My Account
Mike Willliamson comes from a long line of family butchers and in August he will celebrate 10 years of working in his Manly shop. Although many in the community know him as ‘the Manly butcher’, Mike is also a volunteer fire fighter and sports coach. He has been living in Whangaparaoa for 30 years.
I moved here in 1978 with my mother and brother after my parents separated. I attended Orewa College, but by the time I was 15 I’d had enough of school and became an apprentice butcher in Browns Bay. Both my father and great grandfather were butchers. My dad had a butcher’s shop in Manu, Whangarei, and I’d always wanted to go into the business since going along to work with him as a youngster.
During my apprenticeship, I worked part-time for the owner of the Manly Village butcher shop. The shop has been here since 1947 and was one of the first buildings put up in the village. Although I was only 18 then, I could see the potential of the area and determined to buy the shop one day. I worked at various butcheries in Orewa and then one day I looked in the paper and saw this shop was for sale. Straight away I rang up and bought it. That was in August 1998. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for almost 10 years now. In that time so many more people have moved here – especially English and South African people. As far as I am concerned, it really hasn’t changed much here at all, despite the growth. It’s still a very easy place to live. There is no rough side, there are mainly families or older, settled people and it’s a good mix.
I live in Army Bay, looking out over Shakespear Regional Park, which is like my big backyard. It is like living in the country because we don’t have any through-traffic.Personally, I’m pretty realistic about development – more people drag in more money. Business is hard enough as it is, so we need all the new money that’s coming in. I don’t think it’s going to reach a point where we can’t handle the growth. I’m quite keen to have new premises and expand my shop into something bigger and better for the community.
About five years ago I decided that having a wife and three children and running my own business wasn’t keeping me busy enough, so I became a volunteer fire fighter at Manly. My father was a volunteer at Silverdale and Manly fire stations back in the day. In many ways being a fireman is like a sport: you can do it hard and fast, like a sport and it certainly involves a high level of fitness. I used to play quite a bit of sport such as rugby, cricket and golf but as I’ve got older I got more injuries, including shattering my wrist playing touch rugby a few years ago. I find the training for the fire service a much less injury-prone way to keep fit.
Last year I did the Sky Tower Challenge, where fire fighters from all over the country run up the stairs of the Sky Tower wearing all the gear and with a tank of compressed air on their backs. These sorts of events are a good benchmark of your abilities. Last year I did it in 13 minutes and one second, which was pretty good and I wanted to get it down to 11 minutes this year. I trained hard, doing a lot of running including hill and step work around here. The 129 steps down to Tindalls Bay got a fair work out – I’d go up and down them 10 times, towards the end with all my gear on and a 20kg backpack.Last month I beat 230 fire fighters, completing the Sky Tower challenge in 10 minutes, 58 seconds, finishing first equal with Doug Kinsella of Manukau. Climbing those 1029 steps flat out for 10 minutes is hard – your lungs are bursting – but it was incredibly satisfying to win. It’s the first time I’ve won any kind of national challenge.
Since joining the Manly fire service, I’ve had to put out a couple of house fires. People think you are mad wanting to do that type of work, but running into a burning house is what we train to do. Putting aside the circumstances of the fire, it can be rewarding to put what we’ve learned to the test. On most of the call outs I’m helping people I know already through the shop. These days I’m a solo father. I spend a lot of time with my three children, and coach my son’s rugby team, go to basketball with them and support them in any way I can. I think sport is the best thing to help you learn. It gets the blood flowing through the brain, as well as the body.
A few years ago some pre-school and primary school teachers started coming into the shop and asking me whether I could supply them with some brains for dissection. I was happy to help out and since then some teachers have gone one step further and asked for lungs or hearts, livers or kidneys. The basic structure of the organs, and their function, is the same as for humans and looking at them closely gives children a different understanding about how the body works. They’re fascinated by all the gory bits at that age – they just want to get in and touch and learn. It’s not until secondary school that they get squeamish about things like that. I’ve got some great cards on the shop wall from the kids saying things like “thanks so much for bringing us a brain”.
My daughter loves being in the shop, and who knows, one of them may want to take it on some day. I don’t think I will encourage my children to become butchers though. It is a very hard way to make money. It’s time consuming too. Most days I start at 6am and don’t finish until 5pm. Around Christmas my day can start at 3am and not finish until 7pm. I have to be in at the Auckland fish market early as well, two or three times a week.The way society is now, I think there are a lot of easier ways to make money. There aren’t many millionaire butchers.
The simple fact is that I love cutting up meat. The best part is serving people who really appreciate good quality food. For some of us eating is just survival, but others take food really seriously and like their food to be the best. My motto is that you can sell rubbish once, but you can sell quality all the time. That applies whatever you are selling.
Ideally, I would like to stay here, but in a nice big new shop with more fish and good meat for the customers. It will take time to establish all that though, and I think after that I’ll be pretty burnt out. I have been doing this job for 23 years and I think in another seven years I may call it quits. I’d love to become a career fireman and make time to do a lot more hunting. There’s nothing I like more than heading into a remote area, like the Kaimanawas, to do some hunting. I’ve always been a hunter-gatherer.
