Spackman, Grant Stirling Interview

Today is 11th May 2017. I’m interviewing Grant Spackman of Clive on his family, especially relating to the orcharding industry. Grant, would you like to tell us something about your family please?

Yes, certainly. My parents were Keith Spackman and my mother was Merle, and her maiden name was Liley. And the Spackmans go right back to … from what I understand and the research I’ve done … to the times of William the Conqueror. They came in with the Norman invasion of England in 1066, and as a result of their support for William the Conqueror they were given land near Liverpool in England. And I think while not called Spackman at the time, the name derived from that period of time when they first came to England. I do have a family tree that goes back to John Spackman in 1689; and his great-grandson who was born in 1819, George Spackman, came to New Zealand, and he lived in New Zealand ‘til he passed away in 1899.

His son married Louisa Butler; and Louisa Butler was a descendant of John Butler, who came to New Zealand in 1819 with Samuel Marsden, as a missionary. And he settled in Kerikeri. He built Kemp House and lived in the Stone Store. And then he … I think from what I understand from books I’ve read, he disgraced himself and ended up being sent away to Lower Hutt, where he passed away. So William Spackman who married Louisa Butler, [we] can trace back to that early time.

My grandfather was Horace Spackman and he was the son of William Spackman and daughter of Louisa Butler; and he was a shepherd. He was born in 1880. He fought in World War 1. I’m not sure exactly where he was based, but he returned to marry my grandmother who was Ellen Stirling, and they were married in 1919. Ellen Stirling came from a family residing in Blenheim; her father was James Stirling, and her mother was Sarah Aroa. The Aroas came out from England in the early 1900s and they settled in the Awatere region of Marlborough. Unfortunately her grandfather was killed in a horse accident … horse on a gig … returning home one night; the horse has bolted, and he was killed. I understand the Aroas [spells] still reside in the Marlborough area.

My grandfather Horace, and grandmother, Ellen, had four children. Their eldest son was Lloyd Spackman; and their daughter, Faye, who married Ray Clapperton and who was a farmer in the Featherston area – their third child was my father, Keith; and Keith’s younger brother, Clyde – now, Clyde’s still alive today – he still lives in Featherston.

My grandparents farmed a relatively small farm on the western lake [side] of Lake Wairarapa, and that’s where my father grew up. It was difficult times; my father was born in 1924 and when he got to high school age he went to Wairarapa College in Masterton. But he had to board there, and he had to do a milk run to be able to support the cost of boarding in Masterton at Wairarapa College. He had been at the local school there on the western lake – Waiorongomai I think, was the name of the primary school; they used to ride their horses and leave their horses in the horse paddock, he and his brothers.

My father, at the time of the outbreak of World War II – I think in 1942 when he was still seventeen – he enlisted in the army and went through initial training for six months before they found out that he was under age and kicked him out. [Chuckles] By that time he was able to join the Air Force, and he trained at Wigram near Christchurch, as a pilot, and that’s where he graduated with his Wings in 1943. He then went to England and he was pilot at a number of the air bases around England, and I do recall that at the time of the flying bombs that were coming down over London, it was his job to fly along and tip the flying bombs upside down and stop them from exploding; they’d explode in mid-air and wouldn’t cause any damage on the ground. I think he was a Warrant Officer from memory, in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and when he came back, like many returned servicemen, was probably quite unsettled. He found it difficult to settle back on to the farm in the Wairarapa … on to his father’s farm … mainly because he sort of saw the opportunity to mechanise, and his father didn’t want to partake in that.

So he had the opportunity to become a commercial pilot with … well, it’d be NAC [National Airways Corporation] I guess, but he came to Hawke’s Bay for a visit and came up on the train. And [it] was coming into Hastings that he saw Cyril D’Ath’s orchard and that was what gave him the first spark of interest in becoming a fruit-grower. And so he made enquiries, and there was going to be the opportunity as a returned serviceman to be settled on a ballot farm property in Hastings, but at the time there were none available. And because he didn’t have any experience he went to work for Eric Chapman [on his] orchard, which was later to become Ken Kiddle’s, I think, on the corner of Waimarama Road and River Road.

So he worked for Eric Chapman for two years, and it was during that time he met my mother, Merle Liley. My mother – just tracing back on her side of the family – her mother was an Anderson, and she was born in Gisborne but she came to Havelock North at quite a young age with her family. And when she married Frederick Liley, who was a plumber – his mother was one of the Bees. So … I understand, Frank, we’re related.

In fact, I might be accused one day of just interviewing all my relatives, because I’ve found so many that I didn’t know of.

[Chuckle] Yes, yes. So my grandfather’s mother was a Bee. I think probably it was her father who built St Luke’s Church.

Now, the plumber … Fred Liley? Was it Fred?

Yeah.

Is Brian Liley his son?

No, that would be a nephew. So they had nine children, my grandparents … Fred and … I can’t exactly know what my mother’s name; she was Amelia Winifred, and I think she was known as Amelia. They had nine children and my mother was the youngest. And unfortunately my grandfather died six months before my mother was born. He was killed in the first motor car/railway accident in Hastings in 1928 at the Heretaunga Street railway crossing. So my mother never knew her father. Yeah. Yeah.

My grandmother lived in Te Aute Road in a house that’s still there today, I think on the corner of Ngarimu and Te Aute Road, it would be. And her sister, Alice Redpath, worked [lived] directly across the road. I do recall my mother telling me at the time of the 1931 earthquake that my grandmother had left Merle in a chair next to the chimney in the house while she went over the road to visit her sister, Alice Redpath. She got over there, and then she just suddenly decided she might just go back and get Merle and bring her with her; and then the earthquake struck, so …

The chimney came down?

Yes. My grandmother had six girls and three boys. And unfortunately, two of my mother’s brothers, Norman and Cedric, both died. I think Cedric died first – he had a shooting accident and had terrible headaches; so he committed suicide. And I think Norman was so upset that it was only a few years after that he committed suicide as well.

Oh, goodness …

Tragic. So they passed away in the 1940s.

