About a month ago a received an invite to Bobs 70th birthday party at Te Kuiti. As I read the invite I felt privileged to get an invite to such a special occasion as Bob is one of the few people that I look up to as he has done so much for the sport of pig hunting in the past. Form being the editor of the New Zealand Pig Hunter magazine to writing his own book, Find bail and hold.
At first I was in two minds as to weather I would travel up or not as I would have to fly to Auckland then get a rental car and drive to Te Kuiti then get accommodation for the night and the return the next day. Two weeks before the event I rang Bob to see if he could sell the idea to me. Straight away he played his trump card and asked that if I did make it up would I get up and give a speech, so the trip was planed.
On the night I got to catch up with Ewan Mackenzie who is now running the North Island side of the Ridge line judging team. There where also a couple of pig hunters in the bar that I got talking to, one chap by the name of Aaron Proud who I had noticed his name before in some pig hunting magazines. Bob and his friends had put on enough food to feed an army, From hungi food hot food and cold meat and salads, no one went away hungry. The cake that they had made for Bob was impressive, there where lots of small cakes around the main cake that had the names of a lot of the pig dogs that Bob has had over the years.
The speeches went down well and a lot of people got up to say some very nice things about Bob from his school teaching days to his hockey days through to his passion for pig hunting.
As the night rolled on I got to see something that you don’t see in the South Island bars and that was a couple of the Maori chaps pulled out their guitars and started a bit of a sing along, some of these guys had real good voices and it was a pleasure to listen to. Lucky they where loud enough so that no one could hear my voice.