Spotlight

A Rocky Road To Success

A whale vertebra adorns the staircase, display cases full of rocks and gemstones line the corridors, and a life-size replica of a pterosaur -- a flying New Zealand "dinosaur" with a four-metre wingspan --  dominates the room. It's Victoria University's Alexander McKay Geology Museum, a unique treasure trove of New Zealand fossils and minerals, and its success is due largely to the enthusiastic and expert efforts of curator Jocelyn Thornton.

Thornton has been involved with the museum since its inception in 1978, and has been honorary curator since 1981. Many of the exhibits are from her own collection, and she has gone to great lengths to make the material accessible and interesting to children. About 40 classes visit the museum each year and the pupils are given information, pictures, worksheets and crosswords to inform and stimulate them. A big folder of thank-you letters from pupils attests to her success in this area, and the museum is also used by staff, students, outside researchers and the general public.

"We have a unique range of minerals and fossils from the whole of New Zealand, all clearly displayed, and the public is welcome to come and see them," Thornton says. "This is the only place where the minerals and fossils of New Zealand are displayed in a reasonably modern format with someone available to talk about them."

The museum has an emphasis on hands-on displays -- there are rocks to be picked up and handled, magnetic rocks, a fluorescent cupboard that makes certain rocks fluoresce, a rock with water inside it that you can pick up and shake, rattling rocks and rocks that are heavier than they look.

Jocelyn Thornton has a wide background that helps her in this work. She completed an MA in English at Victoria, taught for a year and then worked as a journalist on the Listener before raising a family with her husband Geoffrey.

Later, an interest in gemstones, minerals and fossils led her to undertake a BSc in geology at the university. She wrote the Field Guide to Geology in New Zealand, which was published in 1985, and has since been reprinted twice, and has also produced a small book on gemstones for the Mobil Nature Guide series.

"Jocelyn has given an enormous amount to this museum, and its success is her success," Professor Dick Walcott said at the opening of the New Zealand dinosaur display. "She has given her time freely and willingly. It is she who has made it a museum for school children, and on the most meagre of resources."

The dinosaur display, set up last year, has attracted much attention with its collection of fossils and the pterosaur model. Other exhibits include a wide range of New Zealand fossils, rocks, minerals and gemstones, as well as displays on oil exploration, Antarctic research and the Taupo volcanic explosion, and a model of the Wellington region showing the earthquake fault lines. Researchers also have access to drawers full of other material.

The museum's materials come from a variety of sources, including the reference collections of the university's Geology Department and dinosaur fossils discovered by amateur geologist Joan Wiffen.

The museum is named after Alexander McKay, a self-taught crofter's son who came to New Zealand from Scotland in the 1860s and rose to become a government geologist.

"Some of the academics though he was not reliable, but his observations have stood up," says Thornton. McKay reported trans-current, or sideways, faulting in New Zealand, an observation which rode against the received wisdom of the time but which was later proved correct. Recently, the museum has acquired copies of McKay's letters describing his adventures in Bluff, Dunedin and the Otago goldfields.