My Account
Farmer and businessman Don Hawkings recently resigned after 17 years as chairman of Rodney Health Trust. His collaboration with, and subsequent marriage to, trust founder Wendy Grice created a formidable team that has seen the organisation grow into one of New Zealand’s largest home care providers. A local all his life, Don has lent his practical and financial expertise to numerous community, sporting and industry groups. He is fascinated by the history of those who settled the North, and shares some of his own family stories …
In 1917 Dad’s father got gored to death by a bull. They had a leased farm and my father’s stepmother said he couldn’t manage it on his own, so he went to war, aged 17. One day in the trenches a friend said “let’s move around to the other bay” and a bomb landed on the trench and killed the rest of the platoon. The Armistice came when they were in hospital and they just walked out. Dad lived in Somerset but when he was on his way to the demob office to sign out, someone told him they had claimed to be from Canada and had got their fare paid. So Dad said he was from New Zealand, and they paid his fare to Auckland.
He went working on the threshing mills and shearing in the South Island. One day he came to visit Uncle Edgar and a land agent was there to take him to Kaipara Flats to look at a farm. Mansell Price’s father took them to look at the farm, and they called in at the next-door neighbour’s, Ernie Andrews, who was my mother’s father. Sam Price later said he’d never before sold a man a farm and introduced him to his wife on the same day. That was 1927. The farm was 500 acres and cost 1200 pound. In 1943 one of the Hughes boys was called up to the Army, so Dad bought his 190 acres for 1200 pound. I’d just left school – I couldn’t get out fast enough – and from the age of 16 I managed the farm in the Kaipara Hills.
I was about 19 when I decided to have a break from the farm and I asked Gordon Mason if he wanted a driver. He paid me four shillings and tuppence an hour and I saved enough money to buy my first car, a Morris. I had no licence and it was right on Christmas so I went to the police office and the officer asked me three questions. I got one wrong, so he said I’d have to come back, but I needed to deliver cream over Christmas so I drove without a licence. I would drive up to the Kaipara Hills to get the cream and then deliver it all around the place. One day I was coming down to the hollow where the saleyards used to be, by the showgrounds, and who should be sitting there but the cop. As I came past he was conveniently looking somewhere else. Later, when I went back to the police office, he gave me my licence without asking any more questions.
I had a lovely cream pony with a Shetland mother and Arab stallion father. The Americans wanted it and offered $100, a fortune in those days. It used to love coming from Kaipara Flats to our place and if a truck came along it loved galloping along behind; when we got to our place I had to saw on its mouth to make it stop.
At five years old we were put on a horse and told to ride to school. My eldest sister used to ride one horse and I’d ride the other. The two younger sisters, Fay and Gwen, used to fight over who’d go behind Joy, because they reckoned I rode too fast – at five years old! We went to a little school in the Kaipara Hills and there were 13 students. In 1939 they put on a school bus and took us to Kaipara Flats; Mr Mainland drove the bus. They took the school from the Kaipara Hills to Ahuroa and it’s still there as one of the little school rooms.
In the slump they were getting thruppence a pound for butterfat and Dad would take a wether in the horse and gig to Bridge House, where he could get one and sixpence for it. When Mum and Dad would come to Warkworth in the horse and gig they would stop at Olive Phillips’ on the way home and I was just a baby in a shawl. It was a whole day’s outing doing the shopping in Warkworth. People thought nothing of walking seven miles. Josh Hudson lived out past Civils’ Corner and he would walk, bent double, into Warkworth.
I got married in 1953 and bought the farm off Dad. I’d always loved Solway Farm and used to play golf with Dan Smythe and always said “if you ever sell the farm let me know”, and he’d laugh and say “you couldn’t afford it”. Then in mid-November 1960 I found out it was going to be auctioned and I suggested to Dad that we sell both Kaipara Flats farms and buy Solway. There was some fast talking and he said “if you build me a new house on the farm I’ll come into partnership with you”. In 1964 Dad said there was more money in the sharemarket so I bought him out and I ran Solway until 1983. Our boys all worked on the farm until all four decided at once that there were easier ways to make a living. I sold the farm to Duncan Morrison in 1983.
My son taught me to fly when I was 60. We didn’t get on well because he didn’t like farming but we’re very close now. We used to go out low-flying in the Kaipara Harbour which is one of the places you’re allowed to do it. We’d follow the channels at 300 feet and the guys with their nets would see us coming low and think we were inspectors. We’d see a flurry of nets being pulled out.
I bought Colleen Wenzlick’s share in the Mobil service station – it was Atlantic at that stage – and later bought Dave’s share as well. In 1987 the oil companies deregulated and started to compete to buy the most strategic sites. They were paying ridiculous prices; there was one station at Henderson with two pumps and the owner was ready to close it down, then Mobil came along and offered him $3 million for it. That stopped when the oil companies got together and agreed not to crib on each others’ distributorships. Mobil came and offered me a $200,000 loyalty payment, and I saw an opportunity and said “no, but if you give me a $600,000 suspensory loan I’ll rebuild the service station”. I had been intending to upgrade it anyway. I sold the service station to Mobil in 1996.
Roger Shaw from the Satellite Station approached me about setting up a SeniorNet in Warkworth. Telecom was shutting down its office in Auckland and offered us all the furniture we wanted. We ended up with truckloads of desks and other furniture before we even had an organisation set up, and it all came home to our garage. Our car sat outside for a year. When SeniorNet was up and running, I went on the Warkworth Information Centre Committee, and was chairman of that for years.
Wendy wanted a committee member for Home Care North Rodney and she pestered me until I agreed. I was only there a year as a committee member when Malcolm Clague resigned and Wendy said “guess what? You’re the chairman now”. Wendy needed someone with expertise with money, and I was there for 17 years. I’ve just retired. Wendy’s job was to run the organisation and make it what it is today; I was only there to support her.
