The death occurred in New Plymouth on 19 December 2006 of Godfrey (Nibs) Carryer, aged 92. His parents moved to Stratford from Ohaewai in Northland in 1919, when his father Edgar purchased a menswear business from the O'Leary Brothers and it became Carryers Ltd. Nibs had been the last surviving member of eight children born to Edgar and Sarah Carryer.
Carryers Ltd was run by the family until sold in 1970, and Nibs, together with elder brother Ron, ran the business for several decades.
Nibs did his schooling at the old Stratford Primary School and Stratford Technical High School where he played in the First Rugby XV as hooker. His first job on leaving school was working for Nimmos in New Plymouth, walking door-to-door as a radio salesman. Eighteen months later, a job at Carryers Menswear became available after his brother, John, left to join Newton Kings for an outdoor job.
To supplement his weekly wage of 15 shillings, Nibs had a morning paper run which gave him a bit of pocket money to spend on trips up the mountain at weekends with his friends. The mountain was his playground; tramping and climbing in the summer, skiing in the winter.
While still at primary school, Nibs, together with his elder brothers, camped at the old Mountain House site on the plateau. The boys used to tramp across to Dawson Falls then follow the streambeds up until they came out onto the scrub. As a high school boy, Nibs and his friends used to cycle as far as they could which was not even as far as the present Mountain House, and then start tramping.
The Carryer boys made their own skis, steaming the wood in the copper to shape them. On occasions they carried them to the top of Egmont and then skied down. Nibs stopped counting his summit climbs after reaching 200, and doing a triple traverse of Mt Egmont.
At the end of the Depression, around 1935, there was still little work around so Nibs took an extended holiday with mountaineer friend, Rex Griffiths. Both had built their own canoes from canvas. Their only trial run was around the Sugar Loaves in New Plymouth. They had no life jackets. The intention was to paddle up the Wanganui River to its source, then cross Lake Taupo, go down the Waikato River and from its mouth, down the coast to New Plymouth.
They only got as far as Pipiriki as record floods came, making it impossible to continue. They left their canoes with a farmer and made their way to the Central Mountains where they spent several days climbing, before making the return journey down the river from Jerusalem. The river was flowing so swiftly that it only took one day to get back to Wanganui compared with the four-and-a-half days it had taken to get up to Pipiriki.
Nibs enlisted for the Second World War in 1942 and joined the 2nd Taranaki Regiment based at New Plymouth Racecourse for seven months, and then after training at Paekakariki was posted overseas. He served in the 22nd Battalion and was sent to Italy where he witnessed the Monte Cassino Battle from another nearby high point. He eventually returned home after the war ended in 1945, rejoining his wife, Joan, whom he had married in 1938, his two young children, and went back to work in the shop.
He became involved in the community, serving on the East Egmont Committee of the Taranaki National Parks Board as the Stratford Mountain Club representative. He was club captain and served on the committee of the Stratford Mountain Club, and was involved with Search and Rescue. Nibs also served on the committee of the RSA Executive. He was on the Stratford Business Association executive for eight years, the Stratford Primary School Committee for nine years and the Stratford High School Home and School Committee.
He was a Sunday School teacher at Holy Trinity, and having purchased an old baker's delivery van which he had converted into a minibus because of the increasing number of his own children (eventually seven), he sometimes gathered up to 15 children in it when he took them to Sunday School.
Nibs was chairman of the Stratford Scout Committee and was on the Scout and Guide Building Committee for 10 years. This involved a lot of fundraising, with paper and bottle drives, and mystery envelopes. Working bees were held every Saturday morning until the building near Malone Gates was completed.
Nibs Carryer left five daughters, and was predeceased by two sons.
Obituary - Godfrey (Nibs) Carryer
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