Logan, Hamilton Stopford Interview

Good morning. I’m interviewing this morning Hamilton Logan, well known retired farmer from Hawke’s Bay.  It’s the 3^rd of August [2016]. Good morning Hamilton. Nice to have you here.  Now I’d just like you to tell us all about your time, when your grandparents arrived in  Hawke’s Bay, and right up to the present day, and I’ll leave it all to you.

Thank you Jim. Good morning to everybody. As can be understood this is quite a mammoth task tracing ninety-one [now ninety-two] years of my existence on Earth. So I will do my best and start at the beginning.

My paternal grandfather Francis Logan arrived in New Zealand in 1879 [1881]. By that time he was a qualified lawyer and barrister and an outstanding sportsman, and he came to New Zealand because he was suffering from indifferent health. And I can only suspect – as was so often the case in those days – that it was TB.

He arrived in New Zealand with £500 [£1,000] which was a lot of money in those days.  And the first job he took was in Auckland where the deposit was £250 [£500] – stay for six months or else forfeit your money.  He didn’t stay for six months because he disapproved of the type of practice that the firm was indulging in, and he came to Napier, and he was able to get a job with Mr Sainsbury as a law clerk.  Things being as they were he had to re-sit all his United Kingdom papers again which he did over the course of a year or two. In 1883 he went into partnership with Mr Sainsbury and they were Sainsbury Logan until 1900 when they took in a Mr Williams and became Sainsbury Logan & Williams, and that is the only firm – legal firm – in Hawke’s Bay that still holds its original name.

My father was born in Napier, educated in New Zealand, did his tertiary education at Oriel College, Oxford. He was following in his father’s footsteps, taking law. Unfortunately he too contracted TB over in the damp climate of the United Kingdom.  He came back to New Zealand, spent a year at Okawa with the Lowry family, and then went back to complete his degree, but had a relapse and it was decided that he should come back to New Zealand, which he did;  worked in his father’s office for a time and then went farming on the advice of doctors and particularly Mr T H Lowry. So my father bought the outstation of Olrig Station in 1912;  married in the same year, and he married a Miss Turnbull.

My mother’s father, Robert McGregor Turnbull, was born in Trinidad where his father had large sugar cane plantations, the follow-on industries, and his own shipping. He sent the young Robert to New Zealand in one of his ships [Tamana], in 1862 as an eighteen year old. The following year young Robert Turnbull purchased Linnburn Station as a nineteen year old. Linnburn in those days was fourteen hundred acres of freehold, eighty thousand acres of leasehold.  He farmed there for a number of years and purchased Wanaka Station, and so up until 1912 he owned both those large South Island stations.

When my mother married my father in 1912, my grandfather sold Linnburn and Wanaka Station and bought Kereru Station, which was next door to where my father had bought the back outstation of Olrig Station.  So that is basically a thumbnail sketch of my ancestry.

I was born 21^st November 1924, the youngest of six.  I had three sisters and two brothers.  My eldest brother was twelve years older than me and my second brother, Bob, six years older.  So they virtually weren’t playing companions.  In those days they went to school when they were quite young and so early memories of my two sibling brothers was during school holidays.  So I grew up in many respects as a very much younger member of the family, which did mean that I had far more contact with my parents than my five siblings did, and I’ve always thought that this was a distinct advantage, because having an enquiring mind, I was always asking questions, and I was very seldom disappointed with the answers I got from either parent. They were both extremely well read and my father was a very clever man.  So in many respects I grew up with that advantage.

My earliest recollections of life were very nearly being run over when I was possibly under two [three].  I can still remember the screeching of the tyres and the dust going everywhere where Mr Gifford took evasive action to miss me on the Kereru Rd.  It would have been extremely embarrassing for Mr Gifford if he had run me over because he was a junior lawyer in my grandfather’s firm.

After that a dramatic thing happened coming back from town one day when I was possibly three and a half.   We were driving along an exposed ridge named ‘The Dasent’s Ridge’ on the way to Kereru, when the hood blew off the Buick.  And I can still remember the terrible flapping noise before the hood finally disappeared over the back of the car and the grit from the shingle on the road was literally blowing up into our faces – that’s how strong the westerly wind was.

The next thing I remember of note was the Murchison earthquake, when my sister Rachel and I were sitting on our back porch.  And opposite us was one of the very large chimneys that were in our house at Pukekino.  And it was swaying around, really doing a jig, and we thought it great to see a chimney doing a dance.  Little did we know, about two and a half years later that that same chimney in the Napier earthquake landed exactly where we’d been sitting.

The earthquake is very vivid in my mind and it was probably the most major factor in my first ten years of life.  I was in our house – of all things in the larder room, sneaking a biscuit out of one of mother’s tins.  And in those days rooms were multi-purpose, and on one side of this narrow room was all the family linen, and on the other side were all the preserves and cakes and jams and bottled fruit and everything like that, and I was about half way up the room when the earthquake struck.  And I didn’t know what had happened because the first thing I knew was this huge bump and everything from both sides landed in the middle of the room, quite a lot of it on me.  I was quite bewildered.  Naturally I didn’t know what it was – I didn’t know where to go.  My eldest sister Marjorie was at home for school holidays, and it was the day before she was going back to school at Woodford.  She sensed where I was and the next thing I knew her arm went round me and extricated me from this absolute morass that was in the larder room.  She took me to the nursery under one of the door frames and said “we’re not moving from here”.  And it was just as well that we didn’t because the five chimneys in the house had all been demolished, bricks had been thrown everywhere and the large rainwater tanks had come off their stands and had been shot over the side where we would have exited from.  So that was an early lesson for me as far as earthquakes were concerned – don’t vacate the premises – look for safety within them.

I won’t go into the earthquake too deeply, because it would be similar to many other people’s experiences.  But we slept outside for the first night or two.  The ground literally wasn’t still for twenty-four hours.  My mother put a big dish of water outside to see when it settled, and it didn’t settle for over twenty-four hours after that earthquake.  And then of course there was another equally large one ten days later, but as all the damage had been done, there wasn’t much more to fall down.

We made do with what we had after the earthquake but the greatest thing was that our complete water supply had been wrecked, both the spring water and the rain water, and so my father had to go about three miles down the road – tractor and trailer and a large tank, and fill it up from a stream.  So as one can imagine, baths were pretty few and far between.

As a matter of interest I have an account of that earthquake written by Francis Logan who was in Napier;  one written by my father who was on the farm in the Kereru district and witnessed some enormous ground movements, particularly in the Ruahine Ranges which were absolutely covered in dust by the enormous landslides;  and then I have my own account written by somebody who at that age was only six.  So it’s quite a unique three generation account of the same event.

Without too much more detail about that part of my life, I’ll move to my early schooling.   My schooling up until 1933 was with governesses. Schooling with governesses is very much what you’re prepared to make of it, because governesses have great difficulty in imposing strict discipline, especially when there are one or two rather rambunctious members of the family.  I do remember learning to read a little and to write a little, but by and large I think it was a very expensive exercise for my parents.

In 1933 the Kereru School reopened – it had closed in 1928 when the Depression began to bite.  There weren’t enough pupils to go, and it reopened in ’33 when my sister and I went.  It was three miles away – we wanted to ride our ponies but because of the very narrow, dangerous Kereru Gorge between us and the school my mother decided it was better if we were taken, which was shared by one or two neighbours – there were eleven of us at the school.

I went to Hereworth in 1935 and should have had four years there but unfortunately ill health robbed me of my last year which promised to be a very good one.  But I had some pretty interesting sporting activities at Hereworth.  Without going into too much detail I was either runner up or champion in athletics every year I was there.   I was in the First XV my second year – I was the little squib that was put on the wing because I could move a little faster than most.  I got some great coaching from Norman Elder and Sid Grant, and one thing that I can remember Norman Elder telling me was that he didn’t want anybody in the First XV that couldn’t kick twenty-five yards with either foot.  And for those that remember Norman Elder, he was ambidextrous so it was easy for him, so I made certain that – even though I was a squib – that I was going to kick that twenty-five yards, which I did. And I think that possibly helped me get in as a youngster, and I always made certain that there had to be a very good reason for someone to beat me that I didn’t tackle.

So those early lessons I think stood me in good stead when I played more advanced football later on in life.  I was an average cricketer, probably a better bowler than batsman because batsmen stop a few balls and then swing the bat a bit.  And sometimes it came off and sometimes it didn’t. [Chuckle]  Sometimes I got the full wrath of Mr Grant: “Logan, play a straight bat!”  [Chuckle]

Hockey … I was there for the instigational hockey that was brought in by Mr Buchanan, and I think 1936 or ’37 he brought it in and I was a forward in the hockey team.

I was an average student … picked up the odd prize now and again which was welcomed by my father, because I sometimes used to look at all the prizes that he had on the shelf and … made me feel I was a bit inadequate.

1938 was going to be the year that I was really looking forward to but at the end of 1937 for some unknown reason I got a very high blood sugar and was kept away from school for the first half.   Mr Buchanan wanted me to go back;  Mr Gilligan wanted me to go to Collegiate, and so it was a bit of a tug of war.  And so I went to Collegiate half way through ’38, whereas in hindsight I certainly should have taken Mr Buchanan’s advice – or my parents should have – and I should have gone back and had that half year at Hereworth. Going to Collegiate was extremely difficult because I’d missed the whole of Form 2, and to go from Form 1 into Form 3 – it was a major step, and it made me struggle for a number of years to catch up, especially in subjects such as French and mathematics.  So I was at a distinct disadvantage in my school work, which I shouldn’t have been because I never found school work particularly difficult.

Anyway, at Collegiate I had a pretty interesting sporting career and I remember one incident when I was playing junior house football something happened to a member of the Second XV and I was plucked out of Junior House and put in as second five-eighth in the Second XV as a fifteen year old, and the first game I played for them was against Te Aute.  And that has always stuck in my memory … travelling over to play Te Aute by train;  spending that night at Te Aute College;  not very much hot water in the taps;  having dinner in the school;  enjoying their hakas;  running out on to the field;  easily the smallest boy on the field I would think, and standing up watching them do the haka opposite us – they’re memories that I have never lost. And every time I go to Te Aute I think of the day back in 1940 when I played on that field.  And it was an excellent game, but they were too strong for us.

I later played two more games against Te Aute for the First XV – winning one and losing one.  But they were the three rugby games that meant most to me in my time at Collegiate, playing against Te Aute which was only five years younger than Collegiate.  And the two schools have now played over a hundred games against one another.

There are many other highlights I remember at Collegiate, but I won’t go into them in detail.  The only one I will mention is that I felt I could change from cricket because –  I said earlier I wasn’t really an academic cricketer, but I enjoyed it.  But I went rowing, and thoroughly enjoyed it – loved my rowing.  And I’ve got a photograph at home of the last crew … last four … that won on the Avon against Christ’s College.   And that was in 1941.  1942, most sporting fixtures were disrupted because of the Japanese being round our coastline, and even the football tournament was disrupted – there was no travel between the islands – and when rowing resumed against Christ’s College it was in eights, not fours.

I went through the stages at Collegiate of a bit of authority.   I went right through being Vice Dayroom Captain, Head Librarian and Prefect, Deputy Head of my House.

I left Collegiate a little earlier because I wanted to enlist when I was eighteen so I didn’t see the last term – eight of us left in that term and we all joined up.   As can be imagined, with boys that we’d been at school with being killed away at the war (both my brothers were away), and I wanted to follow.  And so I remember eight of us decided that we’d leave and all join up.  I missed getting into what I wanted to do – I wanted to get into the Fleet Air Arm but I failed the colour blind test.  Two of my great friends who did get into the Air Force were killed before they were twenty, [twenty-one] and of the eight of us that left at that time, half of them were killed.  As I said before I was colour blind and so I couldn’t get into the Navy or into the Air Force.  Commander Harding, who took me back the following day to give me a personalised colour blind test, advised me to go home and join the Army when I was twenty, which was still a year too young, but it was considered legal.

