Enthusiasm the key, says Sir Neil Isaac

Press, 14 June 1986, Page 1

Enthusiasm the key, says Sir Neil Isaac

By

TESSA WARD

Mr Neil Isaac, who has been created a Knight Bachelor in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services 4b conservation, attributes his life’s achievements to a big dose of enthusiasm. “I’m basically a construction man but my enthusiasm has flowed over into wildlife and salmon projects,” he said yesterday in his Isaac Construction Company office at the gates of the Harewood wildlife park, Peacock Springs. With his wife, Lady Diana Isaac, Sir Neil has developed the park, primarily a wildfowl haven, out of the craters dug by the company’s heavy excavation equipment. The result for visitors is not only a view of the work of the company, one of New Zealand’s biggest in private construction and quarrying, but also of a unique conservation project. Sir Neil said that his knighthood was a recognition of what he and Lady Isaac had achieved to date with their conservation effort at Peacock

Springs. “Naturally we are delighted and deeply honoured,” he said. "We have proved that it is possible to turn desolation into a wildlife refuge and rear birds such as the rare mute swan and Cape Barren geese within a stone’s throw of our bulldozers and crushing plants. “The conflicting needs of our industrial quarry and the park have been harmoniously intertwined. So far we have transformed 40 hectares and it will not stop here. “My wife and I have no children and we have put our love into this wildlife park in the hope that it will be a lasting heritage for the people of Canterbury.” By setting up the Isaac Wildlife Trust the Isaacs have ensured that the “pit-to-pasture” restoration effort will continue. Sir Neil, aged 71, was bom in Timaru and educated at Timaru Boys’ High School. After leaving school he founded and was a director of a firm called Contract Cultivation, Ltd, which later became one

of the South Island’s leading earthmoving contract companies. About three years later he joined the Army and left New Zealand for Egypt in 1941 in the 21st Mechanical Equipment Company as a sapper (private soldier). While in Egypt Sir Neil trained with the British Royal Engineers in the School of Military Engineering and earned an Agrade pass in the All Arms Officer Cadet Training Unit. “I then served with the Royal Engineers in Greece and Italy and was later posted to the No. 1 Bomb Disposal Unit in London,” he said. “On my way to Japan in a troop ship I met my wife, who was going to India in charge of the Auxiliary Territorial Service comprising British service women. “By the time we got to India the atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan and I was posted to the Engineer in Chiefs branch in New Delhi. After 6y 2 years of active service with the British Army I went to work for the new United Provinces

Government on a dam construction project at Murzipur in North India.” Sir Neil’s dam construction work for the next two years took him into remote tracts of Indian jungle, where he fostered a keen interest in the fauna and flora. In 1950, he formed the Isaac Construction Company, based in Geraldine, and began with highway construction contracts, including the Domett deviation on Highway One near Cheviot. Other big projects have included four sections of the Dunedin motorway, Memorial Avenue between Christchurch Airport and Fendalton Road, the Benmore dam and most of the Christchurch Airport construction contracts. Sir Neil and Lady Isaac plan to introduce more uncommon species of wildfowl to Peacock Springs and provide more open days for the public to view the park each year.