Dr Wendy London.
Since waving goodbye to her aunt and uncle, who were leaving Manhattan on a cruise liner in the 1950s, Dr Wendy London has been fascinated by ocean-going travel.
After a career in technology law and technology in the law, Wendy changed course and studied for a Master of Tourism at Otago, graduating in 2010. She continued her PhD studies at Griffith University, Queensland, and has since worked as a cruise industry specialist and consultant.
Along the way, she met Otago alumnus Terence (Terry) Lealand, a dentist in Hawera, and she has lived in Taranaki for the past 30 years. Terry died in 2022, having retired in 2020 as New Zealand’s oldest practising dentist, then aged 88. The pair loved to cruise, and they loved Dunedin.
To support research into the industry, and the impressive work of the Tourism Department at Otago, Wendy has recently established the Dr Wendy R London & Terence P Lealand, BDS Overseas Travel Award. The award aims to support a PhD student studying tourism, particularly with a focus on cruise tourism or cruise shipping. The $1,000 award will be given annually, starting this year and continuing for at least five years. Wendy also hopes the award will encourage other alumni to support the department.
In this Q&A, we ask Wendy about her journey to becoming a cruise industry specialist, how she met Terry, and her hopes for the award.
Born in the United States, you have worked in Amsterdam, London and Melbourne, how did you come to move to New Zealand in 1994, and settle in Taranaki?
In London in 1994, a Kiwi friend invited me to dinner, and his brother Terry was visiting from New Zealand. Dinner turned into a whirlwind week. Terry even asked me, "How could I take you to a small country town in the centre of the North Island of New Zealand?" I half-jokingly asked him, "where's New Zealand?"
Terry was a dentist, their father was a dentist, and my father was a dentist. Seemed like some sort of match?
The following Saturday, I drove Terry to Heathrow to catch a flight to Vancouver to a dental conference, and two days later, I was on a plane to Melbourne, to give two papers at a law conference. I had never been to the Southern Hemisphere before. When I got back to London – and remember that this was 1994 when about three people in the world had email – I found an email in my inbox from a partner in a Melbourne law firm saying that he heard me speak, and would I like to come work for the firm.
So, within about two weeks, I had a future husband and a job in the Southern Hemisphere. I looked on a map and saw that the distance between Melbourne and Hawera was about the same distance as New York to Miami, so eminently commutable – which I did for two years. I’ve lived in Hawera for the past 30 years.
Early in your career you specialised in technology law and computers in the law – what were some of your career highlights from this time?
After law school in the US, I was offered a job with the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation in Amsterdam. It was an early career position – each year, they took on a recent law graduate who had studied taxation in law school and ideally, publication and editing experience.
I met some extraordinary people (most American expats) during that year who plugged me into their networks. One knew about a project being established in Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands – a joint venture between Elseviers, International Thomson and the European Union. I was hired as the project leader for the first electronically-produced information source for lawyers on European law – the European Legal Literature Information Service.
In 1987, I joined a City of London law firm, Cameron Markby Hewitt. I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to practice law full-time, that I was more interested in publishing, information engineering and IT – in its infancy in 1987. I joined as their first Director of Information Technology.
The use of computers in law firms was very new at that time, but their usefulness was clearly evident. We were the first law firm to put a computer on every lawyers’ desk for email, access to the firm’s financial system and research. We were also the first firm to demolish information silos and integrate all of the firm’s information systems.
Joining forces with a team from then-Coopers & Lybrand, we did work for the DG-XIII (technology) of the European Union on drafting the legal chapter of the Green Book on Information Security, and for the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry – on the Market Failure of the Computer Misuse Act 1984. Those two projects required a knowledge of law, IT and economics.
When I worked in Melbourne, the ‘theme’ of an IT/law consultancy within the law firm continued. Some of my work was in the area of privatising library and other services for a local council during the consolidation of the State of Victoria councils (from about 225 to about 85) and conceptualising the “Libraries of the Future” for another Council – work which morphed into a part of the State of Victoria Internet at the time.
