George Leslie Adkin
… I suddenly noted a greenish object which just might have been a stray bottle & jocularly said, “Here’s my greenstone mere at last!” – when to my profound astonishment & delight, I picked up a magnificent adze, triangular in cross-section & perfectly proportioned & finished, length 10" .
Leslie Adkin records his discovery of an adze in his diary on 31 October 1937. Quoted in Anthony Dreaver, An Eye for Country: the life and work of Leslie Adkin, Victoria University Press with Te Papa, 1997, p183
Self-taught scientist Leslie Adkin started collecting plants and rocks while boarding at Wellington College. When he returned to Levin to work on the family farm, he began a diary, noting aspects of farming, community and family life as well as recording his travels and scientific observations.
Adkin was a keen explorer of the nearby Tararua Ranges and, in 1909, made the first recorded crossing from Levin to Masterton. Later nicknamed ‘King of the Tararuas’, he helped start the Levin-Waiopehu Tramping Club, mapping and naming mountains, leading searches, and setting up huts and tracks. Fitting these activities around establishing his own farm and family, Adkin also wrote and published controversial accounts of the geology and structure of the Tararua Ranges and the Horowhenua lowlands.
Criticism of his work by Charles Cotton further encouraged Adkin in his research and he became a well-known figure at science meetings and congresses, trying to counteract further academic criticism by meticulously documenting his research. While his initial focus was on geology, his discovery of Māori middens and artefacts led him to archaeology and ethnology, and prompted him to investigate Māoritanga to improve his understanding of the history of the land.
In 1926, Adkin provided photographs for Te Hekenga, an account of Māori life in Horowhenua. With the help of local Māori, he described and mapped hundreds of Māori sites between the Manawatu and Ōtaki rivers.
Adkin’s son took over the farm in 1946, and Adkin joined the Geological Survey in Wellington, where he produced bibliographies and papers on the geomorphology of the southern North Island. His 1948 book, Horowhenua, gave accounts of Horowhenua place names and controversial essays about the history of New Zealand’s Māori occupation.
Adkin was a passionate environmentalist, active in the New Zealand Ecological Society, the Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand and the National Historic Places Trust, and vice president of the Levin Native Flora Club. He was also on the councils of the Polynesian Society – whose journals published most of his ethnological articles – and the New Zealand Archaeological Association.
Bridging the gap between New Zealand’s early gentlemen naturalists and the professional scientists of the 20th century, Adkin believed that: ‘A student of science, without imagination … is not a true scientist… ’.
By Rebecca Priestley