Risk and reward in his blood
Graham MacDonald, who has died aged 83, knew both success and failure in a life that was at times a little too adventurous for comfort.
And while his successes placed him among the leaders of Hamilton’s business elite, his bankruptcy was to test his survival skills in unexpected ways.
A motor mechanic by trade, and a deer hunter by inclination, Graham was to find both skills necessary as he pulled his family out of the financial mess that followed the collapse of his companies.
But if there was one physical object that provided the thread to the story of his life, it would have to be the motor car.
Malcolm MacDonald started M S MacDonald Motor Engineering in Bryce St in 1937 – the year his son Graham was born.
Graham was always at the garage and drove from the age of seven. It was a common occurrence for him to arrive at Hamilton Boys’ High in a car while his teachers would be chuffing along on pushbikes.
And, as his mother Jean disliked driving, the young Graham, perched on a cushion so he could see over the dashboard, used to chauffeur her to Paeroa and once, memorably, in the days before the Harbour Bridge, to Whanga¯ rei.
Of course, there was no question of a driver’s licence, he once told interviewer Liz Lightfoot.
‘‘There was no buggering round with me. I used to sit on a cushion so I could see. It seems as though I’m boasting but I’m not; this was my life.’’
Growing up, Graham’s preferred reading was car service manuals and, as soon as he could, he left school to work for his father. Newly qualified as a mechanic, Graham showed himself to be ahead of his time, persuading his dad to buy one of New Zealand’s first dynamometers, a specialist instrument used in tuning cars.
Car enthusiasts would drive up from the South Island to have Graham tune their vehicles, and he developed a national reputation. It was Graham, or Mac as his customers knew him, who tuned pioneering motor racing driver Len Gilberts’ Maserati 250F.
Fellow mechanic Ian Berbera noted in Graham’s family history that Graham was probably one of the cleverest mechanics in New Zealand.
‘‘We would get cars coming to us for race meetings from all round the countryside. The six-hour car racers would come up and people doing all sorts of track racing. We’d always have cars coming in and Graham would do the whole lot.’’
Needless to say, Graham started saving for a race car but, when he asked Malcolm, his father threw down a challenge, offering him instead the opportunity to buy into the business.
It was not all work, however. A highlight of Graham’s life before marriage was deerstalking. He would load up the Fargo truck and drive his mates to National Park. He was a good shot and the happy hunters used to call into the Chateau Tongariro kitchen and give the chef a haunch or three of venison.
Graham also liked going to the pictures, which is just as well, because that is how he met Lyn on a blind date when she was 16 and working in the tax office in Knox St. They went to the Civic Theatre, in Victoria St South, next to the Municipal Baths.
‘‘I remember a young man in a gabardine raincoat who looked just like James Dean,’’ Lyn recalled. Lyn’s father Harold liked Graham, so he was allowed to take her out. They married when Lyn was 19.
Graham continued the business after Malcolm’s death and was offered his first big business break – a Skoda dealership.
Graham recalls that everyone in the car trade laughed. ‘‘They all thought it was a ‘how’s-your-father’ bloody car’’, as Graham put it. But, a shrewd businessman, he went ahead anyway.
He made a success of it and in 1974 was offered the Mazda franchise. He was the first Audi dealer in Hamilton and bought the Subaru franchise.
As well, Graham, along with a couple of business partners, set up the Coronet Property Group, which invested in property, for which he had to borrow money. The consortium built office blocks, owned deer farms and orchards, and floated a public company. On the advice of consultants, Graham bought a huge computer in the days when computers were very new.
Lyn said: ‘‘They built an absolute empire and the empire unfortunately came tumbling down.’’
Graham realised things were not going well and put in place a plan for a buyout but, after his two partners were killed in an air crash, he found himself holding the debt.
Lyn and Graham were tramping the Milford Track when told they were bankrupt.
Graham had little option but to start again from the bottom and went to work as a salesman in a friend’s Frankton car yard, opening the doors, sweeping up, washing vehicles, and getting by on a commission-only agreement.
It was not much, but it led to a contract to manage a struggling tyre company. Graham did that for two or three years, turned it around, but left when it was sold.
Then, in the early 90s, Graham’s skill set – a mechanic who could not only talk, but shoot, straight, came into play.
A family friend, David Morris, had a contract to supply food to the UN Peacekeeping Force in Somalia on Operation Restore Hope.
Graham always wanted an adventure and he spent 20 extraordinary months in Mogadishu where he combined his love of vehicles and guns. He spent his time servicing trucks, armoured vehicles, fire engines, and tractors, as well as transporting people around and delivering food.
It was, said Graham laconically, ‘‘a bit hairy’’ and staff had to be careful.
‘‘A lot of people get very jittery when there’s another guy with a rifle cocked and looking at you.’’
There were, Graham said, close shaves, and he was ambushed several times. ‘‘It was quite exciting actually. I know that sounds silly, but it was exciting because you didn’t know when someone would take a shot at you.’’
As things turned out, Graham was shot while loading up a truck – the bullet passed clean through his arm. ‘‘I didn’t tell the family about it.’’
With three bouts of malaria under the belt, Graham returned to Hamilton to start again. He bought a car yard in Frankton, but fate wasn’t finished with him yet. One day in 1997, he had a sausage roll for morning tea at the workshop. It didn’t sit well, so he went home.
It was pancreatitis, he ended up on life support in a coma in Waikato Hospital, but recovered.
When he left his last job at Garry Keith Motors, his colleagues presented him with a custom-built toy Land Rover with his jack russell Toby sitting in it.
Graham spent four years at Tamahere Eventide Home, where he was known to go missing, only to be found in the car park noting down the regos of the cars. About 200 packed the home’s chapel for his farewell, and he was piped out held shoulder-high – a mark of respect rarely seen.
Graham was known for his great sense of humour. With the hand life dealt him, many would say there were times he needed it.
Graham was the husband for 59 years of Lynette Jean (nee Dalbeth), father of Juliet and Kathryn, and grandfather to Conor, Abby, Hunter, and Dylan.
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‘‘A lot of people get very jittery when there’s another guy with a rifle cocked and looking at you.’’