As told by his grand-daughter Linda
 
My Grandfather was a motor mechanic as well as a NZBC “stringer” camera-man for donkeys years. 
 
He was a camera buff/film projectionist and owned a TV camera (He never had the money to purchase one  -  It had been dropped out of a helicopter and miraculously the lens didn’t break so he bought it for a few pounds and rebuilt it ). Stringer cameramen were in small towns and used to rush out and cover stories that cropped up - sometimes a reporter would be flown in as well. He always had to send in footage of New Year celebrations in Napier and my father’s fingers appeared on TV once pointing to bullet holes. 
 
My Grandmother was the homemaker par excellence and once to her complete mortification, she was out of town and a “big Name” reporter was flown in for a story. Grandpa picked him up and took him home for morning tea before they set out to cover the story - in spite of three sorts of biscuits in the tins, and an entire cake,  the big name reporter was offered buttered weetbix with vegemite by my grandfather. And he apparently he ate it ! 
 
There is an archives film festival of his film collection called “Under The Macrocapas”  We don’t know where the film came from, he used to store old nitrate film in tins under the macrocapa hedge well away from the house. It was really early silent European stuff that was restored in Belgium  - including individually hand coloured film, coloured frame by frame. And the only known film footage of the pink and white terraces geyser - taken before the volcanic eruption destroyed the lot. My family lived in Wellington and we used to get the job of driving the film cans to the Archive - He would only give them one at a time. 
 
 
 
 

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