So I went home for two years, 1943 and 1944, and I was determined that I was going to put this disappointment behind me.  I worked hard on the farm and also had a lot of time for doing the things that I really wanted to do, such as deerstalking.  Because my grandfather owned Kereru Station next door to us, and Kereru Station ran right into the Ruahine mountains, the head shepherd on Kereru and I went deerstalking more weekends than not.   And in those days because deer skins were in such demand for airmen, it was possible to get up to £12 for a mature deer hide, and some weekends we would shoot up to half a dozen, so it was a very good way to augment our income – or wages, should I say.  That same shepherd and I broke in a number of horses round the district.  I’d always loved riding and had had ponies from an early age.  And in those two years, between us we broke in thirty horses from around the district.  And that was great experience and certainly did my horsemanship a huge amount of good.

I played rugby and did athletics in those two years. I played rugby for Napier High School Old Boys and in both those years we won both senior competitions.  I was playing at centre, my preferred place, but in my football career I’ve played in every back position except half back.  So I was always quite versatile if someone was missing.  In 1944 Hawke’s Bay team played a few games – they played two games against Wairarapa and because of travel restrictions we couldn’t play other games, which was disappointing.  So I was fortunate enough to be picked as centre for the Hawke’s Bay team, and Norman McKenzie was our coach.

I specialised in hurdling in athletics, and was second in both the Hawke’s Bay championships and the West Coast championships that were held over at Cook’s Gardens. I also ran a few sprint races and a few longer hurdle races, but it was the hundred and twenty yard hurdles that I specialised in.

It was disappointing that I had to give them both away, but it was more important to me that I went into the Army.  I had an interesting time in the Army.  I was quite certain that I was going to be able to go over to Italy in the 15^th Reinforcements, but because the war was coming to an end I missed out on that – instead was sent up to Foxton with a hundred and twenty other under-age soldiers, and we had a job of cleaning up the Foxton beach that was in a terrible mess that had been created by the Americans using it as a live artillery range.  That took from memory about six weeks.  I was pulled out by the CO one day and told to go and work into the Orderly Room with quite a grumpy old first world war Sergeant.  And it actually turned out to be quite a good job because the CO asked me what school I went to, and I said “I went to a school over on the West Coast,” and he said “Well, I know schools over there,” he said “what school was it?”  And so I told him that it was Wanganui Collegiate, and he laughed and he said “That was one of the last football matches I had, playing against Wanganui Collegiate.  I was at Nelson College just before the war broke out.”

So Captain Powrie and I became good friends because we were able to relate to that sort of thing.  And he said to me one day “can you drive a Jeep?”  And I said “no, I’ve never driven a Jeep but I can drive a pickup and a tractor, and ride a motorbike and things”.  He said “You’ll do”.  He said “I want you to drive me out to the beach to get a bit of practise”.  And … first time I’d driven a left hand drive vehicle, but that became quite natural.  And he said “I’ve got to go to Headquarters in a couple of days’ time and I want you to drive me to Wellington.”  So that was quite easy, and we became great friends, and he said to me one day, “I think the boys need a bit of entertainment.  I want you to go down into Foxton and see how many girls you can find that would come up and have a dance.”  And I found about thirty-odd, and the dance was such a success, he said “we’d better try that again”.  And the next time we had more girls than what we had boys [chuckle] – so it was obviously a success.

Anyway I went back into Trentham – the Japanese war was still raging but the European war had wound down to pretty well a halt.  And so we were put into some pretty intensive training, and we thought ‘this is interesting, I wonder where this is going to lead us?’  And then Alf Jenkins who had a gym in Wellington, he was the chief unarmed judo  – you name it – instructor at Trentham.  And part of our course that we had to do was an assault course.  And it was a six weeks’ course and after three months we were sent back home to have a bit of leave, because we were going to complete the rest of the assault course and then we’d be away.   Anyway, it was something that’s always stood me in good stead, having had that type of assault course – I suppose it was really a commando course, but a shortened one.

And as time went on it was quite obvious where we were going – we were going to Japan.   When we were home on leave the two atomic bombs were dropped, and so when we went back we didn’t complete the course because there was no point in it, which was disappointing because I was thoroughly enjoying it.  Anyway, that was as it was.

They invited us all to join the Army of Occupation – J-Force – and I declined because I felt it more important to go home and help an ageing father on the farm than go to Japan for a year.  And so once again my army career was as frustrating as it was in being colour blind and missing going into the Fleet Air Arm.  So that was my military service – I ended up not achieving what I had wanted to.

I went back on the farm and played a bit more rugby in ’46 – played back for Old Boys and got into the Hawke’s Bay squad, and suffered a very inconveniencing late tackle.  And of course you’re never prepared for late tackles, especially when they’re from behind.  And that put me on the sideline for a few weeks, and when I went back I decided that I would miss the Hawke’s Bay team for that year, it was pretty well set then.  And so I went back and worked on the farm, and I didn’t play rugby again after that, which was a major disappointment in many respects, but at the same time we had to make decisions in those days.  I remember my old boss saying to me when I was injured – he said “Hamilton – rugby or farming – one day you’ll have to make up your mind.”  And so I thought about it – for the rest of the year I thought about it.  And I thought ‘well, I better be realistic and think about what I’m going to do”.

So I did all sorts of things, I worked a lot on Kereru Station.  I helped farmers muster their country.  I mustered Wakarara for Mr Eton;  I mustered Big Hill;  Kereru Station;  I helped at shearing time on those big stations.  And in 1948 when rabbits became absolutely endemic, and it was either rabbit or lose your farm, I decided to go rabbiting – initially by myself and then a friend … old school friend of mine by the name of David Wright whose family came from Hastings – his father was Dr Romaine Wright – David was at home in November until February during his medical studies, and I suggested that he came and help me.  And we rabbited for three months solidly – became anti-social because in those days we rabbited with strychnine and jam … poisoned them … and we skinned the mature rabbits.  That’s how we made our money.  And so we did that for three months.  David made enough money to keep himself going for another year down at medical school, and I made enough to go away for eighteen months and travel the world.

So in February ’49 I went off.  I went to Australia and was there for a month and then caught a ship and went back through the Suez Canal and spent the next year in England and in Europe.  I had the most amazing experiences.  I was fortunate that my father wanted a new car, and he had some overseas funds so I was able to get a new Morris Oxford for him and have it for a year before it had to be shipped back to New Zealand.  So I drove it all round the Continent, and up and down England and Scotland and Wales many times, [and] had some amazing experiences.

One experience I’d like to relate was  on board ship I became friendly with a pharmacist from Geelong by the name of Bill Wishart.  He had been a prisoner of war in Changi jail in Singapore for about three years during which time he had witnessed horrendous atrocities, and many deaths.  And he’d taken the names of many whom he’d seen either starved to death or killed.  And he wanted to visit them in different parts of the world – they were mainly from the United Kingdom.  And he asked me if I would accompany him in driving around England [the UK] and visiting these people.  So we had the most amazing excursion for a month visiting these people that lived literally from the slums in Liverpool to virtually a castle in York.  And on occasions I accompanied him, and they were such desperate people that he went to see, and it was really very depressing.  I was glad that I was with him because we were able to go and forget our sorrows in different ways.

Bill and I did a number of things together in London as well.  And one day I’d been to Wimbledon, watching – as the multitude do – standing.  And I’d seen John Bromwich playing in the quarter-finals, and he was playing an American by the name of Faulkenburg.  And Faulkenburg was up two sets, and then when Bromwich started to crawl back Faulkenburg did everything in the book including lying down on the court to delay play.  Fortunately he was beaten.  And I told Bill that I’d seen his fellow countryman win his quarter-final.  And Bill said “God – he’s a mate of mine.  I’ll hit him up for a couple of tickets”.  [Chuckle]  And so Bill hit John Bromwich up for a couple of tickets and we saw him play the semi-final in the centre court.  Well that was something I would have never expected and as you can imagine they were good tickets, too.  And so that was a little bonus.

And another day I was at Lords with David Ormond from Waipukurau and we were down there watching the New Zealanders play England.   And Mr Gilligan, my headmaster, was travelling with the New Zealand team, and … I’d contacted him before … and he’d told me to meet him on the first day and we’d have afternoon tea together.

And so David and I were walking along, and so I thought I’d better wear my old boys’ tie on this occasion … and we were walking along and I saw this person walking towards us staring at my tie.  And he stopped us, and he said “I haven’t seen that tie for many years”.  And it turned out that he was from the Wairarapa.  After leaving school he’d done his medicine at Cambridge.  The war had come along so he’d joined the British Army and then he remained doing his medicine in England.  And he was a member of Lords.  And he said to me “I believe the headmaster is here – I would like to meet him”.  So I said “well, I’m meeting him at half past three.  If you’d like to come with me I’ll introduce you to him.”  And with that he said “what are you two doing now?”  And Dave and I said “well, it’s a quiet patch in the game – we’re just sort of having a little bit of a look around Lords.”  And he said “well, I’m a member here.  I’d like to take you up into the Long Room.”  And it’s not everybody that gets an invitation to go into the Long Room.  And so he took us there and we sat down and watched the game.  The most magnificent viewing place – understandably – the best viewing spot at Lords.   And during the afternoon he said to us “do you recognise that person that’s seated in front of us – just two along?”  And I’d never noticed this person before ’cause I was too interested in the cricket.  And I had a look down and I said “yes, I think it looks to me like the King isn’t it?”  And he said “yes, that’s the King … King George VI … he comes to most test matches;  he’s a very keen follower.”

And then we looked at a few other things that he showed us through, and we looked at some of the memorabilia up in Lords, which was very interesting.  And then it was time to go and meet Mr Gilligan.  And we had afternoon tea with FWG, and then he said “Unfortunately I’ve got a meeting that I have to attend, otherwise I’d show you round some of the very special things in Lords.  But” he said “my brother Harold is here today, and I will contact him and he will show you round Lords.”  And of course – for those that don’t know, the three Gilligan brothers all played for England.  Arthur was captain and Frank was wicket keeper and Harold was a pretty useful player.

Anyway, Mr Harold Gilligan showed David and I round.  And one place we went to was where lawn tennis began.  It began indoors at Lords. And the old court is still underneath one of the stands at Lords.  Well that was something that I never knew.  So wearing my old boys’ tie certainly brought me a little bit of luck on that day at Lords, because I saw things that I would have never otherwise have seen.

While I’m talking about my old boys’ tie, I must just tell you another small incident about the old boys’ tie.  When I was in Oxford I went to the Bear Inn.  The Bear Inn is a famous watering hole for undergraduates.  And my father told me that I’d have to go to the Bear Inn.  He never told me why, but when I got there I knew why because when you walk in there are literally thousands of sporting ties and military ties hanging from the ceiling.  And only the bottom end of the tie is there – it’s pinned up, and it’s the thin end of the tie.  And when I was there I said to my cousin Mick Turnbull who was up at Oxford at that time – I said “we must go and have a drink seeing we’re in the Bear Inn.” And when I was over getting the drink, the barman said to me “I don’t think I’ve seen that tie before”.  And I said “well you may, or you may not have – I would have thought that you probably would have.”  And when I turned round to say something to Mick, the scissors had come out and I’d lost the bottom of my tie. [Laughter]  And so – well that was the last time I was able to wear my old boys’ tie when I was in England.  And the bit of it … well I would think it’s probably still up in the Bear Inn.  [Laughter]  So sometimes Jim, your old boy boys’ tie brings you good fortune.

I’ve digressed a little bit, but my experiences in England are far too many to enumerate.  I’ll just mention a couple of things.  I had a letter of introduction to a Colonel Winter who lived on the banks of the river Shannon in Ireland.  And so I went over in November.  He was Master of Hounds and he told me to go over there and we’d have some hunting.  So I had a few days of wonderful hunting with the Winters, and of course had the opportunity to actually physically witness jumping onto those famous Irish built up banks along their dykes.  You can’t jump the dyke, you have to jump onto the bank and then from the bank you jump over the dyke.  Ditches I think they call them.  And so I’ve actually experienced that, which is quite unusual and it made me realise that you ride a little longer than what we do here in our hunting field, otherwise you end up in the water.  So that was very interesting.

