Lytton High School double sculls rowers Julian Hoogland (right) and Cameron Pierce with coach Norrie Mills. The pair were national junior champions two years running in the early 1990s.
At 17, Gisborne rowing prodigy Julian Hoogland seemed headed for great things.
He and Lytton High schoolmate Cameron Pierce had won the double sculls at the national junior championships two years running, and Hoogland had won the single sculls in those years.
The 1996 Atlanta Olympics – still two years away – might have been a stretch, but Hoogland would still be in his early 20s when the 2000 Sydney Games came around.
Hoogland won bronze at the 1994 junior world champs in Munich, Germany. He was on track.
But a 6ft 7in (2.01m) obstacle in the form of Rob Waddell blocked Hoogland’s path to the Olympics.
A year and eight months older than Hoogland, Waddell was still only 21 when he competed at Atlanta. He won the B Final, which gave him seventh place overall. He won the 1998 and 1999 single sculls world championships and smashed the opposition to win New Zealand’s only gold medal at Sydney. Waddell was the first to win three successive supreme Halberg Awards for sportsperson of the year.
So, a big obstacle.
Hoogland had one victory over Waddell in the months after Atlanta. The heading from the Waikato Times of December 16, 1996, reads: “Hoogland wins dogfight against great rival Waddell”.
It was a small respite, though.
“After that he beat me, beat me, beat me,” Hoogland said.
“In 1997, I did the Under-23 world champs and finished third. By that time, Rob Waddell was winning world cup races.
“I was a young star and was toppled very quickly, and I had to deal with that.”
After the 1997 U23 world champs, Hoogland “felt stink” about losing his position as leading contender for the Olympic singles berth, so he “did a couple of years on the bike”, based in Hamilton.
Cycling – in particular, the 1km race – became his focus, and he had some success. A newspaper article noted: “Julian Hoogland became the first rower to win a Waikato-Bay of Plenty Centre track cycling title”.
But he had built a body for rowing, and the explosive nature of cycling’s speed work and training with heavy weights made underlying back problems worse. In 1999, he had a double discectomy, a surgical procedure that removed soft tissue causing nerve pressure and sciatic pain.
The Sydney Olympics came and went without Hoogland taking part. He decided to spend time in his parents’ hometown, Zwolle, in the Netherlands, staying for two years with his maternal grandmother, Adriana (he later named a daughter after her).
He attended language school during the day and worked at the post office at night. His main obligation, though, was as a rower – along with a little coaching – for the Zwolle rowing and sailing club.
His back had recovered well enough for him to make a bid for the 2004 Athens Olympics, wearing a Netherlands singlet in the double sculls.
“I rowed at one world cup regatta in Lucerne [Switzerland]. Three-quarters of the way, I couldn’t put any power on. I finished the race, but it was painful to move.”
His Olympic dream was over. A year after Lucerne, his back was “pretty good” again, but he realised his days as an elite athlete had ended. He continues to manage his back pain.
His back was good enough for him to win the masters single sculls at the Hawke’s Bay Regatta on the Clive River in January 2023, and to partner Peter Gourlay to third place in the A Final of the masters double sculls at the same regatta. In September the previous year, he and Murray Kendrew were third in the double sculls in the New Zealand Masters Championships on Lake Karapiro.
The disappointments of Hoogland’s rowing career are tempered by memories of the people and events that shaped his emergence from the crowd.
Ross Webb was the Lytton High School “master of rowing”, and local solicitor John Kinder was the coach. Kinder put Hoogland on to Norrie Mills, who was then in his 70s.
Mills had run Mills Bakery and was prominent in the development of rowing at Gisborne Boys’ High School.
“At the time Norrie was coaching me, his daughter Leigh Gibbs was coaching the Silver Ferns netball team.
“Norrie lived in Score Rd, next to Anzac Park. I would go to his house for breakfast and then go rowing. He would stand on the bank and quote [rowing coach and author Steve] Fairbairn.”
Hoogland’s regard for rowing was enhanced by an episode from the 1990s television programme Clash of the Codes. Small teams representing different codes competed in a variety of events for “best all-round athlete” bragging rights.