My mother went to Havelock North Primary School, so I followed on and so did my children, so three generations of our family went to Havelock North Primary School. She didn’t stay the full time at Havelock North Primary School – I think she had a very good friend who was Catholic and was going to St Joseph’s; and my mother managed to convince her mother that she could go to St Joseph’s even though she wasn’t Catholic. So she finished her primary school education there. When she met my father they were married in 1949; there was still no opportunity for a resettlement orchard property in Hastings, so they headed off. Prior to 1949 my father decided that while he was waiting he would go to Nelson, and he worked at Mapua as a horticultural inspector … fruit inspector … in Mapua; came back to Hastings and my mother and my father were married in 1949. They moved to Wellington, and my father worked in the DSIR, [Department of Scientific and Industrial Research] and my mother worked at Newbold’s Appliances. And I think initially they lived in Raumati and later in Oriental Bay.

Then the opportunity did come up for a property in St George’s Road South of seven and a half acres that was owned by Charlie Wake, brother of Archie Wake. Charlie was selling his property because he wanted to go farming in Wanganui. My father had the first right to buy the property, even though Wakes had their properties next door. Unfortunately they missed out on being able to take Charlie’s because of Keith being a returned serviceman. So they came up from Wellington; they had, from what I understand, £7/10/- in their bank account and a Model A truck, and that’s all they owned; and came onto the property.

Well, that’s what it was like in that time.

It was – you often hear [the] same sort of stories.

You do, and it’s not that long ago.

No, no, it’s not. You know, you go to funerals of other fruitgrowers and you hear similar sorts of stories of how they started in the 1950s.

So that was in 1951 that they came onto the property in St George’s Road South, and my elder brother was born in early 1953. But my father managed to improve the quality of the seven and a half acre orchard, and by the late 1950s he’d developed it into the – from what I understand – the highest-producing orchard in New Zealand in the late 1950s, particularly a variety called ‘Statesman’ which was incredibly high producing; I’ve seen a number of photos of the production per tree. Massive great trees of course.

It wasn’t that nice an apple, either, was it?

No, it wasn’t, no. Bright red, but that was about all. [Chuckle]

Yeah. It was precocious, though.

It was. Then in 1962 there was a terrible flood came through the Heretaunga Plains, and in those days properties weren’t tile drained. And the St George’s Road area having quite heavy soils, the water ponded from the neighbouring properties into my father’s property for a period of ten weeks and killed most of the orchard. So he had to start again. He got a State Advances loan. Bill Bourke was the person who managed the loan from State Advances, and he went on to become a family friend of my parents right up until the time he died. He had a stroke – was quite incapacitated – and lived in Knight Street Hospital, and my parents used to have him out every week for dinner because went on to become a close family friend.

My father, two years after the flood, purchased the nine acres at the back of the orchard, which was cropping land owned by Selwyn Begley who went on to be Chairman of the County Council. And he planted that block in 1965 and 1966 in Granny Smiths and Hawke’s Bay Red Delicious and Splendour, which he took out and planted in standard Gala. But in 1968 another catastrophe happened in the way of the Wahine storm, and that young orchard got blown over and a significant number of trees, even though he propped them up and put limestone underneath them, died. So he had to replant … interplant, I think, is what he did.

During this period of the late sixties and into the seventies, in order to re-establish himself, he went cropping. My mother and father had purchased a property in Mt Erin Road – twenty acres of bare land – in 1959, so that formed the basis of a new venture into cropping. But he leased a lot of properties around Pakipaki and Pukahu, and grew mainly crops for Wattie’s – tomatoes, beans, peas. And then as time went by into the seventies and into the early eighties he became quite a large potato grower as well. But he managed to get back on his feet again with the new orchard coming along, so he combined cropping and sheep farming, which was his real love – probably more so than fruit-growing I think – and along with growing apples, pears and peaches …

Now at this stage, would you like to say where you were at?

Yeah. Yes, ‘cause it was around that sort of late seventies when I became involved in fruit-growing. I was born in 1956, almost four years after my elder brother, and I went to Havelock North Primary School which I started in 1962. That was prior to Lucknow School opening; certainly prior to the Intermediate and High School, so Havelock North Primary School went right up to Form 2 or Standard 6; there was no Intermediate to go to. Very large school, over seven hundred pupils at the school. I have a certain amount of pride in that I’ve been to … even though I’m only sixty … I’ve been to three school reunions. [Chuckle] I remember in 1963, the centenary; one [hundred and] twenty-five in 1988, and then in 2013 I went to my third school reunion, the hundred and fiftieth.

Think the hundredth was at the Show grounds, wasn’t it?

Part of it was, yes. Certainly the function was, yes.

It was the worst reunion – the happiest one, and the worst one I’ve ever been to.

Yes. Yes, well it should’ve been the most significant one.

So I was at Havelock North Primary School from 1962 to 1969, and my father joined the School Committee around the time that I started school. He went on to become the Chairman of the School Committee for a number of years, and I think he completed that role about a year after I went to high school. Probably the most significant achievement during that time was building the Primary School Hall; and they raised all the money for it. He did numerous trips to Wellington to the Education Department to try and get them on board. That was opened just at the end of 1969 when I was just finishing primary school … quite an achievement. One of the fund-raising activities was a raffle and the first prize was a Hillman Imp. So tickets were sold for that, and when the prize was drawn my mother won it. [Chuckle] It was a ticket that was dislodged from the butt, and she got sick of picking it up off the floor in the bedroom, so she went and wrote her name on it and bought it; and blow me down if she didn’t win it. And of course in a small community like Havelock North there was all sorts of talk about the legality of it all, which was a bit upsetting to my parents; [chuckle] but however, she loved that little Hillman Imp. She had a great love of cars, but she went on to then own an MGB GT, a golf … a 1973 one, and then my father bought her a new one in 1976 and it’s still in our garage. When my mother passed away, my father used it for Sunday drives, and that’s exactly what I do now.

So what colour is it?

It’s maroon. It’s only done fifty-two thousand kilometres since 1976. Yeah, so I’ll pass that on in the family too.