He was also a keen shot so we shot birds that I hadn’t shot before in Ireland – curlew and plover and woodcock and things.  They had a family of four – four boys, and they were all at Winchester.  They were very close together, and so I said when I went back to London that I’d like to go and see them.   So when I went back to England I went and saw these young men at Winchester and had a wonderful tour around that very ancient and famous school.  It was extremely cold in the month of December, as you can imagine.  Heating seemed to be pretty sparse, so they’re brought up tough, those English school boys.  What has stood out in my memory more than anything is seeing their motto “Manners Maketh Man”.  And it’s certainly very appropriate for that school.

I went to a number of other public schools –  I went to my uncle’s public school and I spent time with a friend up at Cambridge – almost a week up at Cambridge University, and I spent a week at Oxford University with my cousin Mick Turnbull who was up there.  During my time up at Oxford an old school friend, Gilbert Bogel, was up there as a Rhodes Scholar.  And we used to row sometimes in the same boat at Collegiate, but more often than not against one another.  He was in a different house.  And he took me to dinner at the High Table one night, which was quite an interesting experience.  I had a don or professor on either side of me, and I thought ‘God, what am I going to talk to these fellows about?’  And you can imagine, it was very formal – dinner jackets – and I didn’t have to worry – they knew where I came from.  Gibbie Bogel had told them where I came from and what my interests were. I didn’t have to ask them any questions, they just asked me appropriate questions, and told me interesting things, and so there was never a minute’s silence.  I thought to myself afterwards, what a wonderful example of intellectual people putting not so intellectual – not so fortunate people – at complete ease, as I was.  And I really and truly enjoyed my evening.

Gibbie Bogel was in one of the crews and it was ‘Bumps’ (Bumper weekend) or ‘Bumps’ as they call it.  And of course there were bumper races on most evenings, and so that was great.  Being a keen rower and being able to witness these races was absolutely magic.  Gilbert Bogel was brilliant, and he was deeply involved after he left Oxford, in I think, pretty hush hush nuclear programmes.  He was well advanced – he was one of the top physicists in the game.  And he had a very mysterious death as a young man.   Very suspicious – but I’ll say no more about that.

The other interesting sporting thing that was a little unique – I had friends that lived at Datchet on the Thames and I used to spend weekends with them and go up the Thames either in a punt or in a launch.  And John Goldie had rowed for Eton, and he’d rowed for Cambridge, and he was pretty well known in the rowing world.  And he had rowed at Henley as well, and he took me to Henley for three days.  And that was an amazing experience because we were where we should be for the salient races, and he knew all the people that made things easy. And for the semi-final of the diamond skulls he popped me in the Umpire’s Launch, which was pretty special.  And it was even more special because the Englishman that was actually leading at the time – and I would think possibly three or four hundred yards from the finish – all of a sudden did a complete somersault out of his skiff.  Whether he caught a crab or not I don’t know – I didn’t see him actually – I just saw him being catapulted up in the air.  So that was quite an experience. And the only time I’ve been in print in the Times was then, and it was a back view, pulling him out of the water. [Chuckle]

Where I live at The Cottage – Maraekakaho – is where the original Maraekakaho Station grew from.  There was a twelve hundred acre block called Doonsdale that Donald McLean – [later] Sir Donald – purchased, and from there Maraekakaho Station grew.  That original twelve hundred acres was retained by Sir Donald’s granddaughter Constance at the Maraekakaho sale in 1928.  My father took care of Mrs Fountaine.  She married an Admiral, Carlo Fountaine, so Mrs Fountaine left her affairs in New Zealand in the care of my father, and she asked him to make certain that that twelve hundred acres was retained for her.  And then of course he had to make certain that it was leased out and farmed properly.

Mrs Fountaine lived at Narford Hall in Norfolk.  She was married to Admiral Fountaine who was a brilliant young naval man – he was Captain in the line during the battle of Jutland and was the youngest Captain in the British Navy at that time.  They had a beautiful home at Narford with a sixty acre hand dug lake in the garden.  Of interest … the lake was dug by three hundred Italian workmen early in the seventeenth century.

My brother Jim was a favourite of Mrs Fountaine’s and she saw a lot of him during the war because he was stationed very close to Narford – in fact he went and saw her two nights before he was on a mission that didn’t come back.

My brother Jim had premonitions – he was quite psychic – and he knew what they were going to do, and it was dangerous.  And I often felt that he possibly went and saw Mrs Fountaine to say goodbye.  When I went to stay with the Fountaine family in 1949, after a time Mrs Fountaine spoke to me about The Cottage and her love for my brother.  She called him her third son.  And she asked me to think about it, but perhaps I may look after the property for her. I thought about it and said to her that if I did it would only be on a temporary basis because I wanted to have my own property.  But I was very happy to do it in the meantime so that she would know that there was someone that she knew that was caring for it.  At that time it had been leased for twenty years.

Anyway, I had many happy times at Narford including Christmas, and the boys took me to a number of shoots on Narford, but one I remember particularly was when we went to the property of a man by the name of Hotblack.  Mr Hotblack was a London businessman but owned this estate in Norfolk.  He was a bachelor and his hobby was collecting crystal, and he had room after room after room full of cupboards of the most priceless crystal collections.  I’ve heard of people collecting stamps and other things but that was the first crystal collection I’d ever heard of.  And he told me … he showed me a set that he’d just completed because he was able to get the exact set, but it cost some hundreds of pounds to pick up two glasses to complete a set.  So that just shows you the value of his collection.

Mr Hotblack had a shoot, and I was invited along with others, and I was put through a rigorous test to see if I knew how to handle a gun … if I knew which end the shot came out of and if I knew anything about shooting etiquette.  My friend John Fountaine who was also on the shoot defused the matter by avoiding the fact that I hadn’t been on a driven shoot before, but I’d of course done a huge amount of field shooting in New Zealand of all types.  Anyway, I escaped without having to be told when I could shoot and when I couldn’t shoot by a keeper.  But the unfortunate American Commander of an airbase next door – a full blown Colonel – he wasn’t allowed to move without being told what to do by the gamekeeper first giving him orders.  So I avoided the same fate by my friend John Fountaine having told him I was an experienced shooter.  We had a very varied shoot – not having shot before with driven birds I missed a few to begin with because I couldn’t gauge how fast they were coming over the back of my head.  But in the end we bagged a few.  And then we had a walk up shoot of woodcock.  I was next to Mr Hotblack, and a bird got up and before I knew what had happened I’d shot it, and of course it was the wrong thing to have done.  I should have let my host shoot it, or else he could tell me to shoot it.  Anyway, as the bird was falling, Mr Hotblack put a barrel into it as if to say “it’s my bird”.  [Chuckle]  I immediately apologised to him and he walked over to me and he put his arm round my shoulder and he said “don’t worry old fellow – these thing do happen”.  [Chuckle]   I don’t think I shot another bird after that because I was terrified it would be the wrong one.

But getting back to Narford, I used to go out on the punt in the lake and sit there and there’d be all manner of water fowl that one could shoot.  And it was such an unusual experience shooting ducks such as teal that are protected In New Zealand, and it just goes to show what is one country’s game is another one’s protected.

When I came back to New Zealand …

What year?

… I came back in 1950.  I had a year to put in before I went down to manage The Cottage for Mrs Fountaine. So I helped my brother Bob who had now taken over Pukekino. Bob had had quite a long war and had been knocked about quite considerably, so it was taking him time to adjust to a different type of life. And so I helped him and was heartened by the fact that he was doing so well, and was so well adjusted to his new life.

I went down to The Cottage on 1^st January 1952.  I rode my horses and dogs followed from Pukekino – I went cross country, down through Olrig and the Dasent’s, and I remember my mother saying “What are you going to have to eat, dear?” and I said “Nothing – I’ll have a good meal here”.  And she said “No you won’t”.  And so I took some boiled eggs, a loaf of bread and some butter and some tea. And then the next day I went in – I’d bought a bed and things before, which I’d had delivered – and spent the night, a very clattery night because it’s a big house with no carpets or rugs anywhere, and got up the next morning and there was no water.  And fortunately I’d got up early.  I thought ‘Good God, how do I start finding where the water begins and finishes here?’  Anyway, eventually found how to fix it.

Next day I went into town and bought a few things, and gradually got established.  Hardly had I been there a week when a man from England rang me and said that he had a letter of introduction – could he come and stay because he was looking to buy a property in New Zealand.  His name was Bill Clinton Baker, who later settled in the Wairarapa, and I said “well, look, you can come – I’ll get another bed – but there’s no furniture and hardly anything.  But if you don’t mind having a bachelor’s existence with me for a few days I’ll point you in the right direction as far as looking at a few farms, and we’ll take it from that”.  So Bill arrived at the end of a week;  only stayed a few days because I got an agent to take him around a few properties.  But he was the most delightful person and of course we became … remain friends for life.  He eventually bought a very nice farm down at Gladstone in the Wairarapa.

My early days at The Cottage were largely revolving round buying livestock to stock the property, and gradually buying a few things for the house.  So that existence went on for quite a long time.  I didn’t employ anybody – I wanted to do everything myself until I knew where things were, and then I employed a handyman that was an ex-builder, and so he set to to build sheep yards and other essential things and I was free to just concentrate on stock, then gradually we got going.  And so my first few years there were pretty basic, getting things going and gradually getting a little bit of staff.  Work hours were extremely long as one would expect.

The actual property was in good order but a huge amount of subdivision needed to be done – it had no wool shed, yards or any accommodation except for the large house.  After about six or eight months I got a single person to help me with the stock work and a year or two later we built a couple of cottages and I employed married people.  We built a wool shed, shearers’ quarters and gradually got the property going.  And by the time I got married things were beginning to take shape – I got married in 1954.  Things were beginning to take shape and my wife Sue [Stead] was able to help me.

Initially at The Cottage I had Romney sheep and trading cattle.  I was disappointed with the results I was getting from the Romney’s – I was ambitious and felt that a farmer couldn’t survive on under 100%, but to do well he needed considerably more.  And in the late ’50s I did a little experiment of cross breeding with a Border Leicester, and with hybrid vigour I shot up 20% overnight.  And I thought ‘well this is a little bit of progress – maybe this is the right way to go’.  And so after another year to make certain that the hybrid vigour wasn’t just a fluke, I was convinced that it was the way to go.  So I burnt my boats.  I bought Border Leicester rams and let another farmer take my Romney rams and put the whole three thousand sheep – ewes – over to the Border Leicester.  And I said to myself ‘I’ll sink or swim by this decision’.  And little did I know that Professor Coop at Lincoln College had come to the same conclusion.  He had done it a different way.  Lincoln College had a pure bred Romney flock that they used for experimental purposes.  And he was breeding these hybrid sheep and then back breeding them … cross breeding them … inbreeding them – whatever you like – to build up a pure bred flock with hybrid vigour and trying to maintain that hybrid vigour, and it was a more … much more complex programme than just cross breeding.  And he had it all worked out.  And the reason he was doing it was, he set himself a target initially to move the College flock from twelve hundred ewes getting 100% to twelve hundred ewes getting 200% of lamb drop.  A few years into it he realised it was not possible – he would never achieve it.  The progress he was making was too slow, and he would never see it completed.  And that is why he started doing what I did – cross breeding.  But being a scientist he knew where he was going and how he would achieve locking in hybrid vigour, and that is what he did.  He bred a breed called the Coopworth which had to go to four stages before it could be called a Coopworth.  F1 was the first cross, F2 was the second … F3 and F4.  The blood was pure enough to be able to call it a Coopworth, which was a fusion of the Border Leicester and the Romney blood, and became Coopworth.

