An account of the project by Matthew Lark.
The field recordings which form the basis of the programmes you can listen to or download, were made between April and October 1998. The history was commissioned by Forest and Bird, originally to co-incide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the society, which was celebrated that year.
Former staffer at national office, Kate Camp, inspired the project, but left the society just as I began to produce the material.
My thanks go to Kate especially, without whose enthusiasm, the project would never have been born. Kate secured funding from The Stout Trust, which was used to pay me, and to pay for travel and a small amount of accommodation. We saved a lot of money by ensuring I traveled cheap, and stayed with some of those whose voices you can hear. My thanks go to those who hosted me as I traveled from North Auckland to Southland to complete the work.
Though our original idea was to produce an oral history for radio, this was not what finally appeared. For various reasons Radio New Zealand, for whom I worked when I started this project, rejected the notion of broadcasting a full treatment of the society’s history. I did manage to “sneak” three programmes, extracted directly from the raw material into my “Natural World of Matthew Lark” series, which played in 1997-8.
The final history is a hybrid. Partly it is documentary and partly it is an extended long-form of interview, like those used to make oral histories. Various professional diversions and distractions saw my delaying of final production of this material until 2000-02. By that time members of staff in head office had really lost interest in the idea, and it is only because former general manager Lyne Baites and I continued to plug away at it, that it was ever mastered to CD.
I want to thank former EMI engineer Frank Douglas, for his help in creating the masters and also Phil Bilbrough, who had the good sense to revive them when he rediscovered them earlier this year.
In 2002, I had a private hope that the internet might be a useful means of distributing it in the future. Audio-streaming was a wishful thought back then, but happily you can hear it all, for free, in 2011. Perhaps more could be added; maybe more should be. I leave it to you, the members and supporters of Forest and Bird, to decide.
I hope you’ll all remember especially, those whose voices may not be heard on this earth again, such as Keith Chapple, Les Hutchins, and Les Henderson.
With my best wishes
Matthew Lark
Engineer, researcher, producer and presenter
20 June 2011.
