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A NZ Herald reporter once likened Piers Barney to the seemingly inexhaustible Energizer Bunny. Nearly 15 years on, there is nothing to indicate that his batteries will be running down anytime soon. Approaching his 70th birthday this year, he still does a 30 lawn mowing round, as well as running his Norma Jean charter cruises out of Sandspit with his much-loved terrier Skip at his side. And although he’s always on a mission “lady-wise”, his first and constant love has always been Kawau Island and the waters of the Hauraki Gulf where he was born and raised, as editor Jannette Thompson discovered ….
My Mum was Norma Honeybun and she worked in the kitchen of Mansion House when Lawford Reeves owned it. She ended up managing the house and looking after Reeves until he died in 1947. I was born on Motuora and there’s a bit of a question mark over who my Dad was. Until I was 10, I thought it was Lionel Barney, a boatbuilder from Tauranga. But that assumption changed when I was at boarding school in Taranaki. I got into a bit of a dust-up with one of the boys and as a taunt, he said ‘Well your Dad’s not your real Dad anyway’. It was a pretty tough way to find out that the man who’d I’d always thought of as my Dad was actually no blood relation. When I asked Mum about it, she didn’t say much. It seems my Dad could have been an Australian who shot through when I was three months old. But there was also an old guy called Snow who lived on Motuketekete, near Kawau. He was a bit of a hermit but Mum always fussed over him and she’d get me to row out with meals for him from time-to-time. I’ve got a photo of him and there’s no denying there’s a likeness, so who knows! One day after taking a bit of a hiding from my stepfather, who wasn’t afraid to dish it out when he thought I wasn’t pulling my weight, I said to Mum ‘He doesn’t care, he’s only my stepfather’. She looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘When we arrived on his doorstep, you were nine months old and all we owned was one carrot and an onion! He took us in and has looked after us ever since. You just remember that’.
Mum eventually convinced Lionel to sell his business and buy the old boarding house in Vivian Bay on Kawau. I was about five at the time. With no school on the island, they sent me Lionel’s sister in Opunaki, near New Plymouth. I was six years old when we caught the boat to Queen Street and Mum put me on the bus by myself, between two sailors who were asked to look after me. My aunty met me at the other end and became like a second mother to me. Even though we had no blood connection, she treated me like one of her own and I just loved her. But every holidays I’d head back to the island and there was always plenty of work to do at the boarding house where we had to be self-sufficient. Power came from a generator and we had our own gardens, chooks and cows. Every six weeks the steamer Onewa would drop off diesel and other supplies, as well as passengers. The boarding house could cater for up to 38 guests. One day I remember seeing a man standing at the water’s edge and it turned out to be Louis Armstrong who was staying with a wealthy Auckland family further along the beach.
I did my high school years as a boarder at New Plymouth Boys High, but left when I was 15. I hadn’t learnt much except how to make vodka. Looking back now I wish I had finished my schooling so that I could have become a pilot, but in those days I had an absolute terror of exams. As soon as I sat down, I’d break out in a sweat and my mind would go blank. So I headed back to Kawau and worked a summer at Mansion House – Alan Horsfall was the owner by then. Our team consisted of three guys and 16 housemaids, mostly students. We had a ball! But then I got the idea that I’d like to be a professional diver. I’d been diving with an aqua lung for years so I joined the navy. I was posted to the Tamaki Training Base on Motuihe Island. Because I’d been to boarding school, I was used to mucking in with a group of males but the navy was something else altogether. It was terrible the way they tried to instil discipline. I saw one guy scrubbed down in the shower with a yard broom until he bled and just before I’d arrived, a cadet had died after a prank went wrong and he ended up going down the waste chute onto the rocks and breaking his neck. When I found out it would take years before I could become a navy diver, I just wanted out as fast as possible but the only way out was to be kicked out and believe it or not, that wasn’t easy. I failed all my exams but they still passed me because they knew what I was up to. One punishment I got was to carry wet sand in a bucket up the hill to the parade ground. I must have done a truck load. When I was finally discharged as being ‘unsuitable for service’, I reckon I could have entered the Olympics – I was that fit.
When I arrived back in Auckland, I was 16 and in need of a job. I walked Queen Street knocking on doors and soon found myself working for a drilling company that specialised in building foundations. That was the way it was then, people were more interested in your willingness and fitness to work, rather than your qualifications. The men on those sites were pretty tough, too. You didn’t muck around. It wasn’t long before I was going down 100ft shafts in the drilling bucket and working on the end of a jackhammer. They also gave me my first driving lesson, although they didn’t know it at the time. They sent me down to bring a truck back from the wharf and I didn’t like to own up to the fact that I didn’t have a licence so I jumped in and did the best I could, which included driving up High Street the wrong way. I worked for them for a couple of years and then decided to head for Canada. But, two days before I turned 19, and before I could save my plane fare, I found myself married with a baby on the way. While I was with the drilling company we worked on a whole range of projects from bridges to the Beehive in Wellington.
By 33, I knew the marriage was over – we had absolutely nothing in common. I’d moved back to Warkworth and was working as a linesman with the power board. Then I got the chance to join Neville Stevenson as a loader driver for James Aviation. We moved on to Marine Helicopters, where Neville was a newly-trained pilot. That was the start of one of the most interesting periods of my life. Most of our work was in aerial spraying, but we did all sorts of things from fighting fires to assisting at plane crashes. You never knew from one day to the next who you might meet or where you might be. It was terrific.
Meanwhile, back on Kawau, Mum continued to run the lodge until it burned down in 1974 after an electrical fire. In 1987, my second wife Christine and I decided to move to renovate and re-open the house as the St Clair Lodge, which we ran for 15 years. I loved it – I’d take visitors on walks, take them out fishing and diving, sightseeing around the island, swimming in the phosphorescence at night. But it was hard work and in the end, it burned Christine out. We sold in 2002 and moved back to Warkworth. Christine always liked secondhand stuff so we bought a shop in Baxter Street. That’s when I started having a problem with the drink. I put it down to boredom and I nearly drank myself to death. Then one day, my 13-year-old grandson took a bottle of wine out of my hand said “Haven’t you had enough Pa?” It made me think, ‘where am I going?’ That was three years ago last October and I haven’t touched a drop since. I still have a strong interest as a supporter of CADS (Community Alcohol & Drug Services) because I like to think maybe I can help someone else the way people helped me.
The Norma Jean was built in 2005 and is one of the few DOC-registered boats that can go to Little Barrier. It’s brought me into contact with some fascinating people, from the BBC documentary crew that works with David Attenborough to researchers and scientists who are experts in their fields. I learn a lot from them and I never tire of sharing my stories of Kawau and the Hauraki Gulf with visitors.
