Loyalty club

Carrying on with my life so far!

I still maintain a fervent interest in the Woodend Rugby Club.

Each year I like to ‘adopt’ a junior team, this time it was the under 11 and what a great bunch of youngsters they were.

I have been honoured to receive a life membership and patron of the Woodend club as well as a life membership of the North Canterbury Sub-Union.

For several years I joined my father and uncle playing in then Woodend ‘junior’ cricket team.

I could sit and watch cricket all day from Woodend junior teams to international games. To this end I am a member of the ‘Willows’ club who promote secondary school’s cricket. My sporting passion would have to be trapshooting or as it is more politically correct clay target shooting. Whilst not a world beater, in the early days I could hold my own and over the years have won several championships.

When local boy Gerard Eder was at St. Andrews, he got several likeminded shooters together and formed a team. I was invited to coach. In the second year the Stac team won the South Island secondary schools’ competition. This made the school hierarchy sit up and we were awarded a teacher to manage the team.

The following year it was up to Blenheim to compete in the New Zealand secondary school’s championship. When we arrived the man in charge enquired who and where from we were. On learning this he said that if we watched we may learn something about clay target shooting. One of the team commented “that fellow thinks we are here for a picnic.” Stac won the national title by 54 points.

Considering it was a 300-point shoot this was pretty good and cheesed the north island off big time. I was with the college trapshooting teams for 30 enjoyable years.

During this time St. Andrews held their fair share of local and national titles. In March 2018 I was awarded a certificate of achievement by the New Zealand Clay Target Association for services to shooting and are honoured to be a life member of both the Canterbury and Amberley gun clubs.

For many years I have enjoyed hunting, mainly deer with the occasional foray into tahr and chamois country.

From a fairly young age I accompanied my dad or uncle into Lees Valley or the Mt. Somers area.

With my fathers trusty old single shot lever action 303 I bagged my first stag whilst still at primary school. Nowadays I just watch others.

With only one leg the hills have to be pretty steep to get round!

I no longer shoot ducks but pigeons who mess in my sheds and pukekos who kill ducklings, wreck nests and eat gardens are fair game.

Another activity I show great enthusiasm for is travel. Since my OE I have been lucky enough to return to the UK three times. To date I have circumnavigated Ireland seven times. I love the place; the people and the medicine Arthur Guinness makes.

Up to Fiji several times and the 10-day 10 country Balkan tour feature highly on the enjoyable list. Perhaps the most memorable sojourn was a three-week stint in the Marshall Islands. Brother Brendan, then a Mt. Cook pilot had been lent by the company to Marshall Island Air to fly their sole 748. They simply didn’t have enough trained people to drive the one plane. I joined the flight on its weekly run to Fiji and as it was a ‘jackup’ tour had to sit in the ‘jump’ seat with the pilots.

Stops were made in Fune Futu and Tevalu which were once part of the Gilbert and Ellis Islands but are now known as Kiribati. Majuro atoll which is the capital of the group is slightly north of the equator.

There is a 3-minute difference between the longest and shortest day. The highest point of the atoll is 24 feet, the height of a bridge between islands. The natives are Micronesian – smaller and finer featured than other ‘nesians’. The place is looked after by the Americans and as with tradition everything is solved by throwing vast amounts of money at it. At that time there was no age of consent and 66% of the population were under 12 – two lots of school were held each day. Of these children ¾ were diabetic. The administration encouraged them to consume vitamin C which could be obtained from orange juice. What they didn’t tell the mothers there was a subtle difference between orange juice and Fanta. Fanta was cheaper and easier to feed than orange juice

To be continued... JH

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