‘A gentleman, a man of substance’

Graham Faulkner

If service clubs hadn't existed, Graham Faulkner would have wanted to help invent them.

They mirrored his approach to life: do what you can to help, and enjoy the company of friends while you do it.

In the public eye as area health board chairman, local commissioner of health and Gisborne Veterinary Club president, Graham also served on school boards, chaired a trade training organisation and was treasurer for the National Party in Gisborne.

While he took on these roles willingly, his happy places were with his family or among friends at Rotary and masonic lodge meetings.

Graham Eric Faulkner died in Gisborne last month at the age of 75, succumbing to the cancer that had gradually curtailed his service club activity over the past year.

Messages to the family described him as a true gentleman, a man of substance, honourable and honest.

When Graham was made a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International in 2007, he reflected on the way service clubs had changed since he joined Rotary in 1995.

“Rotarians have become busier, more committed to both family and work,” he said.

“Rotary has changed to take that into account. But the principles are the same ­— service above self, and the importance of fellowship.”

Graham attended his last Rotary club meeting 10 days before he died. At his request, it was held at his home, with a meal prepared by his wife Heather Faulkner and Jenny Harding.

Graham's interest in Rotary had been triggered by a six-week Group Study Exchange (GSE) trip to Denmark in 1982. He was the farming representative in the group. The others were a veterinarian, a police officer, a teacher, a doctor and the team leader, who was a secondary school principal. They visited places that had relevance to their vocations. All team members went on every visit so that by the end of the tour they had a broad view of a significant slice of Danish society.

But more than that — with an off-the-cuff remark to a young Dane — Graham established an international friendship bridge spanning four decades.

Group members were billeted with Danish Rotary club members, and at one of these homes the son of Graham's host expressed a desire to visit New Zealand.

Graham told the youngster that he would be welcome to stay at the Faulkners' farm at Muriwai.

That young Dane, Kim Bundgaard, took up the offer of hospitality in 1983, when he had finished his military service. He stayed with Graham and Heather for the best part of a year and had his 21st birthday with them.

The next Danish visitor was a girl, keen to spend the time between high school and university seeing a bit of the world. That became a familiar pattern. The gender split was roughly 50/50 male/female and they generally stayed three, six, nine or 12 months.

Other Muriwai residents pitched in. Between the Faulkners and the wider Muriwai community, about 40 young Danes were given a rural New Zealand experience. And the Danes reciprocated. Friends and relatives of the Faulkners were welcomed with open arms in Denmark.

These days the visits are shorter, but the connection remains strong.

Graham Faulkner found the GSE trip and the resulting friendships so rewarding that he wanted to contribute to the service club that made it all possible. But it was not until 1995 that he felt he could do justice to Rotary club membership.

In the meantime, he ran Waihina Station, the 750-hectare Muriwai farm his grandfather had bought from district pioneer Woodbine Johnson.

Hospital or area health board work took up much of any spare time. He had been elected to Cook Hospital Board as a representative from the Cook ward, chaired the Tairāwhiti Area Health Board, and then as local commissioner of health oversaw the transition to crown health enterprise. In all, he served the health sector for 14 years.

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, run through Lincoln College, helped prepare Graham for some of the roles he took on.

He served Federated Farmers as a senior vice-president of the Gisborne branch, and when a friend of his father's asked him to go on the Gisborne Veterinary Club council, he agreed.

He was vet club president at a difficult time. The club decided to put its operations on a contract basis, and when the contract was awarded to a competitor some of the club's former veterinarians set up their own practice.

The decade from 1984 had brought far-reaching changes in New Zealand's economy, government departments and business. Farming and provincial communities were hit by the removal of agricultural subsidies.

At Waihina Station, Graham made changes in staffing and hill-country farm management. At one stage — from 1989 to 1992 or '93, when he was also busy with health board and vet club duties — he ran the farm by himself. He believed that physical strain led to his first hip replacement in 2003.

One thing was certain — horse-riding couldn't be blamed. He rode a horse for cattle work but for little else.

“He had an aversion to riding horses,” Heather said. “He was a runner, tramper or walker, and he went everywhere fast.”

If he had to travel the five kilometres to the back of the farm, a motorbike would do.

With neither of their sons Michael and Jeremy wanting to take up farming, Graham and Heather moved into town the year before Graham's hip operation.

Bob Jackson offered him a job in property management. Later, when Bob retired, he sold the business to Graham.

In a field that had its challenges, Graham found he loved the work. He enjoyed dealing with people, although he could be firm, too.

His son Jeremy said he had a workmate who was one of his father's clients, and who told him his dad was “choice”. The young man hadn't had many references, but he was given the tenancy with a stern warning: if he got behind and wrecked the place, he wouldn't have a chance to get a house for another four or five years.

