Klinkhamer, Louis Gerard Interview

[Background insect noise] It’s 24th February [2020] and I’m speaking with Lou Klinkhamer, old friend of Hastings. And nice to see you in your beautiful home here on a nice afternoon in Hawke’s Bay. Thank you for allowing this interview. Now, what I’d like to know: I’d like your full history, when you first came to Hawke’s Bay, and I’ll let you go from there.

Yeah, well good afternoon everyone. My name is Lou Klinkhamer and I am coming up eighty-one years of age. I’ve been in New Zealand since 1952. I can recall my first experiences coming to New Zealand by going to Mahora School and not speaking a word of English, which was a little bit difficult to say the least. In those days, they used to weigh you and check your height and stuff at the school, which was something unusual for me. And they asked me for my weight and I said, “Yes, about forty-two kilograms.” They said, “No, no, no. No – hang on, hang on – what is forty-two kilograms? Stand on these scales.” So I stood on some scales and they told me I was six stones and seven pounds. I had no idea that they measured people in stones. Anyway, then following that, they asked me my height and I said, “Oh, about one twenty-five.” And they said, “What do you mean, one twenty-five?” And I said, “Well – one metre and twenty-five centimetres.” “No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no – we don’t do that in New Zealand. Stand under this slide thing on the wall.” And I was four feet, two inches. Yeah right, you know. “Feet?” I said. “What – like you’ve got on the bottom of your legs?” I said to my mother, I said, “What sort of a place have we come to?”

And then of course we had money in pounds, shillings and pence, and halfpennies and farthings and all that, and I said, “Good God! Pounds!” Not as in weight, no – that was a different pounds. So I tell them that you know – “Haven’t you got decimal currency here?” And they said, “No, no, no.” And I said, “Well, in Holland, we had decimal currency – the guilder – in 1817.” I think we did it here in New Zealand in 1967.

And then when we went to school in the morning, there was a big crate sitting on the footpath with half-pint bottles of milk, with a cardboard inset sort of thing in the top; and we didn’t get to drink that until lunchtime, by which time it was lukewarm.

And then, it quite amazed me – I saw these kids walking down the road sticking their hands inside their jersey[s] – this was in July; it was cold – and getting something out of their jersey and sticking it into their mouth[s]. And I wondered what on earth they were doing, so I stopped on of them and asked him what he was doing. And for a shilling you could get some chips wrapped up in newspaper; and what you did, you tore the top of the newspaper up, stuck it down the shirt and then you were nice and warm while you were eating chips.

So that was really the beginning. I then went to Hastings Boys’ High. I had three or four years at Hastings Boys’ High, and from there on I travelled around the world when I was twenty-two. And I wanted to start my own business, Klinkhamer’s Paint Store Limited in Stortford Lodge, but I needed some money to do that. So I worked at Wattie’s, and I got to know Jim Wattie personally, who said to me that if I had two jobs I would have to pay extra tax. So he said to me, “What’s your name?” And I said, “It’s Lou Klinkhamer.” And he said, “Have you got any other names?” And I said, “Yes, my second name is Gerárd.” He said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, young fellow”, he says, “I’ll set up two accounts for you; one for Lou Klinkhamer and one for Gerárd Klinkhamer, so you don’t have to pay the extra tax.” And I did that for four years working two shifts, and earned enough money, some $10,000, which was enough for me to start my shop.

I got to know Jim personally, and he invited me to his niece’s wedding down Lyndhurst Road, and asked me to look after his drinks for the evening, which I did. He loved his whisky and I kept giving him his whisky and ice, at which stage I said, “I think, Jim, you’ve had enough.” And he said, “No, no – you’re driving me home.” Well, driving him home was his brand new Bentley that he’d just bought, so that was a bit of fun, driving this Bentley all the way back to Mangapapa.

Anyway, having earned enough money to start my own business, I started a group called the Paint and Wallpaper Federation, and joined up with fifty-one other stores in New Zealand, called the PWF Group, and I became the buyer for that whole group. In 1976 there was a New Zealand-wide competition on a brand of paint called Goldex and they wanted to see who could sell the most Goldex stain … called Olympic Stain in those days … and the first prize was a first-class trip to Montreal in Canada, to the Olympic Games. I said to myself, “Right. We’re going to go after that.” And they said, “You’ve got no show against Guthrie Bowron’s and Resene and all these other people.” And I said, “Well, we’re going to give it a go anyway.” And guess what? I won that trip and my first wife and I went to Montreal to the Olympic Games. Unfortunately we divorced, and I moved to Auckland and became the national Credit Manager for James Hardie Phillips – the Phillips and Impey Group. I designed all their stores, and looked after their fleet of some two hundred and twenty-two cars.

