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Indelible

1963 … a time when boys were boys and their parents were unafraid of that fact. Our Thames Valley community was quite unique in that we had an American exchange secondary school teacher. John E Glass. ‘Mr’ Glass during school, ‘John’ to a select group of teenage boys who enjoyed outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing, exploring and featuring in the local newspaper on many Mondays for their weekend activities – all encouraged and lead by John E Glass. 

Some of these adventures were admirable; others were considered reckless and even gained the attention of the police. Many Monday mornings found ‘Mr’ Glass in the headmaster’s office being sternly admonished for setting a bad example to impressionable young men. An example was the time ‘John’ and his boys decided to clear the local golf course of opossums. 

Before he became a school teacher, John E Glass had been a US Marine. He may have been skinny and with half of his right thigh missing as a result of an incident with ‘gooks’ in Vietnam, but he was unafraid of anything and proficient at almost everything young men admire – especially if it involved weapons and physical challenge. 

The opossum eradication project was planned for Saturday night and a friendly farmer’s light Bedford truck was borrowed for the exercise. It carried John and 4 gun totting teenagers on the back. Although it was a year before I could qualify for a licence, I drove. The golf course was opossum paradise. Their red eyes gleamed from every tree. The hunting team tied themselves to the stock crate on the truck deck with hay bailing twine. When an opossum realises that it has no long term future in a solitary tree it will scamper down and run to another. This was ‘real’ hunting - shooting moving targets at 40km/h while dodging trees, roughs and bunkers. 

The night was proceeding nicely until I miscalculated the width of a sand-trap and we became stuck. Fortunately we were able to break into the green-keepers shed and borrow his tractor. Unfortunately the light of Sunday morning revealed that we had trashed the golf course. The police had little difficulty in tracking down the guilty party and ‘Mr’ Glass spent more time with the principal being advised that our community may be better off without his influence and activities. Most of our evenings and weekends during the next month were spent learning the art of ‘green keeping’ at the golf course. Society was much more tolerant in those days. 

On one long weekend ‘John’ decided to introduce his adventure group to the pleasures of Skin Diving. The place chosen for our underwater assault was Mayor Island in the Bay of Plenty. (Now known as Tuhua) The island enjoyed a huge reputation for abundant fish in clear water. It was once internationally renowned for its big game fishing and during our visit in 1993 the waters teamed with fish of every size and colour. Our equipment was simple – mask, fins, snorkel … and a homemade ‘Hawaiian Sling’. This was a broom handle with a length of sharpened and barbed steel rod fitted in the end. A looped ‘yard’ of surgical rubber fitted at the other end of the handle. When the rubber band was stretched up the handle it provided a powerful propellant for the spear. Anything within 4 meters was in big trouble and the 5 gallon petrol drum used for practice in John’s back yard soon looked like a giant colander. During the journey to Tauranga John’s car must have looked quite formidable with these weapons strapped to the roofrack. 

Our mentor had many abilities but detailed logistics and organisation was not among them. There had been no consideration of accommodation in Tauranga on the Friday night prior to catching the very early fishing boat to Mayor Island. While standing under the awning of the pie cart eating our dinner and looking out into the rain, we realised that the option of sleeping in the park was not very attractive. While we were discussing alternatives with the pie cart proprietor, the local policeman arrived for his evening meal. We had always been instructed by our parents to ask policemen if we lost our way or had any problems – so sought his advice on accommodation. Having no funds did reduce the options but with resourceful thinking the policemen suggested we use the unoccupied cells at the police station just up the hill in Monmouth Street. It had the added advantages being on a slope that would enable Johns old Humber with a flat battery to bump start and of being close to the wharf for our dawn departure. 

