Quarrying & Mining Magazine
ObituaryQ&M

Farewell to an industry friend

I never met our longest contributor to this magazine in person. He passed away not long after making one of his numerous, short phone calls to me. By Alan Titchall.

“Hello, Alan. Peter Owens here. I have a great story for you. I will send it in tomorrow. Goodbye.”

His modulated voice always had a beautiful, old-school NZ enunciation. On a few occasions, we had a heart-to-heart chat between two mature Kiwis old enough to lament ‘New Zealand’ morphing like a besotted teenager into ‘Aotearoa’ with its overshared, New Age prattle while core services and standards go irretrievably backwards.

 Peter was not a great fan of the fatuous antics of extraction protestors, but passionate about profiling the veterans of the ‘South’ and their contributing gold mining zeal. He was a long-term and steadfast member of the National Party, becoming involved in local politics through Federated Farmers, and writing speeches for his friend Ian Robertson (a Federated Farmers’ leader and fighter of rural interests) among others. 

Whether his ‘great stories’ arrived or not, I learnt as an editor not to worry about it. He was getting old, with the usual associated health problems. And his material always needed a lot of editing. However, that was okay, as there were always good ideas and themes to be found. His last story, ‘Ongoing Lessons from Pike River’, was published in the June-July issue of Q&M (p18) and was based on advice to directors from Nick Davidson KC, who passed away in March and was the lead counsel for the Pike River families at the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

Peter’s youngest son, Weston, shared the sad news of his father’s passing with me. Peter was 85, so it was not an unexpected event, but I was grateful at the time to be in my office alone. 

“Peter Owens knew words,” says Weston.

“Storytelling was in his blood; he knew the power of words to entertain, persuade and build bridges. In his journalism, he believed in rigorous journalistic standards. In life, he was a master craftsman of just-so yarns where fact would sit with fiction; impossible to tell each from the other. The moment of sharing a story mattered above all else.

“Parts of a previous story would reappear embedded within another story, quotes would be heard coming from the mouth of a different person. I’m sure that happened in Queenstown, not Tapanui . . . didn’t Sir Keith Holyoake say that nugget of wisdom? Or was it Ian Robertson?

“Even now, for me, they’re all mixed together, making them difficult to pin down and recall. But that was hardly the point, because it was the telling that mattered. A craftsman was at work. Once you were in, you were immersed together in the moment and enjoying it.”

Peter was born in 1940 to a working-class Catholic family in the suburb of Sydenham, Christchurch, says Weston. His mother Patricia was a homemaker and his father, Joseph, a baker, who ran his own business, Delicious Cakes. 

At high school (St Bede’s College), Peter excelled at English and History, was a prefect and captain of the 1st 11 cricket team. He went on to study law at the University of Canterbury, graduating in 1965. He met his future wife Margaret when she was working as a clerk in the law firm of Dale and Oldham. They were married in 1966 and moved to Whanganui, where his three children, Tim, Penny and Weston, were born. His career as a barrister in Marton in the early 1970s took a different direction when, in 1976, the Owens moved to Gore for Peter to start teaching at St Peter’s College. In 1980, Peter and Margaret moved out to Pukerau, achieving a long-held dream of rural living. They renovated the old Presbyterian Manse, while Peter (still teaching) became an enthusiastic member of the Eastern Southland Hunt, an author, a showjumping judge, and a commentator for horse events. 

Peter left teaching in the early 1990s to pursue a freelance career as an independent rural affairs correspondent, writing numerous articles on diverse subjects, including aviation, gold mining, tourism, and truffle farming.

In later years, both Margaret and Peter began to experience periods of ill-health and took the big step to leave their beloved Pukerau home and move into Gore to be closer to healthcare.

Margaret passed away two years ago, and Peter missed her terribly, says Weston. 

“On his own, he was in daily telephone contact with family and a number of old friends and continued to write and be published. He remained at home until the end.”

Yes, I will miss those calls.   

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