When it came to the “Jumbo Jet Pull”, the rowers showed their superiority, Hoogland said. Team leader Chris White (son of former Gisborne mayor and 1950s All Black Richard “Tiny” White) gave himself a run-up and then made the tow rope go taut with such power that the giant plane moved a smidgen, enough to overcome its inertia. The rest of the team joined the effort and the jet moved the required distance in half the time it took any other team.
What impressed Hoogland was the sheer power of the rowing team and the lateral thinking White showed by moving away from the point of effort to give himself room to gather momentum.
White, who did his club rowing at Waikato, was team captain the year Hoogland was selected for the New Zealand elite rowing team.
In May last year, when Rowing New Zealand honoured Gisborne Rowing Club by holding its annual general meeting in Gisborne the day after the club’s 150-year celebrations, Hoogland was one of three scullers, along with Darnelle Timbs and Bess Halley, to receive Rowing NZ Legacy Award medals. These are presented to rowers who represented New Zealand at elite world championships or Olympics.
The wording on Hoogland’s is: “In recognition of selection, New Zealand elite rowing team. Julian Hoogland, year of selection 1995 Rowing New Zealand personal athlete number 260. Double scull with Graeme Ashby of Auckland.”
Hoogland had been in the New Zealand junior team for two years, the second of which featured his third placing in the junior world championships. He then went into the elite team, but was there for only one year.
He was then selected to race the single at the U23 world champs. He was fourth in the first year and third in the second.
All this gave him enough time to experience life at the heart of an exciting period in New Zealand rowing.
Supercoach Harry Mahon, who revitalised the New Zealand eight to achieve world championship victory in 1982 and turned around the fortunes of Cambridge University in the Boat Race against Oxford, was brought back as national director of coaching in 1994.
The Electricity Corporation (ECNZ) sponsored rowing, and elite rowers had the use of an ECNZ house in Karapiro village. Hoogland was the first to move in, then came Mahon from Switzerland, where he had been national coach.
Hoogland was there for six months, then moved into a flat in Cambridge for a few months. He then moved back to Karapiro, where he and two other rowers prepared the caretaker’s house for refurbishing, ready for the arrival of Norrie and Joyce Mills.
Through Mahon’s influence, the New Zealand elite and junior teams went to Switzerland for training camps.
“Harry was idolised in Switzerland,” Hoogland said.
“When we turned up, we were given a view of the treatment he was getting during his 10 years in Europe.”
Hoogland had the benefit of Mahon’s coaching, but disappointing results in the double sculls signalled the end of his time in the elite squad.
When he returned to Gisborne from his two years in the Netherlands, he resumed his relationship with Shelley Wilson, with whom he had been at Lytton High.
“We’re still together and have eight kids – seven girls and one boy, the second youngest,” Hoogland said.
He and Shelley have home-schooled their children and tried to be “semi-self-sufficient”.
In an example of how worlds collide in Gisborne, Shelley’s grandfather Bill Wilson was a cousin of Joyce Mills, wife of Julian’s coach Norrie.
Julian and Shelley live on just over a hectare east of Te Karaka, roughly where Shelley’s mother grew up. She was a Kirkpatrick. Shelley’s cousin John Kirkpatrick was a world champion shearer.
“Both our mothers live in Gisborne; we help them when we can,” Hoogland said.
He and Shelley rented for a few years, but for the past decade have had an old house that once belonged to a shepherd and deer hunter. Hoogland is fixing it up.
He’s worked in orchards and been a builder’s labourer, and helps tend the gardens on the property.
“It was our choice. It has been good and bad. I am considered a little bit of a rebel and a hippie.”
Even after an ankle operation, Hoogland managed to hobble around and work away at his projects, which all relate to boats.
His grandfather, Teun Hoogland, was a Volvo engineer in the Netherlands. In his spare time he built boats – 10 or so, Julian estimates.
About the time Teun Hoogland started building boats, plywood was introduced as a boatbuilding material.
“It transformed boatbuilding,” Julian said. “People could make them at home. Before that, they were made with timber, without glue.”
