Ireland to Fernhill – Jonathan (Jonny) Moffett

Jim Newbigin: On 14th July [2020] at Landmark[s] was Jonny Moffett, and his subject was ’Ireland to Fernhill’.

Joyce Barry: It’s been a rollercoaster [Covid lockdown] as you all know. I found among older people what was a bit sad about coming out of lockdown – they found the peace … the birds; and it was just an amazing time which we’ve experienced.

Johnny’s got a lot to say, and it’s worth listening to; he’s a gentleman that’s [who’s] transversed the world, sports fields, boardrooms, and a lot of Hawke’s Bay soil. So a big story to tell, and I’m so grateful you agreed to do it, Johnny. I won’t apologise for the fact that he’s never picked up the New Zealand language, but he’s, I think, outstanding. [Applause]

Johnny Moffett: Well in response to that, Joyce, I have to say when I first came to New Zealand I thought they sounded a bit like cockneys; and I wasn’t born there. [Chuckles] I’m surprised so many people have not got somethin’ better to do [chuckles] on a Tuesday mornin’.

But I was born in 1937 and grew up on the outskirts of Belfast, listenin’ to the German bombers coming over … whurr, whurr, whurr. I’ve never forgotten it, and all the houses sandbagged up over the windows on the ground floor. My father actually, in 1941 volunteered, ’cause there was no conscription in Northern Ireland; and went to England as a Private, and went to Burma on the front line. He never spoke much about what went on and all the Japanese they shot, but he was there for four years and came back as a Major. And he’d bought a little farm out of Belfast for us at Ballyeasborough. My sister was two years younger, and we lived there on the farm out of Belfast for quite a few years.

My mother was one of [the] critics for the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] – they had about sixty or seventy critics round Great Britain, and between the age[s] of three and five she spent all her time teaching me – language, mathematics, English … extraordinary. There’s been a bit of publicity about how absorbative people can be at that age. But I was at the local public elementary school, Ballyhalbert; and in 1944 the head teacher told my mother that I was so far ahead of anybody at the school, she sent me to boarding school in Belfast. So that was during the war, and I had eleven years of boarding after that; and we had practises at air raid shelters.

But at the age of fifteen – my father had come back from the war and was running a family wholesale drapery business in Belfast; and he told me, “There’ll be no wholesale drapers; there’ll be producers and retail outlets; corporatisation all round the world, so you’ll never come back to this business.” And in the meantime, he’d bought a little four acre lifestyle block outside Newtownards.

And post-school I was working for a vege [vegetable] farmer; going to go and do Agriculture at college for a year, and then hopefully university in Agriculture. And then one day in the holidays my father spotted something in the newspaper; they were offering scholarships to Edinburgh and Aberdeen University. It was worth £300 a year each, and he said, “You’ve got to enter for that, it’s money for old rope.” And so [chuckles] I said, “Well I know nothin’ about forestry.” And he said, “Well you were in the British Schools Exploring Team in northern British Columbia just two years ago, and all your time you spent in forests.” So I went down to the local library and read up about forestry; went for an interview; there were four senior civil servants there. I had captained the Ulster Schools’ rugby team the year before, and they talked about rugby, and fifteen minutes later sent me out the door. Forestry never got a mention. [Chuckles] And that’s what it was like in the amateur days.

And I was about to start Agriculture at college and hadn’t heard anything – a little bit typical of Civil Service, I have to say, in Northern Ireland – I hadn’t heard anything. And I rang up and got shunted around Parliament, and eventually got one of the guys that [who] interviewed me, and he said, “Oh – which university d’you want to go to?” So really, I spent four years getting a three year degree, and then back to Northern Ireland. And I played rugby for … I got the degree, but I played rugby for the Scottish Universities in North Midlands – one of four provinces in Scotland at that time – and started my job as an Assistant District Forest Officer; and it was a great job for practising goal kicking, and training. [Chuckles] And my boss for the last two years there was a [an] alcoholic, so I covered up for him and I just did what I liked. [Chuckles]