I was down at Lincoln having a look round at different things, and I had a chat to Prof and he told me what he was doing and I told him what I was doing.  He said “you were brave to put your whole flock over not knowing where you were going”, and I said “yes, I know I was, but I had nothing to lose because I wasn’t making progress the way I was going.”  He said “you’re so right”;  he said “I will help you”.  And so then a great friendship between Prof Coop and I started, and he loaned … possibly was meant to lease but because he saw somebody that was anxious to follow his disciplines … he used to airfreight me up rams that he’d used, and I would pay for the freight but nothing for the ram, and then I would send them back.

So I was able to make much quicker progress – probably speeded up my whole system by two crosses at least, which, in number of years, we’re certainly looking at three years breeding from hoggets into it, so my process was able to catch up very quickly to where he was at and where other people that he’d helped were at.   And when he saw the quality of stock that was coming out, bred on this dry, warm country, and the bone in my flock, he then asked me if I would be happy if he used The Cottage flock as a little bit of a satellite to Lincoln, to which I agreed.  So I made very quick progress.  I had genetic material that I couldn’t buy – loaned me on very favourable terms, and Coop was able to experiment on a different class of property than what his irrigated Lincoln property was, and so it was a win/win for Prof and I.

And so that was the genesis of my Coopworth stud, and I think it’s fair to say that they were as good as any Coopworth sheep bred.  Certainly I had no difficulty selling them, and I used to sell stud rams to Southland which was quite something.  I sold stud rams locally but I also had a very good clientele in Hawke’s Bay and out of it – into the Wairarapa and other parts of the North Island.

So that was pretty well what I did with The Cottage property with the Coopworths, and the Coopworths were still doing very well when I handed over to my son Tim in the 1980s.  But then there were some cracks evolving in the Coopworth breed because so many other composite breeds were coming along that were performing well.  And they had infusions of other blood such as Finn, Texel etcetera, and so the time had come for pure bred Coopworths perhaps to look at another cross, and I know some of the other breeders have and have been extremely successful.  But Tim opted not to do that and he did other things, so that was the end of our Coopworth. But they did have about twenty good years.  And it was probably the highlight … I know it was the highlight of my farming career, building that Coopworth flock and having such a good clientele for a number of years.

I always was looking for something that was a bit different from the average farmer, because I felt that it was important to try and lift not only your own production bar, but to try and get other farmers to lift their production bar as well.  And with that I looked at Murray Grey, because I used to go to Australia a lot, not only because I had relatives over there but I was very interested in the Australian farming scene, and I’ve travelled very extensively, [farming] in Australia.  And I always liked the Murray Grey, so I started looking at them because I felt that Murray Grey cattle had so much to offer. They were small at birth so you didn’t have calving troubles, and they had very rapid growth from birth weight to weaning weight;  they didn’t lay down excessive fat;  they were docile and they were a good colour.  And they just had so many attributes that the beef industry needed.  At that time the Angus were too small and the exotic cattle that were beginning to come into New Zealand were really too big for a lot of country – they were all right on the lower country but they weren’t hill country animals.  And I thought that an animal between the Angus and the exotic cattle of Europe would be ideal.

Well, the regulations of our Murray Grey Society stipulated that they could only be bred up through Angus cattle.  And I couldn’t see the point in this because we weren’t going to end up with anything any bigger than an Angus, and I was looking for something that was bigger than an Angus, but smaller than a Charolais or Simmental.

Anyway, after years of battling with the Society, I took myself off on a fact finding mission to make certain I was on the right lines, and part of that was to go to Clay Centre at Nebraska, where they were specialising in cross breeding cattle.  At the time that I was at Clay Centre they had twenty eight breed types and six hundred and twenty one breed combinations on this largest agricultural college in the world – forty thousand acres.  And it was an absolute mind boggling experiment.  So interesting, and I didn’t only see Murray Grey cattle there, I saw very impressive things – [crosses] from Swiss Brown, which seemed to be in the background of just about every successful cross.  And the Swiss Brown’s an animal we don’t see out here, and yet it’s possibly – going by Clay Centre experiments – possibly the most valuable one to have in the composite breed.

I went to Canada, looked at Murray Greys – I went to Scotland.  And the only decent Murray Greys, or the type of Murray Greys that I wanted to breed, was [were] ones that were a cross between a Charolais and a Murray Grey.  And they kept the Murray Grey colour, they were between the Charolais and the Angus in size, they were not carrying surplus fat and they still had the easy birth and the quick growth of the Murray Grey.  And so I said to the Murray Grey Society “That is what I want to breed, and I want to get sanction from the Murray Grey Council because I want to be able to breed them, because I think that’s the sort of breed for the future for New Zealand.”  And because the Council was dominated in the main by Angus breeders, it just fell on deaf ears.  And so I said “OK, here’s my resignation.  I’m going to breed what cattle I think are needed.”

And so I bred a commercial herd of Chargreys, (Charolais perhaps) and they I think, were the best breeding cows that I’ve had since I’ve been farming.  But they couldn’t be registered – it was just a personal thing I wanted to do, to just sort of point out that there are other ways of doing these things.

So those were my two major breeding ventures as a farmer.  I was of course very much a commercial farmer for prime lambs and prime beef as well.  Used to fatten steers, and went through a phase of growing on weaners and making them into vealers for a niche market down in the Manawatu, and all those sort of things.  I was always trying to think of things that other people weren’t doing, and that’s been my whole thrust through life, of perhaps trying to do things that aren’t the norm.  Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t work.

But in 1974 I went to Australia with John Pittar from Poverty Bay – he was a Murray Grey farmer, and he and I had a discussion about some of the cattle that were coming into the country.  We weren’t very happy, and so we thought we’d go to Australia and try and seek out a proven bull and bring him back to New Zealand and put him into the AI centre.  Well, we couldn’t find what we were looking for – they were either too expensive or they weren’t available, or their semen didn’t freeze.  Murray Grey semen is a bit temperamental as far as freezing is concerned, and so we came back empty-handed.

But I came back with a hell of a virus that almost finished me, and had it not been for two doctors, both Hawke’s Bay – Michael Bostock and Sam Turner – I don’t think I’d be talking to you today.  Anyway I won’t go into the pros and cons of what happened too much, but from that also came good, because in the end it was in the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney where Sam Turner sent me for his colleague, David Kelly, who was in charge of it, to find out and see if he could get to the bottom of it.  And he did.  That’s all I’ll say.  He got me on the road to recovery and I did recover.  And when I came back to New Zealand I was determined I was going to do something different.  In fact David Kelly told me that I possibly should consider doing other things.

And so my old friend Pat Donnelly and I decided we’d do something for Hawke’s Bay, initially because Pat had had a problem with his heart.  And this virus had affected my heart, and so I knew that something needed to change in my life.  And so initially Pat and I had a charity dinner and raised funds to buy equipment for Napier and Hastings hospitals. But I won’t go into that because that’s been well documented.  It was a great charity dinner – everything was donated.  Even the guest speaker had his air fare donated – he flew over from Melbourne.

And after that I was asked if I’d join the Medical Research Foundation in Hawke’s Bay.  I put in quite a number of years doing that and found that very, very interesting.   And so that was my little flutter into the medical world.

But at the end of ’74 my old friend Lew Harris came up to me one day, and he said “Hamilton, I’ve been looking for you recently – I want you to do a job.”  And I said “Well, I’m not in very good shape to be doing any job – what do you want me to do?”  He said “ I want to nominate you for the Richmond Board.”  And I said “Well, it’s something I know would interest me but I hadn’t really thought much about it.”  And old Lew said “Well, I’m not going to give you very much time to think about it.” [Chuckle]   He said “Next time I see you I’ll have a nomination form.”

Well I thought about it and I had a chat to my old father who had been very involved in all these sort of things, and he just said immediately, “you should do it.”  He said “You can do it, and you should do it.  The time’s come when you need to look at other things [outside] the farm gate.”

And so that’s what happened.  I’m not going to say the in-betweens of what happened, but I got onto the Board.  Chris McGilvray was the other one opposing me.

The first big thing when I got on the Board was [when] Brierley’s came along and made a raid on Richmond shares and thought they were going to take Richmond over.  That was a great learning curve because I was able to watch how a shrewd old fellow like Peter Plummer and a smart lawyer like Andrew Morrison were able to steer Richmond away from danger by very, very smart tactics.  And that opened my eyes enormously and of course the whole scene became so infinitely more interesting after that [as] I quickly realised that you don’t just sit round a table and think up things for the CEO to do.  You have to think well and truly outside of that, and you also have to know how the systems work outside the Boardroom.

And so Brierley’s intrusion into Richmond certainly made me grow up about these things.  And Richmond during that time had taken over the complete ownership of Pacific Leathers.  And I found that an extremely interesting subsidiary.  It had so many interesting facets, and you could follow the processes from the animal through the tannering to whether it be clothes or leather or chairs or shoes – whatever.  Later I’ll tell you of some of the trips that I had around Europe for Richmond, both meat and leather.  It’s quite fascinating, the Richmond story – too much to tell you now.

In 1982 Peter Plummer resigned as Chairman of Directors after twenty years, and I was elected to replace him.  I was still heavily involved with A & P but as I only had six months left as President, I felt that I could do the two jobs at once.  I never believed that I would end up as Chairman of Richmond, but when it came I was very glad that I was given the opportunity because it turned out to be some of the most interesting times in my life.   Bill Webb had died a year or so before, and Rowan Ogg at the age of thirty two had been put into the position of General Manager without much warning.  He’d had approximately a year with Peter Plummer which I was very grateful for because he couldn’t have learned under a wiser head, but when I became Chairman I felt that within the year we should move out of New Zealand and expose both Rowan and myself to some of Richmond’s customers.

That opportunity came in 1984 when we went over to Perth to have a look at the live sheep shipments.  Richmond had been under pressure to handle stock from time to time in the live shipment scene but had resisted it because their business was slaughtering, processing and exporting of stock.  But Richmond felt that it would be advantageous to see what was happening in the live sheep shipment, so a few days were spent in Perth and we looked at it from end to end.  We later went over to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia where there was a food fair conducted by the New Zealand Meat Board.  Richmond were a part of it and it was the first time that either Rowan or I had been to a food fair.  It was amazing to see the diversity of red meat at the food fair – even more mind boggling to see a new city like Riyadh that had been built in the previous decade or two.

We had a little incident in the airport on the way through and at one stage I was wondering if we’d ever leave the airport.  Before we left I gave a book named “The Kingdom” to Rowan to read so that he would be au fait with the modern Saudi Arabia.  Little did either of us know that the book was banned in Saudi Arabia, and when they discovered it in Rowan’s luggage all hell was let loose.  We were interrogated and I thought worse was going to happen.  But in the end we were allowed to leave, but not before the odd gun had been brandished.

From Riyadh we went over to Jeddah and had some time there before flying up the Red Sea to Rome.  We hired a car in Rome and drove over the Apennines in the middle of winter, and it was the most fairy-tale picture that you’d ever get.  Snow on the mountains, Italian villages dotted on all the hill tops and it was the most beautiful scene.  We went to Ancona where we spent a few days with Alberto Baldi, an importer of Richmond meats and a very interesting character – an ex European boxing champion and now a very successful meat man.  From Italy we went to London and had many meetings with Richmond contacts looking at new things before coming back to New Zealand via Singapore.  This was the first of a number of trips that I made with Rowan, and I felt that it was a most productive one because I was able to see how he coped with both owners of companies and their employees, and I was impressed by his great knowledge of Richmond products.  We arrived back in New Zealand and I’m certain that Rowan was much the better for it, and I certainly was much better informed.

