Bastards I Have Met and Bloody Good Blokes, on the Road to Ruin.

Growing up as a member of the Irish Republican Diaspora, in the paradise known as Aotearoa New Zealand, I got to meet some ‘hard cases’, some absolute treasures and some absolute bastards.
Where to start? I suppose we can start with the bloody good blokes.
I launched my first business venture when I was 6.
One of dad’s mates was Red Rainey, a fiery Irishman with a name and demeanor, fit to start a revolution.
Red and his sons lived around the corner from us in Avondale, Tamaki Makaurau.
The Rainey’s were ‘Hard doers’ which they continued after work, when relaxing on Friday and Saturday nights. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, I’d run around the corner to Red’s home and ask him “Do you want some bread, milk and cigarettes Mr. Rainey?
Remember the days when 6-year-old kids could run around safely clutching money and buying cigarettes?
Red would rub his blood shot eyes, grunt in the affirmative, rifle around in his jacket or trousers and hand me a bunch of coins and some paper money and I’d saunter down to the shop for some ciggies and provisions!
My regular gig was to get fresh white bread, milk, and most importantly smokes. The fact that a six, seven, eight, nine-year-old could buy cigarettes with handfuls of money, didn’t create a blink in those days.
Normally I’d get 1 or 2 loaves and eat a portion of one on the road between the shop and Red’s home.
Red and the lads were always glad to see me, treated me well and probably made me the richest 6/7/8/9-year-old in the suburb, because Red normally said, “Keep the change”!
Another source of income at the time was fossicking around in the back of the couch at our place where coins often made their home after slipping from an inebriated Mick Mulrennan, Red’s and other guests’ pockets.
That was lucrative, until my brother Gabriel took some scissors to the back of the couch to liberate coins we couldn’t get with our normal technique.
Ma roasted him, lol.

Then the Bastard Cyril O’Donnell robbed my parents, his business partners, dad’s business specifically, by not paying the employees PAYE tax or company tax or creditors. Cyril was the quintessential bastard.
IRD officials approached dad on one of the civil engineering projects he was working on one day and said “Brendan, we have bad news for you. Your business partner Cyril O’Donnell has just robbed the IRD, your creditors and you and has disappeared.”
He’d emptied the company accounts, not paid P.A.Y.E. tax, nor some company debts, then disappeared whilst abandoning his own wife and family.
My parents lost their home in Avondale, and we ended up broke because Da’ was so freakn stubborn that he turned down the IRD’s offer of an uncontested bankruptcy, with no fault attributed to him. His creditors and the IRD told him he could keep on going and trade his way out of it, but the trauma was too much for him, he was a broken man.
Da dug himself and us deeper into the poverty hole and undertook to repay every cent, a catastrophic decision for the family, especially mum, but the measure of the man’s integrity.

Because Da was so stubborn, Ma had to juggle balancing a severely depleted budget and feeding her family of 8 children, a falling apart husband, and the move from home and business ownership into rental accommodation, she worked miracles, at great personal cost to herself, she held the family together.

During this time, our adopted “Uncle Roy” unbeknownst to me, was buying all of our birthday and Xmas presents to make life easier for Ma.
Roy taught me the “Gift of Giving”, one of the most important life lessons I have learned. Roy was a bloody good bastard.

Whilst literally ‘Drowning his sorrows’, Da found a job working on the 5km long Kaimai tunnel being drilled through the Kaimai ranges, we left the big city and our own home and moved to rented accommodation in Matamata, in the central Waikato. Because his drinking disgusted me, I didn’t start drinking alcohol until I was 27!

We moved on the weekend before Da started work at the tunnel. After his first day we grilled him about what the tunnel was like, he said it was raining continually inside the tunnel, there was a rain forest above and working conditions were hard, harsh and dangerous. The rock was surprisingly fractured, allowing water to enter the tunnel, a forewarning of what was to come!

The next day, I’m at my second day in a new school and a dude walked into the classroom and said: “Kevin, come with me please”. I was thinking HTF could I be in trouble already, then he broke the news. “The tunnel has caved in and 12 men are missing; your dad is one of them.”
The next few days were torture for our Ma, it was 24hrs before she found out she wasn’t a widow with 8 children! Da and his work mates were trapped on Da’s second day at work, imagine that, what a bastard!
I discussed many of these issues at our family Xmas party two years ago, have a laugh with us.

