Gentlemen's rules in traditional world of privilege

Auckland Club stalwart Don Donovan with a line-up of past presidents. Picture / Dean Purcell

Don Donovan has the distinguished air of a learned fellow. With a shock of grey hair, sober jacket and tie, perusing the minute books of earlier years in the Auckland Club's dimly lit library, he could be a character from a period film. He is retired from the advertising industry and lives in Albany where he works on writing projects. Donovan has been a member of the club since 1973 and makes a pilgrimage there every Friday to stay in touch with old cronies.

"Working from home it's easy to rusticate, to not keep up with what's going on if you don't make the effort to get out," he says, "And the club's a comfortable place to meet. It's not crowded like a Queen St restaurant."

Of the 19th-century clubs still flourishing in Auckland, the Auckland Club, established in 1853, is the grandfather of them all. Its rival, the Northern Club, was founded in 1869.

Two sports-focused clubs popped up not long after - the Parnell Lawn Tennis Club in 1872 and the Auckland Golf Club in 1894.

As Auckland transforms and adapts, becoming increasingly fast-paced and diverse, these clubs are bastions of old-fashioned grandeur, upholding traditions and rules that some would consider arcane. For instance, just to be admitted as a full-playing member of the Auckland Golf Club means a wait of perhaps 16 years. In addition to being nominated and seconded, prospective members must supply the names of 12 more members prepared to act as referees. Only when the referees have been contacted by the club is the application put before the committee for consideration. It's all part of the mystique of belonging to Auckland's oldest golf club.

At odds with the supposition that Auckland is an egalitarian city with opportunities for all is the lingering notion that belonging to one of these clubs confers a sense of elevated social status, the feeling that you have "made it". They are places where connections are forged. The combined membership lists read like a Who's Who of movers, shakers and captains of industry: Simon Caughey, Sian Elias, Jim Farmer QC, Craig Heatley, Chris Liddell, Doug Myers, Gary Paykel, Sir Paul Reeves, Susan Wood and MP Richard Worth.

Convention has it that while the Northern Club attracts people from the legal fraternity and other professions, the Auckland Club appeals to the banking, financial and insurance set.

Most Aucklanders have never set foot inside one of these clubs. So let's see what they are really like.

At 11am the Auckland Club's museum-like spaces can hardly be described as pumping. It seems a somewhat lonely place, a solitary member in the cavernous billiards room.

But Donovan says that by 12.30 the coveted corner tables in the dining room will be full of regulars.

Donovan is a traditionalist. He laments the fact that some treasured protocols - such as not bringing business papers or cellphones into the club - are no longer religiously observed by all members: "Those little rules are beginning to crumble around the edges."

Dress codes, too, are dear to him, so don't get him started on the merits of untucked shirts when it should be jacket and tie. There's no contest.

But although a traditionalist, he supported the 1993 move to admit women. "We were becoming vilified for being a gentleman's club," he says. "But we never got the inflow of women members that we'd have liked to have had." Women weren't beating the door down to join a club that had excluded them for 140 years and today they represent only 6 per cent of the members.

The mid-'80s are considered a heyday for the club. Its membership was full and there was a two-year waiting list. But the stockmarket crash ended some memberships and greater awareness of drink-driving laws meant people tended to go straight home after work.

Perhaps there was also a shift to more spontaneous forms of socialising as Auckland central's bar and restaurant scene matured.

Recruiting "the right sort of members" is crucial to the continued wellbeing of the club. Donovan says the right sort are "people of decent character, not dishonest, not overtly scruffy or ill-mannered." A person of dubious repute would be at odds with the "graciousness, dignity, charm and good fellowship" that - says an Auckland Club brochures - is the prevailing mood. The five spacious floors convey a sense of Victorian gentility and in the formal dining room the Queen is still occasionally toasted beneath the glittering chandeliers.

Up the hill and around the corner is the dignified ivy-clad building that has always housed the Northern Club.

Its president, Gavin Cormack, immaculate in suit and tie, cuts an imposing figure and is possessed of a baritone voice and a laugh like powerbroker Nathan Templeton on television's Commander in Chief. But the serene surroundings of the club are at odds with the sense of internal conflict that is palpable in the reading room.

Cormack says that there is a concern that speaking to a journalist may invite more of the "snide comments" the club has endured over the years.

