Rotorua local Bill Groves reflects on WWII, watchmaking and turning 100. Photo / Annabel Reid
Time has been influential for Rotorua local Bill Groves since 1926.
For nearly 80 years, the former watchmaker helped keep other people on schedule, repairing watches and clocks until three years ago. His work ranged from delicate wristwatches to larger public timepieces like the Rotorua i-Site clock.
He was a professional timekeeper when New Zealand running great Sir Peter Snell broke the four-minute mile world record in 1962.
Groves also served during World War II.
He valued spending time with his family, caring for his late wife, Sylvia, and moving to Rotorua to be closer to his daughters, Barbara and Judie, and grandchildren.
He held passenger tickets for Air New Zealand Flight 901, the Antarctica sightseeing flight which crashed into Mt Erebus, narrowly escaping a tragedy that would have cut his time short.
Now set to clock a century on February 7, Groves found himself asking: “How the hell did I have enough time to do what I’ve done?”
Groves comes from a long-lived family, crediting “good genes” as one of the secrets to his longevity.
One of five siblings, his older sister lived to nearly 103, while his three brothers all reached their 90s. Their father lived to 95.
“Hard work” was another secret.
The biggest difference among generations was “young people[’s]” unwillingness to fix things.
Groves found it frustrating that items were often thrown away and replaced, rather than repaired.
When he was growing up, you ”made do" if something broke.
Raised in Whanganui, Groves went to Gonville School. With no family “motor car”, his father ferried the children two at a time on his bicycle.
Groves moved briefly to Whangārei to live with his aunt and uncle on a 40ha (100-acre) farm.
A kerosene lamp lit the kitchen, candles were used in the bedrooms, cooking was done on a wood-burning range and bath water was heated in a copper boiler pot – there was no electricity.
Rainwater was collected in a tank on the back veranda, the toilet was a long drop in the garden, and the telephone was a shared “party line” used by 12 households, “heard by each”.
Returning home, Groves attended Whanganui Intermediate School before attending Wanganui Technical College, where he took an engineering course.
While at the college, World War II broke out in September 1939.
At 14, Groves left school and began an apprenticeship as a wood turner at Beadle and Barron, the long-standing Whanganui business later known as Beadles Panel Products, which closed in 2024.
By 17, Groves joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
With the war intensifying in 1943, Groves trained as an instrument repairer – now known as a technician – and was responsible for maintaining the dials and controls inside aircraft.
In September 1943, Groves was sent overseas. He was “fitted out for the tropics” in Auckland and waited at the Hobsonville airbase for a Hudson bomber aircraft.
Bad weather delayed their departure for two weeks, during which they completed a commando course at Swanson. One exercise involved entering a hut wearing a gas mask, then removing it as the space filled with gas.
“We had to see how long we could stay there.”
They eventually made it to Torokina in eastern Papua New Guinea, where Groves was based in a four-man tent in the jungle.
The Corsair aircraft were the first planes Groves worked on.
He learned to drive. His “biggest worry” was not hearing guards when told to stop, as they would “shoot without warning”, he said.
Groves got a brand-new Jeep, but deliberately “hammered lots of dents” into it so it wouldn’t stand out.
His 12 months in the Pacific ended just as the Soviet Union declared war on Japan between the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, which soon brought World War II to an end.
He decided to do an apprenticeship as a watchmaker. He built a reputation in the trade, eventually running his own workshop and training apprentices.
Groves spent time hunting and gold prospecting with friends, once bringing along a gold-plated item from work and pretending he had found a nugget. One friend was so convinced he’d found real gold that he refused to go home.
He and Sylvia spent years exploring the country by caravan, including one South Island trip covering about 10,000km.
Groves retired from watchmaking when the couple moved to Auckland’s Red Beach in 1988. He continued repairs from home, working on many antique clocks owned by Whangaparāoa locals.
In 2004, the couple bought their Rotorua property, where Groves has lived ever since, keeping “busy” with projects around the house, volunteering at the aviation museum and fixing watches and clocks.
Groves has remained active and independent, renewing his driver’s licence this month.
His daughter, Judie Lewis, credited her father for why she rarely had to ask for help “to fix or sort something at home”.
“When I say to my son about the hours he works, he’ll look at me with that funny look and say, ‘I got it from you, Mum – and you got it from Pop.’
“Good, hard-working genes.”
Annabel Reid is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke’s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.