Probably, you know, just thinking about primary school – I mean Camp Kaitawa is one of the greatest memories – of going to Camp Kaitawa when I was in Form 2, in my final year, and listening on the radio while we were there to Hawke’s Bay losing the Ranfurly Shield; still remember in the camp dining room listening to the radio. And my grand-daughter, Paige, who’s now almost eleven years old, she’s about to go to Camp Kaitawa – fortunately for her, the second time. She was in a composite class a couple of years ago, but she’s about to go next week again, to Camp Kaitawa with Parkvale School.

Well, that’s wonderful because at one stage they stopped going because the bus was too expensive. Maybe they got some subsidies or something from within the school system to restart; it was a great experience.

Oh, it was good. My wife, Wendy, attended primary school in Dannevirke, and she went to Camp Kaitawa too. We have done a few trips to Waikaremoana and retraced our steps; and they’ve both been great experiences at Camp Kaitawa. I remember my achievement certificate being presented at a [an] evening by my father, when he was still Chairman of the School Committee. [Chuckle]

So I went on to Hastings Boys’ High School in 1970 and stayed there until the end of the Sixth Form. I was accredited University Entrance, but I decided to not go into the Seventh Form; at the time I was hell-bent on going sheep-farming and I got accepted into Smedley Station and started there at the beginning of 1974. But unfortunately it just didn’t work out; I just didn’t fit in there. It was difficult. Whether it was the first time away from home for me … but, yeah, I guess you sort of look back on – there’s a lot of talk about bullying now, but you sort of kind of accepted it a little bit then. But it was tough going; sort of tougher guys in second year. It was a tough environment. And I’m sure Smedley has improved a lot.

I think it happens in all those institutions still … still happens in high schools.

Yes. Yes. But it just got too much, so I left in the same year and just caught the final part of the apple harvest so that became officially my first year of fruit-growing, in 1974 – I can sort of count that ‘cause I sort of worked in the orchard and in the small packing shed on [my] parents’ place in St George’s Road South. Then after the fruit season, I went to work for Walker’s Nurseries for Brian Walker who was running the property then, in Pakowhai Road and St George’s Road North. Really enjoyed the nursery side of horticulture, but at sort of $38 per week, or 80 cents an hour for forty-five hours of very, very hard work … Brian grew a lot of pine trees so you were sort of up to your thighs in mud, pulling out pine trees out of the ground. So I had the opportunity to go and work for Kerry and Anne Webb in their nursery in Middle Road, and went from 80 cents an hour to $2 an hour, so that was good money. And it was more sort of labouring sort of work but working with Kerry I still learnt a lot, and …

Well they’re a nice couple as well.

Oh, wonderful memories, yes. Yeah, and of course Kerry’s father was still on the property. They had a contract to grow all the tomato seedlings for Wattie’s at the time, so that was by far the major part of our activity, was around the propagation of tomato seedlings, filling you know, soil into the trays, and moving the trays in and out of the first glasshouses, and hardening them off and so forth. So I learnt a lot there too, and getting towards the end of 1974 Kerry’s father put me on to a guy who owned plant propagation laboratories I think, or a nursery in Poraiti … up on the hill in Poraiti.

But it was about that time that I started thinking about getting a qualification, so I enrolled for the Diploma in Horticulture at Lincoln. And I remember coming back to work at Webbs after, and told them what I’d decided to do; and Mr Webb Senior just could not understand why I would give up the opportunity to go working on a nursery, and go to university instead. He really couldn’t … and I remember Kerry sort of trying to calm him down.

Old school …

Yes. But that’s what I did. I didn’t do a formal, pre-entry training like the other students in the Diploma of Horticulture, but because I’d been working on the orchard and these nurseries during 1974, that was enough to be able to be accepted for the course. So I headed off there in 1975 to Christchurch. I had a little Mini at the time which I drove down; the ferry was the ‘Rangitira’ and went all the way to Lincoln. That’s where I met up with Jonathan Skelton, who I had known through high school days at Hastings Boys’ High, but we weren’t that close: we just knew of each other. Jonathan went on to be … and still is … one of my best friends. We travelled overseas together and we still catch up.

Is he any relation to Bob Skelton?

Yeah, his son.

I only ever met the daughters.

Oh, of course … Ann being the eldest, I think. He was in partnership with this person from Nelson – Ivory … Don Ivory, that’s right.

So what does John do?

Jonathan? After he came back from overseas he worked in the company as a spray rep. [Representative] And then when Whitworth … Derek … purchased, he stayed on for about a year after that; but then Brian Pennington at Fruitfed … the manager of the Fruitgrowers’ Federation … offered him a job. So he went on to quite a long time with the Fruitgrowers’ Federation. He moved up in the mid to late 1980s to be manager of the Gisborne branch; and then on to Pukekohe. And he went on to be the North Island manager for Fruitfed, and saw all the spray reps. Then he left there and works for a printing company associated with Stanton’s Acme, in the Havelock North industrial area. So he’s based in Auckland where Acme Print have … and they import a lot of stationery materials which are sold to the major companies around New Zealand; still lives in Pukekohe, in the same house that he’s been in since probably early … ‘bout 1990.

So I completed the Diploma in Horticulture at Lincoln; I think the choice of Lincoln at the time was that they offered a course in horticulture generally whereas Massey, you had to choose a specific – whether you wanted to go into fruit growing, vege growing or nursery work. And I couldn’t make up my mind – I just loved horticulture; I loved growing things; I liked the nursery side, I liked the … [of] course cropping which my father was doing as well as fruit growing. So I didn’t actually think too much about fruit growing as a career. I just liked horticulture, so that’s why I chose Lincoln. Probably I think, Tony Knight who now works for Mr Apple, he worked for Fruit Fed and sold us our first Fed Air sprayer. At the time he’d just finished under the old two-year Diploma of Horticulture, and he talked me into going to Lincoln. And it was a great experience – I, you know, really enjoyed it. And like for most people, it’s the best days [chuckle] of your life, I think, those student days; and really, things came right for me there.

I carried on in 1976 to complete a Diploma in Horticultural Management which they’d sort of structured to follow on from the various Diplomas in Parks and Reserves and Landscaping; and so I did Horticultural Management and was very successful with that and came third in the class.

Did you play any sport while you were doing these ..?