I have since slept in a couple of other police cells. The Tauranga station was unquestionably the most hospitable and without the stress of later experiences. We laid our sleeping bags on the thin wooden beds and discussed among ourselves the crimes we could have committed to achieve the same accommodation. Most of us fantasized about a crime that would have left us more financially well off. John advised that robbing banks was not as smart as nicking the things that we would have bought with our illegal gains. His plan was much more efficient and the policeman agreed that they took a very dim view of bank robbers nationally but didn’t have the resources to track stolen goods that left their community. Both our adults proved to be teachers. We had access to unlimited cups of tea and could listen to the radio – it was excellent. 

The journey to and from Mayor Island was on the fishing boat that catered for people who wanted a day out fishing. It took about 4 hours to cover the 25 miles from the Strand Wharf to Half Moon Bay. It didn’t take John long to take over the boat. A study of the US Marine Corps curriculum in our school library had revealed that they work ‘with’ the US Naval Forces but did not ever mention they actually commanded marine vessels. Indeed, John had already proved to us that he was not worthy of commanding the large tractor inner tubes that we used for navigating the Karangahake George. Undaunted, John soon convinced the skipper that as a ‘US Marine’ and a science teacher he was the ideal person to tune up the skippers nautical skills. The voyage to Mayor may have been the quickest but it wasn’t the most economical as evidenced by the plume of black smoke exiting the exhaust as a result of full throttle. Nor was it the most comfortable given John used the ‘straight line’ navigation principal rather than the softer arc angled to the waves. When he elected to take a ‘shortcut’ into half moon bay the skipper did manage to wrestle back the helm which almost certainly did avoid our first shipwreck experience. 

The 4 divers were discharged onto the sandy beach and the boat left to give the paying customers a days fishing. The skipper promised to return for us on Sunday evening. With hindsight this was surprising. John and his 3 diving novices found the caretaker of the Fishing Lodge and convinced him that we were worthy of his patronage. Our fast talking leader promised we would be forever in his debt if we used one of the nearby cabins free of charge for our night’s accommodation. Having secured a dry place to sleep and thrown our backpacks on the bunks we gathered some driftwood for the fireplace sure in the knowledge that it would be the ideal place to cook the cream of our catch. The caretaker advised the best place to dive and we scurried over the narrow ridge to Omapu (Western Bay). 

Mayor Island is a beautiful place. The island is subtropical, covered in native forest with dense Pohutukawa trees around the coast and outcrops of black glossy obsidian which was once quarried by local Iwi. At the time of our visit the birds were almost tame and their calls where a cacophony of constant sound. We quickly slipped into the water and were instantly transfixed by the astonishing sights of thousands of fish darting around rocks and ‘corals’ that supported brown, red, green and black seaweeds or kelp. Starfish, Kina, Crayfish and many shellfish lay all around. It was a completely new world of quiet ‘whooshing’ and ‘clinking’ sounds full of things that we did not recognize but, even as teenage boys were awed by. Until this time our experience of fish was the trout, whitebait and eels caught in our local rivers supplemented by the pictures found in our school library books. It seemed that every species of fish in the world must be right here at Omapu and for a while we were overcome with fascination. 

However, the fascination did not last long. We were hunters. The fish hovered just out of arms length … but well within the range of our spears. While it wasn’t as easy it we first thought we did manage to spear significant varieties of quite large fish. We each towed a small car inner tube that supported a sack into which we put our catch. When I felt a slight tug on the line attached to my waste I didn’t give it much thought. When the second ‘tug’ became a jerking ‘yank’ I looked back to see a shark attempting to steal my fish. The story I told around the campfire that night to explain the loss of my spear and tube was due to the fact that I immediately attacked the ‘huge’ shark with my spear and almost had it to my advantage but it just escaped to warn its mates we were in the vicinity. The truth was: I dropped my spear, slashed the rope with knife and swam backwards up onto the rocky shoreline at a speed that would likely have won an Olympic gold medal.  

Mr Glass was an excellent science teacher. As ‘John’ he was the most exciting person in my teenage life and has left an indelible impression that shaped my attitude to life. He will never be forgotten. Our journey to beautiful Mayor Island was also one of life’s ineradicable experiences. For me, it is a sacred place.