Spectrum 086. Men of the broad arrow. Part 2

Rights Information
Year
1974
Reference
32659
Media type
Audio
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Rights Information
Year
1974
Reference
32659
Media type
Audio
Duration
00:29:33
Credits
RNZ Collection
Perkins, Jack (b.1940), Producer
Lee, John A. (John Alexander), 1891-1982, Interviewee

Spectrum was a long-running weekly radio documentary series which captured the essence of New Zealand from 1972 to 2016. Alwyn Owen and Jack Perkins produced the series for many years, creating a valuable library of New Zealand oral history. 

Spectrum presents Men of The Broad Arrow, two programmes in which John A Lee revisits the places in which he served a prison term 62 years ago. Your guide is Jack Perkins.

Programme 2, North Head. "Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage": so says John A. Lee as he goes on to talk about the 360-degree panoramas which he took with him all his life and the song, Sun in The Morning and The Moon at Night."

Jack Perkins describes John Lee’s early life and how he came from Mt Eden prison to North Head and its panoramic views, a beauty and freedom which came nearer each passing long summer’s day as his release date in March 1913 approached.

John A. Lee returns to North Head and talks about the views, marching out of Mt Eden in prison garb through Auckland streets to the ferry then to the prison on the crest of Fort Cautley.

He tells of laying cables through the streets from the guns to the naval yard and also to Fort William under armed guard. And when he later stood in the mud and filth of Flanders and thought of New Zealand, two visions came, one of Auckland from North Head, the other of the Remarkables from the Waimea plains. He remembers looking out his prison window and looking across to Shelly Beach and seeing young women swimming.

He speaks of the great days of the kauri industry and seeing large rafts of kauri being tugged down the gulf and up the harbour to the sawmills at Freemans Bay.

Jack and John circle the head looking for the remnants of the subterranean gun installations, the disappearing guns as they were called, which date from the Russian scare of the 1880s and for any signs of the old prison. John tells of prison life and the need for useful work for the prisoners and books to read.

Jack reminds John of beer and cockles for rugby players and coconut oil for prisoners. John replies that in the gun pits were great tubs of coconut oil used for lubricating the guns, he thinks, and the prisoners would rub some of it into their top knots.

Jack and John have come full circle and find several gun pits and bunkers that still exist on the Rangitoto face of the Head. John finds a pit he remembers and goes down into it and finds a passage he white-washed in his prison days. He tells Jack how the disappearing gun worked but thought it was never fired in anger.

They have circled the Head and John asks Jack if it was a great panoramic view to which Jack agrees. Jack says he has enjoyed every moment of his return visit too North Head.