My Account
Stoats, rats and other pests make a serious mistake when they cross the path of Scotts Landing resident Warren Agnew. He has been on the trail of these animals for decades with his latest innovation being a toxic trap that kills with a poison spray. In the fight to save our native fauna from predation from introduced pests, Warren has also developed tracking tunnels, foot recording systems and an electronic trap. He is a man with strong opinions and little patience for muddling officialdom. His maverick style could be linked to his slightly unconventional upbringing as the son of one of Auckland’s busiest bookmakers in the 1940s. Here he reflects on an interesting life ….
My father Roy was a bit of a character – he had agents in hotels all over the place. I can remember going through Newmarket one day and he turned to my uncle and said “Arthur, did you pay the police sergeant this week?” We had two phones in the house and bets were taken from all over NZ. People used to try to place bets after the race had been run, thinking we wouldn’t know the results. That’s why we had such a good radio which could pick up the races from everywhere. We had lots of influential and interesting house guests including, on one occasion, Clive Churchill and the entire Australian League team. My brother Trevor was set to become a Kiwi rep until he injured his wrist. Instead, he became a leading heart specialist in Auckland. My sister Robin and her partner Adrian set-up the Matakana Gallery.
I was newly married when I arrived in the Mahurangi nearly 50 years ago. We bought a block and built a house at the end of Dawson Road with money saved by working on the wharves, driving trucks and working for contractors. In those days it wasn’t unusual to see snapper in the river feeding among the native rock oysters. Now they are nearly all Japanese/Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) which grow to a harvestable size about three times faster than the native variety – they’ve actually been the saviour of the oyster industry. There’s a theory that they were introduced when a tanker from Japan was slowly towed down the NZ coast to Auckland, during the construction of the Harbour Bridge, distributing spawn from its hull as it went.
The late John Male and I started the Friends of the Mahurangi because we were concerned at some of the things that were happening, such as effluent from Snells Beach going into the river where my children used to swim. A few months ago I calculated that during the time I’ve been living on the river, the two properties I’ve owned have lost about 750,000 cubic metres of soil through erosion. This is the real issue about siltation in the river. It’s a crime that so little of the money in the Action Plan is addressing this problem. The river would be a lot better off if landholders were given assistance to construct a continuous seawall along susceptible parts of the riverbank. The sediment could then be deposited behind the walls. RDC hasn’t learned a thing from the lessons of the past – they are still acting irresponsibly with sewerage treatment discharges into the Tiri Channel, the Mahurangi and Matakana Rivers, and at Martins Bay.
I began a 40-year teaching career at Warkworth Primary School, followed by six years at Matakana School. My final teaching position was at Oruawharo but in between I also taught at schools in the Urewera, St Heliers and South Auckland, and I had two very enjoyable years at Kaipara Flats. It was a pretty nice job, guiding children’s learning, but I didn’t enjoy the paper war. I once had a five-year-old in my class with a six-page report attached to his file. I thought ‘what are we doing?’ It is absolutely foolish the way we are judging, assessing and pigeon holing children at such a young age. Apart from covering the basics, education is about teaching and encouraging children to use the interests and skills they have to further their knowledge. All children have enormous powers of intellect but they won’t all achieve in the traditional areas of learning such as mathematics and chemistry. Experience has taught me that original ideas don’t normally come from the so-called “brightest” in the class.
In the early 1970s I was teaching at Warkworth when I approached the conductor of the Auckland Symphony Orchestra with the idea that the orchestra should perform in Warkworth. It was the beginning of a very successful relationship between the orchestra and the school, which resulted in the formation of a children’s orchestra. Lorna Jackson and Joan Curreen provided magnificent support, and the school orchestra even performed at the Auckland Town Hall. Interestingly, the programme also had a profound impact on the reading abilities of students. Later research linked music to improved reading skills, because it helped children to differentiate high frequency sounds. My involvement with the programme came to a sticky end when I became involved with one of the other teachers. The principal found he could no longer work with me and tried to have me transferred. He actually ended up being the one who was transferred but it left me feeling pretty disenchanted. These days we would never have to endure what we went through then but, that was what it was like in the 70s. A later principal sold all the instruments for $1000 and that was the end of the music programme.
Life took a different turn when I joined the NZ stand at the World Expo in Brisbane in 1988. Ian Fraser was the pavilion manager and I was his second-in-command. We had some wonderful experiences. Another person with a Warkworth connection at the Expo was Alan Brimblecombe who had taken over his steamboat Puke to ferry VIPs up and down the Brisbane River. I was a bit concerned when Alan told me his boat wasn’t insured and suggested that he do something about it. He thought it might be worth $15,000 to $20,000 but the Australian insurance company gave him a valuation certificate for $100,000. After Expo, the boat was shipped back to NZ and a few months later I had to smile when I heard Alan had produced the valuation when he sold Puke to the Maritime Museum in Wellington.
In 1998 a routine medical check-up showed my PSA level in the prostate was 260, when it should have been between 0-4. I was sent off to Auckland Hospital, where I was seen by a young Indian doctor. Without so much as a word of warning, he announced that I had prostate cancer, my testicles would have to come off but not to worry, because I could be fitted with prosthetic testicles so I could still wear Speedos! It was unbelievable. There was no counselling. Nothing. I declined this offer and so began a series of treatments which included putting me on hormones to reduce the production of testosterone. After two-and-a-half years, they still couldn’t get my count below 50 and they gave me about four years to live. Then, through an acquaintance, I was put onto an Australian doctor who changed my treatment regime. When my PSA count fell, they used the ray gun on the tumour. It appears that the lengthy time I was on the hormone treatment actually increased my chances of survival. It was all a bloody nuisance really. The treatment sapped my strength and left me feeling like on old lady. I’m glad it’s behind me.
I do a lot of work with universities around the country these days, coming up with ideas to keep their Masters students busy. There are still improvements to be made to the traps, the Tank Vac cleaning system looks like its about to really take off and one of my next projects will be looking at controlling viruses and bacteria on supermarket trolley handles using stabilised chlorine dioxide. I’m enjoying a busy and fulfilling life, but I also wouldn’t mind a bit more time to go trout fishing.
