“Oh I’ve got so many different stories.”
Stan’s family moved into Runanga in 1958 from Gladstone (“same name as me!”) just out of Greymouth. His father was an instructor in the army at Burnham, then foreman at the Gladstone mill and then went to the mines at Runanga. He also worked in the Strongman followed by Stan, as well as the coke and coalmine at Ruinui.
Stan was a very vigorous protestor when the Government stopped logging in the ‘80’s. “I do a bit of stirring, I’m known for it, you’ve got to show your disapproval to certain things.”
He made a point of disassociating himself with the Labour Party by handing in both his and his fathers 50 years of service badges to the Regional Council in Greymouth. He was disappointed that others didn’t join him in protest.
“I’ve been outspoken very definitely, all my life, either with my tongue or my fists.
I used to box, for five years. I started at 17 until I was 22. I went through to the NZ Championship, and the joker that beat me actually won the featherweight title. My father, he was a boxer, from England. He trained over there with a chap called Jimmy Wile who was a world flyweight champion. I was fortunate enough to be a bit more scientific than some of my opponents; I worked out my punches. I’ve got a book about Jimmy Wile, his movements; I just copied some of his style, it was new in NZ and that’s what gave me the edge. I ran out of opponents my own weight, so I had to fight jokers over a stone heavier than what I was. And I cleaned them up too!”
All the hard manual work that Stan did working at his first job at the Mill was great for body building. He would be sent to the big Bundy dredge out at Camerons, and would pick up the biggest heaviest stones and lay them on the truck, then offload them back at the Mill into a big hopper, so they could be used as fill. The chap that trained him for the first few fights, a great axe man on the Coast, said before the first fight, “You know there’s only one man more muscley than you Stan. Samson!”
These days he trains young aspiring boxes and also mentors them on the art of the sport. “I’ve been going with the gym about 8 or 10 years now I suppose, training others, three nights a week.”
Stan is a collector too, of a very expensive Italian porcelain called Capita Monte. He is also a stone carver himself, using a stone called Waiumu made from the sediments formed in the bottom of lakes, for which reason it often contains fossils in the form of freshwater mussels, ferns and leaves. Stan had been a jeweller by trade and was interested in this new material. It is similar to soapstone although harder, but he could not use machinery due to the amount of dust it made, so the detailing is all done by hand with the help of home made tools; a sharpened three inch nail and a machine hacksaw blade sharpened down into a point. Because it was a hobby while Stan worked in the mine, some pieces took up to a year to finish. These days it is very hard to get because much of it is only about the size of coal.
“My cobbers, when I was working in the mines, they’d throw a big hunk of stone on top of the coal box for me, and the boy who was calling out the numbers, he’d put it aside so that I could take it home. They looked after me.”
Brass pins are used to hold the pieces together. Getting wet can turn this stone back to mud so a protective coating is put over it which gets absorbed. “Nobody else has ever done this before with this stone. I would get this stone from inside the mines; sometimes from on top of the coal, but generally from the floor. It’s really the sediment of the lake; as the trees fell into the lake, all around the area they turned into coal.”
“I used to do a lot of gold assaying. They send you samples of gold after going down every metre, to determine how much gold is in the ground. When I was melding gold for one company they’d get 100 ounces in a day. They would make small bars of it. But you lose that “oooh its gold” sense of feeling, you know?”
For about 15 years Stan ran the Harriers Club. He was the first person to run from Hokitika to Greymouth after a wager from a mate to do it in 3 hours. The run took him 3 hours and 5 minutes!. The following year the Hokitika Marathon began although unfortunately for Stan he never took part, especially as he considered many entrants were very slow, taking three and a half or four hours to complete it.
Stan was also once a rally driver.
These days he is in his second term as President of the Greymouth Working Mans Club. His friend asked him “How did you get on at the elections?” He said “Not bad. I just scraped in.” I got 101, and the other two got 16 each!”
“I was a very quiet boy.
One time when I was about 5, my father and I went fishing at Camerons Bridge and we caught a 30lb eel! It swallowed all the bait, so Dad tied the line onto the bar of the seat of the bike and the eel towed us all the way back to the hall where they had community evenings every Wednesday night, and Dad takes the bike into the hall and rides round the floor towed by the eel!
Stan and his wife Val had five children and are heading for their Golden Anniversary. Val is 82 and Stan 81.
He has said to his family, “I’m not going to retire until I’m 102. It’s a good age. I’m going to take up my favourite hobby. I’m going to chase young girls. If I catch them though, I’ll have to ask them what to do next!”