In 1985 Richmond won an award for best presentation of lamb in Europe, and the Board asked me if I would go over on their behalf and receive it.  That was in ’85.  The night before I boarded the plane I was asked to speak at the Sir James Wattie dinner  – the dinner was hosted by the Sir James Wattie Memorial Trust, who each year invited an eminent medical person to come to Hawke’s Bay to lecture, visit patients etcetera.  The visiting professor was then able to visit other parts of New Zealand and charge for their time.  The visiting professor in 1985 was Professor Cannal from Boston.  I was asked to speak on the nutritional value of lamb at that dinner.  As can be imagined it was a subject that I felt a little uneasy about speaking on in front of an eminent cardiologist, so Michael Kite who was then on the Meat Board offered to obtain all the information he could about lamb, from the United States.  It was interesting to read so much of this information and note that there was very little damming evidence about the ill effects of lamb on the human being [body].  When I delivered my address and sat down, Professor Cannal immediately said “I agree with so much that Mr Logan said, and lamb does have its nutritional value.”  That was all that he said about lamb and then he talked about many other things as you’d imagine, because the audience was heavily loaded by the medical profession.

I flew off next morning to Germany to go to the Anuga Food Fair which is held annually in Cologne.  At that time it was the largest food fair in the world.  I had been to it on one occasion previously and found it immensely interesting.  On this occasion Mike Moore was visiting too – he had only just been appointed Minister for Overseas Trade in the new Labour Government administration at the change of government the year before.  It was his first visit to the Anuga.  I asked for a quick meeting with Mike because he was tied up with diplomats and members of the European Economic Community so he wasn’t really a free agent.  I told him that Richmond were in partnership with a company called Mattfeld and that we had a stall upstairs.  I told Mike Moore that I believed that it would be in his best interests to come upstairs and visit as many New Zealand exporters and importers that he could, because they were a very important part to the New Zealand meat industry.  He told me that he would do his best but he was pretty tied up.

A little later on he sent a note up to me to say that he could spare half an hour at two o’clock – could I organise things for him, which I did.  First he came to Richmond and then I passed him on to others – he was upstairs for over two hours before he left.  When we were both back in New Zealand he rang me one day and said he was coming to Hawke’s Bay – could he visit Richmond?  So I made certain that he got a very good reception and arranged for him to see some of the Richmond plants at a later date.  He told me on that occasion that the two hours that he’d spent upstairs at Anuga was the highlight of his visit.

I visited Anuga again twice before I retired.  It was the most amazing place.  There was red meat and manufactured products from all over the world, and it was truly a universal meeting place for like-minded people.

Richmond’s association with Mattfeld was very beneficial to the company and a wonderful business association for them to have.  I visited Mattfeld headquarters in Hamburg and have had other things to do with them over the years.  While I’m at Anuga … it’s amazing what contacts you make.  One day I was late getting there, because I wanted to go into the Cathedral at Cologne to have a short look around it.  And on the way down I’d been sitting next to a Norwegian, and he was in the fish business.  So I said to him “Have you been to the Cologne Cathedral before?”  And he said, “No, I never have time”.  And I said “Well, I’ve been there twice before and I’m going to go back because I think we might strike a church service.”  Just as we walked in to the Cathedral, the seventy-strong choir in scarlet surplices walked in singing an anthem … most inspiring way to enter any House of the Lord.

After the service I took him downstairs to where there is a very ancient Roman museum – and still very well preserved. It was only discovered some decades ago.  But the interesting thing – on the way over to Anuga, I was sitting in the launch next to three Germans that looked to be pretty official, and I said [asked] “are you going to Anuga?”  And one said “yes, indeed I am.  It’s a wonderful place for us to do shopping.”  And so I said “well what sort of shopping are you doing?”   And he introduced himself to me as General so-and-so.  I said “well, I’m Chairman of Richmond, a meat company – maybe we can meet at Anuga”.  And he said “I would be very happy to meet you at Anuga”, and I said “will you come and have lunch at our stall at half past one, and I will make certain that our chef provides you with a lamb meal”.  And so he duly turned up and John Cornish, who is a professional chef with Richmond, had cooked a variety of lamb dishes, and this army General plus two of his Lieutenants turned up and had a most [delicious] lamb meal that John Cornish had produced, and wine from a friend of mine, Garry Glazebrook.  I talked him into it, telling him it was great advertising for his wine.  And the General enjoyed himself and it ended up with Richmond getting a contract for the West German Army for the year ahead to supply them with lamb.  And that was just a chance meeting sitting next to him on the boat.  So it was worth going and praying in the church for a time.

It’s difficult for me to go into the cut and thrust of life at Richmond but the most significant thing that happened was in 1986 with the takeover of first, Dawn Meat, which was amicable and arranged and programmed, and followed within a week of the Whakatu closure.

I understand and appreciate the frustrations, disappointment and in some cases hardship that the Whakatu staff and workforce had to go through the sudden closure of their plant. It was an enormous shock to the whole of Hawke’s Bay – indeed, perhaps the largest since the 1931 earthquake.  It is impossible to throw two and half thousand people out of work overnight without it having widespread ramifications to the province and beyond. I would just like to say to those that were affected how much I regretted the sudden notice that you received.  It wasn’t planned that way.  It was planned so that you would have warning at management level who could then make the path a little smoother for you,.  But that wasn’t to be.  It had to come forward very rapidly because of what was to transpire.  It was evident that some people had prior warning and were able to take advantage of this knowledge by buying up Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Company shares.  As can be expected, that immediately triggered a move by the three companies to hasten the announcement, otherwise those Whakatu shareholders would be financially disadvantaged. So the rapid closure was done for the right reasons but it was unfortunate that it happened that way, and it was a very bad public relations exercise, for particularly Richmond, and it brought unnecessary stress to many people.  So I do want those that were affected to know personally how I felt about it and I was sorry that it had to happen that way.  In the end Barry Brill’s shock announcement on the six o’clock news was justified in order to protect the Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Company shareholders.

Richmond did everything they could to alleviate the pain. We were the only local company, therefore received the full force of criticism, whatever that may be.  And some of it was extremely personal. But I understood that and accepted it and it only drove me on to do more that I could to help the affected people. Richmond set up an information centre to help the affected people. We spoke to them personally and we gave many more employment than what was economically sensible.  So I do feel that we did everything within our powers to help the affected workers.

Unfortunately for Hawke’s Bay, that wasn’t to be the end of major closures.  And this was brought about by delicensing, which allowed smaller, more efficient plants to be built and compete, and the larger older plants then became at risk. And it wasn’t long before Tomoana couldn’t stand the heat, and they closed even more abruptly than Whakatu.  Being controlled from England by the Vesty organisation – the parent company being Union International – they were able to shut their doors overnight, but they didn’t do it quite like that. They, like the Whakatu closure, offered their employees very generous redundancy.  And I think that it must always be remembered that the redundancy that the Whakatu employees received did give many the opportunity to start their own little business or to seek employment elsewhere, so it wasn’t all negative stuff. And over the years ex-Whakatu employees have spoken to me and said that they were grateful to have the opportunity to start a new life, and they had the money through their redundancy to be able to do so.

I would like to take you back five or six years and talk about some of the factors that may have contributed to that event – to when Richmond and Dawn applied for a sheep licence to build a three chain plant at Oringi. That was in 1979. We had a very protracted hearing before the Meat Industry Authority and because we were applying for a licence, Whakatu (or Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Company as their proper name is), also applied to have a sheep plant built at Takapau. It was also to be a three chain plant. It was quite incongruous really, because we had friends giving evidence against one another, and in the case of Richmond there were an enormous number of clients that had dual shareholding in both companies. And I used to sit in the background and listen to these people that maybe were neighbours or just lived a little distance away giving evidence for one company or the other. Anyway, the final analysis was that our application to build down at Oringi, just outside of Dannevirke, was turned down but Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Company was granted a licence to build at Takapau. It didn’t really make logical sense to the Richmond and Dawn Meat Companies because we had no sheep licence, whereas Hawke’s Bay Farmers Meat Company already owned Whakatu which had six chains, and Takapau was only going to be about forty minutes down the road.

Anyway, be that as it may Graeme Lowe, part owner of Dawn Meat, would never let the matter rest. He was a very forthright Yorkshireman and would stop at nothing if it was impeding his progress or his desire to move forward. So he arranged through John Falloon who was then Minister of Agriculture and our Member for Pahiatua, for Richmond and Dawn to have a meeting with the Prime Minister of that time, Mr Rob Muldoon. A meeting was arranged in the early part of 1980 and for some reason of his own Peter Plummer, Chairman of Richmond, asked me if I would go in his place. That came as a little bit of a shock to me because I was still the newest boy in the Richmond camp.

Anyway the day was set and I arranged to meet John Foster and Graeme Lowe at the Napier Airport. I was waiting there patiently when I got a telephone call to say that Wellington Airport was closed and that we’d have to drive, and we had a little over three hours to get there or else miss our meeting. Graeme Lowe was chafing at the bit and was reluctant to wait for me to drive from Napier to Hastings because he was in fear of missing the meeting. John Foster prevailed upon him to wait, because it would be completely the wrong thing for just one side of the two partners to meet the Prime Minister. And as it turned out it was the right decision, because as can be expected it was quite a prickly meeting with the PM.

We left Hastings, Graeme opted to hold the speed detector high on the windscreen so that John Foster could drive at pace. I sat very quietly strapped in the back seat and marvelled at John’s ability to drive so quickly. We arrived at Parliament Buildings in under three hours … perhaps a record none of us wanted to boast about. And when we arrived at Parliament Buildings we were met by John Falloon and he greeted us with the good news that the PM had also been unable to fly into Wellington and so the meeting was delayed by half an hour. That brought a huge amount of relief to us because we were able to gather ourselves and prepare for the meeting. In the meantime Ben Couch joined us and told us that he was very concerned about the future of Waingawa in the Wairarapa, in his constituency. And we didn’t really have very encouraging news for him because Waingawa was destined to be one of the early casualties.

At our meeting with the PM, he was very blunt and to the point. His opening phrase to us was: “I’ve just had the other roosters in and they’ve told me a completely different story to what I’m anticipating you’ll tell me. Who am I to believe?” And that was our introduction. Anyway, he asked some pretty searching questions and as I said before it would have been completely the wrong thing for only Dawn to have turned up. The upshot of that meeting was that Muldoon a few weeks later pushed the delicensing of the meat industry through Parliament, by a very slender margin. We of course were elated. I can’t say the same for Hawke’s Bay Farmers’ Meat Company who had already started to build the plant at Takapau some months earlier.

Richmond and Dawn (Pacific Freezing as the joint company was called) took eleven months to build Oringi, which surely must have been a very smart time. Graeme Lowe, being the methodical man he was, had ordered in anticipation much of the equipment and material needed. And so the builders were able to get off to a flying start because the engineer had already designed the whole building. It was opened in November 1981 by the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon himself, and he spoke very encouragingly about allowing non-Union labour to work at Oringi. This was one of the things that Richmond and Dawn particularly wanted to happen, and we wanted to also attract farm labourers and farm owners to work at Oringi, and we didn’t want them to have to compulsorily join the Union. So after Mr Muldoon’s encouraging speech at the opening, we felt confident that we’d be able to run Oringi with people that didn’t want to be a member of the Union.

Roger Middlemass was the President of that area and he had a different view, and he caused enormous disruption. In fact he openly said that he wouldn’t be satisfied until he saw Graeme Lowe driving a Mini. Fortunately that day never came when Graeme had to put his knees up round his chin somewhere and drive his Mini, but Middlemass certainly made things extremely difficult.

And not only was Oringi on strike for many weeks, but other companies were taken out too, and in the end the meat industry in the southern part of the North Island was at a standstill. The reason Mr Muldoon wasn’t prepared to persevere with voluntary unionism at Oringi was due to pressure from the established companies, because they didn’t see why they should go out of business for the sake of Oringi which they didn’t really want anyway. So that was the end of voluntary unionism at that time.

I’d just like to say a few words about Pacific Freezing which was the joint company owned by Dawn Meat and Richmond. We came to an agreement – instead of rotating the chairmanship as had been the case when I became Chairman of Richmond, I became chairman of Pacific Freezing and Graeme Lowe became the Chief Executive. So I had a lot to do with Graeme and we had a pretty good working relationship. The only problem was that Graeme looked upon Pacific Freezing as his company, and there were times when things were done that I wasn’t in knowledge of.

