The above work by Laurence Aberhart a leading New Zealand photographer, is informed by his Remembering ANZAC series (1980–2013), a long-running project photographing war memorials across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, shaped by his sustained focus on places of remembrance. It is a platinum–palladium print, a non-silver photographic process known for its tonal range, matte surface, and long-term stability.

The photograph was gifted to Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira (PH-2023-3) by Waitaki Old Boys ; Chris Millar and Tim Gerrard. 

The following text by Martin Edmond, a New Zealand writer and essayist, accompanies this work and provides historical context for the Hall of Memories.

The Hall of Memories at Waitaki Boys' High School in Oamaru opened on 16 March 1927 with the Duke of York, later King George VI, officiating.¹ His train stopped at the school for just forty-five minutes; time enough for the Duke to look around, say a few words and plant a tree, a copper beech, next to the oak his brother Edward, Prince of Wales, planted seven years before. The building, designed by John Megget Forrester and made from Oamaru stone, was primarily an Assembly Hall. Until then, in Ian Milner's words, the boys gathered “in the old gym, a drab, uncouth setting.”² It was Ian's father, Frank, 'The Man' Milner who had driven the process that led to the building of the Hall. He had foreseen it long before, perhaps when he was first appointed Rector in 1906. Again, in Ian Milner's words, “the ending of the Great War, and the widely felt need among Old Boys to commemorate those who had served and died, opened the way.” Thus, the Hall is also a War Memorial.

Milner gathered memorabilia. The Hall was to be a repository for relics of war: autographed portraits of admirals and generals, flags, pennants, captured enemy insignia. The ship's bell in the vestibule is from HMS Ajax, which fought at the Battle of Jutland in 1915. The platform table, dais and chairs are made of teak derived from fittings from battle cruisers HMS New Zealand and HMS Powerful. One of the flags is the Red Ensign flown by the New Zealand during the Battle of Dagger Bank, also in 1915.

Other pennants flew over New Zealanders fighting in the Western Desert in World War Two. Generals Birdwood, Godley, Russell, Puttick and Fryberg are all photographically present. There is a memorial tablet for Robert Falcon Scott whose ship, the Terra Nova, put into port at Oamaru in February 1913 with news of the death of Scott and his party as they returned over the ice from the South Pole.

The Hall of Memories wasn't used just for Assembly but for all public-school occasions — prize-giving, Parents' Day, Anzac Day, visits of national and international dignities including, for example, Baron Rutherford of Nelson. It continues to be used for these purposes today, with the original seating, long backless wooden benches, still in place. It is also a kind of theatre. Frank Milner initiated the practice of Sunday evening non-denominational chapel for all (non-exempt) boarders at the school: hymns, the Lord's Prayer, a Bible reading. “It was the devotional mood and aesthetic effect The Man was after. Standing on the dais in his gown as he delivered his sermon, he achieved this in full measure. His noble brow and silvered hair caught the light from the overhead chandeliers; behind him, the memorial brasses on the dark oak walls gleamed under the candelabra.”

In the 1920s, when the Hall of Memories was built, some distinguished New Zealanders attended the school. They included Charles Brasch, poet, editor and patron of the arts (1923-27); his friend James Bertram, writer, academic and China expert (1924-28); and Ian Milner, teacher, translator and alleged spy (1925-29). These three feature prominently in James McNeish's Dance of the Peacocks (2003), which follows their careers up to, during and after the Second World War. Painter Colin McCahon also attended Waitaki Junior High School, in 1930-31, and received early encouragement as an artist. He wrote: 'My academic career ended about there. I accepted my fate and became a painter.'³

There are more than 13,000 First World War memorials in Australia and almost a thousand in New Zealand: astonishing numbers. Shaune Lakin, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, suggests one of the reasons for this proliferation is the fact that very few of the bodies of the fallen came home.The majority were buried where, or near where, they died. Some were never found. War memorials thus became sites of private mourning for those who had no grave to go to, or none on this side of the world. Lakin also suggests that this role is no longer fulfilled by memorials, that their 'inner meaning' has been replaced by 'outward form', which is conserved and preserved by municipal or other authorities as sites where the public may still gather to remember, if not individual lives, then the more general ubiquity, honour or futility of war.⁴ 

The Waitaki Hall of Memories, however, is different from most of the memorials found in town squares, sports grounds, outside public buildings and so forth: because here for nearly a hundred years, the day to day and week to week activities of the school have taken place and continue to do so. The same is true of other school memorial halls of course but few, in New Zealand or elsewhere, carry as heavy a load of memories as this one does. When you are there, you are as if inside the war, or rather you are inside memories of war. The insistence upon relics makes this so: these flags flew over battles on land and sea where men died, these photographs are of the officers who led them to their deaths, these windows are sites where the so-called glory of war is celebrated and remembered.

First, the photographer was there, with his camera, bearing witness to the absence of the living and, simultaneously, to the presence of memories. Or triggers for memory. Second, we are there too — I mean anyone who looks at the photograph. The Waitakian dead who are commemorated are not there, except in name; the relics are silent; the flags no-longer fly and the Kings and Queens, generals and admirals in the signed photographs are mute and sign no more. In this sense what we are looking at might as well be called a Hall of Absences as a Hall of Memories. But this is the paradox of memory: that which is absent is also, simultaneously, sometimes almost unbearably, present.

References

• Aberhart, L. (2014). ANZAC. Wellington : Victoria University of Wellington : Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2014.
• Drew, R. S., & Waitaki High School Old Boys’ Association. (2008). A haul of memories : Waitaki Boys’ High School : 125th anniversary, 2008. Oamaru [N.Z.] : Waitaki High School Old Boys’ Association.
• Tyrrell, A. R., & Waitaki High School Old Boys’ Association. (1982). Strong to endure : Waitaki Boys’ High School, 1883-1983. [Oamaru, N.Z.] : Waitaki High School Old Boys’ Association.
• Online Cenotaph records include Waitaki Boys’ High School Old Boys who served across multiple conflicts. The full list can be viewed here (Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2026).