MR JOHN MASON TO RETIRE AT END OF YEAR

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27149, 19 September 1953, Page 5

MR JOHN MASON TO RETIRE AT END OF YEAR

After half a century of service to the farming community as stock agent and fat lamb buyer, Mr John Mason, of Rangiora. will retire from active work at the end of the year aged 83. For the last 34 years he has been buying lambs in the Rangiora district, and in that time has made so many friends among his clients that upwards of 100 of them met him at Rangiora this week to make him a presentation, and to thank him for his work for them. Mr Mason was born in Christchurch, and got his first job (ma law office, at 5s a week) in September 1884, just 69 years ago Office life had little appeal and after trying one or two other inside jobs, he went to Australia, where he knocked about for a few years, «enerally in some job connected with stock. He made three trips to New Guinea after gold when New Guinea was civilised only at Port Moresby, and at one two small mission stations on the coast. Elsewhere the country was as it had been since the beginning of time. There was plenty of gold in New Guinea, but it was a most unhealthy place, and after his last gold-seeking venture, at the age of 20. he left it for good. His only tangible acquisition from those years is a scar on his wrist left by a bush knife wielded by a native who was trying to decapitate him. presumably with the idea of eating him. as New Guinea natives were in those days mostly assiduous cannibals. , j Hjb. came back to New Zealand shortly after that, and worked in the back country as a musterer and general hand for 10 years or so. He got to know many of the big North Canterbury stations well. In 1906 he joined the North Otago Farmers’ Co-op. as a stock agent, and stayed there until he came to Rangiora as buyer for the North Canterbury Farmers’ Freezing Company in 1919. He transferred to the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company as buyer in 1934 and will be with that firm until he retires at the end of the year. Mr Mason took no part in politics, but was nevertheless a most useful member of the community. He was for 18 years on the council of the A.A.C., and for more years than that a member of the committee of the Northern Agricultural and Pastoral Association. He took a great interest in the Waikuku Domain, and on all three of these bodies was known as a most active worker, always ready to make time to get the job done. . He reckons that he has bought m

the Rangiora district in his time somewhere about 1,500,000 lambs and sheep, but declares that he has always enjoyed every moment he has been working. His philosophy has been to do the best he could for his clients, and the large gathering of farmers at his presentation is proof that this policy was well appreciated. He was noted for his punctuality, not an easy reputation to acquire in his line of business. He was a firm believer in getting on the job early, and many farmers have had to get out of bed at unaccustomed hours to have stock ready for him in the yards. If he fixed a time, he would keep to it to the minute. He believes he may have made another record in the number of cups of tea he has been given on farms. “It must have been tens of thousands,” he said this week. “People have been very good to me. Lamb buying is the best job in New Zealand, and I have enjoyed every moment of it.” The life certainly seems to have agreed with him because he is as erect and brisk at 83 as many men 20 years younger.

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