Greer, Russell William Interview

10th November 2020

I’m interviewing today Russell Greer at his home in Greenmeadows, and we’ve got a very interesting story coming up here. Now good afternoon, Russell.

Afternoon, Jim.

And if you can tell us your history of your grandparents when they first came to Hawke’s Bay; and anything at all from there, we’ll be very interested.

Okay, I’ll do my best. Some of it I’ve got written down and we can read out and then we might just chop and change a bit.

So John Greer, my great grandfather, would’ve been born around 1855 in Kilglass, County Sligo, Ireland, and emigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1870s or maybe a couple of years later. He was the older brother of Acheson who was born in 1860, and emigrated to New Zealand as well. John arrived in Lyttelton, bought a dray and presumably horse, and then worked his way south through Canterbury into Otago; Southland; following the harvests and sleeping under his dray. He ended up farming in Longridge North near Balfour in eastern Southland, and for a time farmed in partnership with his younger brother. However, for some reason they didn’t get on that well, and after a time Acheson went his own way. Apparently the rift between the two brothers went on after they parted company, but I have no idea why this was. John wanted to get married and the farm wasn’t big enough, or it may’ve been a more fundamental reason.

John Greer would’ve only had a basic primary school education as was the norm of the time – who knows? The farm that John Greer had at Longridge North was not very easy to farm and he worked very hard [for] not much return. I’m not sure exactly where it was; my cousin did find out some years ago. Apparently the high part in the farm was called Mount Buggery … interesting. In [the] 1920s or thereabouts he had [had] enough, and retired to Timaru where he was pretty discontented; living on a small section whereas his wife lived in town. I don’t know if one of his sons took over the farm or whether it was sold, but the early twenties was quite a buoyant time farming in New Zealand, and he may’ve taken advantage [of] good prices to sell out.

John Greer married Margaret King, who was of Scottish blood; born in 1867 in Glasfield, Scotland. They had a family of four children – William Alexander, who set up Stewart Greer Motors, Acheson, Emily and Frank. John died around 1930 in Timaru, while his widow lived until 1953 and died at the age of sixty-six. [Eighty-six] It’s possible to get copies of John’s marriage and death certificates from the Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages in Wellington. Two brothers of the Balfour Greers used to own butchers shops in Balfour and someone remembered calling to say ‘hello’, once.

My grandfather, William Alexander Greer, known as Bill, was born in Southland and made a successful career in the motor trade; started in the bicycle business when at the age of sixteen he joined P H Vickery in Invercargill. With the emergence of the motor car my grandfather switched to cars, and learned everything he could about mechanics. For health reasons … and I think the reason was he was run over by a horse cart, I think, and had a very bad gammy leg … and everyone will remember he had a walking stick for most of his life. Any rate, the south was too cold for him, so he moved to Hastings where he worked for the Tourist Motor Company for a short time. He joined Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ in Napier when the company started a garage, and was later transferred to Dannevirke when it opened a new garage. He was in Dannevirke for two years before returning to work at Farmers garage in Hastings. Later on he went into partnership with Edmund Stewart; the other side of the Stewart Greer Motors.

Have you got dates for this?

Dates for ..?

When he moved to Hastings?

No I haven’t. But … 1934 he started the business with Edmund Stewart. I’ve got a copy of his marriage certificate. He married on 9th November 1921, to Maheleth King, my grandmother, and that was at St John’s Cathedral in Napier. So I’ve got that; oh, in fact I think I’ve even got their blimmin’ passports here, believe it or not. Look at that. [Chuckle] So I’ve got quite a bit of history there; Longridge … there we are.

Any rate – then my father, Lew Greer … not sure when he was born but I can soon work that out because I know he died in 1975 [1973] at the age of forty-five. Yeah … outlived my mother who died aged forty-three, seventeen months earlier.

So any rate, my parents moved to Waipukurau in 1950 to open up the Stewart Greer Motors garage in Waipukurau, and we lived there for five years.

