FEATURE: Sir Tim still has a head for heights

ROGER MORONEY
Sir Tim Wallis would have loved to have made a flying visit to Hawke's Bay for the weekend.
While he did manage the visit, someone else did the flying ... and flying is something the legendary entrepreneur who developed the country's deer industry clearly misses.
But, he said, leaning forward with a smile, he's had the opportunity to fly some of the greatest and most iconic piston-engined fighters in the aviation world. So no real regrets there.
However, he admitted that if he could change anything from his remarkable life it would have been to be more selective with his aircraft.
In January 1996, in a crash which nearly took his life, and which has left him visually impaired and confined for much of the time to a wheelchair, he made a simple error in applying the incorrect amount of take-off rudder trim to compensate for the torque pumped out by a big four-blade propeller on a Mk XIV Spitfire.
It would have been okay had he been in one of the other Spitfire variants, but he was not.
When I asked Sir Tim the "would you change anything in your life?" question his wife Prue quietly beat him to the punch and simply said, "put on more left trim".
But you can't keep a good man down, and the 67 year-old is absolute proof of such a sentiment.
He and his wife flew up to Hawke's Bay to attend a family wedding, and while here took the opportunity to visit the gannet colony, a few restaurants and drop in to sign a few copies of his book Hurricane Tim.
The book is something he is proud of, and described it as something for New Zealanders to read and understand what he had set out to achieve, often against huge odds.
He uses the term "team effort" a lot, and he says it with an accompanying light tap on my arm to emphasise the point.
It was a team effort which eventually led to New Zealand leading the world in deer husbandry, but it was one man's vision which drove it.
"That is what I am most proud of," he said.
"That is what I regard as my greatest achievement. Taking what was a noxious animal in the 60s and turning it into a natural asset for New Zealand."
At the World Deer Conference in 1983 Professor Roger Short stated, "today New Zealand unquestionably leads the world in the development of intensive husbandry systems for farming deer."
Reminded of that, Sir Tim simply replied "that statement means a lot to me".
He pioneered the deer industry, from the days in 1963 when he began aerial recovery of deer using helicopters.
But it wasn't an activity which met with everyone's approval and there were bureaucratic hurdles which had to be cleared.
But he and his team stuck at it and today the Alpine Deer Group, based at his home town of Wanaka, is internationally respected. Sir Tim is, rightfully, a Life Member of the New Zealand Deer Industry.
He described himself as an entrepreneur.
"And industry needs entrepreneurs," he said, again tapping his finger on my arm to emphasise his point.
Mind you, his entreprenuerism could have cost him his life at the hands of the Russian mafia in the early 1990s as he sought to set up a deer trade there.
"It was a challenge, but I saw a great opportunity there." However, so did the criminal underworld.
"If you become a success there you become a target for the mafia. I lost four Russian friends. One was poisoned, one was drowned and two were shot. I was losing my friends and I started to think, 'when will it be my turn?"'
He wasn't prepared to sit around and find out.
"I left a one million-dollar investment there. I got out and took my New Zealanders with me."
He smiled and added, "I'm a survivor".
He's also quite clearly a businessman who has no intentions of easing off work to achieve things.
There's still work to be done with the wondrous Wanaka Warbirds aircraft collection and museum, which he helped create, and he has what he calls a long-term view about another of New Zealand's introduced animals - but was not prepared to elaborate on the record.
He enjoys his visits to the Bay where he has many friends, and was delighted to read how John Pattison, a member of the 485 (NZ) Squadron, of which Sir Tim is patron, was presented with a model of his old WW2 fighter.
"I shall be back in March," Sir Tim said, explaining that was when 485 (NZ) Squadron would be holding their next reunion.
And that resulted in the release of a smile which fairly made his face glow.
"They are great people," he said.
"I am so proud to be patron of 485."