Working hard to help people in Tokanui
Todd Lyders was mowing grass and singing The Impossible Dream when he accidentally cut down a goal post at the Tokanui rugby grounds.
Eight years on, he’s still embarrassed about it.
He was practising the song for his part in a pantomime - Scrooge - and for a brief moment lost concentration. The tractor he was driving, with a Maxim mower attached, drifted off course and resulted in the mower cutting through the aluminium post.
‘‘For a start, I wasn’t sure what had happened ... the cross-bar came down on the [tractor’s] bonnet,’’ Lyders, 53, says.
He’s been the Tokanui Rugby Club’s volunteer groundsman for 15 years and before taking over, his father, Pete, had the job for about 20 years. Pete, now living in Te Anau, is a life member of the club.
From February to May, the grass is cut with ride-on mowers to provide the two fields with good playing surfaces. Sometimes, there’s three or four ride-ons working at once.
Todd was the club’s bar manager for 15 years.
He retired from playing rugby three years ago, represented Tokanui for 44 seasons, and bowed out in president’s grade.
President’s grade is for mixed teams of young and old players and it gave Lyders the opportunity to be in the same side as his son, Jack, and step-sons, Tamati and Lincoln Harris.
As well as being a sheep and beef farmer at Tokanui, Todd Lyders is a volunteer ambulance first responder.
He started as an ambulance driver, under the direction of the town’s nurse, Jane Brown,17 years ago.
‘‘I learnt how to work the defibrillator, do CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] and general training on stabilising people,’’ Lyders says.
Tokanui’s ambulance and firefighting volunteers work closely together. If a rescue helicopter is needed, it comes from Taieri Airport.
‘‘It’s a beautiful sound when you hear that coming and you’re with someone sick.’’
Tokanui has 12 medical first responders, including emergency medical technicians Kelly Earwaker and Nicola Johnstone. Cellphone coverage in the southeast of the Catlins is poor but the responders have a satellite phone for communication in no signal areas.
Lyders has noticed a reluctance from some unwell elderly people in Tokanui to disturb the town’s nurse at night. The nurse fields most calls.
‘‘They’ll suffer through the night and call the nurse at 6 in the morning.’’
‘‘We get a lot of calls from people with strokes and chest pains about that time.’’
Call-outs to car crashes involving tourists are frequent, Lyders says.
An interesting call-out was when a tourist reported a bus over a cliff.
‘‘It turned out to be a campervan over a bank and no-one was hurt.’’
Lyders says the Tokanui community is close knit and willing to help each other.
‘‘If a [tourist’s] car needs stored, a local cockie will come along and tow it out of harm’s way.’’
Lyders recalls in the early days of his medical work, he attended to a young boy who had an arrow lodged in his neck.
The boy and his friends were playing a game with a homemade bow and arrow. ‘‘The arrow had a nail in it.’’
Other community roles held by Lyders are chairman of the Tokanui Community Development Area, a board member of the Mataura Licensing Trust and deputy chairman of the South Catlins Search and Rescue.
‘‘I love helping people . . . it’s been instilled in me by my parents, grandparents and people around here. But, there’s dozens of people [in Tokanui] that do a lot more than me.’’
The Lyderses have farmed in Tokanui since 1930. Todd Lyders is the third generation on his father’s side to farm in the area, while he is the fifth generation on his mother’s side to work the land there.
During Lyders’ four years at Southland Boys’ High School in Invercargill, he stayed at the Coldstream Boarding House across the road. After leaving school, he spent 18 months working at Diacks Nurseries’ Tweed St branch in Invercargill.
In 1983, he studied for a diploma in horticulture at Lincoln University in Christchurch.
Lyders returned to Tokanui to work for his father before they formed a partnership. Todd bought his first farm in 1988 and sold it 12 years later.
Then he bought one of his father’s farms.
‘‘I’ve drifted into farming but I love it.’’
He is in the Tokanui rugby group, the Big Rock Cougars, who compete at southern hemisphere golden oldies’ tournaments every two years.
Most of its 30 members are either exTokanui rugby players or have an association with the Tokanui Rugby Club.
Meanwhile, Tokanui’s senior team takes on Ohai-Nightcaps in division two club rugby at Tokanui on Saturday. Tokanui had a bye last weekend but a week earlier, they beat the Blues B side 29-22 on its home ground.