By the close of the 1990s, our nervously executed decision to launch a new DMS (Dealer Management System) had been vindicated. Our client base had...

I’d worked for three companies since my arrival in Australia in 1983, and they’d all become insolvent. Was I a manifestation of the albatross in...

My employment as a salesperson for ORAD computers lasted only ten months but it was an excellent introduction to working and surviving in an urban...

After landing in Melbourne, I ticked the box on the immigration form to indicate I intended to remain permanently in Australia. The customs official...

Our divorce was finalised in NZ in November 1982. Early in 1983 I was getting restless and began weighing up my options. Rosie had purchased a new...

e returned to NZ to be faced with a tsunami of problems which by 1983 resulted in the dissolution of our marriage and an end to my life as a farmer,...

Six months into my contract, I was beginning to understand there was a hierarchical structure influencing all aspects of life in Fiji. The Fijian...

Our first year was over, we had helped to make a difference with the people, but the concept of developing a large western style cattle ranch was to...

We’d now settled in, and I’d returned from NZ with my leg mending but still in plaster. I couldn’t ride a horse but there’d been ample time for me...

By the end of the 1970s, things were going well on Cairn Peak. Pinnacle Pine forest, our second forestry syndicate was fully subscribed and we now...

1970 was an eventful year for several reasons. We had been farming Cairn Peak for six years, and though heavily burdened with debt, we had continued...

Slowly Going Broke! My new bosses asked me to pay a visit to the farm about a week after they’d hired me. My task was to count a mob of cattle that...

WEST TAUPO I now lived in Taumaranui and my responsibility as a Field Officer was supervising the development of four blocks on the Western side of...

INTRODUCTION Legend has it that New Zealand was discovered by Kupe, an early Maori explorer who when seeing some low clouds on a distant horizon...

A long time ago, Gronk was sitting by a fire outside his cave. He was aware that a four-legged carnivore had been lurking rather too closely around...

INTRODUCTION I was born in Wellington New Zealand in 1939 and later that year on 5th September, New Zealand’s first labour prime minister, Michael...