But we got all that straightened up. I had the utmost respect for Graeme’s ability, his tenacity, and his drive. I certainly learnt a lot from working with him and I also recognised that there were so many different ways of doing things than the conventional way. Graeme was the main driver for reforms in the meat industry, and I think farmers and the country owe him a lot. He certainly shook the industry up. He was extremely successful and was also very generous and put a lot back into the community. And I would just personally like to thank Graeme for what he did for the community, much of which was never publicised.

And I would also like to thank Andy and the Lowe family for carrying Graeme’s legacy. Andy has grown the business. He’s got very good people around him and he’s also done a fantastic job in the conservation of New Zealand native flora and fauna.

Pacific Freezing was a very successful company. The combination of John Foster, Graeme Lowe and a few others was a recipe for success. It was so successful that at one time the Meat Board imposed restrictions on the number of cattle that could be slaughtered at the beef plant. That surely must be one of the most contradictory things that the Meat Board has done, to encourage lower killing costs and then penalise the company that was able to deliver. Naturally Richmond and Dawn were very vociferous in their criticism of this move by the Meat Board, and it wasn’t very long before the restrictions on the imposed daily kill were lifted. But the other Works in the Province weren’t very happy because our killing charges were significantly lower and the market share naturally was growing.

I would just like to talk, before I leave the Meat Industry, about one or two aspects of Richmond Company itself. It was founded by William Richmond who would have to be one of the most knowledgeable and practical meat men the country has known. And his eye for stock was extraordinary and his memory was even better. He never kept a notebook, but he knew the daily tallies and the weights of the lambs without referring to pen and pencil. William Richmond was known as the farmers’ friend, and the culture that he developed was well known throughout the country. And he was insistent that those who worked for him adopted his culture for fairness to both client and customer. And it was on those principles that he developed the company and built up a huge clientele.

He had many good men working for him but the earliest that I can remember well was Lou [Les] Fisher who ran the administrative side of Richmond. And Lou [Les] Fisher was a very smart individual, and he had the most meticulous diary that anyone could ever see. Every detail was written down in small neat writing. He never missed a thing – he really was the engine room of Richmond in those early days. There are many good stories about Les Fisher, but one that I like is this:  a director was taking it upon himself to give one of the drafters a little bit of advice about how to conduct himself and a few other matters pertaining to clients. The drafter was a little bit concerned about this so spoke to Mr Fisher, and Mr Fisher’s reply to him was (with a tap on the shoulder): “Now then young man, don’t you worry about those things. You look after picking your stock and looking after your client – I will look after the directors”. And Les Fisher in his inimicable way took care of that situation. That’s how Richmond was in those days.

And the godfather of Richmond was Lew Harris – later Sir Lewis – one of Hawke’s Bay’s great philanthropists, and well known for the wonderful work he did in setting up the Hohepa Homes. Lew Harris was always at the beck and call of the GM of Richmond or anybody else that needed advice or assistance. And one little instance I will give you was when Richmond bought the old Heretaunga Dairy Factory in Maraekakaho Road with a view to turning it into a wholesale department. And it is still there today as a meat wholesale outlet. And he took Bill Webb, the then General Manager, and a Director, Thomas Cross, along to have a look at it, and Bill Webb said “it is the sort of building we need but at the present time our cash flow won’t allow us to purchase it”. Lew Harris turned to him and said “you buy it now, or you’ll lose it. Here’s a cheque to pay for it and pay me back when the company is able to”. And that was Lew Harris, so no wonder he was called ‘The Godfather’. And he also owned the land where Pacific Beef Plant is situated, and when Bill Webb looked at the price that he was asking for it, it was a ludicrous price. And Bill Webb spoke to Sir Lewis and said “that is nowhere near value for that property”, and Sir Lewis just looked at him and said “that is my business, not yours – you buy it”.  And that is how that site for the beef plant was bought.

And of course it is well documented that when Brierley’s raided Richmond and took up a number of shares, Lew Harris told Bruce Judge, the Brierley Director, to go back to Wellington and he would buy the shares. So Richmond has been fortunate in people that it has had both on the inside and the outside.

After the closure of Whakatu, Richmond grew fourfold in a week, which took a considerable amount of skill to handle. We were very fortunate as a company in having acquired the services of John Foster who had come over to Richmond after the Dawn Meat takeover.  John Foster and Rowan [Ogg], the immediate past General Manager of Richmond, did an amazing job in skilfully guiding Richmond through the next few years. And of course here I must also mention their executive staff too.  During all the negotiations and the settling down process I must recognise the outstanding advice and contribution to helping Richmond that two other people made – Andrew Morrison, the company’s solicitor and Sir John Anderson, the company’s banker.  Sir John was General Manager of the National Bank of New Zealand, and a very good friend to Richmond and a great adviser, and I thank those two gentlemen profoundly for their huge assistance in getting Richmond through the next three or four years.

Because Richmond had so many new customers and clients, a big part of my job was to visit both here in New Zealand and overseas. This required a huge amount of travel which I did sometimes with John or Rowan – often by myself – but I always had agents to meet me when I arrived at the port of destination.  I was fortunate to be able to visit many parts of the World that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to – most of the Middle East countries, a lot of Asia, and a great deal of Western and Eastern Europe, and of course North America, Australia and other places. It was a wonderful experience for me but also quite an exercising one too, and it required many long hours away from home and, perhaps more importantly, away from the Boardroom in Richmond. But I do feel that I gave the company my best shot in areas where it was needed, and I considered that a very important role that I had to fulfil.

I would just like to mention one person that I had a huge respect for and learnt so much from when we’re talking about Agencies, and that was Nicholas Zehnder from Switzerland who was the principal of Emag, Richmond main agent in Western Europe and Eastern Europe for hides, slipe wool and pelts … lamb pelts.  I travelled extensively with Nicholas and he taught me much about both East and Western Europe. He was multilingual and knew the cuisine of most of the countries we travelled through. He was a joy to travel with, well informed and we thoroughly enjoyed the odd game of golf every now and again.

I would just like to mention one small instance when we were in the South of France in a town called Mazamet that is the centre of the pelt industry of France. We were having dinner with an owner of a large tannery that held an interest in one of the premier French rugby clubs. During dinner he obviously got the sniff that I knew a little bit about rugby, and the subject of pelts completely went out of his mind and all he wanted to do was to talk about current All Blacks, ageing All Blacks, anything about the All Blacks or merging All Blacks, that I may have knowledge of that I could share with him. It proved that the evening wasn’t long enough for him and so he invited Nicholas and I to have a game of golf with him at six o’clock the next morning because we had a plane to catch to Barcelona at ten. All that I can say is that the golf was mediocre, the conversation was full on, and the company and a very nice breakfast was very pleasant.

Apart from my tours with Nicholas Zehnder, I’ve also travelled quite extensively with different sales personnel in Richmond. I’ve been twice to America with Bruce Cockroft, who handled the beef side of Richmond business in the United States and Canada. I’ve travelled round the Middle East with an agent by the name of Hackenshauer, who knows the Middle East like the back of his hand and speaks most of the different languages. And so I’ve really had an introduction to a lot of the other side of the business, other than sitting in the Boardroom and making decisions.

I’d also like to say before leaving that I never had anything but the utmost support from members of Richmond Board, which made my job just so much easier.  So that was a pretty tumultuous decade, the 1980s, for me with my association with the meat industry.

I would now like to move two decades on from the closure of Whakatu to the attempted takeover of Richmond by PPCS, a South Island Meat Company. They launched an aggressive and at times unreasonable takeover of Richmond, which by this time was the number one company in the North Island.  A small group was formed of past Richmond directors and a couple of ex executives and a lawyer, named the Bell Group. It was our intention to contest the takeover of Richmond.  We were of the opinion that some of the transactions were questionable and so took them to Court. Our view was upheld by Mr Justice Young who came down very severely against PPCS and they had to unwind some of what had been done.  But before they did that they appealed to the Court of Appeal to hear their case.  And beyond all our comprehension the Court of Appeal awarded them their appeal. There was only one recourse for the Bell Group to take then and that was to apply to the Privy Council, and this application was declined. These two shock decisions, or rulings, came as a big blow to many people, and in my particular case, it rather shook my confidence in the judicial system.  But that being as it may, you have to put these things behind you and get on with the business in front of you. I would just like to say that the takeover of Richmond by PPCS – later named Silver Fern Farms – didn’t bring immediate benefits to farmers and I doubt very much whether they’ve received any benefit at this stage from the takeover. Unfortunately the company is now half owned by Chinese interests and it’ll be interesting to see whether that marriage brings benefits to New Zealand farmers.

The meat industry has tried very hard for a long time to get a little cohesion and coordination into the system, but up until now has failed, and this has largely been due to strong individualism between companies – competition instead of cooperation in some areas where there could be cost findings.  But one day it will have to change if farmers are to be kept in business.

But the area that worries me most is how to keep the hill country farmer – the person who breeds the lambs that are eventually slaughtered – how can they be kept in business. Their margins are shrinking yearly as costs rise. The breeder of stud animals, and the finisher and fattener of his lambs that come off the hills, are both doing sufficiently well to have a profitable business, but I do have concerns about the hill country farmer, especially the one of medium size. The larger ones where they have thousands of stock units are all right. But the New Zealand sheep industry is made up of tens of thousands of small to medium farmers, and they are the people where the industry has to find a solution.

In the early 1980s Bill Birch who was the Mr Fixit Minister in the Muldoon Government set up Regional Councils around the regions, because he wanted to have closer contact with them and also he wanted them to be able to go through their Members of Parliament more directly to Government. When the Hawke’s Bay one was set up in the early 1980s I was invited to join. From memory I believe there were eight of us including Members of Parliament from Napier, Hastings and what was then the Hawke’s Bay electorate which later became the Tukituki electorate.

So there were three Members of Parliament;  Sir Richard Harrison was the Member for Hawke’s Bay in those days but after the election in 1984 he lost his seat, and Bill Sutton took his place. And Bill Sutton was a very inquiring academic and he wanted to know everything he could about the meat industry, because he recognised that the meat industry was a very big part of Hawke’s Bay, and that Michael Sanders, the General Manager of Tomoana, and myself as Chairman of Pacific Freezing and Richmond, were the main players in the area apart from Whakatu. And he wanted to be able to come to us to find out what was happening in the Union movement and whether we were having unreasonable hold ups and all these sort of things. So it was a very good medium for Government to get a feel of what was happening in these regions.

Lindsay Smith, President of Federated Farmers – he and I were the only two of the eight that weren’t executive. We had David Irvine, Chief Executive of Wattie’s and these sorts of people – John Buck from Te Mata Wines, they were all executives in the different industries and possibly saw things from a slightly different perspective than what Lindsay and I did, who were representing a group of people. We had some very meaningful meetings, and the most difficult one of all Michael Sanders was absent for, and he asked me if I’d take it. And that came about by a directive from Central Government to get a meeting of Local Government representatives in the area and hold a forum with the express purpose of trying to soften them up a little bit for amalgamation, that was just round the corner. Whether we softened them up or not I can’t gauge but it certainly got them into high dudgeon. And we had mayors arguing against mayors, and if I hadn’t been very firm it would have been a complete raucous. Anyway the message did get through but perhaps a little bit of rationalisation in local body industry was on the way. And it wasn’t terribly long after that that we did have some amalgamations in the area, but only minor ones compared with what was tried a year ago. That was easily the most difficult meeting I’ve ever had to chair, but we got through it.

We also as a body looked at opportunities in Hawke’s Bay and debated them in front of the three MP’s, so that was fruitful. And although I was only on the Council for four years it was very beneficial to my way of thinking and also gave me a far greater inside knowledge of what was going on both at local level and at national level.

I resigned at the end of 1986, because the Richmond load really became far too great after the Whakatu closure and the takeover of Dawn Meat, and I wanted to devote my time entirely to making certain that Richmond succeeded. So that was the end of my little foray into … really local politics … and I must say that it was my only one because my other involvements have always been either on the industry side of politics or on the charity side of politics, but never directly into local politics.