No, no I didn’t. No – tennis … played tennis. More so primary school, early secondary school competitively, but after that more recreationally. We had a tennis court at home, so probably of any sport that was what I played. Probably my main recreational activity … when I was about thirteen I got involved with the Keirunga Drama Group through Lilian Phillips.

Always remember Lilian and her pencilled eyebrows …

That’s right. She’s still getting around … still got pencilled eyebrows. She ran the … Keirunga Young Drama Club, I think it was, and I think it went on to be called the Keirunga Young Players later on. So that started an involvement that I kept up right up until the time I went to Lincoln and after I left high school. I got involved in directing plays, along with John Grainer; we sort of pretty much took over the group. It was a great learning experience; it sort of really helped develop us in growing up, I think, taking responsibility … Yeah, so John Grainer now lives in Japan; married a Japanese lady. And that was my social life as a teenager … it revolved around the Keirunga Drama Club.

Pretending to be somebody else …

Yes, that’s right; [chuckle] and met girls from other schools, Girls’ High School and Karamu, and guys as well from other schools too. So it sort of gave me that sort of … really, that growing up as a young person. Yeah, I look back …

Ideal.

… I was not only with the young people, acting, but also I was involved with the older group as well, and had a couple of really good parts – one in a Terrence Rattigan play that went on to win the North Island Young One-Act Play contest in Levin at the time, acting alongside Mr Lawson who lived in Duart Road … he was a tall, thin Englishman; and Joy McKenzie. And so yes, I sort of acted with the adults as well, in quite a few productions. But when I went to Lincoln I kind of gave it away. I do remember … might’ve been in 1998 … running into Frank Bacon who was the headmaster of Havelock North Primary School during the sixties when I was there; I remember him saying to me, “I thought you would’ve gone to Hollywood” … [chuckles] “stayed acting.” By that stage I’d long given it up and never went back to acting again.

So when you came home with your Management and your Diploma, what did you do then?

I worked with Wattie’s in the Field Service as an assistant to the Field Officers in Wattie’s.

Who were the Field Officers then?

Well Rob Arthur and Bob Anderson …

Was Bill Dodds there then?

No. No, but I know Bill Dodds – he’d already moved on.

[Speaking together]

So my direct boss there was Stuart Thomas and Bob June was his boss, so – probably still there at that time. But I think in those days Wattie’s had about six field reps [representatives]. It was very well organised and very well structured, and so I sort of worked around with them, you know, assisting with sampling peas, and doing research sort of work.

And then in 1977 the Havelock North Lions Club and more specifically Graham Wake, our next-door neighbour, asked if I’d consider going to the United States to work in Washington State on orchards there. And he had an association with a man called Fred Westberg in Yakima. So along with Peter Collinge from Pakowhai – we both headed off in June 1977 to Yakima; we stopped in Hawaii on the way for a few days. And we both worked for separate employers in Yakima but we shared an apartment in the city. Within a few days of arriving, Peter – he was a bit of a character – so he went and bought a big Dodge Charger … a 1966 Dodge Charger; but I was a little bit more conservative and bought a small Chev [Chevrolet] Vega.

I worked for the Allen brothers … for Dave and George Allen and their father, Bob Allen, who was quite elderly at the time. I understand – I haven’t been back since 1999, but Allen Brothers are a huge operation now, producing and packing something like twenty million cartons of fruit.

Does the Okanagan Valley run down there?

That’s north of Yakima, yeah. I think the Okanagan Valley traverses both USA and Canada …

It does.

… and into British Columbia, and it’s a very good fruit growing area too, but quite a way north of Yakima.

We think we’ve got good water and so forth, but …

Yeah, it’s exceptional. It’s interesting too, that you know … here in New Zealand we have got beautiful scenery, but don’t realise how beautiful the scenery can be in other countries, too.

And there’s so much of it.

Yes, yes. I mean that mountain area between Seattle and Yakima, the Cascade Mountains – the scenery is just … beautiful scenery over there.

So how long were you ..?

So I was there for just over a year. Peter Collinge left to work in France in November, so he went for four or five months in Yakima. But we both went to Europe together; we travelled around in Europe for about six weeks – my first experience of travelling overseas. And then Peter went on to work on an orchard in France and I went up to stay with a school friend whose family were Scottish … John Watson; then came back to my job. The Allen brothers were really good letting me have time off, and I spent the northern winter months working in their pack house packing apples … contract packing. And I was pretty fast at that stage – still wrapping – and then went back out into the orchards and worked there until the middle of 1978. Jonathan Skelton who I mentioned before, he came over from England … he’d been working in England … and he worked on the same property.

So I came home July, 1978. Like most young people returning home, not quite sure what I was going to do, but we had the opportunity … my father talked to me in October of ’78; there was eighty-seven acres that was coming up for sale that Jack McKeown was growing pumpkins in. It belonged to Mick and Dalton Hardy who’d been landowners around Mt Erin Road for a long time. So we decided between my father and I that I would come into the fruit-growing business with my mother, who was also a shareholder in Aorere Farm Limited, which was the company at the time. We decided eighty-seven acres was too big, and too much money to borrow, so we arranged for the property to be subdivided and we ended up purchasing forty-seven acres, and we had to put a bridge … Lattey’s built a bridge for us over from Mt Erin Road to get access directly to the eastern side of the property. And Paul Cacase bought the other forty acres which he then sold in the early 1980s to Graham Wake. So the Wakes became our neighbours again – having been our neighbours through most of my younger years in St George’s Road South, [they] went on to be my neighbours again in Mt Erin Road.

1979 we started planting the orchard; we finished planting out in 1980. So we planted the whole forty-seven acres. People at the time said to us, “Well you know, how can you afford to plant it all?” And my father’s reaction was, “Well, how can we afford not to plant it all?” So we planted it predominantly in Granny Smiths and Red Delicious again, but by that time the Royal Gala was around. We were reluctant to plant Braeburn because we thought the high-coloured strain would come along and supersede it.

Yeah, Braeburn was the most unattractive apple.

Absolutely. So we didn’t plant Braeburn; we planted …

Ugly trees …

Yes. And we planted Cox’s Orange; we planted about ten acres in stone fruit – nectarines and Golden Queen peaches – just to get diversification. And we kept the peaches until the late 1980s, and the premium export market had pretty much collapsed by then; but it was good money up until then.