Yet turning down the opportunity to meet clearly wasn't an option for him. Members of these old clubs treasure written documentation of their existence - histories, newsletters, brochures and fragile minute books are pulled out at the drop of a hat and frequently referred to. It would be unthinkable for a club to be excluded from a story that included its counterparts. So Cormack makes a compromise by sparing just 15 minutes for the interview.


'We just don't talk about money'

People come to the Northern Club primarily to dine, to drink and to enjoy the company of other members. It is a tenet that no money is exchanged at the club. Members get a monthly bill for food and drinks.

This fact, accompanied by the badinage between members and long-serving staff who know each member's favourite tipple, enhances the illusion that the hospitality is magnanimously laid on as if you were an honoured guest. Presumably the arrival of the invoice through the letterbox could come as something of a shock.

In some circles it's considered vulgar to make a big deal about money and at the Northern Club questions about legal tender are not welcome. "We just don't talk about money," says Cormack, who won't divulge the precise cost of membership. The lips of the trophy heads of deceased animals mounted on the walls of the grand hallway are similarly sealed.

Apart from its pale and minimalist new restaurant, the interior of the Northern Club is a little gloomy. The leather upholstery, patterned carpet and sombre portraits create an austerity that is little changed since opening day when it was a club for gentlemen only.

The 1990 appointment of Dame Catherine Tizard as Governor-General hurried along the Northern Club and the Auckland Club - both of which prided themselves on close relationships with Governors-General - to allow women members.

The architecture and decor is much lighter and brighter at the Auckland Golf Club, sited between King's College and Middlemore Hospital in Otahuhu, where admittance to the grounds is regulated by electronic gates and surveillance cameras.

Beyond the colonial-inspired white pillars are classic woven chairs, extravagant flower arrangements, oriental rugs and locked glass cabinets full of gleaming silver trophies.

All this, and the chance to hobnob with Auckland's finest, clearly make the long wait for full membership worthwhile.

Across the highly polished board table, club captain David Hunter is a quietly spoken and genial man who knows exactly what he will and won't speak about.

He will talk about top tournaments the club has been asked to host, about the installation of fairway watering systems, and the duties of the staff charged with upkeeping the course - superintendent, horticulturist, mechanic and seven greenkeepers.

But he is less forthcoming on other matters and politely declines to name a few of the club's high-profile members. Hunter emphasises that the Auckland Golf Club is a private club in the sense that you must be a member or a member's guest in order to play. At the Parnell Lawn Tennis Club - which retains its name although the grass courts were swapped for an artificial surface in the 1980s - the ebullient Paul Harvey is enjoying his fourth term, since 2002, as president.

In pinstriped shirt and the latest in spectacles, the youthful Harvey is well suited to being head of an establishment that takes itself a little less seriously than Auckland's other old clubs.

The Parnell Lawn Tennis Club is recognised as a friendly place. "We want to encourage social involvement," Harvey says. To this end, a Freddie Mercury wannabe regularly entertains, and in December the "mid-week ladies" dress up as plum puddings, reindeer and Christmas fairies. In October an unconventional tournament with three players to a side is energetically contested.

Harvey says that contrary to urban myth, his club is definitely not "a place where you can pick up a partner easily". He says it's no different to anywhere else in that regard. It's friendly, but not that friendly. Some members of other Auckland tennis clubs have the perception that Parnell is a wealthy - perhaps even snobby - club, a claim Harvey refutes.

Small world

Its prime location just below the museum at the edge of the Auckland Domain, and luxurious tournament prizes - which include black pearl necklaces, diamond earrings, trips overseas and magnums of champagne, all courtesy of sponsors - no doubt contribute to the popular belief, as do the late-model European convertibles to be seen on Wednesday mornings when the women play.

It is a small world among these old Auckland clubs and membership crossovers and connections abound. Parnell Lawn Tennis Club professional Peter Fletcher says "a good couple of dozen" members also belong to Auckland Golf Club - including Northern Club president Cormack.

Some of the foundation members of the Auckland Golf Club were originally associated with the Northern Club which itself was said to have been formed by a splinter group of Auckland Club members.

An informal policy of neither confirming nor denying the breakaway story applies at both the Auckland Club and Northern Club.

But if there are any grievances between the two inner-city clubs they can be aired - in a gentlemanly fashion, of course -at their regular golf tournament where a tankard, at present held by the Northern Club, is at stake.

And the venue for this inter-club duelling? The Auckland Golf Club. Where else?


* Shelley Bridgeman is a member of the Parnell Lawn Tennis Club