I’m just going to talk about my recreational community venture that is the favourite thing that I have done, and that is in becoming involved in the A & P (Agricultural and Pastoral Society). I’ll just give a little bit of background as to why it was formed back in 1863.  In the 1850s when livestock was starting to be imported into New Zealand, mainly from Europe, it was a bit haphazard and odd individuals were taking advantage of those that weren’t in a position to import, and possibly not always quality stock was coming into New Zealand. So a group of farmers led by the then Superintendent of Hawke’s Bay, Sir Donald McLean, met in a hotel in Napier and talked about an organisation that would take care of the importation of livestock and plants and seeds and trees and all those things that farmers needed if they were to carry on their lifestyle. And the Hawke’s Bay Agricultural and Pastoral Society was born in 1863, and Donald McLean was its first President.

Over the years the Hawke’s Bay A & P has been very well served by Presidents in the main from the farming community, and testament to this is the fact that none has been sacked in office. So they must have all been acceptable.

Being a man of the land I have always been interested in the Society and can well remember going to Shows when I was a youngster. We’d go ‘en famille’ and take a picnic lunch, enjoy the candy floss and popcorns, and a ride or two on the merry-go-round, and look at the enormous bulls in the ring and woolly sheep. Those are my early recollections, long before I reached double figures. I’ve been to the Show on and off all my life. Obviously missed a few days of Show when at secondary school and odd times when I’ve been out of the country.  But when I’ve been in the country I have always attended and more often than not, all three days.

In 1946 I was asked if I would be a junior steward, and I accepted. But I didn’t do it on a regular basis until I joined the Committee in 1960. In those days the General Committee was quite difficult to get on, even though there were fifty people on it. And the year that I stood there were six applicants for four places, and I really felt very sorry for the two that didn’t make it, because any six of us could have been in that position. I did a variety of jobs. Initially I was a steward in the Sheep Section designated to look after the Natural Romney Class. I did this for a number of years and it was a great learning curve. And I also had the opportunity to meet many of the leading breeders in the country and to view their stock and to ask them questions about their stock. So that was very beneficial, especially seeing it was a Natural Class and not the Open Class because there is no deception such as trimming or blooming in a Natural Class.

The next thing I did was to run the shearing competitions. That was a pretty full on job on the last day, and I did that initially in conjunction with the Romney sheep on the first and second days and the shearing on the last day, so I had a pretty busy Show. I was really very interested in the shearing competitions and it was a time when much emphasis was being put on wool handling and wool and presentation of the clip, and the quality of wool as well.  And Ron Montgomery who was head of the Meat & Wool Section of the Department of Agriculture – he was an absolute enthusiast for wool presentation. And he did an enormously good job both locally and up and down the country in lifting the standard of wool handling in woolsheds.

It was also a very interesting time for shearing, because Godfrey Bowen was world renowned by this time and he’d broken just about every shearing record in the World. And he’d also demonstrated far abroad – even in Russia he was looked upon as a hero when he went over there and taught the Bowen method of shearing sheep. So it was an interesting time to be involved in the shearing section, and during my time Hawke’s Bay sent two teams to the Golden Shears. Both occasions we won the wool handling, but never the complete team because the shearers that went weren’t quite fast enough. They were certainly clean enough but not fast enough, and so the team never won the Golden Shears.  But the wool handlers won the national title two consecutive years – one year two sisters won, Hannah Cotter and Janie Tahau, and the next year Hannah Cotter won with her daughter, so it was a good family affair.

The next thing I did of interest was to look after Waikoko Gardens, and I did that in conjunction with John Anderson who owned a very large nursery in Napier, Anderson’s Nurseries. They were a very old company. John was a fund of information and knowledge and was a wonderful person to work alongside. And we had three or four years doing that. John always had the Iceland Poppies which became an absolute focal area of the gardens, ready to flower at Show time and if it was a sunny day it was just an enormous display. We also did considerable work on the very old trees in the Gardens – employed an arborist and some trees were taken out and others had a little bit of surgery done to them. There are some very interesting trees in the Waikoko Gardens and particularly of note is the big plane tree by the lake, and if anybody that listens to this recording goes and has a look there you will find that there are some branches that are grafted into one another. It looks like a natural phenomenon but indeed it could well have been, but history tells us that William Nelson’s gardener used to sometimes doodle a little bit in that area and persuade some branches to grow into others. But I just invite you if in the Gardens to have a look one day.

In 1980 I became President. I think that I’m the only President that never served an apprenticeship as a Vice President and I was virtually appointed because the person to be President became ill a month from the annual general meeting and the Society was in a little bit of crisis. A past-president and a very good friend of mine, Mr Jack Chambers, persuaded me to take on the job and I’m very grateful that I did. And the fact that I wasn’t part of the establishment, should I say – I felt that I had a little bit of freedom to do what I had thought needed doing for a number of years, and that was to shake the old Show up a bit.

When a bunch of us formed the Executive Committee it was done in a pretty autocratic manner, and it was done within the first week and passed a month later by the General Committee. It possibly was unconstitutional but we made certain that at a later date it complied with the Society’s Constitution.

It was quite a desperate state that we were dealing with – the finances were running out quite quickly so we had to act promptly, hence the speed in forming that Executive. I must confess to being extremely autocratic, and in conjunction with my Vice President, Ralph Beamish, we appointed a number of people to join the Executive. It is fitting that five of those members consecutively followed me as President, so we didn’t get everything wrong. They were Ralph Beamish, Brian Pattullo, David Hildreth, Peter Holden and John Renton. Trevor Casely, a practising public accountant, became Treasurer and a very diligent one too.  He was aware of our plight so avoided trying to tie the Executives’ hands, but at the same time made us aware of how thin the ice was that we were treading on.

In 1981, a year later, Eddie Hayes joined as Secretary. Eddie was brilliant at promotional work, he was a past PR of Greater Hastings and he was very experienced in running functions. He was a great find, and was the face of the A & P Society for the next twenty one years.

The other person that I wish to mention was Ian Nimon, who was tragically killed in a car accident in 1983. Ian was the maestro of the Showgrounds. You never had to mention anything twice and he always had them in absolute immaculate order.  We sadly missed Ian when he wasn’t there. But we were fortunate in having a wonderful deputy to Ian in David Nelson. And David Nelson has tended and cared for those Showgrounds for the last thirty-four years, and I don’t think there’s anyone that has ever criticised him for the grounds not being up to scratch. He has the propensity to always have them bang on for any function that is run on those grounds.

There were many other very able and capable people that were on the General Committee and indeed people working on the grounds, but it is difficult unless for special reasons, to talk about them, except to say thank you.

One of the first things that I queried at the first Show was why the gate takings were so low. I had fair idea why – that there were a lot of free entries going on – and the worst area was the fence along the railway line close to the Tomoana Freezing Works. And so I had a bit of a stroll over there on the morning of the last day and people were just streaming over. So that was evidence that something had to be done. So before the next Show we built a security fence round the grounds that encircled the salient parts. We couldn’t afford to go right round the grounds, but even the security fence that we built cost $58,000 which we didn’t have. But the Executive Committee took the view that we’d take the gamble and do it, and if it didn’t come off we’d all be down the road. But it did come off and the $58,000 was paid back in three years from the increased gate revenue by collecting the fish in the net, and not let them swim wild.

I’ve been a past-president for thirty four years which is a very long time. And I’d just like to say how grateful I am to successive presidents and committees [for] the courtesy that they’ve extended to me and the little jobs that they’ve asked me to do at different times. I was out at the Showgrounds yesterday with Peter Holden and Brian Pattullo, and the present General Manager Brent Linn gave us a conducted tour of what is going on there today in the form of water reticulation, sewerage reticulation, power reticulation and ablution blocks, which is Stage 1 of the proposed development of the Showgrounds into a leading event complex. I was very impressed with what is going on and I can’t help but thank Richard Chambers and before him Robert Pattullo, who initiated this forward planning for the grounds. There’s a terrific community ground swell for support for the grounds and it is very pleasing to see the business community and others coming forward with support and funds to make all this possible. These iconic grounds are certainly the hub that so many things revolve around in Hawke’s Bay and they must be maintained and they must be kept up to date with ever improving facilities. And it is paramount that the wider community support the A & P Society as much as they can. When you consider that the Annual Show is Hawke’s Bay’s largest function and the Horse of the Year is another very large function, (and the other large function in Hawke’s Bay of course is the Art Deco weekend in Napier, but it will always have to stay there for obvious reasons), but these other two functions can be made to grow and can be made to contribute to the Hawke’s Bay economy.

When I was President I saw an opportunity to further promote industry in Hawke’s Bay, so the Society set about making it possible for as many embassies and agricultural attachés to be represented at the Show as possible. And in my last Show in ’82 there were twelve Embassies with representatives at our Show.  And because of my involvement in Richmond and Pacific Freezing, and Pacific Leathers, I made it possible for some of those representatives, whether they be agricultural attachés or the Ambassadors themselves, to come up the day before the Show, or two days before the Show, and visit industry in Hawke’s Bay – whether it be Wattie’s, whether it be a meat works, whether it be Apple & Pear Board – but it was an opportunity to get these people from Wellington into the region to see what we were doing in Hawke’s Bay.

At my last Show the guest nation was China and they brought a big delegation, not only from Wellington but also out from China too, and there were a lot of Chinese representatives at the Show. Through this Association I got to know the Chinese Ambassador quite well and I also arranged later for him to have a visit to some of the Richmond Plants. He asked me if I would take a delegation for him to China at my convenience, which was a pretty generous offer, and I told him I’d think about it and think of a few ideas and come and see him in Wellington, which I did.  And we worked out a very comprehensive itinerary.  And I asked him for an undertaking before I agreed that he would not allow the itinerary to be tinkered with once it was agreed to – and he gave me that undertaking. Which was great comfort to me, because it was well known that sometimes sensitive areas all of a sudden become out of bounds.

So in 1984 I took a group of twenty odd people including some people very interested in forestry and deer farming, and nursing and – Government statistician – and a few friends, and we had almost a month’s tour in China. Because of a group being sent by the Ambassador from New Zealand meant that we had opportunities to go to places that we wouldn’t have otherwise gone. And I’ll give you as an example, into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing which is normally off limits. We went to a deer farm that was also off limits, especially to people that had a vested interest in the deer industry. And we had a permanent interpreter guide with us twenty four hours of every day from the time we arrived in China until the time we left, and she was very well informed and of course was the liaison officer with the local guides that we picked up everywhere. So we saw the cultural side, we saw the industrial side, the schooling side, educational side, a little bit of hospital work, and an enormous amount of scenery.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to visit Guilin, the sister city to Hastings. John Renton and his wife and my wife Sue, we had an evening with the Mayor of Guilin and he was an interesting character, especially seeing he fought against New Zealanders in the Korean War. He was fighting for North Korea with the Chinese.

So we had a very interesting time, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a tour, when you have travelled so extensively in a country, and seen so much of a completely different culture. You can go to countries like Egypt and it’s more concentrated, but China – it is so spread. And we saw some amazing things – old irrigation systems on the Yangtze that had been going since before Christ;  and we came down the Yangtze River three days in a boat. That was an amazing experience, starting up where it is quite narrow in the mountains. But that whole trip came about through inviting the Chinese to the Show and making them feel welcome, and that is how many things start and are done in life, just by a personal contact.

I could say so much more about the A & P Society. It is an organisation that is there to be used by farmers. It polices matters such as quarantines. Quarantine is so important in a country that rests upon its survival for livestock, and it has so many other functions pertaining to farming and animal breeding. And so I found it fun, interesting and challenging, and I’m very glad that I have devoted so much of my spare time to it.

In 1956 the Hawke’s Bay Farm Forestry was founded. The instigator of that was Merrick Williams, a very well-known and knowledgeable forester who was farming in Hawke’s Bay.  The Farm Forestry was brought about by the diminishing access to native timber, so it was seen by the Forest Service that there would have to be additional planting other than commercial planting to cater for future needs of domestic timber in New Zealand. It was an initiative that was totally supported by the Government and they gave quite generous subsidies to get the scheme underway. The National body had been founded about two years earlier but what I want to talk about is the Hawke’s Bay Farm Forestry.

