I'm a Hawkeye Guy
There's Something About a Magpie
EDWARD ("Ed" or "Eddie) CULVER
Ed Culver was a regular columnist in Hawkes Bay club and provincial match programmes. Upon retirement in 1961, Ed had spent 43 of his 48 years of working life as the ‘Daily Telegraph’ reporter in Hastings.
Ed and Gwen, photographed for the HB Photo News (033/August 1961), upon his retirement from the Daily Telegraph.
Affectionately known as ‘Uncle Ed and Aunt Gwen’, he and his wife conducted the Hastings children’s sessions for 22 years, on both 2ZL and 2ZH – the Hastings and Napier broadcasting stations of the ’20s and ’30s. The couple became the districts most popular radio personalities and would often visit the less fortunate children, in hospitals and homes.
Along with his great friend and local retailer, Harry Poppelwell (1899-1988), Ed is credited with the formation of an organisation to promote activities in Hastings (Greater Hastings), following a post WWII period of perceived stagnancy in the city.
Poppelwell had previously stated that something should be done about the ‘glorious inactivity’ in Hastings. Gone were the ‘Fun Sessions’ at the Hastings Municipal Theatre during the war, and he and others thought Hastings had been coasting on its reputation, built earlier in the 20th century by the promotional organisation, the Hastings Progress League, which organised all the grand carnivals which had stopped when the war started.
Ed Culver died in 1981 (September 18th), aged 75 years.
The cover of the promotional booklet 'Sunny Napier', produced in 1960 by the Napier Thirty Thousand Club (Swailes Printing Ltd)
IAN LESLIE MILLS (1928-2021)
The man who famously sketched the prototype of ‘Hawkeye’ on the back of a shoe box in his shop in Napier, was a man of very many talents. Ian Mills - by his own confession - says his life was split into four parts; books, painting, retailing and the Aquarium.
“I’ve had a very interesting life and I’m the “nearly” man. The “nearly man” – nearly made it in various aspects of my life; never quite made it anywhere.”
Ian Mills, 2018 (Knowledge Bank - HB’s Digital Archives Trust)
In reality, that is quite some understatement. It's difficult to find one word to accurately describe Ian Mills; visionary…innovative? This is a man who spent 40 years on a book researching the history of Napier's street names, started a ‘fish’ club which led to a major aquarium and sketched a bird that became the greatest rugby mascot in New Zealand.
The Mills family came to Hawke’s Bay in December of 1938. They’d arrived from Invercargill (where Ian was born) so that his father, Les (a Londoner), could negotiate with Mike Stephenson to buy into a shoe shop in Napier. Les Mills formed the Londoners’ Club for ex-pats in Napier. It was a very bright and happy little club from 1938 to 1940.
Following his secondary schooling at Napier Boys High School, Ian found himself working as an illustrator in the art department at Coull, Somerville & Wilkie in Christchurch. He spent two years with the advertising company, drawing ‘Weetbix cards, letterheads and labels’, before returning to Napier to help establish his father’s shoe shop, via a four-year stint as a window-dresser in both Wellington and Auckland.
Heeding the call, Ian returned to help his father and eventually ran the shop, but was soon in demand in Napier, his artistic skills quickly recognised. Ian produced signs, ticket-writing and window displays for chain store McKenzie’s, bigger works including life-like creations on Blossom Festival and Napier centennial parade floats. More of his models included a 10 ft Dolphin, a Sea Horse, a Stingray and a Shark, all out of fibreglass. He also created giant papier-mache figures such as Humpty Dumpty, Donald Duck, and Bugs Bunny.
His father had insisted on a fish tank being placed in the children’s department, in his new Hastings Street location. The initial goldfish were replaced by tropical fish and - with one thing leading to another - Les Mills was given £500 by the Thirty Thousand Club to build an aquarium in the underground basement of the soon-to-open War Memorial Hall.
The Aquarium (started by Les and Ian Mills, Russ Spiller and Gordon Dine) opened in 1957 and proved a popular attraction. The project was eventually usurped by the building of Marineland, New Zealand’s first marine zoo, which opened it’s doors to the public in 1965. The idea was to build a facility (at a project cost of around £200,000) where people could watch dolphins and observe their natural behaviour, blending information, entertainment and education.
The same year as Marineland opened, Ian was asked by his great friend, Jock Stevenson, to come up with an idea for a rugby mascot for the Hawkes Bay rugby side (refer chapter; ‘Hawkeyeus Ontrailerus’). Within days, the Wiig brothers and others were building an enormous version of his commissioned sketch, which was, within weeks, off to New Plymouth for a Ranfurly Shield challenge.
