From lighthouse keeper to search and rescue

At nearly 93, Neil Shepherd still has a paintbrush in his hand, painting delicate pictures from a life that’s been full to the brim, from a lighthouse keeper on Stephens Island to training camps on the Antarctica and creating the police search and rescue training.

The Arvida Oakwood’s resident is a bit peeved lately because his son has “stolen my toys” – his kayak and electric bike - but with the good intentions of keeping him safe.

The fact he has only just stopped using those toys tells a lot about how he lived his life. A very long time ago, he was an airframe fitter in the air force where he met his wife, Maggie, but was keen on the idea of being a lighthouse keeper. It led to a stint at Cape Brett in the Bay of Islands and then Stephens Island near D’Urville Island.

It’s a steep-sided, rocky island frequently lashed by ferocious winds and a haven for tuatara and “wide awake” birds – known as the dove petrel or fairy prion.

“You would hear this cacophony of noise which sounded like ‘wide awake’ and get faster and faster. Then the tuataras underneath the house would decide to have a fight,” he recalls.

“An old, aged tuatara would have a head as big as your fist and if they clamped on to your hand, you had to put a screwdriver into their jaws to get your hand out. They were all over the place; it was marvellous. They would lay their eggs in our garden and their eggs would hatch, so you had all these tuatara among the potatoes!”

They were one of three households on the island who had to be reasonably self-sufficient as the weather could delay supplies by weeks. It meant milking a cow, making their own butter and bread and growing as much as they could.

He went on to be head ranger for the Abel Tasman National Park, living at Tōtaranui, before heading south to be a ranger in the southern section of Fiordland. But he had come from a military background where it was easier to get things done, so turned to a completely new career with the police where he spent the next 19 years.

He took on the youth aid role after a few years. At the time, there was no official search and rescue teams in New Zealand and tramping clubs were usually called upon to search mountainous country.

“I got together some of the blokes interested in tramping and clambering around the hills and got the okay to spend Wednesday afternoon doing search and rescue training. It got me out of having to do sport on a Wednesday afternoon!”

The advent of police search and rescue teams added transport and radios to searches, along with groups trained for the job, which was more often than not, retrieving bodies.

One of his jobs followed the crash of a Bristol freighter that had taken off from Woodbourne near Blenheim. Unknown to him, Maggie was supposed to be on the plane, but at the last minute was replaced by an officer.

Another time, a man fell off a bluff on Tākaka Hill and during the rescue, Neil fell off a bank into the water in freezing conditions.

“We eventually got him to the helicopter and my wet Swanndri jacket was frozen on me. We managed to get a fire going and the canopy cleared to fly him out, but that same trip the helicopter nearly crashed. I was in the helicopter at the time and we thought a torch below was signalling us to the clearing, but it was a torch in a gully flickering.”

Ask Neil how many search and rescue operations he worked on over the years and he says he “couldn’t hazard a guess.”

His adventures took him to Antarctica, which he says was unheard of at the time for anyone not involved in research.

While those adventures may be behind him, his painting continues and one of his favourites is the cheeky tomtit, pecking at a lace on his boot when he was with a police group on the St James Walkway.