And in 1961 I was picked to play against England at Lansdowne Road, and we hadn’t beaten England in ten years. And going out in the bus about four seats forward from the back, and listening to Syd Millar who was [??] man persuading Ronnie Dawson that I should do the goal kicking and not Tommy Kiernan. So I thought, on reflection many years later, I’m glad I didn’t get that news four days earlier; just an hour [chuckles] before kickoff. Anyway, there was a gale blowing and I had to have somebody from each touchline, but I got two penalties before half-time, and one into the wind in the second half, conversion, and we won 11-8. And the newspapers the next day … I just had full headlines: ‘Moffett Destroys England!’ [Laughter] Even Beauden Barrett would be pleased with that. [Chuckles] Another one: ‘Ballymena Blonde Bombshell Blasts Ireland To Victory!’ And another more reserved one in the Times: ‘Moffett Brought Joy To The Irish!’ And the following Tuesday in the Ballymena newspaper they published a little article saying there was no truth in the rumour that Moffett had left all his clothes in Dublin and come home with a suitcase full of newspapers. [Laughter] But two weeks later we went to Scotland, lost the match and five of us got dropped. [Chuckles]

But in ‘62-’63, that season I was captain of Ballymena, and it had Willie John McBride, and Syd Millar, who was later a president of World Rugby. And pre-season I’d been playing for the Public School Wanderers tour in Cornwall; and that was a London club that had won two Hong Kong Sevens.

But before the first game, when I was captain of the side at that time, I met this Gary Jamieson who, as an eighteen year old, played for Hawke’s Bay against the British Lions in ‘59; [siren in background] and he came up to me the night before the first match and said, “Ah, there’s something I should tell you, Johnny – I haven’t had a run for eighteen months.” He’d talked his way on as a [an] All Black trialist onto this tour, which was all rubbish; he’d had his car stolen and all his gear stolen in London. He was a simple Hawke’s Bay farmer’s son, and life was very honest in those days. So he told me, and I didn’t give him too much ball from halfback, but I could see the talent, and talked him into coming over to Ballymena and staying with [?Yvette?] and I in [a] country house, and playing that season. And we took the Senior cup out of Belfast – the first time in eighty years since rugby had started – to a country town, so it was a good party.

And on the way down to Cornwall six months previously I’d read a book called ‘First Overland’ by Tim Slessor; and it was a [an] Oxford and Cambridge group of guys in two Landrovers they’d painted dark blue and light blue, and driven from Belfast to Singapore, overland. And twelve months later we were on our way … a Hillman Husky van duty free for export. When eventually I got there [I] managed to sell it for double the price I’d paid for it. It was quite a journey; and I’d copped hepatitis in India and wasn’t able to play rugby here for the first season; and I was in hospital in Singapore for two weeks, and then flew to Darwin and hitchhiked Darwin to Sydney. Gary had flown home.

And it was quite an experience in northern Australia because I got picked up hitchhiking, and [I] always wore a clean shirt and so on. But the Seppelts rep [representative] picked me up, and we went through all the country towns in north Queensland, and then we came to one pub – it was late afternoon – and went to see the manager. And the big mama behind the bar came out; said “George! Great to see you!” Walked across, grabbed him by the crutch and said, “Is he gettin’ much exercise?” [Laughter] Ah … welcome to Australia. [Laughter]

Then a few days later I saw a little shop on the side of the road in north Queensland, and a lady there; I said, “Do you get many tourists up from New South Wales here?” “They come up with their £5 note and a dirty shirt – and they don’t change, either.” [Laughter]

So Gary met me down [in] Wellington when I got off the plane from Sydney; and he’d copped a bit of hepatitis too, and so we weren’t going to be playing the first half of the season anyway, but his father was very friendly with Mr Francis, who was headmaster of Lindisfarne; and I’d worked in France as golf instructor for three weeks previous to the drive over. So I took three classes of French; and the previous French teacher had been doing French dictation with English pronunciation … however that works; very sad. But it was a good year there, and I later heard … certain[ly] I’d never taught before, but when anybody in the classroom was talkin’ to the fellow next door or not paying attention, I just grabbed a stick of chalk and fired it; and I was quite accurate. [Chuckles] And a lot of those boys, who’re in their seventies now, remind me of it. [Chuckles] And the headmaster, apparently long after I’d left, said to a few people, “Well I don’t know how much he taught them, but they certainly enjoyed his classes.” [Chuckles]

At the end of the year I married Christine Walker from Walker’s Nurseries; here today. And we went and worked in Far North Queensland, and learned then that my father had left home and gone down to Africa, so my mother was on her own. We drove across Australia and then took the boat to Greece; and then I did another Public School Wanderers tour and played another season for Ballymena. And then we planned with a John Robb, who was a surgeon – he had driven with us to Singapore – we did a trip down from Belfast to Cape Town, overland and stayed with my father. And I worked for [coughing] Rhodes Farms for a few months, and Chris was modelling there. But the future didn’t look good for South Africa, and we took the boat home via Australia.