Go back a little bit … 1980 I met and started going out with Cathy Kirkpatrick who was a local girl; also been through Havelock North Primary School. We were going out together, probably only about eighteen months when I proposed to her, and we married in September 1981, on the day of the fourth Test between South Africa and New Zealand All Blacks – oblivious to everything apart from the fact that her elder brother, Alex, had rented a motel at the Angus Inn where the reception was, so that him [he] and his Lindisfarne mates could watch the game [chuckle] while the reception was on.

Cathy’s parents were Callum and Glenda Kirkpatrick, and Cathy’s grandfather was Alex Kirkpatrick; And he was captain of the well-known 1920s Hawke’s Bay rugby side. I understand he played twelve games for the All Blacks during the 1920s. He went on to be the manager of Tomoana Freezing Works under the Nelson family, and then also became deputy mayor of Hastings – I think for about eighteen years; and Chairman of the Harbour Board for many years as well. Callum grew up in Hastings, and I think he was dux of Central School. In 1947 I think, he became an accountant and he worked at Rainbow & Hobbs, and he spent his whole career there – I think about fifty years. He didn’t get married to Glenda until he was about thirty, I think, so Glenda’s a few years younger.

We all used to have a dance once a week at this old Buffalo Hall, and we all knew one another; yeah – he was quite a tall man.

He had a long involvement with the National Party, and of course had a very illustrious career, I guess you would say, as a director of a number of different companies; but also appointed by the Government … He was a director of the Reserve Bank for many years and I understand he chaired Commissions of Enquiry for the Government on numerous occasions; director of a number of companies – probably a lot of them originated in Hawke’s Bay – Robert Holt & Sons, which went on to become Carter Holt; Hawke’s Bay Farmers; and Baillie Farmers, Chairman of that company; and a strong involvement with the Presbyterian Church, too – I think from what I recall he became an elder at only twenty-eight years of age in St Andrew’s, then on to something else.

[Speaking together]

He was a very serious man and could certainly deal with the Church … the formality they needed. He was great at looking after money, in Rotary or the Church or community organisations.

Yeah, very good as a treasurer. Yeah, one of the memories I have of him is I’d go around to visit Cathy, ‘cause she lived at home right up until the time we were married, unlike relationships these days; but I’d go round there on a Sunday afternoon, and he would be doing his mother’s financial affairs on a Sunday afternoon – he just never stopped.

It was his life … enjoyed working.

His mother was one of the Roach family; they were retailers in Hastings.

So Cathy and I were married in 1981 and our daughter, Gemma, was born in 1984, and our son nineteen months later at the end of 1985. That was Hayden. But unfortunately our marriage came to an end in 1991. By that time we’d built a new house on the property; we were building it as we were getting married, so we moved in almost immediately after we were married at the end of 1981. Relatively small house; it was built by Williams and Britton, local builders, and they designed it and built it. We extended it … well, it would’ve been 1991 after a very good year in orcharding; one of the few more good years in the market. We extended the house, but around the time the extensions were finished, Cathy moved on and left me, and she went on to marry again fairly soon afterwards, to Lance Pell, who was a local builder – he was actually building the extensions [chuckle] to the house. Such is life.

And your son and daughter – where are they now?

Gemma is still local, she has pretty much lived in Hastings …

Is she married?

Yes, she’s married, and she got married in 2012 to Lee Holloway, who’s a builder. When we first met Lee he was actually a single parent; he was bringing up his handicapped daughter, Estella, who has cerebral palsy. And Estella’s now eleven years old; she’s in a wheelchair permanently, although she can manage to sort of crawl around and so forth. But she’s gone through the State School system – she’s been at Parkvale School up until the end of last year and now she’s at Hastings Intermediate. They have a caregiver with her at school. She’s only recently moved on to an electric wheelchair now, but for the first five years of her life Lee brought her up on his own. Then when he got married to Gemma he took up a building apprenticeship with Simkin Construction. After only a short time he won the Hawke’s Bay Apprentice of the Year, and then had another go the following year and won the New Zealand Building Apprentice of the Year, down in Christchurch. So he’s [a] really practical sort of guy, and he’s renovated their house which they own in Akina. So Gemma … from her previous relationship with Alan Drury she had moved to Australia for a short period of time, but that relationship broke up … during which time she had her daughter, Paige, who’s almost eleven years old and in her final year at Parkvale School. So each have a child, and since then they’ve had a child together, Violet, who’s just had her fourth birthday. She is going to go through the Rudolf Steiner system, so she’s been at a Rudolf Steiner daycare; she’s now at the kindergarten opposite the main school, and she’s enrolled to carry on at the Rudolf Steiner School in Hastings.

All good news …

Yes, yeah. She’s got a shock of curly red hair and a great sort of personality, and we’re very pleased.

Have you got red hair in your family?

No. Lee’s got an auntie who’s got red hair.

It does pop up now and again.

Yes, and I think probably the curly hair came from Cathy. [Chuckles]

And Hayden came on to the orchard after he left school, and he was very successful working for us on the orchards. And by that time we were starting to lease a number of properties. But after we sold the orchards he carried on working on orchards in Hawke’s Bay, but then has moved over to Australia three years ago. He went over with his girlfriend, and he lives on the northern beaches of Sydney; and he’s now involved in turf culture. So he’s had a number of different jobs; and you know, while we sort of you know, probably look sideways at changing our jobs in our generation, it seems the way to go these days. In a way it’s sort of built up his experience, ‘cause each job in a way has been related to turf culture, but different styles – from big equipment, truck driving, using machinery … Now he’s the groundsman at the Redfern Oval in Sydney, which is the home ground of the Rabbitohs rugby league team. But ultimately I think he wants to get into cricket field management.

So, did you sell the orchard?

Yes.

Did your father pass ..?

