The Last Word

By Samuel Hewson | Posted: Monday August 19, 2019

Last words are a funny thing. Over the last two and a half years I have heard a lot of last words and forgotten most of them.

Much like when a teacher says this skill isn’t going to be in the internal, it is in one ear and out the other. There’s all this pressure on prefects to deliver these last words that are going to inspire you and change your lives, but we are all kidding our selves if we think you are going to remember it, let alone change your lives. Frankly, I’m just hoping you remember it long enough to still be mocking it at interval.

When I think about last words, one thing Max Chu said a few years ago does stick. “Lads. Don’t take life advice from a seventeen-year old.” So, I won’t try give you life advice today. Instead I’m going to spin a few yarns about the lodge and maybe someone might laugh.

Most of you have been to the lodge, the jewel in the OB’s crown, and a lasting testament to the power of child labour. When the school originally decided to build the lodge in 1974, the cost was going to be $120,000. At that price the lodge was dead in the water. But Rector Donald ‘Stumpy' McLachlan realised that the school did not have money but did have 900 boys. He realised that boys, unlike builders, did not need to be paid. Stumpy said, "why pay a builder $5000 to get a digger into the valley to dig a septic tank hole when 20 boys could dig it, and you could call it a 7th form Biology trip."  By using slave labour, the cost of the lodge was halved.

Since the lodge opened in 1977 almost every boy has been up there. If the walls could talk, they would scream from the things they have seen. I mean, what else would you expect when you send 30 boys 400 kilometres away from home with no tv or internet, and the only things to do in the down time is to play ping pong, throw sticks, throw rocks or fish the fishless west branch.

A funny wee book exists in the school museum called the Lodge Bible. This is a notebook written in 1977, that records the events of every day at the lodge that year. It is good to see that even back then camp descended into "Lord of the Flies", and that it’s not just our year group due to our inability to survive without snapchat and Love Island. One thing that has not changed overtime is our interactions with animals. In 1977, Mr Foster recorded that on a 4th form trip after a big dinner the boys decided to go out to quote “bash some possums.” Sadly, it was recorded that the boys went to bed disappointed after no possums were found. Also, in the early days the boys did not carry their food in like we do now, they killed it when they got there. The class would go and capture a sheep, lead it to the lodge where the most confident hostel boy would kill the sheep in front of the whole class, apart from those vomiting in the bushes or had already fainted. Sadly, the sheep hunt is no more, and the possums are now caught in traps. This legacy only lives on now through fishing. Our fishing skills have not improved over the past 40 years as in 1977 only one fish was caught, which was described by Mr Foster as a goldfish.

Also, back in the day they used to have a few more interactions with Dunstan. The Lodge Bible describes an eventful day of encounters between the two schools in 1977. In the morning, the 7th form biology boys defeated Dunstan in a game of softball. But later that night, the boys received some visitors at the lodge. Two young ladies from Dunstan had snuck out and walked an hour and a half to come and see the boys. However, they were quickly discovered and sent back to their lodge. The story does not end there though. The Lodge Bible recorded this event. “The two females from Dunstan were quickly led back by our glorious leader but were surprised and taken aback by the sight of Peter wearing nothing but a ping pong bat.” So maybe there’s a reason we don’t interact with Dunstan anymore.

The lodge has left many different impressions on boys over the past 40 years. Not everyone enjoyed their time in the Matukituki as much as I did. One of these boys was Sammy T when he was in year 10, although he did change his mind in year 12 and I'll finish with a quote of Tommo’s from year 10: “I hate this place and want a can of Lift Plus.'

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.