The 1970s were a heady time for the growing global hospice movement.
In the early 1980s, Geoff Mirkin moved to Dunedin and found himself in the thick of it.
His uncle, thoracic surgeon Ivan Lichter, had spearheaded the Dunedin campaign for a hospice, and Mr Mirkin was a young transplant from Oamaru.
''I moved to Dunedin in 1981, and within six months, he had me roped into the project,'' Mr Mirkin said.
''I promised him that hell or high water, I would stick to the project.''
The hospice movement aimed to establish emotional support (and physical assistance, when necessary) for people who were dying.
It was a radical goal at the movement's conception in the 1960s, when no formal institutions quite like hospices existed, but the movement nonetheless gained ground quite rapidly, with independent hospices opening all over the world, including a couple in the North Island - but none in the South.
Then, in the early 1980s, Mr Lichter started campaigning for the first South Island hospice to open in Dunedin.
And now, 35 years later, the Otago Community Hospice is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
The near-decade-long campaign was not without its obstacles.
''You wouldn't believe how much politics can be involved in getting a hospice up and running,'' Mr Mirkin said.
The campaignMr Mirkin, a lawyer who is now the deputy chairman of the Otago Community Hospice's Foundation Trust, is a fountain of knowledge on the ''modern hospice movement'', which began in Britain more than 60 years ago.
But he was not always.
''When I went to the first public meeting, I found out what the hospice was all about,'' he said.
''I had never put two and two together and figured out exactly what happened [in hospices].''
He quickly learnt, and became a leading member of the campaign for what would become the Otago Community Hospice.
When the Dunedin hospice movement began, Dunedin Hospital did not even have a palliative care unit (care based on improving quality of life for patients with life-threatening illness).
''That kind of care was given, obviously, but there was no dedicated unit,'' Mr Mirkin said.
Then, in 1987, that changed when the hospital set up such a unit.
However, many people felt that having a separate, ''freestanding'' hospice outside of hospital grounds was still necessary.
''[A freestanding hospice] would stand apart within the community so that it became a community facility with a more homely feel, where people would volunteer and cook and garden,'' he said.
There was a lengthy debate about the hospice: where it should be, who it should be funded by, and even whether it should exist.
After a great deal of political manoeuvering - and hustling for funds - the hospice finally opened its doors in George St on March 28, 1990.
The early days''When we opened we had no CEO. No-one had ever run a hospice before. We were learning day by day,'' Mr Mirkin said.
Every day, he would leave his office and head to the hospice.
''Every week or month was balancing the books to keep things going.''
The challenges were many: not just providing those who were dying with the support they needed, but also raising enough money to stay open. In terms of providing support, the hospice's staff had a revelation about three years in.
''We found that you couldn't use volunteers to the same level that we thought we would - that we needed to bring in more professionally trained staff.
''Suddenly, our costs escalated, and suddenly, we had to go out and raise a lot more money,'' Mr Mirkin said.
''It was hard for the first five or six years, because people had a vague idea of what [the hospice] was, but they hadn't had much connection with it unless they knew someone who had gone into the hospice,'' he said.
Now, decades later, the hospice, which moved to North Rd in 2001, is well established.
''Almost anyone you talk to now has been touched in some way by someone who's been in the hospice and had amazing support and care.''
Hospice chief executive Ginny Green hopes so, because the hospice relies on the community for almost half of its annual funding - $2 million of its $4.8 million budget.
''The fact that we rely on our community so heavily gives the community ownership of this asset,'' she said.
''The community established it, and they are responsible for making sure it keeps going.''
And as the hospice's engagement with the community grows, so too does its size, caring for more than 400 patients a year, double the number of a couple of years ago.
In talking about her work, Ms Green kept returning to the word ''community''.
''Being a community-based service, we attend to the physical and the emotional and the spiritual [needs of a patient] ... We look at the whole person and the family unit rather than just the physical symptoms.''