Yes. So we sold the orchards in 2005. My father passed away in early June, 2005. My brother had lived in Auckland and Australia right up through his career; his career was in managing and looking after homes for intellectually handicapped people, predominantly young people. He had started out at Hohepa in the mid-seventies, and then worked for many years managing a Rudolf Steiner home just out of Melbourne, and then came back to Auckland in about 1990 after his marriage broke up. And he remarried, and he broke away from Rudolf Steiner; and since then he’s been running a trust for intellectually handicapped people, and they’ve got about twelve homes in west Auckland, round Te Atatu. But he’s never had any involvement in the orchard side. My mother passed away in 1990 and my father passed away in 2005. And then the executors of the estate – one of them was my parents’ lawyer and the others were friends of my parents – they decided that fruit growing wasn’t the best way to protect the assets of the company, so they said to the bank that they weren’t prepared to allow the bank to advance any more money to it. So it put me in a very difficult situation, and basically had to sell the orchards. At that time we had three orchards. We’d planted the cropping land … the twenty acres in Mt Erin Road … in 1992; and then of course, the main orchard which we planted in the late seventies … the fifty acres …

You had the pack house in Mt Erin Road, didn’t you?

Yes – my parents had always been packing their own apples right through since the 1950s, but in 1983 with the new orchard coming into production we decided we had to build a new pack house. So we built it on the main orchard in 1983 … built a large pack house and put in a new electronic grader, and so we continued packing until 1999. At that stage we were starting to lease orchards in the local area, partly because we’d taken out a lot of Granny Smiths and Red Delicious and our production had dropped, and it was a struggle to keep the pack house going. So we started leasing orchards in the late 1990s – ’97 I think, we leased the first one – and then we found that we were sort of producing so much fruit that we couldn’t keep up in our pack house, so it went the other way. And so we sold all the pack house operation and the equipment to Crasborn’s, and took all our crop to them to pack from 2000 onwards.

That was the end of the packing side; but during that time we leased quite a few orchards – thirteen – by 2005 we had thirteen leased blocks and our three orchards that we owned. So we had three hundred acres of orchards – the vast majority in apples, but some pears and stone fruit. We exported two hundred thousand cartons of apples at that stage, because the industry was deregulated in 2001 so we were sort of dealing with two or three different [?] to sell the crop; mostly to D M Palmer which is part of the Bostock Group.

So unfortunately we had to sell the properties in 2005 and go around all the lease owners and say, “Look, we’re not carrying on, and that’s it.” Some of those orchards were pulled out; currently still being cropped by Bostock’s and I think John’s keen to plant some of them again; ten, twelve years later. And the properties in Crystall Road – there was [were] five orchards there – Bostock’s took over the lease, and still lease.

After Cathy and I broke up … oh, probably about nine months after … I met Wendy Mildon. We were both at a course for single parents, ‘cause I sort of had the children a lot of the time – certainly every weekend; then when Gemma turned thirteen, you know, she came to live with me. And so we sort of mixed socially as a group on this course and that’s when Wendy and I started dating, in August 1992. We were married in January 1996. And Wendy had three children from her previous marriage, two daughters and a son.

So you both had ready-made families?

Yeah, we both had ready-made families, and not only that, Frank, they got along – they were like best friends and still are. It’s great. Wendy’s eldest daughter, Emma, and my daughter, Gemma, are still best friends today.

That’s lovely, isn’t it?

One’s in Australia and one’s in Hastings. Hayden and Anthony got along so well together too. Aroha just fitted in – she was a few years younger than the others – she’s currently twenty-seven. But she’s sort of [a] strong personality; she didn’t miss out on anything. So the kids still get along well, and have done all the way through.

So we initially lived in Mt Erin Road, and then at the end of 2003 we decided that we’d start afresh with a new home … a bigger home, which was an unusual move because it was about the time when the children were starting to leave home; [chuckle] but we bought a lifestyle block on Crystall Road which had been subdivided off one of the orchards I’d had just planted in Crystall Road. The subdivided area was only three and a half acres, so by that stage I was growing three hundred acres of orchards, but this little peach orchard … a real mixture of fruit salad so after a year we pulled it out and planted Golden Queens. The house is very large – it was over three hundred square feet.

Were the buildings part of it?

Yes. All the sheds, yeah. It was originally Jack McKeown’s.

I know.

Very good quality ground, very …

And it’s all part of the Awanui, and it’s all silt country.

That’s right. Yes, highly … highly fertile land, and went right around to where our Mt Erin Road orchard which was a Class 14 and 15A – very, very fertile soil. So we rented the house out in Mt Erin Road … the original house. I mean, partly because Wendy just wasn’t comfortable not having her home. Cathy and I had built the house, so she didn’t sort of really fit … didn’t fit comfortably with Wendy, and so we thought we’d start afresh with a new home together, ‘cause she’d previously always owned houses herself in Hastings. So we bought that property in … end of 2003. We sold the orchards which included the house, in 2005, in Mt Erin Road, so we remained living at Crystall Road right up until December of last year. So thirteen years we were there, and then we bought this property here in Clive … [pronounces Cleevé] It backs onto the Clive River.

Or fronts onto the Clive River.

Oh, I guess so, yes. Yes.

This is the front of the house; it’s not the back.

You think so?

Absolutely!

Yeah.

You always have … the front of the house is facing the sun.

Right.

That’s where it is …

Yeah. It is great, and there’s the Rotary Pathway just right outside our fence, so we’re very fortunate to have …

No, I’ve adapted after … you know … and [of] course obviously the discussion this afternoon – you know, I’ve lived all my life pretty much – apart from that period at Lincoln and in the United States – I’ve lived in the Pukahu area all my life; and now at age sixty – people didn’t think I could sort of live in town, but here I am and I’ve adapted very well. I mean, I’m enjoying it.

In the last few years then, you’ve been … as you described yourself, an export supply manager.

Yes.

Who are you with?

I’m with the Bostock Group. There’s their subsidiary company, D M Palmer – later just became DMP – which is now a fruit exporting company. There originally was a David Palmer who retired, and John Bostock who had been supplying him with his squash, particularly for Japan, bought shares in the company along with some other shareholders. And in 2003 he bought out the rest of the shareholders and owned the D M Palmer solely himself; and then the company was rebranded two years ago ‘cause John wanted to have all his subsidiary companies under the Bostock New Zealand brand, and so now we’re Bostock New Zealand.