Teun Hoogland had a hard early life. Hoogland is Dutch for “highland” and, before World War II, the family were veterinary surgeons, specialising in horses – Friesian working horses – and dogs.
Teun was 18 when war broke out. He couldn’t go to university and spent the first two years hiding in and around Zwolle, emerging at night to seek food for himself and others in hiding.
Eventually, they were caught and put to work in a concentration camp in Belgium.
“I rowed a couple of times not far from where it was,” Julian said.
“The rest of the team went to the camp. I didn’t.”
Julian’s parents, Henk and Margriet, were from the same area and came to New Zealand in 1969, initially to Auckland.
“They used to go camping on the canals in the Netherlands,” Julian said.
“Dad inherited a love of boats, and was interested in hobby sailing and canoeing. My first dinghy was something he bought from a mate, and we painted it together.”
Julian was born on September 22, 1976. He has one younger brother, Stephen, who preferred mountain biking to water sports.
“We came to Gisborne about 1980. Dad would take us on the Waimata River, canoeing and a bit of rowing in the dinghy. Then we were at the yacht club for a year or two in Optimist and P Class boats. Dad sailed a Laser.”
After that, Julian got into rowing – in fours – as a 14-year-old fourth form student at Lytton High. His coaches, John Kinder and Norrie Mills, were from a different era of the sport, “when it was a men’s after-work activity”.
Hoogland would like to see community rowing make a comeback in Gisborne.
Flat-water racing skiffs for mainly school-age crews were a tight fit for adults and could not be used in the waters of Poverty Bay, he said.
“Coastal rowing is a new Olympic sport, and Gisborne is a perfect location for it. With a coastal rowing boat, you could go into the bay. It is far more practical for most parts of New Zealand as a craft that can be used for recreation and competition. It is a slightly wider version of a racing boat, and has a sliding seat.”
Hoogland wants to take things further than that.
“My vision is a men’s health project with traditional boats.”
The construction, by traditional means, of a replica of 17th-century Dutch East India Company ship Batavia in Lelystad was an example of how such projects could keep alive traditional crafts and promote wellbeing among the people working on them.
“I have seen how powerful rowing and boatbuilding can be,” Hoogland said.
“When I was working in Zwolle, they had just had the Bosnia conflict, and the Dutch were sending peacekeeping United Nations forces there. Some were badly affected by their experiences and I encountered this.
“When they went rowing, you wouldn’t know they had been depressed. It was powerful for them.
“I think we have an opportunity in New Zealand for traditional boating. It might be something men can get into together. Surfing for Farmers is great, but it lacks the element of working together.”
Something about timber, boats and the sea seemed to resonate with men, he said.
“My goal is to set up an interest group. It might just be for a social media account for later interest ... a group that can finish restoring traditionally built boats and be excited about traditional rowing, sailing and paddling.”
On his property, he has 10 boats that could prove to be the realisation of his vision.
“Every situation is different,” he said. “Some people want a boat removed, some want money. I have an old Midway surf boat they didn’t want. An old wooden rowing eight from Gisborne Rowing Club is in the workshop of a service station out here.”
Two boats could be regarded as extra-special. And associated with one of them is a simple wooden building redolent with local history.
Both boats are clinker-built wooden vessels, meaning their planks overlap horizontally with no glue used in construction, as opposed to carvel-built boats, on which planks are fitted edge-to-edge, creating a smooth hull.
Clinker-built craft have less internal framing, so are lighter and displace less water, features that allow them to move faster.
“Clinker construction was mastered by the Scandinavians,” Hoogland said.
“They built long, ocean-going boats with thin planks that overlapped. The strength came from the overlap. They could be rowed or sailed quickly, and their shallow draft meant they could go into places that were shallow.”
About 2005, Hoogland saw a small group of men working on two boats at Anzac Park.
“They said they were former Sea Scouts who had come from Wellington to fix two cutters. They spent a lot of money and a lot of time – about two weeks – on these boats, which were built in 1945.
