ENCOUNTER: His story of Auckland | Auckland News | Local News in Auckland

Who: Dr Rodney Wilson
What: Great living Aucklander
Where: Maritime Museum
Why: To acknowledge his lasting legacies

History has a funny way of proving us wrong. I ponder this more than once as I stroll around the exhibition with the former director of Auckland's Art Gallery and our War Memorial Museum.

Dr Rodney Wilson, 65, is pretty relaxed here, and openly proud, in the Maritime Museum. He knows almost every exhibit intimately, having brought them from private collections or from neglect in backyards to fully restored glory for the Viaduct Basin institution.

He does not, he allows finally, feel so happy about visits to the museum on the hill across town.

"I really don't want to go in there," he says, looking across the vessels struggling against their moorings in the blustery north-easterly wind to where the museum is obscured from our view. "I'm so saddened by what's happened."

What's happened is the controversial and abruptly terminated tenure of his successor, Vanda Vitali. Dr Wilson says many museum staff confided in him during the tempestuous times and some also stayed with him at his former home in Akaroa. He confesses it was difficult to maintain a dignified distance from the troubles.

Now back inside the new boundaries of greater Auckland at Matakana with his wife, Maureen, Dr Wilson is astonished to be named our greatest living Aucklander in a recent survey in The Aucklander.

We walk through the maritime museum, which was hauled from a ramshackle, rundown wharf into an international-quality attraction for $13 million and a massive amount of goodwill and support. Example: a huge dredging barge at Lyttelton near Christchurch. The Navy towed it to Auckland, gratis, as a "training exercise".

Once known for his natty dress style, particularly colourful bow ties, Dr Wilson is today casually attired in dress pants, open-neck shirt, navy sweater. Fearing a floating encounter in this foul weather, I've come in a trenchcoat and feel ridiculously over-dressed.

Dr Wilson (the doctorate is of philosophy in art history from the Netherlands) has chosen to remain inside as he hasn't yet seen the new cantilevered wing that houses Sir Peter Blake's Black Magic and a collection of small yachts. It's about three years since he was here.

"I was quite worried about how the small boat display would fit but I knew they were very dear to Peter Blake. It has worked out very well."

We settle for a seat in a room resembling an old Kiwi bach. The old chairs are warm and comfy and I again regret wearing the trenchcoat. On a radiogram in the corner the Everly Brothers are warbling, "Walk right back to me this minute ..."

We chat about the challenges of directing an institution of national significance while drawing funds from councils around the region, central Government and benefactors.

While keeping them reassured of the money's good use, a trust board is constantly reviewing, the public is scrutinising and the media are digging for dirt. In the midst of this, Dr Wilson renovated the war memorial museum's rooms and displays, then tackled massive extensions.

But coping with the multiple levels of attention are not what Dr Wilson considers his best achievement nor, surprisingly enough, the extensions.

"What's peculiar about that museum is the war memorial," he says. "We started having the war veterans in as volunteers and involving the RSA. With the exception of one day a year, on Anzac Day, they had no connection with the museum.

"When I left in 2007, the Auckland District RSA presented me with their shield as a symbol of their satisfaction with the way I had run things. I have that up at home and it is very fulfilling to have."

I return to musing on how history can reverse one's views as Dr Wilson outlines how this award from returned servicemen means so much to a member of the anti-Vietnam generation.

"To think that I would end up spending 13 years of my life devoted to a war memorial, it says something about the voyage I've made in my life."

He was, however, a national serviceman, called up in the birthday ballot for the summer intake of 1966-67. At the time, Australia decided to send its national servicemen to Vietnam. "One Saturday morning, I was in Burnham Military Camp with the others after we'd received our cholera and smallpox shots. There were 1200 unwilling soldiers."

Instead, the New Zealand Government asked for volunteers from the regular services.

Before leaving the service, "some clown threw a thunderflash" explosive into the back of a truck he was in. He must now wear a hearing aid, partially paid for by a war pension.

Dr Wilson is at pains to point out that museum staff are very much to be credited for all that was achieved. But this graciousness is delivered like a true Gemini, with a passing shot at his successor: "That's probably where Vanda Vitali's downfall began. She started in on the staff."

He is still a frequent visitor to Auckland, if not to its museums. He's helping establish an art gallery in a former Takapuna library. That project is "inching along".

History once had me believing the whalers in one maritime museum exhibit were doggedly courageous founders of our nation. Now, perhaps, there's a whiff of rapacious wastrels of a cherished resource about them.

It does seem likely, though, that the institutions that Dr Wilson either fostered or founded will long be recognised among Auckland's proudest achievements. I shake his hand and bid farewell, walk into the howling winds on the Viaduct and gratefully button my trenchcoat as it starts to rain. History has a funny way...