What drew you to move away from your established career and into the cruise industry?
A chance meeting with a friend in a car park in Ōpunake following a Tourism NZ roadshow altered my life’s course. I had been a lawyer in London and Melbourne, but there was no love affair there, so I was casting around for something much more fun to do. I just happened to mention all this to my car park friend, and picking up the cues, he said that he had just completed his MTour at Otago, and thought that it could be done via distance learning.
I enrolled. And Dr Hazel Tucker took me to lunch one day in the Staff Club. Her words still haunt me – in a very good way: “You are interested in cruise. You should make it your focus, but bear in mind that cruising will never be the same for you again.” A whole new passion has evolved from those haunting words.
What it is about the cruise industry that interests you?
It started when I was a little girl of four or five in the 1950s. I remember standing on the 54th Street Pier in Manhattan, wearing a frilly dress, patent leather shoes and white gloves, watching what I thought was a mighty big white building edge out into the Hudson River. This building – this cruise liner – was on her way to Europe with my aunt and uncle, Judge and Mrs Morris E Barison, onboard. Streamers and confetti clouded the sky. We had just come back ashore after wishing them Bon Voyage.
I was fascinated, and I never forgot the experience. I can’t remember which ship it was, but it very well could have been the Andrea Doria shortly before she sank, or the Nieuw Amsterdam or another one. I was totally smitten with the spectacle, the romanticism, the sheer improbability of it all, at least to a little girl. The fascination and love of ocean-going vessels have never left me, but never did I think I would become an addicted cruise traveller, or more improbably, making a career of cruise. But I have.
After doing law and legal IT stuff, I decided that travel and tourism is much more fun. I'm a cruise addict, and I admit it. In every aspect of my life.
What is your particular focus?
Over the years, I have created a distinction in my own mind between cruise tourism and cruise shipping, perhaps artificially assigning stuff about cruise passengers onshore (cruise destination management) to cruise tourism, and stuff relating to the ship and the products and services it provides to cruise shipping, such as cruise shipping supply chains, infrastructure, policy, and regulation. My focus tends to be cruise shipping – my fascination with cruise infrastructure, the role of local ports in the cruise shipping supply chain, risk, etc.
The lack of investment in cruise infrastructure is my key interest at present – and, at least for one port, how we can build a world class cruise terminal and all that it requires from a port, cruise line, passenger and community perspective.
My PhD thesis was on the political dysfunction and stakeholder fragmentation surrounding proposals for the development of Auckland’s cruise infrastructure. I am fascinated by the cruise infrastructure itself, and how passengers react to and flow through those facilities – it is their first impression of their ports of call.
Can you share a little about your connections with Otago?
Terry’s and my first cruise together around New Zealand called into Port Chalmers. Off the ship, we grabbed the shuttle into town, and I was smitten. The city, the people, the university – Married at First Sight has nothing on the quick start of my love affair with Dunedin.
And then the chance meeting with my friend in the Opunake car park. And then meeting and connecting with educators who were more special than most, and who became a part of Terry’s and my family. And the coincidences and connections that kept building – and continue to do so. After all, it was Dr Anna Carr’s father who was the first to see Terry rock up to his first job – the Adolescent Dental Clinic in Hawera – watching this young dental graduate on his Army Indian and sidecar. Ben Carr owned a business directly opposite the clinic.
Every Christmas cruise when I call into Port Chalmers (and throughout the cruise season), as many of this special ‘family’ (current lecturers, past lecturers, alumni) who can congregate at Carey’s Bay for lunch do.
Did your studies confirm and further your path?
Before that memorable lunch with Hazel, I hadn’t really thought about pursuing cruise as an academic subject, or even building a bundle of activities related to cruise – such as research, writing, mentoring a couple of ports, consultancy, promoting NZ cruising (on a particular cruise line) through social media. One of the sites I run is destination-focused, rather than particular cruise voyage focused, providing a wealth of information about cruising in, around and to New Zealand.