I was born in Waipukurau, and then in 1959 they moved to Hastings where the company built a new dealership; so we moved and lived in Whitehead Road in Hastings. I went to Mahora School, then moved to Heretaunga Intermediate and at that time I remember we shifted to … 509 I think it was … Nottingley Road in Frimley. That area’s all changed now, yeah; very much so. I’ve got two brothers, Philip and Jeromy; Philip’s eighteen months younger than me and Jeromy’s another two years younger than that. We all went to boarding school; boarded at St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton [for] five years. Five great years of my life; thoroughly enjoyed it. Learned a lot of people skills, wasn’t very good academically, but certainly learnt how to get on with people, and played a lot of sport. So I came back from school in about 1970 I think it was – I can double check on that, got some records somewhere – and worked in the family business in Hastings as a Parts junior. I can actually remember visiting you, Jim, with my father on some occasions. [Laughter]

And then unfortunately my last year at school I lost my mother. She died very young from leukaemia. And then seventeen months after that my father passed away. I was living with my father in the family home in Nottingley Road; Philip was at Palmerston North at Massey University, and Jeromy was still at school. So I was sort of left high and dry; and my godmother, Anne Crawley, who was a spinster and a very close friend of my mother, a dental nurse – she came; moved into the family home, and that lasted for about two years. During that time I met my wife, Alison. At that time two years later, unfortunately we had to sell the family home to pay death duties. My grandfather was busy gifting shares in the company to my father so that he would not get caught with death duties, and it all backfired, so we ended up having to sell the boat and the cars and the house.

At that time Alison and I got married and we moved into our own home in Puketapu Road in Taradale, where we brought up three daughters. My brothers went flatting in a family friend’s house … old Dr Ted Shilton’s house … who my godmother stayed with then for a few years.

After a few years in the business, Edmund Stewart decided he wanted to move me to Napier and train me as a junior car salesman, and he thought it was best that I work under him, and as we were living in Taradale it made sense. So I worked under him and his son-in-law, Peter Taylor, for the company, and I learned a lot from Edmund Stewart; taught me a lot of the basics. Taught me how to handle people; never to ever get in an argument – you might win the argument but you’ll lose the customer and you’ll lose the sale. So he taught me that. He also taught me that you always be completely honest; that way if anyone ever questions you on anything you can never ever get caught out. He said, “If you tell someone a fib, somewhere along the line you’ll get caught out, ‘cause you’ll forget you said it.” So there were some very interesting skills there.

And I think I’m proud to say I became a pretty successful salesperson and worked myself up the ladder. I left school in 1971, started my first job with the family company as a parts assistant; four years later moved to Taradale with my wife, and took a junior sales role at the Napier branch, which I’ve mentioned. From there I worked my way up through the department to become a sales manager then a branch manager before becoming sole owner and managing director in 1997.

Yeah – over a period of time I bought both my brothers out. Jeromy was the branch manager in Hastings for a few years, and I haven’t got the exact dates here; and then he decided he wanted to go farming. And Philip, who’d studied horticulture in Palmerston North, he was an orchardist so he had no interest in the company; so over a period of years I bought them out. And then the Stewart family, who were the Napier based family, had the other fifty percent shareholding, and some time later the then company secretary, Len Morley, bought the Stewart shares and I bought him out after he retired. He retired and left me in charge; but it lasted about four or five years and then I ended up buying – or the bank helped me buy him out, and I became the sole owner of the company for the last twelve years, where I put my head down and managed to get to the stage where I could retire without any debt.

So I’ve got three daughters who all live in Hawke’s Bay, Linda, Paula and Jackie. They’ve all married … got six grandchildren who live in Hawke’s Bay; so very fortunate to have everybody, the whole family, in Hawke’s Bay. Not many people can say that.