And I do remember standing outside on the deck looking at Wellington Harbour before we landed; looking at the land, thinking, ‘I’m twenty-nine; life’s really starting now’ – never having driven a tractor or really worked seriously on land. And I worked for AB Smith, did some contract pruning; and Fred Horrocks on Omāhu Road. And in ‘68 the Fraser family who’d had their eldest son drowned off Napier, [children’s voices] – I leased their peaches block – peaches and nectarines; fourteen varieties, fifty trees each; $700 a year for the block; twelve foot steel ladders. At that time there were a lot of working bees, and people helping one another.

And I don’t know … Vic Butcher who I played rugby with for Hastings … he was out workin’ at the weekend; he has a plumbing business now in Hastings. And he was up the top of the twelve foot ladder, and he shouted down, “D’you want to know the time?” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “I can see the town clock from here.” [Chuckles] And that was the corner of Maraekakaho Road and Longlands Road. [Chuckles] So I did four seasons for Hastings and captained them in ‘67. Working bees were big in those days, and the Rotary Club used to go out and pick peaches to raise funds for them.

And the YMCA owned an orchard at Longlands Road and it came up for sale because Wattie’s were going to cancel their contract. And I managed to speak to the Operations Manager and their Field Officer, and said, “I’ll buy it from them for $30,000 if you’ll give me the contract.” So we did that for ‘bout three years.

And at that time I had a little overseas funds my father had left me, and you could buy a new vehicle from Paul Jones, who’s [chuckles] not listening at the moment. [Chuckles] You could buy the vehicle duty free for export, and sell it if you drove it for a year; and you could sell it for double the price at the end of the year. That was very advantageous. And we were very close with Paul and Sylvia and all their young kids, and we used to go away up north camping, and having holidays in [the] early part of January. That was very formative.

And I realised that the Heretaunga Plains – the western edge was higher and earlier; production [was] better because the cold air slides down and then it gets trapped against the hills in Havelock. And when I had both orchards going we would have two picks of Golden Queen [peaches] at Korokipo before we ever went down to Longlands. But during the time I had peaches at Longlands, I worked with Allan Chittick, face to face across the freeze for two or three months, pruning most of our orchard and all of his; and so you get to know somebody quite well when you’re just there, the two of you, chatting across as you’re pruning.

And then in late ‘73 the opportunity [to] purchase Korokipo came up, and I sold the block to Brian Hutchinson, who’s here today. And that was all official; and then we leased it back, just on the basis of a handshake, and that worked well. There was no legal discipline about it, but it worked. And in those days when we purchased at Korokipo, there was a view – if you stood on the Fernhill bridge you could almost see Waiohiki, and there were just dairy farms all the way across. So we managed to purchase sixty-seven acres there. Some of it was already in apples, and the rest in maize. One of the worries about growing apples at that stage was getting labour there, ‘cause not many people had cars; but we had mums and kids came out and worked from nine ‘til three. That worked very, very well – I got to know a lot of people from that time.

But I wasn’t prepared to pack apples at night, ‘cause most people were just doing the little sheds, and it was really effective. And the Fruitpackers had owned about two, three years before and had about thirty shareholders. And so I joined Fruitpackers, and then three years on in 1976 I became a director; and in ‘82, became Chairman. And that continued for thirty-six years until 2018; and I’m now reduced to Deputy Chairman. [Chuckles] But we had gone from seventy shareholders to fourteen with the disaster in the early 2000s, and we could see that if some of our non-shareholder suppliers – big growers – pulled out, we’d be in trouble; we went from seventy shareholders to fourteen in quite a short period.

But from the time [I] was at Korokipo, we bought a lot of land; come [came] back in different stages. My son, Jonty, he came back, and he had done his apprenticeship – he didn’t like school – and he had started his apprenticeship with Paul Jones in 1968 at Hastings Motors. And there was a lot of suggestion within the staff that it was only because Paul and I were good mates that he’d got that job, but he got [the] top apprenticeship award for Hawke’s Bay in that year. So that was good. And later he went to Australia and worked on pipelines in the desert, and when everyone went to town to have a booze-up at the weekend he stayed out there and serviced the machinery, and came home with quite a lot of money. He also – in England – worked for a contracting firm that operated machinery, and only employed New Zealanders. [??] And the New Zealanders made contact with more and more, and so that’s what they ended up with over twenty-five years; only New Zealanders.