In 1998, Ian published a 280-page book, “What’s in a Name?”, the history behind the names of some of Napier’s streets. The book had its roots in his days working part-time in a petrol station, answering the questions of motorists seeking directions around the city and environs. He also completed a book about tropical fish.
From the age of 50, Ian, it was estimated, had painted in excess of 80 paintings and although he made relatively little money from them, examples of his work are scattered around the globe
Ian Mills died on August 25th, 2021, 11 days short of his 93rd birthday.
The cover of a 'Marineland of New Zealand' promotional pamphlet, date unknown (presumed 1970's). Produced by 'Marineland of NZ' (Martin Printing Co. Ltd).
“Hawkeye” rugby mascot in Hastings Blossom Parade, Heretaunga Street East, 1966
Bernard Rashley MEREDITH (1927-2020)
Napier personality, Bernie Meredith, was another instrumental in the birth of Hawkeye. Bernie was Chairman of the Napier Development Association, for twelve years the manager of the famous Top Hat Club, an avid rugby supporter and a stalwart of the Napier High School Old Boys rugby club.
He grew up on a farm half way between Onga Onga and Waipawa. Both his parents died when he was but 12 years old. In 1942 he was sent to board at Napier Boys High School and following his schooling he signed on as an apprentice at Robert Holt & Sons, in the joinery factory.
He soon-there-after joined NHSOB and said that’s when his life really started, joining organisation after organisation, eventually attaining 12 life memberships around various Napier groups.
Here (abridged) Bernie Meredith shares his memories of the birth of Hawkeye with Frank Cooper, for Knowledge Bank, the Hawkes Bay Digital Trust Archives;
“Oh yes. We built Hawkeye. It wasn’t my idea, but I had a big input because I was a tradesman. And I looked after him for seventeen and a half years, bloody thing. But he was the best ticket to all rugby parks in New Zealand. I’d have him on the tow ball, and you’d pull up at the gate and the gates’d open and the car load of you could go in. Straight in!”
“But I had one highlight I’ll always remember. We were going to Auckland – it’s a double-banger, this one – we were going to Auckland and it started to rain like hell and there was a northerly blowing. And between Taupo, then Wairakei there’s a bit of a rise, and we come to the top of the rise and a gust of wind hit us – just about detached Hawkeye off the tow ball – its wings broke lose and they went up like … thirty-one-foot wing span. And there was a woman coming the other way in the car and she wondered what the hell had hit her, and she finished up in the middle of the golf course.”
“I was chairman of the Hawkeye Supporters Club at this stage, and we’d written to Auckland and asked them if we could get them to look after the bird overnight. And they said “yes, certainly”, you know, “so when you get to Auckland come and see us”. So we got to Auckland, I went in and knocked on the Police Station about one o’clock in the morning after we got there and said “I’ve got this bird here called Hawkeye”. “Oh”, he said “bring the cage in and put it on the counter!” So I had to park him down on the Station Hotel carpark and I had to stay up all night and look after him. Well everybody had never seen a thing like that.”
“Then I decided that ’cause I was care taking him and doing repairs and so on, that he must go in the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest rugby mascot in the World, and that was one of the biggest jobs I ever took on. They demanded that we survey it. So we got a surveyor and we made the appointment, made a big public effort of it, and I got hold of the Lowe Walker helicopter and we towed old Hawkeye out to the round about where Marineland was and we picked him up underneath the helicopter and flew him down to the Sound Shell. We taught him how to fly, you see. Yeah, and we landed him there and the surveyors are there and all the big wigs from …
Anyway, we took him to Taranaki on his first visit out of Napier and then he was on a trailer ‘cause you know, he didn’t have his own wheels yet. And I had a big photograph of Kelvin Tremain and we carried it round the park with a case of apples, and we had a bit of a parade in town and we threw the apples out off the back of the truck. And then we walked round the park in front of the bank in Taranaki … anyway it had a bank, and I’ll bet you every one of those apples came back down and met us again. [Chuckle] They threw ‘em. And we got beaten. And on the way home from Taranaki, on every lamp post, every street road sign, there was a dead magpie hanging there.”
“There’s one real good one which they still talk about. I organised the street parades before every Ranfurly Shield match when we had it. And ‘Pinetree’ Meads and King Country were coming, so we said “right, Pinetree – we’ll fix you”. So we had a huge parade that time and I got hold of a pine tree in a planter box big enough, and it was about twenty feet high and we put a cradle on the bottom of it and stood it on the back of a truck, and drove it up Emerson Street. And right outside the hotel where the Hawke’s Bay team was staying some blokes dressed up as bushmen jumped on the back of the truck. I stopped it … chainsawed it out and it broke a window in … Blythe’s window.”
