When you grow up in Huntly, you’re faced with two choices. You either settle down there, or you get out and find a career in the big cities around the world. Wayne McNamara chose the latter.

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Knowing that he wouldn’t get to do much if he stayed in Huntly, Wayne said that he became a chef because he wanted to travel. After doing some work experience when he was due to leave school in year 11, and having had enough of school in general, he took work experience anywhere he could. Some of these jobs included doing a lawn-mowing round and working in a joinery for a week each, and Wayne said that he hated every job he had during this time. But then he got sent out to a catering company – and absolutely loved it. After discovering that you didn’t really need much school qualifications to become a chef, he said that everything about being a chef ticked all the boxes he had for a career. It wasn’t exactly the love of food that drew him to cooking.

After getting his cooking qualifications from Wintec – before the cooking program was moved out to the Rotokauri campus – and having worked in three different restaurants for a year each, Wayne followed a chef from his first real cooking job to another restaurant, who pushed him to do his apprenticeship. Not wanting to do anything more with school, Wayne said that if it wasn’t for that chef encouraging him to do the apprenticeship, he wouldn’t have done it at all. Wayne also said that it was this chef that inspired him to carry on with cooking, because he (the chef) had been all around the world, and Wayne was blown away that there was somebody from Huntly that had been around the world.

Once the chef that had inspired Wayne to continue cooking had moved to Hamilton to work on the Waipa Delta riverboat – which at the time was new to Hamilton – he thought it would be a good idea to follow him there. After a year of working on the riverboat, Wayne applied for a job at the Left Bank Cafe, which he says was one of the better restaurants in Hamilton during the time he was there. Having gained all of his qualifications at the end of that year, he went to Pauanui to work at Puka Park Lodge, and he stayed there for three years.

After his time at Puka Park, Wayne spent some time cooking on the island of Wakaya in Fiji and in Sydney, where he spent a couple of years working for the Australian Hotel Association, which was a temping agency.

After his jobs in Sydney, Wayne spent some time cooking through Southeast Asia and eventually ended up in Britain, where he wanted to have a regular 9-5 Monday to Friday job, but ended up having a few jobs in hospitals, saying that the food he cooked wasn’t that great. However after the hospital jobs, Wayne found himself working under Michelin-star chef Brian Turner, who had appeared on the show “Ready, Steady, Cook” along with various other things.

After working under Brian for a short time, and having spent 10 years away from New Zealand, Wayne decided to come home to Hamilton, home to his family, and home to everything that he knew. A bit sick of cooking, Wayne didn’t want to work under anyone else, but he also didn’t have the money to open his own restaurant. He had an idea of what he wanted his restaurant to look like and what to have on the menu, but after walking down Victoria Street, he quickly noticed that Hamilton already had a lot of what he had planned. After having a few jobs in different pubs, restaurants, and cafés, Wayne soon realised that he no longer wanted to do cooking as a career. He was beginning to have a family, and was still working in the hospitality industry when his daughter was born, and it soon dawned on him that working in the hospitality industry while also having a family isn’t a good mix.

If he was given the opportunity to be a chef again, Wayne would most definitely jump at the chance, as he said that it was a great thing to do as a young person. While he was the cooking teacher at Saint John’s College, Wayne would consistently encourage his students to go out and give cooking a go, because it’s essentially a ticket to travel around the world. He also had some advice for any young person who was thinking about being a chef.

After having gained enough knowledge about the hospitality industry to a point where he believed that he could pass it on, Wayne became the cooking teacher at Saint John’s College.

After not having a particularly positive experience at school, and having known that there were teachers that weren’t going to enjoy teaching him, Wayne is able to notice the exact same thing in students.

If he was given the opportunity to be a teacher again, Wayne would do it in a heartbeat. He said that he never really had a passion for food, but he does have a passion for people.

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Wayne did have some advice for anyone who wanted to become a teacher, and that was to go out into the world and get some life experience first. You can’t teach genuinely or with authority if you’re teaching with something you read out of a book. Doing the job he does, Wayne believes that his life experience is the most valuable tool that he has in actually doing the job. He doesn’t think that he’d do things any differently, because he wouldn’t be the teacher he is if he hadn’t lived the life that he did.

To be able to perform his current role at Saint John’s, which is the Careers Advisor, Wayne had to hand over the reins of the cooking department over to Linda Myburgh, who already had experience at Saint John’s teaching the junior students about cooking.

In a way, Linda Myburgh had experience as a chef, as she was lecturing students in tertiary education who wanted to become chefs themselves.

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For cooking as part of her career itself, Linda says that her high school teacher inspired her to take it up. When she was at school, cooking was mixed in with many different topics, such as sewing. Linda wouldn’t go out and be a chef in a restaurant if she was given the opportunity today, but she has nothing against it.

Linda’s advice to those wanting to take up cooking would be to have role models. She believes that it’s important that you see something working for someone, and that you can see that they’ve got values alongside their career – just model yourself off of that person.

When it came to being a teacher, the main reason that Linda took it up as a career was her passion for the subject. Once she had gained her qualifications, she noticed that she had some good teachers as role models, and she believed that she could work off that.

Linda says that she has learned more while actually teaching than she did while gaining her qualification. She says that as a teacher you’re hungry to know more and to do more research, so anything that you’re teaching your students, you’ve researched yourself.

When asked if she had any advice to those who wanted to become a teacher, Linda again mentioned having a role model, but to model yourself from one of the top teachers, and as a young person, go out and learn as much from that person as you can. Being a young teacher is a time that you can ask questions and not feel foolish, as when you’re a veteran teacher, you don’t get that opportunity.

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When Linda first arrived at Saint John’s College, she found everyone to be really friendly and found that everything was really relaxed. Linda got her role at Saint John’s as someone she personally knew was leaving, so the transition was made easier for her, as Linda was shown the ropes as her first full year of teaching at the school drew closer.

Some of the food that students from Saint John's have cooked in previous years. Photographer: Wayne McNamara.

Linda also said that former cooking teacher and current Careers Advisor Wayne McNamara was also really helpful in helping her prepare, as she asked him questions on what the year 9 and 10 students needed, to which he replied “they don’t really know too many different methods of cooking”. Linda was also given the autonomy to be able to do what she wanted to do with the students. She has also changed the cooking program slightly over the years she has been at Saint John’s, and believes that is what has helped the program become what it is today.

When asked what had changed at Saint John’s since she arrived, Linda noted that the cooking department was helping out with a lot more functions than they used to, and that feedback from the students about it had been very positive. At first, it was just a trial, so they started off with a Shakespearean meal, which she admits was a big challenge, but says that her students loved it.

Year 9 & 10 students preparing pizzas and Butter Chicken. Photographer: Jordan Holland.

Linda said that something else that had changed in the department was competition work, as when she arrived at Saint John’s there was only a burger competition for the year 10 students. Since then, there have been things such as a culinary fare, plus incentives for year 12 students that actually finish the course.

For now, that’s really all there is to say about cooking at Saint John’s College. The department looks good now, but how will it change in the next 5-10 years? Maybe one day, we’ll find out.