Second son, Joe … mechanical engineering degree in Christchurch; post-graduate in France. Played rugby for [?]; he was provided with accommodation. And he was very athletic, and in 1986 there was the Centennial Cup to celebrate a hundred years of skiing at Ruapehu. And all the pros [professionals] were there. [It] was difficult conditions but he won it, and he holds it for a hundred years. And it lies in the back of his shed covered in a whole lot of tools [Chuckles] Then when he came back from overseas, he was Heinz Wattie’s project engineer for four or five years, and then he came back to the family business.

Sean, the third son, he did his apprenticeship as a builder in Whanganui, and finished with Mackersey’s. He was quite a daredevil, and he was BASE jumping in Australia and in the USA, [United States of America] and in 1999 he won the New Zealand Swoop Accuracy title at Taupō, where he sailed and came down off the plane, and then you’ve got a target on the shore and then you’ve got to skim your feet through the water and land closest to the target. Later he went to the Norwegian fjords, and he was BASE jumping off there when the cruise ships came in, to witness them; the BASE jumpers going from two thousand feet.

And I hadn’t seen him for about six or eight months, but my mother’s ninetieth birthday was on at home; and I rang and persuaded him to come over for the birthday party in Northern Ireland. So he flew to Edinburgh, took the rail to Glasgow, came overnight in the boat to Belfast, and my mother and I went up to meet him off the boat; and here was this individual with long blonde tassels all the way down his back, and they’d been intertwined by some lovely German girl with multi-coloured beads. [Chuckles] So my mother, who was Methodist and never had drunk alcohol [chuckles] … she was quite silent [laughter] when we met him.

But we got the beads out of the hair over the next couple of days, and I was taking him up to the Giant’s Causeway and the rental car was leaking, and so we had to get it replaced at the airport. And he was going round to get the car – I did the paperwork – and it was raining. And there were three taxi drivers parked up in the covered way, and they’re watching this apparition walking bare feet, [chuckles] surf shorts, hair down his back. And I walked in the covered way, and when I was opposite the taxi drivers one said to the other two, “Are ye f—— Australian?” [Laughter]

So all came back to the family business – the combination of mechanic, builder and engineer was very, very convenient. And as Richard Jones told me years ago when they had the big family business in Hastings, “It’s a poor family business if it can’t have one waster”, [chuckles] referring to Stuart Jones, who spent most of his time very successfully playing golf. [Chuckles] “We’ve got none.” [Chuckles]

I go back to 1987 when I stood for the Apple & Pear Marketing Board. And John Paynter who’d done nine previous years was standing again – he hadn’t become Chairman or Deputy Chairman in those early days – he came back on. And in October ‘87 I was down for the interview with Fruitfed directors I think. It was the day of the financial great crash, and I was walking up and down wondering what was going to happen in Wellington. And a Christchurch director whose name I’ve lost, when the interview was going on he suddenly said, “You’ve got a university degree and you played rugby for Ireland – you’ll do me.” [Chuckles] So that was my access to the Board. And the following year it was suggested by some of the directors that I take over the chairmanship, but I didn’t take it on. Our operations at home … I didn’t want half of my time in a flat in Wellington, so I was Deputy Chairman for seven years, and made two hundred and thirty return trips to Wellington in nine years, many of them with John who’s here tonight. At least they had a car we could drive from the offices and get home on time, and didn’t have to wait for planes.

But one night we were coming through the Manawatu Gorge and a rock came down and broke the window – I was driving at the time – broke the window behind me. So we had five or ten minutes cleaning up the mess and putting some plastic in there, and then we just drove on. And two minutes later, John says, “What’re you planting this winter?” [Laughter] Yeah. Oh well, he’s always wanted to plant the entire Heretaunga Plains; [chuckles] he’s got very close, but hasn’t quite got there.

And then a few years later in the mid-nineties, we were changed from four grower-appointed directors of the New Zealand Apple & Pear Board, and two government appointees; and that was changed to four growers and two commercial appointees. Price Waterhouse Coopers were our financial advisers and they took part in that, or witnessed the voting. And Wilson Whineray was standing as a commercial appointee, but we already had his skills round the table and just wanted a super salesman that we had to control. So Wilson didn’t get on, and [the] PWC managing director came over to me after the voting and said, “I know why you didn’t vote for Wilson Whineray.” I said, “Oh, why’s that?” “Prop forward.” [Laughter]

When I left the Apple & Pear Board, end of ‘96 after nine years on it, we had two thousand suppliers. Three years later when single-desk selling was gone, fax selling Dutch markets ended in a disaster ‘cause there was no training in a competitive world. It was very, very bad. And then we all as suppliers had shareholding in the Apple & Pear Board, but Tony Gibbs came under the radar and legally leased a couple of orchards down in the Wairarapa, and then began buying the shares; and he eventually took over the Board. It was three or four years after John and I were involved; we had to go down to Wellington and speak to the Minister of Agriculture, that Tony Gibbs couldn’t have a monopoly. So there was a bit of mayhem then, and a lot of the quotable valuations of orchards in Hawke’s Bay came down by forty to forty-five percent.

