Contractor’s mechanical passions
Wanaka contractor
WHETHER driving a bulldozer or a V12 Packard, Wanaka earthmoving contractor Robert Duncan was always in tune with machinery.
His company, Maungatua Contracting, has done much of the heavy lifting during the development of the Upper Clutha since the 1980s.
Robert and his company were responsible for upgrading and maintaining the Treble Cone Ski Area road and for developing much of State Highway 8 over the Lindis
Pass, as well as forming many subdivisions in Wanaka.
Robert died of cancer in Dunedin Hospital on September 18, aged 66.
He was born in Mosgiel on July 25, 1954, the son of Noeline Duncan and the late Murray Duncan, who lived on the Maungatuas and operated a gravel crushing and earthmoving business.
He attended Outram and Allanton Primary Schools and The Taieri High School.
After leaving school, he worked for his father but also studied parttime at Otago
Polytechnic for his New Zealand certificate in civil engineering.
In the early 1970s, Ken Harliwich, of Harliwich Contracting, was constructing the Treble Cone road. Completing the tricky stretch past the big rock bluff required drilling expertise, and that led to Murray Duncan being called in to help.
Robert was the drilling operator and that was when, in 1975, Robert met his future wife, Lynette Harliwich.
They were married in 1981 at Roxburgh.
Robert spent four years, from 1978 to 1982, turning a long section of the Lindis Pass road from a rough gravel track into a sealed highway — with Lynette as ‘‘stopgo girl’’.
In 1982, the company won a New Zealand Contractors Federation Award for its
Lindis Pass reconstruction. During that project, Murray stepped back from the business and Robert joined forces with his twin brothers Colin and
Les.
Because the company was involved in work all over Otago, Robert and Lynette spent two and ahalf years living in a caravan, shifting from job to job.
That changed when the couple’s twins, Blair and Kane arrived, and the family settled in Alexandra.
But much of the work was in the Upper Clutha and after about three years, in 1986, the Duncans moved to Wanaka.
The population then was about 1000, and much of the development was on lowerlying ‘‘boggy’’ land which Robert became skilled at draining.
The company survived the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crash when many other contracting businesses went under.
Lynette puts that down to careful management and ensuring the company did not engage in unrealistic discounting.
In 1988, Robert carried on with the company on his own and his two brothers returned to the Taieri. Robert believed having eight staff was the right size for the business to remain manageable, but Maungatua has now grown to having 25 staff, six of them Duncans.
In recent years, Robert was able to step back and enjoy his passion for vintage cars — particularly the big, powerful American Packards of the 1930s.
His interest in vintage cars stemmed from a project he and his father began in 1985 — reassembling and restoring his greatgrandfather’s 1910 Metz.
It had been stored by his grandfather, Harry Brundell, during World War 1, in the roofspace of his house.
The family heirloom is still on display at the Warbirds and Wheels Museum at Wanaka Airport which Robert helped establish in 2011 with George Wallis and Garth Hogan.
The Metz has since been joined by a range of far more expensive vehicles, such as the 1934 Duesenberg once owned by Hollywood actress Carole Lombard, and said to be worth $10 million.
Despite Covid19, Robert’s business has continued to thrive in a district where there appears to be a neverending demand for housing and for the workers and equipment needed to put them on a solid foundation.
The 1934 Chrysler Imperial he had almost finished restoring will be completed by a group of friends. Robert is survived by wife Lynette, sons Blair and Kane, daughter Kylie and five grandchildren.
— Mark Price