I took a year out and went sort of contract pruning, and worked for Starnes [?] during the fruit season, Andrew Alexander, a peach grower in Mt Erin Road … sort of took some time out to have a think about things after we sold the orchards. They advertised, and it was a little bit ironical, but I did answer the ad and went through the formal interview process. But I had been their major supplier of apples for a number of years, so I had that association with them, but applied quite independently for the job and became Supply Manager for the North Island, and that’s the position I still currently hold. We’re based in Kirkwood Road, and I look after about twenty-three growers out of Hawke’s Bay. They’re all independent fruit growers because I look after the conventional apple supply; Heidi Stoffel looks after the organic supply, so all of the organic supply comes from the Bostock orchards apart from John Foulds, I think, is the only independent grower now. Yeah …

Goodness me …

… I think so; whereas my supply comes from independent family growers, but John doesn’t grow a lot of conventional – he only grows conventional fruit when it’s in conversion to organics.

So we export about four hundred thousand cartons out of Hawke’s Bay, conventional fruit, and another two hundred thousand out of Nelson – we have a Supply Manager down there. John’s organic production is up to a million now, so we’re around 1.7 million export, so it’s a big company.

It is indeed.

Yeah. And part of a wider Bostock Group which is making quite an impression on Hawke’s Bay at the moment with orcharding and cropping.

Yes, well he must have very good men doing his cropping. All his orchards, everything looks absolutely …

It does. And he’s managed, you know, I mean … well you’d recall too, with organics in the early days – I mean they really had it tough. You couldn’t believe how they could’ve even … with black spot; and the lime sulphur … the trees were deteriorating. But Bostock’s – John’s found ways of growing organics successfully, and he’s probably right up there on the world-wide stage of organic growing too. He’s managed to make these orchards look and produce just as well as conventional orchards.

Yes, they don’t look as if they have just been hailed on …

No. [Chuckle]

‘Cause at one stage I thought, ‘My God, they’re not going to make it.’

So many people tried and failed with organics, and there were quite a few organic growers around. I mean, it’s only been in the last five years that Bostocks have dominated probably ninety per cent of the supply of organic apples out of New Zealand. Prior to that there were quite a few organic growers but market and production pressures were against them. Yeah.

And I suppose you’ll be Supply Manager until you retire?

It looks like it now. [Chuckle] Yeah, I think I will retire at sixty-five and look at other opportunities … you know, I enjoy being a Rotarian; then I think I might sort of get more involved in the community activities around Rotary. I’m currently on District Committee – the Foundation Committee for District 9930 – have been for the last two years. So we meet in Taupo four times a year.

Now you’re a Rotarian – you have been for how long?

I’ve had two spells as a Rotarian. I was introduced to Rotary by Callum Kirkpatrick in the early 1980s – I think it would’ve been 1983 that I joined the Havelock North Rotary Club, and I was a member until 1989. I guess the main reason I left was I was young and had a young family, and I … you know, I felt really bad on a Monday night leaving Cathy at home with little children – she was trying to get them their dinner and get them off to bed, and there was I going off to Rotary, so it didn’t, you know … And [of] course the orchard was taking up … you know, with the orchard developing rapidly, and you know, the new pack house – it was just too big a commitment. So I left Rotary in 1989 and I rejoined beginning of 2008. Ian Hill – I had an involvement with Ian when he was export manager for Apollo – he talked me into rejoining; wasn’t hard. And so I rejoined the Havelock North Rotary Club in 2008. I was only in the club for a year when Steve Randall asked me to become a Board member of the club, and I was the Foundation and International and Youth Committee Chair; I think they combined all three into one in those days. And then I was asked to be President of the club, so I had a year as President-elect and I was President in 2011 and 2012 of the Havelock North Rotary Club. I’m still on the Board, and the coming Rotary year it will be my ninth consecutive year on the Board; and I keep asking, but [chuckle] … be nice to have a break. You know, I think it was Steve Randall that [who] said to me that unless you’ve got a very good excuse, if you’re a Rotarian you don’t say no if you’re asked to do something.

Great, isn’t it? And so many other organisations can learn a lot from Rotary. So, your grandchildren – have we talked about your grandchildren?

Yeah, well, there’s Paige who’s ten and Violet who’s four, and my step-grand-daughter who has cerebral palsy, Estella, who’s eleven. Then the grandchildren in Australia – Wendy’s eldest daughter, Emma – she married James Thomas in late 2012, the same year as Gemma; we had two daughters getting married in one year, so expensive … both here in Hawke’s Bay. Gemma got married at Clifton Café in January 2012 to Lee; and then in November Emma and James were married at Mission Estate. James is a policeman; Emma – I helped her out in 2006 to go to [on] one of these Kontiki Tours in Europe, so she met James on the tour. He’s an Australian from the Central Coast … the coast out from Gosford in Bateau Bay. Emma came home, and then he came to pick her up in December of the same year [chuckle] of 2006, and they bought a house and they were married, and in August they produced twins … girl and a boy.

Wonderful! What are their names?

Isabella and Lincoln, so we’re going over in August for their first birthday. Wendy went over when the babies were born and spent a month with them.

Can you think of anything else ..?

I guess we didn’t touch on the fruit growing politics side of it – that’s probably the only other thing to …

Well I think it’s probably important that we do.

Yes.

The Fruitgrowers’ Federation … was Keith Spackman ever a ..?

Keith became involved in the early 1970s with the Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association Executive, but the only involvement he has with the Fruitgrowers’ Federation was in the early 1980s they set up a National Pipfruit Committee – I might not have the wording quite right – but they set up sort of National Advisory Committees, and they were the committees of the Fruitgrowers’ Federation.