But the boys on our orchard had the courage to go to mortgagee sales, and we bought quite a few blocks, all on Korokipo Road or Swamp Road, or Ōmarunui Settlement Road. And a lot of them were bought at $7,000 an acre, and today they’re probably worth forty, fifty, sixty – our neighbours have gone for $60,000 an acre. But much of that’s overseas owned, which is sad.

Today at Moffett Orchards the family members own six separate titles, four with family homes on them; all leased to Moffett Orchards Limited. Moffett Holdings owns six blocks leased out to Moffett Orchards, all over the Fernhill bridge; total is now two hundred hectares, and twenty-five hectares leased – a hundred hectares in apples, a hundred and twenty-five hectares of rockmelons, watermelons, machine-harvested green beans, machine-harvested sweetcorn, butternuts and courgettes, and we supply Countdown Distribution Centres three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Only twenty or thirty percent of our apples get exported, and Countdown don’t import any apples any more because the preserving systems are very good.

And on the machinery side we have thirty-two tractors, but the youngest one is thirty years old. And our yard looks like a wreckers’ yard [chuckles] but in the old days they were built to last, and I can’t say the same of modern tractors and their structure. It’s been a wise decision not to invest in depreciating assets; Jonty’s handled that very well.

And since we sold Fruitpackers, Joe’s come back home – that was in 2016, and he’s built a new ten thousand-bin cool store with CA [controlled atmosphere] SmartFresh facilities; and a large packhouse, hugely automated, with facilities for mechanical packing melons, green beans and apples. A lot of it’s very new technology and experimentation.

Also, Jonty has joined forces in bee-keeping with Flanders & Moffett; Flanders came from Arataki [Honey]. And it’s working well, and they now have two thousand hives up in high country … manuka country … between Hawke’s Bay and Wairarapa.

I go out the bottom doing a few local sales, look after stocks for the smoko room and the [?] rooms. [Chuckles] And at high season we have a hundred employees this year. So that’s about it.

[Applause]

Joyce: That was something else. I’m going to get John Paynter to do a thank you; if there’s any questions first? Just might elongate the questions I think, so I’d love you to talk now, John.

John Paynter: Well, Johnny, on behalf of the audience here, thank you for that journey of your life, and as one who’s spent a lot of time with you driving from Wellington to Auckland, and many days around Board tables and in discussions … I mean, I wasn’t sure about Johnny when we got on the Board together, but I learnt in nine years, this guy is a fantastic guy. And what a wonderful life story he’s given us today; a story of courage and taking opportunities; of a person with vision. Johnny has a lot of very fine qualities. They didn’t actually come out today but he’s got some wonderful qualities. So – friendly with Paul Jones; buying a Ford off [from] Paul Jones, and sixty years later he’s still buying Fords.

Johnny: In thirty-two years he sold me nineteen new vehicles, and the following twenty-four years I’ve only bought one. [Chuckles]

John: Anyway, he’s been able to retire and you haven’t. [Laughter] Johnny has made a tremendous contribution outside of what he told us today about his journey [child whispering] – what a colourful journey it’s been, as I said. But he’s made tremendous contributions. Johnny has been a great citizen; he’s been a great friend to people, a great citizen, made a tremendous contribution here. But to the New Zealand growers in our time, in the nine years you spent on the Board, you were a great grower representative; you battled for growers long and hard, and you made a difference in people’s lives. That’s a great thing to’ve done – you absolutely did that. Now Johnny has always accented the positive in life; he looks at opportunities and goes for them. You picked that up in his talk today. But he’s got one word that I’ll never forget, he used regularly when I was with him; he’d be talking about something, an opportunity or something new, and he’d say, “That’s terrific”. [Chuckles] And for me that sums up Johnny – he’s positive, and he does things in an optimistic way, and he aims to make things terrific. So Johnny, thanks for that terrific speech. [Applause]

Joyce: Are there any big questions you’ve got? I’m going to hold Johnny here, and if anyone would like a wee word with him – you won’t mind, Johnny, will you? But thank you so much; one round of applause for a wonderful speaker.