I met my second wife, Janice, about eight months later, and after twelve years living in Auckland returned to Havelock North; and I managed Goddard Security until I retired at seventy-two.

My wife and I have travelled extensively all overseas; we’ve travelled twice to China, and I became the Hawke’s Bay President of the New Zealand-China Friendship Society for many years. The first trip to China was with our mayor, Jeremy Dwyer.

Other than that, I’ve been in the Masonic Lodge for many years, and Services Lodge; a member of the New Zealand Founders Association; a member of the Hawke’s Bay Petrolheads Group; a past member of the New Zealand Food & Wine; and my wife is President of the Hawke’s Bay branch of the Cancer Society. I have two articles in Michael Fowler’s recently published book, ‘Historic Hawke’s Bay’, on pages 52 and 108.

Other than that, my hobbies were flying aeroplanes which I had to do for my business, and I have my own private pilot licence.

And originally coming to New Zealand – in 1951, ‘52, my father tried to get an entry permit into New Zealand. He was a Doctor of mathematics; he was a pilot himself; he was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Dutch Air Force; so everything was all tickety-boo, but we couldn’t come to New Zealand. And he tried again for an entry permit and they said, “No.” He tried a third time and he [they] said, “No.” My mother suggested that [he] go and talk to a gypsy friend of hers, and she advised rather an unusual method, to say [saying], “Why don’t you ring the Minister of Immigration in Wellington?” Well in those days we had the old dial phone that switched you through from Holland to London, from London to New York, from New York to San Francisco, from San Francisco to Hawaii, from Hawaii to Fiji, from Fiji to Auckland and from Auckland to Wellington, which took about half an hour or more to get through. But when my father eventually did get through to the Minster of Immigration and asked him why we couldn’t come to New Zealand, he said, “There is no problem at all except that there is a housing shortage, and if you get here we have nowhere for you to live.” As it happened, my father happened to work in Delft with another Air Force officer whose father was related to van Loghem and La Grouw, the people who eventually started Lockwood Homes here in New Zealand. And one of their brothers had another business selling kitset houses to Brazil. So my father said to the Minister of Immigration in Wellington, “If there is a housing shortage, what if we bring a house?” As you can imagine, there was dead silence on the other end of the phone while the Minister tried to digest that. You know – “Bring a house?” he said. “Yes. If that’s what it needs to come to this god-forsaken place, we’ll bring a house.” “Yes,” said the Minister; “Well”, he said, “if you can give me that in writing, you can come.” And we did.

We then purchased a section on the corner of Lumsden Road and Copeland Road from a Mr Beckett and that cost £250. In those days, you were only allowed to take £1,000 out of Holland, so Dad had £750, and the house was all kitset; it was supposed to be put together in six days. Hughie Little decided to build the house and instead of taking six days he took six weeks, which took up the last of our £750, so at that stage we were stone-broke, but we had a house and a section which were freehold. So that was sort of our adventure coming here.

Then from a sporting point of view, I was very interested in roller-skating, and there was a roller-skating rink at Windsor Park. We used to play ice hockey back in The Hague but there not being any ice here, that didn’t go. So I talked to the manager of the roller-skating rink and asked him whether we could start roller-hockey here. And he hadn’t heard of that, so I said, “Well, you know – it’s like ice hockey but you play it on roller skates instead of on ice skates.” So he said, “No, we can’t do that. There’s no way we can do that.” He says, “You’ll do damage to the concrete with your hockey sticks.” Jack Charters had a sports shop in Market Street, and he made hockey sticks for us that were flat on both sides; and instead of using a puck which was a sort of a rubber disc thing that we used to use in ice hockey, we used a cricket ball, and we started roller hockey nevertheless. It became the most popular thing that ever happened on the Windsor Park skating rink and we formed a team; in fact we formed two teams and we played against each other. Napier found out that we were doing this, so Napier played against us and we beat them; and then Palmerston North found out that we played, and we played in Palmerston and we beat them; so at that stage we became New Zealand champions. [Chuckles] It was a very interesting way to introduce a new game to New Zealand.

I think that’s probably all that I can mention here, but that gives you an insight anyway, of what happened since we came to New Zealand.

I feel that you’ve got a lot more to tell us about your life when you first came to Hawke’s Bay, and then we’ll get onto some of your other things. You’re a great man to … not object, but write about that [which] you are not happy with. It’s good reading in the local paper, and I hope it goes to other papers as well, in different areas, so I’d like you to perhaps talk to us a little bit about that side of things.