So tell us something about your father’s involvement …

As a child the only time I remember him being involved politically in my younger years was going to local conferences – that was quite a big thing in those days, and I’ve been to a few myself. But he came on to Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Association executive in the early 1970s and he was elected President in 1974. And I think Graham Wake stood against him, but Keith … The association, which was composed of about four hundred members – it’s a very large, strong, powerful association compared to the number of Fruitgrowers’ Associations all around New Zealand – they were all little associations; and in Central Otago and Nelson, numerous little Fruitgrowers’ Associations. But Hawke’s Bay just had one, and very strong, and that’s why it’s so strong today – they’ve stuck together. He was President for ten years until 1984 and served on a number of sort of committees; but also, more particularly … you know, hosted a lot of people. In those days you know, if somebody was coming over … [of] course it was all through the Apple and Pear Board … customers from overseas and marketing people would come out to my parents’ home and have dinner at home; nowadays they go to a restaurant. My mother would host them, all these different people and also politicians as well, and we had the mayor of Guilin [China] come and visit with Jim O’Connor, the Mayor of Hastings, and they’d come through the house and stay. Yes, so … and it wasn’t just apple growing; I mean he had a very strong involvement with the stone fruit industry … the process industry. And in those days the Fruitgrowers’ Association negotiated with Wattie’s to set price and so he was always very involved with that. The deregulation of the transport industry; [he] was part of that too, and so he lobbied on behalf of you know, Wattie’s and other groups, so he had a very general fruit involvement. But he was very dedicated to it.

Yes. He certainly was a shining light – we all, you know, knew who he was.

Often controversial sort of personality too, in the sense that he said his piece and didn’t sort of suffer fools.

Most people knew where they stood with him.

Yeah. You know, he clashed a few times, and particularly with Alan Hyde; was interesting because they’d known each other all their lives, pretty much, or ever since Dad moved in the early fifties to Hawke’s Bay. But yeah, they often clashed, and my father …

There’s actually a tie-up there through marriage, too, isn’t there?

Yes there is, yeah. Auntie Alice is Mavis Hyde’s sister. Yes – can’t get away from it.

But I think one of the controversial things that came up in the early 1980s was the two-tier capital charge. And my father actually – and myself too, because we were just getting established, and there were a lot of new orchards were being established in the late seventies, early eighties. So the traditional growers, or the long-standing growers, wanted a second tier capital charge to build cool stores for the Apple and Pear Board; and the money would come from new production. And of course the new growers said, “This is highly unfair, because we’re producing the new varieties that are going to make the money.” And my father actually saw the logic in that, and he supported the newer growers against the traditional growers such as the Wakes and the Hydes and the Martins. So he didn’t make himself very popular.

Those of us that were new growers certainly supported him.

Yes. Yes, that’s right, and eventually it was scrapped. And they paid the money back.

Was he ever awarded anything? Any citation for services to the industry?

No. No, he wasn’t. I can’t think of anything that he was awarded. He also served on the Harbour Board for at least two terms, I think. In those days they were elected, so [??] and served on the Harbour Board as well. And then I sort of became involved in later years, in the late 1990s, in national fruit growing politics. Apart from some involvement with the Fruitgrowers’ Association on their Pipfruit Sector committee for a while, and social committee, my involvement in politics came later, and I was elected along with Phil Ellison and Nigel Cooper, to the executive of Pipfruit Growers New Zealand, as it was known then. It’s GNZI, and it’s now Pipfruit New Zealand. And we had area representatives on the Executive so there were three from East Coast; I took over from Alan Bennett in the late 1990s, and I think … oh, probably five years I served on the Executive. In those days Pipfruit New Zealand was based in Wellington, and so we used to go down there every month to Executive meetings.

That evolved into a Fruitgrowers’ Forum, which involved a lot more people. And at the time of deregulation in the early 2000s I, along with Louise Wake, Phil Ellison and John Foster [?] – the person who was involved in the meat industry with Richmond’s – the head of Richmond’s – who lived on the corner of Endsleigh Road and Middle Road. The Forum was where a company was formed to take over the industry from the Apple and Pear Board, from ENZA as it was then at the time of deregulation; so all the research and development and new varieties were taken over by a company called New Zealand Pipfruit Limited and I became the director of that company along with those people. That went for about another three years before it was disbanded. So I sort of … you know, I stayed involved politically pretty much until the orchards were sold.

Now, last but not least, normally if Wendy was here she would tell us about where she came from; so this is going to test you. [Chuckle] Where did Wendy come from?

Well, Wendy on her mother’s side, had Danish heritage. And the Rasmussens came out from Denmark, I think about the 1880s, and they arrived, after a long, treacherous journey, in Wellington and they moved up to Halcombe near Fielding, and they became smallfarmers there. Her grandfather was a Harker, and he was from up here in Taradale. And I think they moved up to Taradale – Wendy’s mother, as a child – and he was the Postmaster [at] Taradale. But on Wendy’s father’s side, Jim Mildon was from Dannevirke, and his family had sort of been in Dannevirke for generations; and he was the Service Manager for Baillie Farmers in Dannevirke. I think there’s … there had been a split; there’s some up in Wairoa, I think.

Did he ever work in Hastings by any chance?

No, I don’t think so. I think they had a small garage for themselves in Te Awamutu for a short time, but otherwise spent their whole married life in Dannevirke. Wendy’s father passed away just at the same time as I met her – only a few weeks after having met Wendy and started to go out with her, her father passed away … had a stroke and died at sixty-five. But Wendy’s mother is still alive – she’s ninety-one next week and still lives in Dannevirke. Wendy’s got one sister, Jenny, who lives in Dannevirke; she was a [an] Activities Manager for the retirement … rest home.

So I think we’ve probably just about covered everything?

Yeah. I mean, I’m happy to mention that unfortunately Wendy’s son passed away two years ago at home; he took his own life. But you know, when we talk about how many children we’ve got we still include Anthony; he passed away, twenty-eight years old.

Yes, this is a story that’s told many times these days.

Yes, it is.

All sorts of families; hard to say reasons, but no-one knows what’s going on inside someone’s head.

No, that’s right – exactly.

So anyway, I think we’ve got a pretty good picture of your family’s life.

Long, long history, you know. I mean I think going back to the Andersons which was my grandmother’s maiden name – her grandmother was present at the Treaty of Waitangi signing. I’ve talked about John Butler in Kerikeri …

Yes, yes.

… starting school, so early settlers of New Zealand.

Yes, well it’s not until you start digging the patch that you find these gems come up.

Yes, yes.

Well, thank you, Grant.

That’s all right, Frank.

I’m sure that Hawke’s Bay and your family will enjoy this history one day when they listen to it.

I hope so – thanks very much.