Donovan’s World

There’s nothing special about St. Luke’s at Ngahere on the Grey River, but its fresh, bright restoration which was still in progress offered me the opportunity to use some of the colours from the ‘hundreds-and-thousands’ end of my paint box.

It was built to plans given by Ralph Tyler of Greymouth and it has a twin in the Rai Valley.

The foundation stone was laid by the Bishop of Nelson, Rt. Reverend P. W. Stephens D. D. on 21 September 1952.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Our Lady of the Snows, Franz Josef, is designed like a Swiss church with a steep-pitched roof to shed snow.

Having been dedicated, opened and blessed on 23 December 1951 it’s not old, but it is different. Small and intimate, it has the atmosphere of an appropriate place in which to consign one’s fate to one’s maker before taking to the mountains.

In the porch are two St. Bernard windows, one depicts crossed skis and a shield containing a loaf of bread and a flask of brandy, the other has a ski pole and ice pick crossed, and a coiled rope.

© DON DONOVAN

 donovan@ihug.co.nz

St. James’s, viewed from across the glacier-fed Waiho River is a perfect example of the axiom ‘Man proposes, God disposes’ for when it was built, the sanctuary window, by design, framed the terminus of the Franz Josef glacier. But the ice disappeared from view in 1953, with a brief return in 1994, after which it once again receded and hasn’t been seen from the window since.

Nevertheless, it is an admirable church. Vaguely Tudor in its board and batten stripes, it was designed by Turnbull & Pule of Timaru and built by Bullock & Stewart. The foundation stone was laid by the Governor General of the time, Lord Bledisloe, in 1931.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

It was a long, long journey from Arrowtown (see 132) to my next subject. I crossed to Westland by way of Haast Pass and then round steep bluffs and through mossy forests to Jacobs River, about 80 km north of Haast township.

There, all alone in a paddock beside the highway, is a humble little church which is now called Our Lady of the River. It was paid for by landowner Bob Ritchie and built by Bert Weenick and Harry Bush in 1928 for the Church of England as St. Peter’s but since the late 1970s has been used by both Anglicans and Catholics.

It appears to be part of what marketing executives might call a ‘branding exercise’, there being other ‘Our Lady of…’ churches at Haast, Whataroa, Fox Glacier and Franz Josef.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

Despite a continuous tourist onslaught, Arrowtown, unlike Queenstown, is unspoilt.

Two uniquely paintable churches survive enhanced from its gold town origins. The first, St. Paul’s, is a plain porch and nave Anglican affair in timber built in 1871, just nine years after the first gold was found in the Arrow River.

Stained-glass memorial windows were added in 1973 and 1992 apart from which the pretty church is unchanged from the day it opened.

Across Berkshire Street is the Presbyterian St John’s. This is the note I made in my sketchbook: ‘Superb! Framed between enormous wellingtonias and mellowly glowing from sunlight reflected off the forecourt. If there were nothing else in Arrowtown those wellingtonias, planted around 1880, would be worth coming to see; and they allowed me to render a special emphasis of contrast to the intriguing 1873 stone church. The stones of St. John’s were dressed and laid by Chinese miners and its timbers came from near Glenorchy at the alpine end of Lake Wakatipu.’

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

For hoteliers and restaurateurs tourism has blessed Queenstown (where the second language is Japanese).

For historians its gems lie buried in a sea of gift shops, bistros, bars, tour coaches, motels, banks and bureaux de change.

I am therefore not contrite for leaving out everything around St Peter’s to show it as it must, in essence, have looked on the day it opened in 1932.

Redolent of the archetypal English Gothic parish church, it was designed by J. McDowall Smith of Dunedin.

Its random rubble walls are stones from the beaches of Lake Wakatipu. It replaced an 1863 wooden church that was removed to Omakau, north of Alexandra.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

ST. ANDREW’S, CROMWELL

Although the general colour of St Andrew’s is a sandy ochre, achieving the required effect on paper demanded a palette of yellows, umbers, reds, greys and even hints of blue.
 
On the day of my visit the church was empty inside, a new concrete floor having only just been laid. The starkness only served to emphasize the depth of colour in the memorial windows in the sanctuary.

Now the oldest church in Cromwell, it was built in 1874 by James Taylor on a site given by local pioneer settler, John Marsh.

© DON DONOVAN
  
donovan@ihug.co.nz

Like the Curate’s Egg parts of Cromwell are interesting; other parts, like the old main road, disappear into newly formed Lake Dunstan, victims of the Clyde Dam hydroelectric project of 1992.

From the lookout above the town at the northern end of Cromwell Gorge the pink tiled roof of the handsome Church of Mary Immaculate and the Irish Martyrs is very distinctive among those higher buildings that survived.

It has the longest name of all the churches in this book and I can add little more than to quote from the board outside the church: ‘…The foundation stone … was laid on March 17th 1908 … The church was built by Patrick Thomas and the stonemason was William Gair … cost £2400. The church was blessed and opened by Bishop Verdon on April 18th 1909. Father Hunt gave the church its unusual title to gain the support of the many Catholic Irish miners in Cromwell at that time…’

© DON DONOVAN
 
donovan@ihug.co.nz

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

At first glance it looked little more than an overgrown garden shed and hardly worth painting, but the neat stone wall and history tipped the scales.

St. Alban the Martyr was pre-fabricated in England and sent by Captain F.G. Dalgety, owner of the local Hawkdun Station, to St Bathans complete with furniture, matting, bibles, and prayer books.

It replaced earlier Union churches: one built in 1865 and blown down the next day, and the second subsequently rendered roofless!
 
St. Alban’s was erected in 1883 but it took over 100 years to consecrate it as an Anglican church to be shared with Presbyterians.

© DON DONOVAN
 
donovan@ihug.co.nz

I wrote and illustrated Country Churches of New Zealand. It was published in 2002 by New Holland, Publishers and is still on sale in bookshops. The publishers have kindly agreed to me re-publishing some of the book’s images and descriptions in this blog.

The town of St. Bathans had such a fabulously rich goldfield that miners turned what was once a 120m hill into what is now the flooded crater of the 50m deep Blue Lake.

St Patrick’s was built in 1892 for Catholics and has a ’stone lasts forever’ look about it that contrasts with corrugated iron St Alban’s up the road. A misleading impression, for like the nearby Vulcan Hotel, it is built of sun-dried mud brick.

I did my work in the churchyard on a chilly spring morning, my feet in dew-wet grass and periwinkle but as I sketched, the sun picked its way across the tombstones and lit up a magnificent horse chestnut in full bloom, probably as old as the church.

© DON DONOVAN 
 
donovan@ihug.co.nz