Once international, always international.
It may, at first, have come as a slight surprise for the about 30 graduates of the former University of Otago School of Mines, arriving on campus yesterday for a reunion, to find their former haunt now houses the university's International Office.
But, ironically, there was something particularly international about gaining a degree from the former Otago School of Mines.
For many mines graduates, gaining an Otago degree was a passport to work in the mining industry almost anywhere in the world, including Australia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Iran.
Graduate Lindsay Spittle, who worked throughout his career in Australia, was pleased to be back for the reunion.
''It's good to see the old place again and see how much it's changed,'' he said.
Among those attending the first day of the three-day reunion at the Otago campus yesterday was Michael (''Mick'') Buckenham, who graduated from the School of Mines in the early 1950s.
After working in senior roles in the Australian mining industry, he returned to the school as a senior lecturer in 1956.
He was later made an associate professor and, in 1977, was appointed chairman of the then department of mineral technology, previously the School of Mines.
This department was controversially transferred to the University of Auckland School of Engineering in 1987, and Mr Buckenham continued as head of department until he retired.
The department was closed in 1994.
Leslie Black (89), a school graduate and Mosgiel resident, was enjoying the reunion, and noted the campus had ''vastly changed'' over the years.
Mr Black had worked overseas throughout his career, in several countries, on three continents.
He had been working in former Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, when a British mining colleague asked him: ''Are you from that famous Otago University School of Mines?''