Above is a video featuring Gordon McLeay who was trapped with my Da: “dads kaimai tunnel video great escapes Gordon Mcleay (aka peanut)”


Da’s former colleagues at Gilberd Hadfield Piling company, when hearing of the cave in, raced from Auckland to dig the men out, the crane they used to drive a ‘pile’ into the tunnel apparently ripped down many power and telephone lines on the 100mile trip, the urgency of the men’s predicament required haste. Those ‘Bloody good blokes’ saved all of the survivors of the collapse.

In those days, decades before cell phones, on many street corners were the old ‘Pay-Phones’. People would put lots of coins into the machine, to ensure the call wasn’t interrupted and the phone refunded any excess or the full amount if no one answered the call.
My next business venture evolved with me stuffing the refund coin chute with toilet paper, this prevented the coins leaving the chute. I’d discretely stuff the chute on the way to school, empty the coins after school and pocketed the loot, rinse and repeat. I guess that made me a cheeky young bastard, you be the judge!

My next business model revolved around milking cows before and after school, hand rearing ducks and chickens, selling them to Da’s mates either ‘Dressed’, plucked and cleaned, ready to eat or ‘Undressed’, tied up in a sack, me culpa. I also hand reared ‘bobby calves’, sheep and pigs as a schoolboy, business was booming, mea culpa for the ensuing slaughters, I stopped eating meat in 1984.

Then the shooting began. When I was 14, I lobbied my parents, with the help of one of dads mates, to allow me to buy a motorbike and a 22-caliber rifle. Milking cows before and after school didn’t leave much room for error, that, combined with me riding a farm bike to round the cows up made it a moot point, apart from the illegality. Da’s mates were hunters who gave us free venison and pork, plus I did some rabbit and possum culling, so me having a rifle and a motorbike at age 14 wasn’t so unusual in those days. I went on to win shooting competitions at AMP shows and at the shooting range at ‘Boys town’, now known as Youth town.
I sold the corpses of the rabbits and possums to my college for biology lessons, yes, we did dissections at high school in the mid 1970’s.
I took the tails of the possums and rabbits into the Piako County Council offices which they exchanged for either two shotgun cartridges or six 22 caliber bullets per tail.
I was running this ‘enterprise’ when I was 14, being rewarded in ammunition and money from my school!
One day constable Webb, our local cop and a mate of dads, stopped me on my Kawasaki 100 and asked to see my driver’s license, I had just turned 15, I handed it to him, he said “Kev, this license is only two weeks old and I’ve been seeing you riding around for ages, sometimes with a rifle on a sling, explain that to me? I replied: “It must have been my brother”, he shook his head wryly and let me off, what a bloody good bloke, old school policing! As I mentioned in the family Xmas video above, he had kicked my ass once, he was very lenient with me after!

