Community Contributed

Brian McAllister 1933 -

Kete Horowhenua2020-03-23T16:47:19+00:00
Interviewed by Jason Juno of 4MC Horowhenua College.

Brian was born at Blenheim on September 15 1933 to Keith McAllister (born 1905) and Doris McAllister (born 1908). Keith was a truck driver, while Doris was a youth hostel worker.

During the depression the McAllister family moved to Petone, Lower Hutt. Five years later they moved to Palmerston North where the young Brian went to Russell Street school. School was the one thing Brian did not enjoy and he would try to hide on the way there.

After a while he and his family moved to Foxton. From 1940 he attended Foxton Primary.

It was at this time he first started hunting. He would hunt for rabbits which were a pest around Foxton. At this time he also joined scouts and held a paper run.

He attended Foxton District High School for his secondary education.

When Brian was sixteen, his father came home one day and asked if he would be interested in becoming a printer. Brian, who had thought he would never leave school, was soon employed working for the Foxton Herald.

In the early fifties he joined the Deerstalkers (now the Horowhenua Hunting Club) and also became involved with Search and Rescue. He recalls his first rescue which was in the Mangahau River in the Tararua ranges. They used old Army radios and carrier pigeons. Not quite like the gear they would use today! It all worked well as long as everyone remembered the basics.

In 1957 his father died and Brian moved to Morrinsville in the Waikato. Before leaving Foxton he met and later married his wife Marion, who joined him in Morrinsville, where he worked for the Morrinsville Star.

In 1960 Brian and Marion moved to Levin where he joined the police force and continued with the force for twenty-three years. He has continued his hunting throughout and plans to keep hunting for a long time yet. Following a recent trip from Mangahau to Otaki, he was impressed and encouraged by the regeneration of the lower growth.

Brian’s many years of tripping around in the bush have exposed him to a wide variety of experiences. He remembers that you had to use a knotted rope to get around the Tararua peaks. In the early days some of his most scary experiences came with trying to walk along the tops and around bluffs.

He has won many trophies for hunting and remembers every one. He only wished he had had a camera for when he first started hunting.