Motorsport
Former Masterton traffic officer Peter Priest was back in town this week to donate a trophy to the Wairarapa Four Wheel Drive Club, of which he was the founding president.
The initial presentation of the Peter Priest Cup, which will go to the "most dedicated member of the year", was a highlight of the club's annual meeting, held at the Masterton Cosmopolitan Club.
Priest served as a traffic officer in Masterton in the early 1970s and he recalls entering the first four-wheel-drive rally to be held in New Zealand in 1971, when he and friend Ken Stratford competed at the Happy Valley Rally at Dannevirke in Stratford's Nissan Patrol.
"It was a really testing course ... massive bog holes, steep terrain and sidelings, deep water courses and very steep drops off the sides of banks," Priest said. "It was real adrenalin pumping stuff, luckily I remembered to take a spare set of underwear!"
So taken was he by this experience that Priest decided to form the Wairarapa Four Wheel Drive Club. Advertisements in the Wairarapa Times-Age and on radio drew a "fantastic" response and the club became a reality in late 1971.
Priest was the inaugural president of what is believed to be the first four-wheel-drive club in the country but stood down after one year because of work commitments and a pending promotional transfer to Huntly. Allan Rayner took over the presidency.
Priest said the main objective of the club was to promote four-wheel-drive events but they were also keen to involve families in the likes of day trips and picnics. He remembers a long weekend being spent at Waiouru after permission was received from the army to use their land.
The support from the then Wrightcars-Toyota dealership, of which the late Bert Wood was manager and Roger Southey sales manager, was a huge assist to the club in those early days and there was similar support from the late Frank Booth of Scott Motors, the Land Rover dealership.
Priest recalls early stalwarts of the club as being Ken Stratford, James (Butch) Martin, Vince Bicknell, Norm Bengston, Warren Forbes, Frank Gulliver, Tim Johnson, Allan Rayner, John Gedye, Peter Finlay and Graeme Wilton, some of whom have passed on.
Membership of the Wairarapa club grew rapidly and in May 1973 they hosted their first rally on a farm just south of Eketahuna. It received entries from all over New Zealand. Many of the competitors assembled in Masterton for a parade through Queen St. The rally was a huge success and the venue was used several times after that.
After his departure from Masterton, Priest lost touch with his mates at the club but admits to often wondering how they were going and whether the club was still in existence.
Then two or three years ago, he was staying at a hotel in Rotorua and bumped into Norm Bengston and his son Tony. A good chinwag over a beer and Priest learnt the Wairarapa club was still going strong and had a good membership base.
It was this chance meeting which prompted Priest to make contact with the club last year and, after hearing they had a healthy membership of over 60, he decided to present a trophy to mark the happy memories he had of his time with them. And who better to be the first recipient of it than club president Peter Pope, who has held the reins for the past six years?
Pope was rapt with his success and praised Priest for his foresight in starting a club, which now had a healthy membership and continued to strongly emphasise the importance of family involvement.