Why did you decide to establish the Dr Wendy London & Terence Lealand BDS Overseas Travel Award at Otago?
Terry Lealand.
I will be leaving a bequest to the Tourism department, with plans for a scholarship to be awarded to a PhD candidate. However, since I won’t be around to enjoy the fun of the bequest, I’m also establishing an annual travel award of $1,000 now for a PhD student attending an overseas tourism conference. I am in discussions with the Department about ways in which we can ramp-up cruise tourism research, and get postgrads interested in pursuing their own research in the area.
There are few tertiary institutions worldwide which offer papers in cruise tourism and relatively few PhD theses being undertaken in cruise tourism or cruise shipping. These topics are fascinating and expansive, they involve topics such as tourism; managed tourism; finance/mobile capital; sustainability; infrastructure engineering/architecture; the psychology of passenger behaviour; food management; supply chain analysis; legislation and regulation . . . the list is quite endless.
Otago has a real opportunity to take a lead in research and postgraduate studies in cruise tourism and cruise shipping. It is also significant that Port Chalmers is the first port of call for many cruise ships coming from Australia, and that Port Chalmers itself has a fascinating history with respect to passenger vessels.
More specifically, it is hoped that the award will enable PhD students to travel to an international conference, hopefully deliver a paper, plug into new networks and benefit from the exchange of ideas.
Hopefully establishing an award will give the Tourism Department recognition in the field of cruise tourism, adding an additional line of research to its already impressive research specialities. More significantly, I hope that it encourages other alumni and also potentially third parties (i.e. outside organisations/companies) to establish similar awards or other funding to the Department.
You are also interested in gifting Terry’s dental notebooks to the Hocken Collection?
Yes, because they are interesting from the perspective of what was taught to dental students in the 1950s; and they reveal the diligence of a scarfie from Taranaki.
When Terry left for university and came over the hill as his train approached Dunedin, he vowed to spend two hours a night crafting his notebooks, based on his coursework during the day.
Leafing through Terry’s notebooks reveals a diligent, talented and creative student. We never looked through the notebooks together when Terry was alive, so I was particularly struck with awe with his drawing talent, and his diligence in reducing the knowledge he obtained in class to these handwritten notebooks.
One example of perhaps different teaching content can be found at the start of his Chemistry notebook. It starts off with a wonderful history of early science, with Terry latching on to Aristotle’s approach to scientific inquiry: ‘observe, classify and induce a theory.’ Those words clearly guided Terry throughout his life.
You have been on 44 cruises – do you have a favourite?
Antarctica – we did it in 2005, and I still dream about it. Just the sheer reality that we were able to visit the most remote place on the planet, yet, I was surprised how busy it was with other cruise ships, supply ships, helicopters, sailing yachts, etc. When we went, we were amongst the few 17,500 cruise passengers who had cruised to Antarctica. Last season, about 106,000 went in one year, and that number is rising. I’m glad we had the privilege of going, but I have reservations about the number of ships and passengers that are visiting now.
New Zealand is my continuing, on-going, forever favourite! My mantra is that every New Zealander needs to see NZ from the sea, and through the eyes of visitors to NZ. It is a great opportunity to visit friends and family onshore.
Now, I cruise because I love meeting and talking to people – they share their most extraordinary life and travel stories. Also, ‘family groups’ develop on the ships – fellow passengers, crew, and you often see many of the same from both groups on successive cruises. Social media allows us to stay in touch.
And where are you cruising to next?
November 2024 – circumnavigation of Australia (35 days) – this will be my third circumnavigation, and it is a very special cruise. Australia is the only continent you can easily sail completely around. I will stay on the ship until 5 January, for the Australia/New Zealand cruise. Terry and I spent most Christmases on the ships. I’m also booked for the UK/Iceland in July 2025 and a 42-day Pacific voyage in 2025, to several islands and island groups I haven’t visited before, including PNG and the Solomon Islands.