“I didn’t think about it again until after Cyclone Gabrielle [in February 2023]. My mate Noah Lee was in charge of the Sea Scouts’ shed at the end of Vogel St. He was trying to take boats out of it, and I gave him a hand cleaning the shed and relocating everything that was in it.
“One of the cutters had a trailer and was called Takitimu. It was No 1 of its design. The other one is No 70.
“The Sea Scouts’ shed had to be shifted from Vogel St, which forced the sale of the boats. I rang Shelley’s cousin Raewyn Newcomb, who is on the committee of Hawke’s Bay Sea Scouts. They fundraised $5000 to buy Takitimu.
“In the meantime, Raewyn found a Certificate of Gallantry that was presented by the Boy Scouts’ Association to her father, George Newcomb, on April 11, 1946, for his good work as a member of this boat’s crew when they rescued people from a disabled launch at Gisborne on April 21, 1945.”
Hoogland had asked Lee to contact him if the other cutter was ever for sale, and he bought No 70 for $1200, an amount that took into account the help Hoogland had given in the clean-up.
“From my research, I believe the boat I have was built in Nelson and called Tuahine,” he said.
Then a home had to be found for the Sea Scouts’ shed.
Hoogland offered to remove it and take ownership.
“I paid $3000 for the permit and will pay $15,000 for the building relocation and another couple of thousand for the piles.”
That’s a big outlay.
“Mum helps,” he said.
“The scout boat is made of kauri planks, mahogany gunwale and knees, and oak keel and ribs. It was made without glue but the transom is held together with copper rivets and brass screws.”
The other special boat on the property is a lifeboat from the Kaitoa, a coastal steamer built in 1908 and used to transport goods and passengers around New Zealand.
“It had two rowing lifeboats – cutters – one on each side.
“Before all the ports were dredged, they had to use these boats for transporting goods and passengers between the ship and shore. They were 27ft with the rudder. I am building a replacement rudder.
“I bought the boat from Mike Gibbons, our neighbour in Darwin Rd, where I grew up. It’s a double-ender for following seas. The construction method was the same as for the Scout boat and it was made of the same timber, but was built in Scotland.
“I made an inquiry to the Auckland Maritime Museum and got all the information they had on the Kaitoa and its lifeboats ... kauri planks, mahogany gunwales. I’ve added other bits as required, using oak from down the back of my section and other assorted reclaimed timber. The keel – the backbone of the boat – is oak.”
Hoogland learned that the Kaitoa was scuttled in the Marlborough Sounds in 1950. Its last captain bought one of the ship’s two cutters from the company and converted it into a motor sailer.
Mike Gibbons had wanted to buy a keeler, and in the mid-1980s he found the converted cutter in Wellington, bought it and transported it to Gisborne on a trailer.
“I bought it off Mike for a couple of grand,” Hoogland said.
“The engine was the most valuable part. It was brand new when it was put in.
“When I stripped all the conversion, the quality of the wood made it obvious what had to be done. It had to be a rowboat again. When I scraped it back and found the number 351 I had to smile; 351 is the number of my place.
“We had to take the keel off the bottom, then the cabin off the top. They were starting to go rotten. We took the engine out, and stripped all the paint off the boat. We repainted the inside, and put on a new bow and new gunwale caps ... all reclaimed wood.
“We’ve still to do the seats and decks. I’ve used the Scout boat as a sort of pattern. The ship’s boat will have fibreglass sheeting on the outside.
“I’ll put the old boatshed from Vogel St in a corner of the property and it will be a workshop.
“I want to use the ship’s boat, so I might put it on a trailer with a cover on it. The Scout boat can’t really be kept outside. It will be on a trailer under some sort of connected system.”
Hoogland and a few of his mates have a kind of tradition. Sometimes, about New Year, they and “a bunch of kids” – all in lifejackets – row down the Waipaoa River from Puha to Te Karaka.
Hoogland’s vision is that similar jaunts – on rivers or open water – might be in vessels restored by the craftwork of committed individuals for whom the task is as much therapy as preservation of the old ways.
'He never takes a step back and he always has your back,' says coach Kahu Tamatea