Embracing newcomers

When Davy Bryce arrived from Ireland in 1948, he landed at Picton with just enough money to buy a pie. Not much, but enough, he would say.

He headed south working on farms, won the heart of Annette, the beloved eldest of nine children in the Hopcroft family farming at Gummies Bush.

They married, had four children and ,at the age of 50, Davy Bryce died leaving Annette with their family – David, 20, and three younger sisters: Shirley Anne, Mary and nine year old Rachel who a decade on became the New Zealand Rose of Tralee and took her widowed mother Annette on her prize winning tour to Ireland to revisit the home of their late Dad, Davy.

That young David, former John McGlashan head boy, first XV rugby player, had stayed to manage the Northern Southland farm Longridge while Shirley Anne became a nurse, Mary a rural accountant and Rachel an interior artist.

Then David went to Lincoln, married Marian, had Davey number 3, then Tim and Georgia, changed a paddock of apple trees into his first Marlborough vineyard, made more.

Then came south to resurrect the tourism Southland albatross, the Kingston Flyer. He got it to its wheels and toddling over a paddock. He spent a fortune, suffered a stroke, was diagnosed with terminal renal failure, returned to Renwick to be cared for, passed away there last week.

This week he was lovingly farewelled at the Riverton Union church by family and friends, interred in the Riverton cemetery next to his dad Davy, less than a decade older than him when he too passed too soon, surrounded by memories of Hopcrofts and Templetons, cousins all.

And wheelchair bound, Annette, family matriarch beautiful still, serene in lavender, lilac and lace, surrounded by her children and theirs, her siblings and their families, David’s grown children strong and loving.

Southland’s greatest strength surely lies in its families, people like the century old Hopcroft clan, loving and close yet welcoming to a lonely young man from Ireland. And it was that migrant’s son, another David, who returned south to try to save the benighted Flyer.

Our long- settled families grow by embracing newcomers. We just can’t see what others bring; what lies ahead.