Merrick Williams invited five of us to join him to form the inaugural Committee for the Hawke’s Bay Farm Foresters’ Association. They were Gary Glazebrook, Brian Patterson, Dick Gilbertson, Gordon Halliday and myself.  We were all interested in trees from an amateur perspective, but quickly saw the advantages for Hawke’s Bay if we became a little bit more proactive and encouraged people to plant trees in difficult country that they looked upon as waste country, and if they wanted to, on better country. Initially it would be fair to say that all the waste corners were the first to be planted up. And when people started to realise that there was an economic gain in planting trees, some of the less steep hills and even some flat land was planted, but it was discouraged, especially on the flat land, if there was other land that was available.

We visited many very interesting gardens, parks, other forester’s farms, most of the large sawmills in the country, wood processing plants and many other places that related to the timber industry. And once a year there was an annual Farm Foresters’ Association meeting which was held in a different part of New Zealand every year. So over the years we had the opportunity of going to visit some amazing areas in New Zealand that many of us didn’t even know existed, and of course some lovely gardens and some old plantings. So together with Sue’s and my interest in the Rhododendron Society, the Farm Forestry, and the Coopworth Society that held a conference in a different part of New Zealand every year, over a period of twenty odd years there weren’t many special parts of New Zealand that we didn’t get to see.

The Farm Forestry has gone from strength to strength and is still a very major part of the timber industry. And for Hawke’s Bay, the Farm Forester of the Year has special recognition at a dinner held once a year for the Primary Industries, which is hosted by the Hawke’s Bay Agricultural and Pastoral Society. And it is very heartening to see the Farmer of the Year and the Forester of the Year sharing the same evening on the Hawke’s Bay Farmers A & P Society grounds.

I have even been able to attend the odd Field Day of recent years, and I still can never help but marvel just how much wonderful trees – and the spectacle of them – we have in this province, and of course nationwide. New Zealand is just so blessed to have a climate that can grow such a huge variety of trees in so many different regions.

I would just like to briefly talk about the twenty years that my wife Timmy and I had in Taupo.  I knew Taupo from a very early age. We used to go there in pre-earthquake times, but I didn’t remember very much about it. But I did remember the early ’30s very well and I always loved it. Swimming in the lake was always an absolute boon, and of course all the many attractions of geysers and mud pools etcetera were all novel to us.  And I also learned to fly fish there. I was taught by my Uncle Ivan Logan who was a very keen angler and had been fishing there for over thirty years at that stage.

After I retired from Richmond and a few other things that I was involved in, I just wanted to go away somewhere and do a few things that I knew Timmy and I would enjoy doing. I’d had a pretty full life in Hawke’s Bay and to a degree was perhaps too willing to do things to help people and to help the province, but it’s just the way I am.  And I really needed and wanted to get away from it all for a time, especially after the decade of the ’80s, which was a very full on one for me in many ways.  So in 1992 we went to Taupo and initially lived in the family bach on the lake front until we were able to purchase a very nice house in Ngauruhoe Street with a view that gave you the impression of sitting on top of the world. We became involved in the things that we wanted to do. We joined the Monday Walkers, which was one of the best things that we’ve been able to do together that I can remember. It happened every Monday and we went for sometimes a half day, sometimes a day walk every week. We explored so much of the Central Plateau that I doubt if there’s any part of it we didn’t see. And the other parts that we didn’t go to I saw in other ways, either fishing a little stream with my fishing companion, Joe Collins, who’d been a friend of mine since we met in a cricket match in 1937 on the Hereworth cricket grounds. Joe and I mainly fished … the Waitahanui occasionally, but mainly the Hinemoa which has a reputation for large fish, and I can vouch for that. But Joe’s preference was the Tongariro and we fished just about every pool and reach that I know of on it.

In hindsight I didn’t take as much advantage of my fishing as perhaps I should’ve, but there were other things to do as well. There were some larger mountains to climb;  there were many golf courses in the area to play, and of course, we had the three golf courses in Taupo, which I played two days a week, each time with a different group, and on a Wednesday afternoon in a cart with my old friend Joe Collins, and we played nine holes. And he was a pleasure to play with. He had been a runner up in the New Zealand Open and was a great mentor to me when I shagged and went into the bushes.

Taupo had many other things to offer, but only two did I become involved in. One was the Museum which I became very involved with and was happy to see it changed from a little bit of a mish-mash into a Heritage Museum. And later Alistair Hobson who was President (and I was his Deputy) persuaded the District Council to fund it more and eventually to fund it completely. This gave them control but it was still very much in the hands of the local volunteers. And that Museum today is a very fine Heritage Museum, and anyone passing through that has heard me mention this – please don’t fail to go there.

I also became involved in the Arts Festival with my friend Dennis Griffin. We were both asked if we would join the Trustees and I had no fear of joining as long as Dennis was there because he was one of the smartest accountants around. And it wasn’t long before he had the finances straightened out, and from his own Charitable Trust a large grant made to the Art Fair. Unfortunately it has since petered out and I’m not entirely surprised.

After about eighteen years we decided that we had had the best of Taupo because when we went there we were able to have fun on the lake, go fishing, climb mountains, enjoy our walks, go into the bush with a chainsaw and gather our large pile of firewood for the winter, with others, and all those fun things. But as time went on and we couldn’t do many of those things we decided that it was better to come back to a warmer climate and family.  And that was a great move, because since we’ve been back here we have had such an enjoyable time during the last five years.

I would just like to make one comment – one hears so much about the cold of Taupo, but to us it was never an issue. We didn’t come back because of the cold, but we were conscious of the fact that the winter went on for a long time, and that is a huge distinction between Taupo and Hawke’s Bay.

I have been very fortunate to have had two wives that have looked after and cared for me so well.  My first wife, Suzanne Stead, was a daughter of Bob and Rua Stead of Sasanof Stud, Longlands.  I know that much has been said about the Stead family, so I will add no more.

Sue and I had three children, Tim who lives at The Cottage, Diana who lives in the Wairarapa, and Marion, or Muff as she’s called, is on an organic orchard on part of what used to be the Stead property at Longlands.  Sue and I had a wonderful life with the three youngsters, and it is just a great shame that she didn’t live longer than to just see our eldest grandchild, Jessica.  Subsequently there were eight grandchildren. Unfortunately Sue died when she was only fifty-five, so didn’t have the joy that these children have brought to Timmy and me.

Timmy and I have been married for almost as long as I was to Sue. She was married to Bill Cowper, a member of the Cowper family from Dannevirke.  Timmy had four children – Richard, Sarah, Susan and Anna, and the children had five grandchildren.  So Timmy and I between us have thirteen grandchildren that have brought so much interest and pleasure to us.  Over the years we have travelled far and wide to see them participating at their schools whether it be in sport, plays or graduation ceremonies.

My life has been full of adventures and doing interesting things – too many to enumerate here, but I hope that I’ve given you a little bit of a thumbnail sketch of my life and experiences. Over a long life it is very difficult to tabulate everything that you’ve done and seen, but you have a little bit of a picture of what this country boy has done, and I’d just like to finish by talking about my parents and my Grandfather Logan.

My Grandfather, Francis Logan, I believe has contributed as much as any in the early development of Hawke’s Bay. He was a very clever man and a very smart Solicitor and Barrister, and in early days he had the lion’s share of clients in Hawke’s Bay. He didn’t only look after his clients but he looked after the sporting interests of Hawke’s Bay. He was instrumental in the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union being founded in 1884. He was the first selector and coach of the Hawke’s Bay team and he was the first international referee in New Zealand. He didn’t only lead rugby in Hawke’s Bay but in 1886 he wrote the Constitution for the New Zealand Rugby Board, and took it over to England and had it adopted by the IRB, which I would say is no mean feat.

He funded the 1904-05 tour to the United Kingdom. It wasn’t going to go because it didn’t have the funds, so he put up the money and then went and collected donations from all his friends, and the team went. And we all know how successful it was. It only lost one game and that was against Wales, and we all know about that. After the team came back the coffers had funds in them and he repaid all his friends what they had put up to make that tour happen.

He started tennis in Hawke’s Bay and with Minden Fenwick won the New Zealand doubles in the early ’90s. He was also a member of the New Zealand Tennis Team and of course the Hawke’s Bay.

He was a very good cricketer. He was instrumental in the Acclimatisation Society getting on. And during this time he was Honorary Solicitor to all these organisations and many others, and I don’t believe they ever received an account. So apart from being a very good sportsman himself he was also a very good sports administrator and a very generous one too.

But it didn’t finish there. He was a great stalwart for an inner harbour, and he fought for it during his life and that fight was carried on by my father, who was obviously influenced by his father. And Dad carried on that crusade until the earthquake put the whole thing beyond doubt, and the breakwater and wharf was built at Napier and the harbour is as we see it and know it today.

But that’s enough about my Grandfather. He didn’t only put Hawke’s Bay on the map in the sporting field but he did in the business world as well, and he was involved as Solicitor and in some cases as Chairman of a number of the early Hawke’s Bay companies.

My father was different. He, as I said, had to give up War because of bad health. So when he lived in the country he was able to assist his fellow farmers and employees in the district. During the Depression years and after the earthquake when farmers were so hard up, I can remember people coming to our home, Pukekino, regularly. Dad and another very able man, Mr Mason Chambers, were appointed by the Government as a two man Tribunal to look after people who held mortgages but had fallen upon difficult times. It was called The Mortgagee Relief Act … was passed, and Dad and Mr Chambers were the two man Tribunal in this part of Hawke’s Bay. It took much of their time and they had to deal with a lot of very, very sad and desperate cases. And so there were a lot of people, unknown to most, that had a lot to thank my father and Mr Mason Chambers for in the way they dealt with their mortgages, or the interest on their mortgages.

My father was also Chairman of the Hawke’s Bay County Council during that bad period, the late ’20s and the early ’30s, and so that also gave him a lot of extra work. He was Chairman of the No 4 Transport Board, and that acted in Hawke’s Bay, Poverty Bay and the Bay of Plenty, and its responsibility was to hear applicants and if thought fit, award what they considered to be suitable people to hold a transport licence and to go into business in the haulage business. Heavy traffic was just beginning in the early ’30s and so a number of people who were able to attain licences really held their good fortune in the hands of that Licensing Authority.

He was very involved in the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board and I remember returning from a long visit when he took his brother over to have an operation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester in the United States, he became friendly with one or the Mayo brothers. And the Mayo brother gave him a lot of good forward thinking information about hospitals which my father was able to share with the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board, which was a great opportunity for that Board to come up to speed with some of their systems. And he was involved in many other things.

And so I’d just like to say in closing that I believe that a father/son combination – I can think of none other in this part of the world that has contributed more to the development and wellbeing of this beautiful province of ours, Hawke’s Bay.  And I would just like to thank my parents, Frank and Dorothy Logan, for bringing me up in a stable, happy home environment and giving me the opportunity to go and do what I wanted to do in life. And what I did has always been my call, but with the blessing of my parents, and I thank them for it.

I would like to thank the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank for giving me the opportunity to share with those of you that may have listened to what I have had to say about Hawke’s Bay over a period of very many years. I have endeavoured to give you a thumb nail sketch of my life, but obviously it is difficult to include everything in the matter of a few hours. I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to do many things which has made my life both enjoyable and interesting, and I hope during this time I’ve been able to make a small contribution to the very rich history of this beautiful province.

My philosophy in life has always been to keep things simple, to enjoy things. Think wisely about the friends and the business associates that you surround yourself with. Don’t fear change because you can’t do anything about it, so accept it and make it work the best way that it can for you. And above all you must enjoy your life because after all life is for living. Thank you.

Thank you Hamilton, that’s an extremely good talk, and I’m sure that everyone will have great interest in reading this.