Club Otago Lunch September 2018 - Max Quinn
01/10/2018
Dunedin-based internationally-acclaimed wildlife cameraman Max Quinn is prepared for all eventualities.
From spending almost a year in Antarctica, where temperatures rarely rose above minus 25 degrees and where there was a three-month period when the sun never rose, to filming the diverse animal population of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona in temperatures close to plus 50 degrees, Max has seen it all.
He was our September Club Otago speaker and mixed powerful commentary with extraordinary photos and moving pictures in a snapshot of his stellar 50-plus year career.
Max was the first cameraman to film Emperor penguin chicks in Antarctica hatching and the male birds handing the new-born to their partners after balancing the eggs on their feet for 60 days. He has been stalked by an angry mother polar bear protecting her cubs in the Arctic, where he was also on hand as a US nuclear submarine surfaced through the ice cap.
Southern right whales, long thought to be extinct in New Zealand waters, emerged before Max’s camera lens in another first, he has filmed the construction of some of the world’s genuine megastructures, and has worked on such global success stories as Our Big Blue Backyard and Abalone Wars.
In recent months he has trekked, heavy camera equipment on hand, in China and Tibet where he is considered a legend by major television companies.
Max’s appearance marked the silver anniversary of Club Otago lunches, 25 now having been hosted since the first in April 2012.
For the record, the speakers over the years have been – (2012) new All Black coach Steve Hansen, evergreen broadcaster Keith Quinn, businessman and doctor David Kirk and Sir Peter Leitch (the Mad Butcher); (2013) John Leslie (the first Highlanders’ captain) and Dean Bell (the first Warriors’ captain), the outspoken Sir Bob Jones and Black Caps cricket coach Mike Hesson; (2014) newly installed chief executive of Dunedin Venues, Terry Davies, UK-based science communicator James Piercy, Therese Walsh (head of Cricket World Cup 2015 – New Zealand and announced in September 2013 as the most influential woman in the country) and former police commissioner Howard Broad; (2015) Tyler Hamilton (part of the Lance Armstrong Tour de France ‘era’), successful Highlanders’ coach Jamie Joseph and His Excellency, The Governor General, Sir Jerry Mateparae; (2016) Dame Susan Devoy (NZ Race Relations Commissioner), Australian author and raconteur Peter FitzSimons, ex-World Anti-Doping Agency director-general David Howman and the founder of the amazingly successful Dunedin-based gaming design company Rocketwerkz Dean Hall; (2017) Prof Robert Patman, from the University of Otago’s Department of Politics and internationally acclaimed for his ability to clarify complex political issues, in June we celebrated Otago rugby’s grand history against the touring Lions down through the years with a gathering attended by many players from the successful 1950, ’59, ’66 and ’93 teams, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Bill English, as he prepared for the challenges and confrontations leading into the general election, and Animation Research founder Ian Taylor; (2018) ex-NZRFU chief executive David Moffett, All Black legend Buck Shelford on the eve of the French test in the city in June and, now, wildlife cameraman extraordinaire Max Quinn.