The Blackwell Donation
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R A McIntosh
I was involved too in trying to get the Observatory put on top of one of Auckland's hills, when one day Mr Blackwell came to see me at my work. He chatted to me for a while asking were we doing anything for an Observatory for Auckland. I said no, we were hoping but we could not get a site. About three months later he came back again and I was able to tell him that we hoped we might be able to get a site near the entrance gates in One Tree Hill park. Good, he said, would you care to come around when you are not busy (he gave me his address) as my wife is rather interested in this.
So I tore off home to get my best suit on and I said to my wife, this might mean five quid. We had raised no money at that stage for the Observatory and I was delighted.
Mrs Blackwell seemed frail and sat in a wicker armchair and her husband stood behind her. And he said, "My wife is very interested in this programme - she is always interested in things which give value to children". Mrs Blackwell asked me what was happening, I had a provisional plan of the Observatory with me at the time. I explained that these would do all that the Observatory we had in mind would require. I showed her these. Silence fell in the room and Mr Blackwell leaned over his wife's shoulder and said "Well, my dear," and I thought well, here's £5 for sure.
They had a short discussion among themselves and Mr Blackwell said to me: "My wife would like to buy you the telescope." That was a gift worth more the £7000, without it we would not have the Observatory we have today. We still had to house the telescope but as soon as we had the site the Winstone family - Mrs Blackwell was a Winstone - came in and helped us enormously with the building.
In looking for a site we tried everywhere but were chucked off almost all of the Auckland hills. We could have had Mt Roskill but they talked of putting a railway past there and we could not have an Observatory where you would have such a source of vibration. Everywhere we tried to get a place there was some obstacle, and this seemed to go on for years. I remember we went up to Mt Hobson one day and we found everyone in Remuera trailing up the hill behind us. One woman came over to me and said she knew that I was the culprit and asked me what I thought of the spot. When I said it was a marvellous position she said, "Well why don't you leave it alone." They thought the Observatory was going to be a great big ugly thing on top of the mountain, but I'm sure that if they could have seen what it would be like they would have changed their minds.
E J N Greager
Somewhere about this time I got a telephone call from Mr Blackwell whose wife was interested in donating a good telescope to Auckland and had decided the Society would be the ideal vehicle for it. He asked me to find out exactly what these things cost and so that gave us a big boost forward really. I wrote to about five manufacturers, one to the big English firm Grubb Parsons who quoted £10,000. It was a bit outside our scope but we persisted and eventually we did get some quotations that were more realistic. We got one from East German Zeiss, another from the West German Zeiss, one from Tinsley in the United States, and one from a Japanese firm, Goto. The Japanese quoted us for a 12 inch refractor - a beautiful telescope, and they sent us a drawing about 10 ft by 12 ft which had to be laid out on the floor. It was made to half full size.
That was out of the question, round about £25,000 I think, although it was interesting. The best offer we got was from East German Zeiss and that is what we finally got.
It turned out in the finish that the Winstone family practically donated that Observatory. There were a number of big donations, mainly from the Auckland Savings Bank and several trusts but there were also all sorts of money raising schemes, none of which raised any large amounts. There was that Infinite Sky exhibition - it was a good exhibition but somehow we never got much money out of it.
L A C Warner
We used to have meetings and talk about the possibility of having an Observatory but it dawned on me that we were getting nowhere near the thing. Around about 1958-59 when I was President, we went to see Mr K W Hay, Mayor of Mt Roskill, to see if we could have Mt Roskill and he gave us some very good advice. We told him we had £7000 from Mrs Blackwell and £3000 which we had otherwise acquired. He said not to try to go on saving but to start the building and that would encourage people to come in. Anyway, we found that Mt Roskill was no good.
Just before that we had tried Mt Hobson and stirred up a hornet's nest. And every time we tried a new site, there was opposition, organised opposition.
Of course, comparing things astronomical now with what they were then, we were just playing at the thing. Now that we have got an Observatory and all the knowledge we have know, I'm almost speechless at the amount of progress that has been made.
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