“Plough Queen” contest

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32976, 24 July 1972, Page 6

“Plough Queen” contest

A young Christchurch woman Avon the 1972 “Silver Plough Queen”; title during the New Zealand ploughing championships at Chertsey at the weekend. She is Mrs Lynne Myers, who is head teacher at the Rutland Street kindergarten. Mrs Myers’s husband is on the staff of the botany division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Lincoln. Aged 23 years, she comes from the district where last week’s ploughing championships were held, and is the daughter of one of New Zealand’s best known ploughmen, Mr H. A. Magson, of Rokeby, who won the New Zealand championships in 1961 and was runner-up in the world match that year.

Mrs Myers, who is one of Mr and Mrs Magson’s five daughters, attended the Rokeby primary school and Timaru Girls’ School. She was selected from a field of about 30 young women aged 17 or older by a panel of three judges who assessed them for speaking ability, personality, deportment and dress sense. The runner-up was Mrs Marlene Acton-Adams, of Chertsey, who has a five-week-old baby. Also aged 23 years she is the wife of a spraying contractor in the district. Miss Carolyn Skilling, of Ashburton, was third, Mrs Pauline Doody, a 20-year-old schoolteacher, of Rakaia, was fourth, and a special prize was awarded to Mrs Rothery Reesby, a 23-year-old housewife, of Winchmore, for personality. The first prize in the competition is a return air journey from Christchurch to Rotorua for two, and t six nights hotel accommodation, $5O in spending money and a wall mirror. In the photograph at right Mrs Myers has a lassoo round the neck of Mr A. R. Johnston, one of the finalists in the ploughing contest. Part of the duties of the “Silver Plough Queen” is always to select the “most handsome ploughman” and Mr Johnston was Mrs Myers’s selection. Mr Johnston, who comes from Rakaia, was competing in his seventh final and is senior vice-president of the Rakaia Ploughing Match Association, which conducted last week’s contest;