Darryl | Kaikōura, Canterbury

“That would be my mum and dad. They’ve always been tied up with Lions, and I’ve always gone along to do Lions projects with them. 

In Timaru, we had a lot of projects, but probably the major one that we had is Bioblend, and they’ll go down to Pareora, which is 20 minutes south of Timaru, pick up a load of Bioblend, bring it back up to Timaru, and bag it and they’ve done this for the past 20 years, and the amount of money that they’ve raised for the Timaru community is quite considerable. We brought the Wellington Zoo train down to Timaru, because they were getting rid of it, and so that’s another Lion’s project. That gets run pretty much all year round. Once again, it raises a lot of money that goes back into the community, and since I’ve been up here, I’ve joined the Kaikōura Lions Club. This year is my presidency. So, I’ve gone in as president, and I really enjoy it, because it gets me out to meet new people helping in the community. 

The Shed was set up by a guy called Peter. Originally it was up at the dump, and as you can see, behind me, there’s a boat. They built that as a kitset, and they take it out every once in a while and it’s just a place that we’ve been using to try to get people involved. People that haven’t got sheds at home, or haven’t got the room for sheds, they come in here and do projects, or they come to us with projects, and we do them for them. We have a Thursday group of old age people that are just starting to suffer with Alzheimer’s, and they really enjoy it. We started off with eight men and now we’re up to 12 men, and basically what we do is find very basic projects for them to complete. Our first projects were trap-boxes for DOC. Then we had Rifleman bird boxes, and the latest one that we’ve just done is the penguin boxes for South Bay, and it just gives them a feeling of self-worth, that they’re still valued in the community. If you talk to them, they’ve got the wealth of experience and knowledge, and you just have to sit there and listen, and they’re a bunch of great guys, you know?  That’s what I really enjoy about The Shed, plus making things with my own hands.

A friend of mine was pretty much a second father and he got me to help him build a house. It was a kitset home, but I really enjoyed it, and it just took off from there. It wasn’t just building a house. There was car-mechanicing and you name it, we did it. Building trailers. He taught me to weld. It gives me a feeling of self-worth, because I can’t actually do a fulltime job, because my back is buggered but it just helps me to stay involved, and stay grounded in the community. Everyone up here’s been really, really nice. I’ve had my issues, when we moved into our new place, I had a viral heart attack, and everyone in the whole camp rallied round my wife, and it’s just the feeling of community in the whole Kaikōura. Everyone knows who you are, and they know what’s going on. I spent some time in the hospital, and the girls at Night ‘n Day, they made a big bacon and egg pie, for Jan. That was their way of saying, if you need anything we’re there. It’s just small things like that that just makes you think, this is a lot better than Perth and it’s a lot better than Timaru.

I grew up in Timaru. Got married 18 years ago. We spent 10 years in Perth, Australia. I was crewing for a company called EPA over there. We did all the major touring concerts coming through Perth, and in the last 18 months when I was there I got asked to go across to the brand new Perth Arena before it opened, to help set it up. Then we moved back over here, because my daughter was starting high school and the drugs in high school over there is pretty bad, so we didn’t want her going through that scene. Then we moved back here, and she did one year at high school and she said that’s enough, and then she buggered back off to Melbourne, to live where she is today.”