A man who made his mark on Southland
He has gone now, his passing mourned, his life celebrated. But city accountant Cliff Broad has left a host of memories and tangible gifts - from his autobiography, Chronicle of a Fortunate Southlander, truly a whale of a tale, to his Tail of a Whale, the striking sculpture highlighting Invercargill’s reinvigorated south City.
Chronicle of a Fortunate Southlander with Broad’s sense of gratitude permeating his thoughts on home and hearth and hills ought to be required reading for us all and for those not yet here who will learn a century of business history and see what can be done, what works and what not, where not, see the enormous exciting potential of the south.
For Broad was nothing if not daring and through prodigious energy and imagination changed the face of Southland, shared his gifts and good fortune, carved a path for sightseeing gondolaso reach the Skyline atop a Queenstown hill, saw Southland Frozen Meat become the Alliance Ltd, warmed up America with wool-lined lambskin coats, made round the back of the Southland Daily News. Where? We are talking the past here, reading Broad’s 87 years in the south of New Zealand, seeing through his words a small 1920s town evolving, as it still is.
He had a marvellous gift for business, mentoring many along the way.
The quiet methodical accountant was there - biking home for lunch through Queens Park, unless it was a Rotary day, valuing home cooking and baking, his womenfolk in skirts rather than trousers, tramping huts rather than flash hotels, breaking all-day meetings with an hour-long walk in fresh air.
A founding member of the Southland tramping club he knew every nook and cranny, highway and byway in the south and made sure his family did too, sharing with them his love of nature, the freedom of the outdoors.
Leaving school, Southland Boys’ High School, at the end of the war years he found figures his forte and Broad joined school mate Christie in Broad Christie, an accounting partnership which went through many name changes, mergers and marriages to be just recognisable today as McCulloch Partners.
Broad made friends, kept them too, many from school days.
Lifelong mate Ian Capitaneas, from Boys’ High years, said, a bit sadly, such friendships were encapsulated in the Ten Green Bottles song; ‘‘ and now there are just three green bottles left hanging on the wall.’’
Broad had asked that his farewell not be gloomy but rather a celebration of the life he had loved, lived fully and joyfully and left with no regrets, a journey spent in great company with adventures shared, a journey now at its end.
Through the years he had given time to local bodies, chairing Environment South, to the stock exchange, to playing hockey, to taking each of his three children in turn on a world trip, to imbuing them with the importance of planning and preparation.
Daughter Alison, said her dad was a great man for that, for being prepared.
‘‘He would always set out with a day pack holding a thermos and a good piece of fruit cake to enjoy at the top of the climb.
‘‘As he got a bit older he enjoyed that sit even more so donated several seats to be placed just where he would naturally stop.
‘‘And of course as often as not by the time he got there so had others. But he was pleased to see the seats were in the right place so that others valued them too.’’
His wife, Jocelyn passed away in Queenstown where they had moved in retirement with their younger daughter Sarah.
Between a formal farewell in Invercargill and a friends and family get together at Skyline the following afternoon, Broad was laid quietly to rest by his beloved Jocelyn in the Queenstown cemetery.
His only son Lindsay and wife Janice farm at Waimahaka where Broad planted some of the hundreds of trees he has growing around the south.
He is survived by them, by daughters Alison and Sarah, granddaughters Kristie and Natalie, great grandsons Mannix and Baxter - all in the south - and surviving sisters too, Judy Peters, in Invercargill, and Jill Beadle, Queenstown - descendants in the remarkable Broad family which first built homes in Russell St, where Alison now lives, in the 1880s and have been in and around there ever since.