat never ever, heard any suggestion that anyone is buried on the Kimberley site. Given the former population density of the place, and the freedom of movement accorded to privileged inmates, there would have been major problems keeping a practice of midnight burials secret.
If People First’s narrative of what Kimberley should become is to prevail then surely it should do so on its merits, rather than introducing the kind of allegations that seem disturbingly reminiscent of the Peter Ellis case. Claiming that some kind of clandestine burials took place has serious implications of criminal behaviour. To imply that such things were standard practice is downright mischievous.
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Access: Some aspects of New Zealand's…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Worth a visit to their facebook page.
Thank you. That appears to be the former single men's staff quarters, built in the early 1960s, in the background.
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Access: Some aspects of New Zealand's…, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
Kimberly Centre gest a new lease on life…..
I was wondering when someone was going to get around to linking to that.
That Kimberley site has too many ghosts. As well as unmarked graves.
Too many living people with genuine recollections to treat the place as a kind of terra nullius. Also when do these graves date from, and please, where precisely are they? I'm pretty familiar with the geography.
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Busytown: Tell You What: A Nonfiction Giveaway!, in reply to Carol Stewart,
Junkyard Planet, by Adam Minter, about the global recycling trade – fascinating and full of unexpected insights.
Thanks for the recommendation, just finished it, found it very educational.