What I did do – while I was working I got very interested in sailing. I remember going to the company secretary and seeing if I could borrow some money, ‘cause I wanted to buy a yacht, and I really got laughed at I guess. But somehow, I’m not sure how, somehow I managed to buy a twenty-two foot Noelex trailer yacht, and every Saturday we’d race that religiously; and used to chase national championships around the country. Ended up becoming Vice-Commodore of the Napier Sailing Club for a period of time, and then later on I gave that away and became interested in golf.

Being Vice-Commodore … I mean, what did you actually do? Or was it just a name?

Oh – Vice-Commodore was really helping run the club basically; yeah, running the club. I didn’t [get] involved in running the racing; managing the sailing club.

You joined the Napier Golf Club?

Yeah, and I’m actually Vice President of the Napier Golf Club, which I’ve been for several years; involved in the management of the Golf Club which I thoroughly enjoy. Yeah. So [I’ve] been playing golf for about thirty years, I guess. Apart from that we do quite a bit of boating; do a lot of fishing out in the sea; at Taupo; camping … family holidays camping; biking … do a lot of biking, you know, the Timber Trail and all the South Island trails. Yeah.

Overseas travel?

Yep, Alison and I quite [have been on] quite a few overseas trips. Alison is a passionate tramper. She was Club Captain of the Napier Tramping Club for ten years. She took me overseas; remember circumnavigating Mont Blanc over a period of about twelve days. We’ve trekked in South America, and we’ve done quite a bit of travel in Europe and the UK, [United Kingdom] where we visited relations. Got to the stage where my knees got a bit gammy; ended up having two new knees, and so I gave up tramping.

Two new knees? My word!

Well half knees as they call them these days; but brilliant now – not a problem. Retired on the 30th September 2012. I’m not sure where that time’s gone. I had an opportunity to get out of the business and I didn’t have anyone else who wanted to take it over, so two separate entities bought the business.

Over that period of time in business, what agencies did you have?

Myself personally, [it] was Austin, Morris. We had several tractor franchises, truck franchises; and then we moved on to Honda in 1978. And then we acquired … it was a period of time which I talk about in the company history … we acquired the Nissan franchise. So we had [a] dual franchise, so it was a bit tricky for me trying to run Honda and Nissan in Napier, and Honda and Nissan in Hastings; trying to keep the franchisors happy. Always difficult.

Yes – so I can remember in my early days in the Parts department selling Beatty washing machines. [Chuckle]

But we were big into farm trucks and tractors, and that all started when my grandfather became a close friend of Sir James Wattie, and ended up when Sir James Wattie became Wattie Canneries; he was one of the original directors of that company, and so we had an inside running in supplying most of the … Allis Chalmer[s] and Nuffield tractors and trucks to Wattie Industries. Yeah. So that sort of got us on our feet really, but it was [the] Austin and Morris days that really, I think, held the company in the best stead.

So as a result of having the Honda and Nissan franchises I was fortunate enough to win some sales awards; ended up going to motor shows in Australia; went to the Japanese motor show … Tokyo motor show in Japan. Visited [a] couple of Nissan and a couple of Honda assembly plants while I was over there, and one year Honda took all their dealers and their wives for a three week trip through the States to visit assembly plants etcetera, over there. Yeah, they were wonderful times. Had an opportunity to race cars round Suzuki and Honda’s other Formula 1 track called Tochigi … yeah. So that was fascinating. So you know, we used to have a lot of fun; good comradeship with the other dealers. Now most of the dealers are independent, a bit like myself, so we compare notes and work together which all helped. Yeah.

Anyway … well Russell, thank you very much for that, you’ve given us a load of papers and photos to look at and …

Yeah, there’s a lot of records there, a lot’s self explained. It’s all written down but there’ll be some gaps, and I’m happy to come in and go through with whoever to try and fill some of those gaps, and maybe just try and describe some of the photos, of who and what they are.

Well thank you very much indeed;  on behalf of the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank …

Thank you, Jim.

… we’re delighted.