Dad had a mate named Jack Lindsay, he owned Balcarres thoroughbred horse stud, Da waxed lyrical about Jack and how honorable he was.
I knocked on his door and in some way, shape or form, introduced myself and said, “Give us a job please Mr. Lindsay”? He replied, “Sure thing, drop in at 8am on Saturday morning and I’ll find you some work ‘mucking out the stables.’ I asked, “What will you pay me”, he replied, “Not sure, I’ll decide after I see how hard you work”! Da had reiterated what a bloody good bloke Jack was so I took him at his word.
Late Saturday afternoon he dropped into the stable I was cleaning, with a couple of bottles of Fanta for us both, it dawned on me he must be super rich to have Fanta at his house, this was in 1974, a different world. He asked if I wanted to come back the next day and I said ‘sure thing’, money wasn’t discussed.
Both days I ate lunch with Jack and his two sons; I hadn’t dined in such luxury in my life before. At the magnificent dining table, in a palatial house, I was treated as an equal.
Late Sunday afternoon Jack arrived armed with another bottle of Fanta and passed me a piece of paper.
It read “Dear Principal, please allow Kevin to leave the school at lunch time to attend a scheduled meeting at my accountants practice in Matamata on Monday.”
Jack asked me if I wanted to continue working at the stud regularly and I replied cheekily: “I’ll decide after I see how much you pay me”! He smiled and replied “Fair enough.”
In 1974, the going rate for an adolescent laboring was .50cents/hr. I worked 9 hrs. each day, my back of the envelope calculation was I had earned about $9 in two days, I was unsure if the price of lunch was included or not.
The next day I attended my first ever meeting at an accountant’s office! My life had just changed.
I rang the little bell on the reception counter and a woman arrived, looked a little surprised at the scruffy kid in front of her and asked, “How can I help you sir”? I had never been called ‘Sir’ before, I felt ‘elevated’!
I introduced myself, explained my business relationship with Balcarres Stud and Mr. Lindsay and handed over the note from Jack.
The receptionist replied, “Take a seat please sir, we’ve been expecting you, I’ll prepare your receipt, how many hours did you work?” I replied 18 and took a comfy seat and pondered my new circumstances.
Moments later the accountant returned with a receipt book and a cheque book. He handed me the receipt book saying please sign at the bottom for your wages.
I looked at the receipt, and it read “18 hrs. @ $2/per hr. = $36!!!!! When I left school and began my electrical apprenticeship, I was earning $44/week, leaving school and starting full-time work, was effectively a pay cut for me!
Jack paid me four times what I was hoping for! I addressed the accountant and said “Are you sure that’s the right figure? It seems a little high”, he chuckled and replied: “Kev, it’s my job to get the numbers right, Jack said that’s what your worth”.
So began my high paid job shoveling horse shit and straw. What a ‘Bloody Good Bastard’ Jack was.
Months later I was driving the tractor towing harrows through the paddocks. I hit the wheel lock whilst doing a ninety-degree turn at speed, the diff locked, the tractor skidded into the drain and bent the struts of the front end loaded, I’d just totaled the old tractor.
I wandered back to the stables, crying in anticipation of expecting a ‘bollicking’ and the ‘sack’!
Roger, Jacks son, asked me what happened, I explained and he beamed “Don’t worry about it Kev, I’ve been telling the ‘old man’ we needed a new tractor for ages, good work”.
Jack didn’t mind; he was just glad that I wasn’t hurt.
Clearly Jack and Roger were ‘Bloody Good Blokes’.
A quarter of a century later I bumped into Roger in New Caledonia, we were both working as yacht delivery skippers. I wrote about meeting him again and going on to sail from Micronesia to Cairns with him, he was a bloody good sailor and crew mate. That aspect of this tale is embedded in my article titled: Shark Attack at Minerva Reef


When I had just turned 16, I was called into the Matamata college Principal’s office and was asked “Why do you bother coming to school”, clearly, he was a bastard, lol.
I replied, “I’m biding my time until I start my electrical apprenticeship next year”!
He burst a blood vessel and shouted: “Not anymore you’re not”.
I wasn’t expelled as such but was asked to leave, I jumped at the opportunity.

Back to Auckland, Tamaki Makaurau I moved and not long after found myself living in an ‘A frame hut’ at Moller’s Barn in the foothills of the Waitakere ranges, the hut had been built by Barry Crump.
Barry was another mate of Bill Moller’s, Barry was the quintessential Kiwi country bloke, he wrote a book titled: Bastards I Have Met!
“Bastards, as Barry Crump discovered one afternoon in the Timberlands Hotel, outnumbered heroes by something like 15,000 to one – an intriguing fact that had never been adequately documented before. Crump being Crump he immediately set out to remedy the matter, and the result was “Bastards I Have Met”, an ABC of Bastardry which when published in 1971 took the country by storm.”
“Now due to popular demand Crump’s original twenty-six prize bastards are presented for public enjoyment once again, together with another eight unlikely bastards he met while working down on the Coast a few years back. A whole new generation will enjoy this fresh collection of Crump tales, which are as hilarious as they are perceptive of the many quirks and oddities in the Kiwi character.” Bastards I Have Met by Barry Crump
Barry wasn’t immune to being a bastard, he was violent, sometimes to his partners, one time he was locked out of his house by one of his five long-suffering wives’ and took a chainsaw to the front door and chain sawed his way in!
He could be a stupid bastard sometimes.
When he died, I rang Bill and asked him if he wanted a ride to the funeral and Bill replied: “No thanks, I’m not going, I never liked the bastard.”

Barry accidentally blew up the long-drop toilet at the barn once; there was shit everywhere! The poor bastard had his ass and whatever else singed.
Below is a photo of the men being rescued, Da’s the dude with the huge smile in the center of the photo.

Barry became something of a celebrity bastard and a national icon!

Barry wrote another book titled: A Good Keen Man. The following embedded audio book is worth a listen. “A Good Keen Man”.
Below is a pretty critical analysis of the funny ‘bastard’ and it’s a fascinating listen, his misogyny gets mentioned.
Colin Hogg on A Good Keen Man – Barry Crump

Much of his ‘fame’ came from him promoting ‘off roading’ for Toyota.

Taika Waititi on Barry Crump – Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

Barry Crump Death Announcement.

I’ll sign off with the “Good Bastard” George Carlin.

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About Kevin Hester

I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.