John’s digging deep for gold
John Northcott may be a man of few words, but he certainly lets his
13-tonne digger do the talking. Popping champagne bottles, pouring cups of tea and painting pictures with a brush are a few of the tricks to which the Taranaki man lends his excavator operating skills.
‘‘Yeah, yeah. . .yeah,’’ the
39-year-old said when asked whether it took a fair amount of dexterity and precision to pull off the stunts.
And with 21 years of operating experience under his belt and having previously won the Taranaki regional excavator competition, Northcott isn’t hesitating testing his skills on a national scale.
Over Friday and Saturday, he will take part in a heavy metal showdown at the Central Districts Field Days at Manfeild Park in Feilding.
There, he will be vying against 11 others for gold in the CCNZ CablePrice National Excavator Operator Competition where he will be expected to perform both entertaining and ‘‘real-world’’ tasks, which could be anything from slam dunking a basketball into a two-storey concrete pipe to lifting and relocating a manhole cover.
This year marks the 27th anniversary of the annual competition, organised by Civil Contractors New Zealand, to raise awareness of the skill involved in excavator operation and the careers available in civil construction.
Northcott, who works for Graham Harris Ltd, was not always going to be a digger operator.
‘‘I used to play around with them when I was younger,’’ he said, contemplating whether that was what sparked his career.
‘‘But I left school and started to become a butcher, then decided I didn’t want to work inside so came and did this.’’
In the past two decades, he has worked in London and taken on demolition jobs inside the Sydney Opera House, growing his wideranging skills.
And while Northcott enjoys the challenges digger operating can bring, he has never looked to match strength with other drivers.
‘‘My boss is the one who put me up to it,’’ he said of the impending competition.
‘‘I just got entered into it and turned up and had a go and yeah...’’
As for the performing in front of hundreds of onlookers, Northcott said he’s ‘‘a little bit’’ nervous.
‘‘But it is what it is.’’