Bernie Meredith passed away on March 20th, 2020, in his 93rd year.
Roger Kim MORONEY (1954-2021)
One of five children of Bill and Iris Moroney, Roger grew-up in the family home on Marine Parade, and started school at nearby Te Awa. He attended Napier Boys High School from 1968-1971. His father, who drove tanks in Italy during WWII, was also the Hawke's Bay Rugby Football Union's "custodian and fix-it chap" and was entrusted with looking after the Ranfurly Shield between challenges.
As a result, young Roger often kept the trophy in safe-keeping under his bed during the week. He played rugby at school, with some aspiration to become a Hawke's Bay Magpie himself, like his heroes in the match programmes he sold at McLean Park during that great shield era.
“It's a trophy I have held close to my person and it would be fair to say that the Moroney family actually held the Ranfurly Shield longer than teams like Taranaki or Bay of Plenty or Southland ever did. For while the wonderful Magpies bore it aloft for one day a week, over three glorious seasons in the 60s, we had the thing for every other day... tucked under a bed and wrapped in a blanket. Security? Of course we had security. Dad locked the back door every night and Mum sorted the front door.”
Roger Moroney (HB Today), 2011.
%20copy.jpg)
Roger Moroney, pictured in 1968 with the coveted Ranfurly Shield, of which his father was the custodian of the trophy for the HBRFU.
When match day arrived, Bill Moroney would drag the shield out from under the bed, put it in the back seat of his Morris Minor and head for McLean Park. On a voluntary basis, he was also the custodian of the old (now demolished) HB Rugby Union rooms. Occasionally the shield would be collected on a Friday evening by one of the players for the parade on Saturday morning.
Roger recalled that his father would arrive home with the shield on the Saturday night, grinning like a Cheshire cat after a skinful and another challenger put to the sword. He'd wrap the trophy in the blanket and slide it under the bed... following himself soon thereafter.
Roger let his mates come round after school and hold it, but those he didn't know so well, or particularly like, he charged 10c. For 20c, he'd take a photo of them with it with his Kodak ‘Instamatic’ and after a week at the chemists, the roll of film came back as photographs. Everyone was delighted.
After leaving NBHS, Roger - regarded as ‘a bit of a lad’ - worked in a wool store (where he met his wife of 3 years, Glenda, who worked in the office), before taking off on an OE.
He began working at Napier’s Daily Telegraph newspaper in November 1984, the only real credentials he had for the job were that he liked motorbikes - and writing about them!
A decade prior, he’d started writing about motorcycling on a freelance basis for ‘a small NZ bike mag’. By the late 70s, concerned about the dearth of bike news on the motoring pages at the Daily Telegraph, he approached the editor, who agreed to run a fortnightly bike road-test column – testing the bikes and writing articles, juxtaposed with his day-job, pushing bales around the woolstore.
Roger considered the upside of his part-time reporting was riding motorbikes and getting paid a little to do it. He calculated that he'd road-tested about 350 motorbikes, since his first freelance articles in the early 70’s.
“Eventually, the editor (Ken Hawker) offered me a job as a reporter, reckoning that I had some skill with words. I didn't think so. I just wrote how I spoke basically, as I had no formal training in journalism … and had left school at 16.”
Roger Moroney
But the truth was that Roger’s articles were so well written, it was well known amongst the staff that little editing was necessary.
Despite his early desire to play rugby, he later covered the local football club, Napier City Rovers. His involvement during their heyday, national league champions and Chatham Cup winners, saw a growing passion for the sport, he himself being a Southampton supporter because; “that's where I landed on arrival in the UK”.
“The Chatham Cup... ahh, I once drank from that fine vessel after the boys in blue lifted it in 1993... the year they did the double, having also swept to victory in the National League. It wasn't champagne we sipped however... it was cider, if I recall rightly.”
Roger Moroney (HB Today), 2011.
Roger had been writing for the Daily Telegraph for 15 years, when the newspaper and the Hastings-based Hawke's Bay Herald Tribune, by then in the same company ownership, merged to become Hawke's Bay Today.
Amongst his more popular writings included the recanting of stories by Napier earthquake survivors and those who served during WWII. By his own admission, he considered himself to be an ‘observer of the slightly off-centre’.