My Account
June 1948 – November 2021
Kaiwaka and Mangawhai is mourning the loss of a great pillar of their communities with the passing of Robert Hastie. He was known for his sense of humour, community spirit, accomplishments in sheep dog trials and love of a single malt.
Rob’s family has lived in Mangawhai since the days of the kauri loggers. Rob attended primary school there, in a building now located at the Mangawhai Museum, and went on to Northland College in Kaikohe. Upon returning to Mangawhai, he joined the shearing gangs. This would ultimately earn him enough money to take over the family farm on Cove Road.
While on a float in the Waipu Christmas parade in 1974, Rob spotted Deborah Morton. His first attempts to impress were unsuccessful, but Rob made a few phone calls and managed to track her down and organise a date for Boxing Day. The following week, on New Year’s Eve, they were engaged and would marry in St Peter’s Church in Waipu. They had two children, Euan and Fiona.
Rob served as secretary for the Molesworth Sheep Dog Trial Club from 1971 onwards. Despite being a renowned judge at local and national levels, it took Rob 45 years to win his first open. As his mate Tony Hargreaves put it,
“You don’t have to be an All Black to be a good referee”. Rob finally won an open in the Far North in 2013 with a heading dog named Jack. Tony travelled around the competitive circuit with Rob for 30 years. “A nicer fella, you couldn’t meet, and he didn’t just talk about dogs like some of the others,” Tony says.
The Mangawhai Golf Club benefited from Rob’s tenure as president in its early days, opening its original 18-hole course under his watch. His mate Jim Wintle recalls an annual competition dubbed “the Hastie Shootout”. A group of 19 would start playing a hole and the worst scorer would get knocked out, and the best would have to have a drink. At the end of the competition, there would be a lot of jovial golfers riding on the back of Rob’s ute. Jim says that Rob would write articles for the club newsletter filled with details of the worst plays of the month. “You had to be careful what you told him.” He says Rob had nicknames for everyone, with at least 40 different names on the go at a time.
Some of the community roles Rob took on included lifeguard at the surf club, volunteer firefighter at the rural brigade, rugby coach at Eastern JMB, community board member of the Otamatea County Council and Kaipara District Council, member of the board of trustees at Mangawhai Beach School – which was responsible for building the school pool – collator for the Kaiwaka Bugle, member of the committee that built the Mangawhai Domain, and member of the Kaiwaka Hall committee and the Kaiwaka Historical Society.
Jim Wintle says Rob always did his bit for the community and asked for nothing in return. “People wonder why they call the place Magical Mangawhai. Well, the magic was that people rolled up their sleeves and made it into what it is, and that was Rob.”
