GUNDRY'S GRUMBLES with Simon Gundry

Farewell to a Mentor…

Simon Gundry is a Devonport and North Shore identity, and character, who is known for calling a spade a spade. He is a director of contracting company Gill & Gundry, is an enthusiastic and active sailor (past crew-member of Ceramco New Zealand and Lion New Zealand in Whitbread Round The World races and Shockwave in Admiral’s Cup) and is a life member of the North Shore Rugby Football Club. This is his regular and lively contribution to CHANNEL.

And we’re all sick of those wardens

It’s amazing the people who come up to me in the street, wanting to talk to me about my column. It’s amazing how many people agree with me, some of them quite envious that I have an avenue to vent my frustrations through the Channel magazine.
Many people have agreed with my comments regarding Maggie Barry becoming our next Member of Parliament for the North Shore virtually by default. So many people in this City would like to see a local person in Parliament, a person who understands the North Shore way, the North Shore values and the North Shore way of life.
Other interesting comments have been in regards to these parking wardens who have suddenly started to spread their wings from the shopping precincts of Takapuna and Devonport. They have gone from checking cars parked over time on their meters, and are now spreading themselves far and wide over the community, nowhere near any parking meters or restricted zones, checking for overdue WOF’s; overdue registrations and Road User charges. Sometimes, as happened to a friend of mine recently, a ticket for a bald tyre. These parking Nazis have been spotted as far distant as the new café under North Head at the Navy Museum, checking vehicles there. Are these parking wardens just another arm of the Police force? I’d like to find out their job description. The next thing we’ll see is them standing on the side of the road with a speed camera.
I must say how impressed I was at the local cleanup prior to the World Cup last month. The Devonport Wharf was virtually rebuilt and cleaned up overnight, the public toilets on King Edward Parade adjacent to the Devonport Yacht Club were completely rebuilt and painted over the course of a week and the installation of wash basins happened overnight. It’s only taken 100 years or so to get this done. The people of Devonport over the course of the weekend before the Cup had a wonderful working bee cleaning up gardens, putting up bunting and generally tidying up in preparation for all the visitors. How nice our suburb looks, and what a shame it doesn’t look like that all the time. It takes an event like this to get things done.
The Friday prior to the start of the opening celebrations, all the pupils from the peninsula schools - that is from Takapuna Grammar School south, took to the beaches and parks for a major cleanup. There must have been 1500 odd pupils spending three hours scouring the beaches. If each of those pupils had picked up at least twenty pieces of rubbish, and the group that I was with picked up a lot more than that, then approximately 30,000 pieces of rubbish were picked up. I’d love to see this become an annual event, towards the end of each spring, this could be organised to get the beaches cleaned up prior to summer. It wouldn’t cost that much.
On a sad note, back in September, an old friend of mine died. He was very much a legend in my eyes as he was in the eyes of many old Devonport locals. His name was Frank Willis, he lived in lower Church Street for virtually his entire life. He was married to Anne, and he had three sons - Robert, Rusty and Ross. Frank outlived his wife and all his sons. He was a wonderful man of the sea, the first man to ever take me sailing on his 22ft Mullet boat “Cynara” (L9) which was moored in the outer waters off Torpedo Bay for many years. He owned “Cynara” from 1948 until he had to sell her in 1985. On board that yacht I had my first yachting adventures; Frank would take his wife and three sons and a couple of other young stragglers from Church St on adventures into the Hauraki Gulf. I can remember as a very young boy all these people sleeping on this 22ft boat, Frank cooking food over the small kerosene burners in the cockpit, setting nets to catch piper, swimming and rowing the dinghy round the bays, exploring the coves and inlets and hills of seemingly far away Browns Island, Motuihe and Motutapu Islands. Occasionally there’d be a seemingly never ending voyage across the ocean to the far away destinations of Coromandel, Te Kouma, Elephant Cove and sometimes way down the end of the Firth to the township of Thames. I think Frank Willis planted the seed in my brain to venture far and seek wider horizons.
Frank died just a few days short of his 93rd birthday; his ashes will be spread over the waters he loved. He was indeed a wonderful teacher of sailing and the sea to an impressionable young man. I believe every man should have, in his youth, an older man as a mentor and Frank Willis was mine, I was indeed so fortunate to have known him.
It’s a damn shame the grand old lady Masonic Hotel on the waterfront of Devonport looks so bare and dreary, lacking bunting and flags to celebrate the RWC. What a sad sight she is these days, waiting like a condemned criminal for Madame Guillotine. Although, where there’s life there’s hope, surely we as a community can rally and save her. I know in 10 or 20 years’ time, if we lose this hotel forever, people will ask “How the hell did they let this happen?” It would not happen in any other civilised country.
That’s all for now. SG