“He would take a chance on someone if he thought they deserved it,” Jeremy said.

In 2014, Graham bought the business Home Rental Services Ltd and ran it as long as his health allowed.

Away from work, he had a strong interest in politics. In 1986, he sought selection as the National Party candidate for the Gisborne seat in the general election the following year. Georgina Tattersfield won the nomination, but Labour held the seat and had a further term in power. Graham found another way to contribute.

Former Gisborne district councillor Pat Seymour, who chaired the National Party's East Coast electorate for nearly two decades, said Graham was a “most efficient treasurer” for the electorate in his 17 years in the role. He was also a committed supporter — alongside Heather, who was a committee member — of the Gisborne branch of the Life Education Trust that Pat Seymour chaired.

Heather's brother Chris Bunyan said Graham also served as treasurer for three Gisborne masonic lodges — Lodge Gisborne, Lodge Montrose and the Eastern Masonic Centre. He was a “prolific visitor” to lodges in the Gisborne-Wairoa district, and Chris said Graham played the organ for all the Gisborne lodges and probably every lodge in the Gisborne-Wairoa district.

“We got involved in being freemasons and going through the stepping stones to get to being master of the lodge,” Chris said.

“Graham did two years as master; normally it's one year. We had a lot of fun. We travelled to meetings outside Gisborne quite a bit. Graham liked a yarn, he liked people — and good jokes and bad jokes.”

Graham found a non-intrusive way to practise and memorise the rituals and ceremonies of masonic lodge meetings . . . “He learned all his lodge work mowing the lawns, yabber-yabber as he went,” Heather said.

Rotary provided the mix of service and fellowship that Graham enjoyed. He served the Rotary Club of Gisborne as president, international committee chairman and GSE co-ordinator, and completed a three-year term as one of the assistants to the district governor.

Rotary played a significant role in the formation of trade training organisation Gisborne Development Incorporated, and Graham chaired its board for several years.

Gisborne District Council recognises voluntary contribution to the community with its annual Citizens Civic Award ceremony. In December 2018, the council recognised the contributions of 11 individuals or groups with civic awards. Among them, as individual recipients, were Graham and his good friends (and fellow Rotarians) Bill Harding and Les McGreevy.

Born in Gisborne in January 1947, Graham was the eldest of Ian and Margaret Faulkner's family of two boys and two girls. He grew up at Waihina Station, started school at Bartletts and transferred to Muriwai, then went as a boarder to Hereworth Preparatory and Whanganui Collegiate, where he shone as a record-setting miler.

He studied architecture for three years at Auckland University before he and the school of architecture “agreed to part ways”.

He came back to Gisborne and went shepherding for two years at Pehiri with Eric Butt. Then he got a manager's position at Te Matai Station in the Waimata Valley. After three years there. he moved to Mangapurakau Station, near Waipukurau, and worked for Ponty von Dadelszen.

By this time, Graham had a wife and child. He had met Heather Bunyan at a country girls' young farmers conference at Kaiti Hall. She, too, was the eldest in a family of two girls and two boys. They were engaged in November 1969 and married in August 1970. Eldest son Michael was born in Gisborne, and Jeremy in Waipukurau.

After two years at Mangapurakau Station they came home. It was February 1976.

“It was time to come back,” Heather said.

“Graham's father was semi-retired. He was on the Urewera National Park Board and spent a lot of time at Lake Waikaremoana. He was involved with the building of the visitor centre and the chalets there.”

Graham did the plans for a new four-bedroom home for his family at Waihina.

Hard times and good times lay ahead.

His family remember him going out to work at 5am, coming back for dinner at 5pm and going out for another two hours.

“As a dad, he was very involved with our lives,” Jeremy said. “We got used to him always being busy.”

In later years, with the pressure off, Jeremy and Graham spent many hours travelling together between Gisborne and Hawke's Bay following the fortunes of Jeremy's son Jack, goalkeeper for Gisborne United's Pacific Premiership football team.

Michael Faulkner said Graham taught his sons by example rather than command, and he treated everyone the same.

As Christmas approaches, Heather will think of the 50-odd years she and Graham hosted Christmas for the extended family and how one year they went the extra mile.

“Graham and I built the swimming pool,” she said. “We got someone to dig the hole. I sat for hours making staples out of No.8 wire. We lined the hole with netting, mixed concrete and slapped it on. We got a plasterer to do the final coat. We were filling it on Christmas Day.”

Graham is survived by his wife Heather, sons Michael and Jeremy, and grandchildren Georgia, Jack, Nikolaj and Mikkel.