Spectrum 065 - Of Beasties and Fishes, of Magic and other Strange Powers. Part 1

Rights Information
Year
1973
Reference
30158
Media type
Audio
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Rights Information
Year
1973
Reference
30158
Media type
Audio
Categories
Interviews (Sound recordings)
Sound recordings
Duration
00:27:34
Credits
RNZ Collection
Morris, Kenneth, Interviewee
Perkins, Jack (b.1940), Announcer
New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (estab. 1962, closed 1975), Broadcaster

Spectrum was a weekly radio documentary series which ran on Radio New Zealand's National station from 1972 to 2016.

Alwyn Owen and Jack Perkins produced the series for many years, creating a valuable library of New Zealand oral history.

Part 1 of 2. Pixies and Tsetse flies.

Doctor Kenneth Morris, retired doctor of biological science, is interviewed in his house on Lake Rotorua by Jack Perkins. He talks about his childhood in Cornwall, England and supernatural experiences including encounters with piskeys (Cornish pixies) and African juju talismans.

The introduction has Doctor Morris discussing abandoning the materialistic ways of the Western world and sticking to the true values of nature. He quotes a poem by John Dryden; ‘no atoms casually together hurled could ever produce so beautiful a world’.

At age 72, he is still in the conservation vanguard fighting pollution of natural things.
Strange, magical juju curios from Africa adorn his house, collected over half a lifetime spent there helping to eradicate the carrier of sleeping sickness, the tsetse fly.
Doctor Morris recollects his childhood in the fishing village Polperro and how it influenced the rest of his life.

He talks about poaching salmon near Trelawney house, after midnight, and being piskey-led (led astray by pixies).

He describes French silk stocking and brandy smuggling in the area and recites the epitaph of a shot smuggler, Thomas Mark, from a grave near Talland Church.
Doctor Morris also recounts yarns of seaman and baker John Holliverand of his Uncle Jan in an old Cornish accent.

Some of the most vivid things he remembers, are the many varieties of fish and birds. He says fishing was the great thing for him and recites from the 1496 book on fishing - ‘Treatise on fishing with an angle’ by Dame Juliana Berners.

He states it was the perfect setting for a boy who loved nature and collecting pets including a poisonous adder.

Kenneth tells that his grandfather, an illustrator of Rider Haggard’s books on Africa, was a powerful influence.

Upon completing his degree in Zoology and Biology, Doctor Morris travelled to Africa to tackle the Tsetse fly problem.

His team of 3-4 hundred natives gathered field notes on the Tsetse fly and removed riverside vegetation to reduce their habitat and allow people to come back to live near the river.

He talks about shooting 51 elephants and how the natives thought he must be able to make himself invisible with his juju fly whisk to stop the elephants charging.

Doctor Morris shows Jack the magical buffalo tail fly whisk.

Outro describes part 2 of the programme about the magical powers of African tribesmen.