Yes, well, Jim, I read the paper every day, and find things which I think are not right or should be looked at, and if I feel strongly enough I write to the editor of the paper and say, you know, “What about this? And what about that?” But for those of you that have read my articles in the Hawke’s Bay Today, I’ve had quite a bit to say about the Te Mata Track at the back of Te Mata Peak, with Ngahiwi Tomoana; and the end result of his proliferations with the Council, costing the Hastings ratepayers some million dollars to remediate this track back into what it was. I personally still think that that was a disaster that was a very worthwhile gift from Mr Peabody from Craggy Range to spend $300,000 of his own money to build that track. I personally have taken visitors to the top of that track and down again, and Mr Peabody told me that he had some $30,000 worth of imported Canadian hardwood sitting in the shed ready to build seats and railings and stuff up there. But thanks to Ngahiwi Tomoana and his interference, and his pōkokohua business, that unfortunately came unstuck. Bayden Baber [Barber] who was on Council had a hand in this, driving past there for three months whilst it’s being built and not saying anything until the track was in; the end result of which is now that the track has been back-filled at great cost to the Hastings ratepayers. And it looks worse now than it ever did with the lime showing the whole track now.

Jim asked me about the shop; I had Klinkhamer’s Paint Store at Stortford Lodge, as I mentioned earlier, and became a major distributor in Hawke’s Bay selling brushware. I was the distributor for Hamilton Brushware, and people like Derek Ricketts from Scott and Ricketts in Taradale used to be one of my customers, buying Selley’s products off me, for which I was also a distributor; Hamilton Brushware; Bunting Brushware; and various paints that he wanted. As you will know, Derek started Mitre 10 … Mega [Mitre] 10, and now has stores in Hastings and Napier, and Auckland and down Wellington way. I was a major distributor for Goldex Paints, British Paints – I had Rolf Harris at my place for dinner one night, but we won’t talk about that. I was the distributor for Berger Paints. In fact I had probably one of the largest paint and wallpaper retail businesses in Hastings. I built a warehouse behind my store, but unfortunately, due to my first wife, I had to sell everything. In those days everything had to go fifty-fifty; and that’s when I finished up going to Auckland.

You might like to tell us a little bit about your thoughts on the Arataki Motor Camp, as well.

Yes, well that’s an interesting story that once again involved quite a few letters to the paper, one thing and another. The Minister of Māori Affairs and Minister of Education decided that the Arataki Motor Camp was originally purchased with the intention of building a new primary school for the children living in this side of Havelock North. Her name was Hekia Parata. We had many, many arguments, and letters and emails going backwards and forwards. She was determined that as Minister of Education, she was going to turn the Arataki Motor Camp into a total immersion Māori school. I said to her, “Look, with all due respect, where are these Māori children going to come from?” She said, “We will bus them in from Flaxmere every day – some six hundred-odd – from Flaxmere, to go to this new school we are going to build.” And I said to her, “With all due respect, Hekia”, I said, “don’t you think that you should build a total immersion Māori school, if you want to build such a thing, either at Flaxmere or build it somewhere near one of the marae, say at Waipatu, where Māori people live?” Anyway, we got to the stage where we were no longer talking, and I fought tooth and nail to say, “Look, this is ridiculous.” And partially due to the Te Mata Mushroom odour problem, I managed to get her to change her mind; and she decided that she would take my advice and buy some land on the corner of Bennett Road and Karamu Road to build this total immersion Māori school – as a result of which the land then became available for sections, and some thirty-eight sections were sold within two weeks. And if you drive past there now, you’ll see that all but about three or four sections haven’t been built on. So that was one that perhaps I can take credit for, you know, that I stopped this total immersion Māori school being built right here in Havelock North, where it shouldn’t have been in the first place. It should’ve been somewhere near a Māori marae or possibly near Flaxmere.

Rex Graham and … what’s-his-name? Foss … you know, are going to rename the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council the Hawke’s Bay Environment Centre [to] which I’ve said, “Look, you know, stick with the bloody Regional Council; everybody knows what you are and what you do and where you come from.” I said, “Calling it the Hawke’s Bay Environment Centre’s only going to confuse people with our outfit”, you know? Once again, it’s another little fight on my hands. [Chuckle] Oh, I don’t know, it’s interesting; I’m a very honest person. If I disagree with something, or something that’s not right, then I say, “Hey, come on. Let’s try and put it right.”

I’m just trying to squeeze a little bit more out of you, like one person I spoke to, and I said, “Well come on now – what did your grandparents have for breakfast in the morning for instance?” Well, he started up – just carried …

I wouldn’t have a clue what my grandparents … I know what we had during the war. It was called grass.

It’s very interesting. Lou, I want to thank you very much for your talk, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot more stories to tell, and I think the next generation will be happy to interview you when you get into your nineties.

Wishful thinking. [Chuckles]

But thank you, anyway.