Peter Etheridge born 1944

Ashburton, Christchurch, Te Waipounamu

“You still working mate?” yells out a farmer cheekily as Peter Etheridge steps out of his ute. A wry grin spreads on his face and he tips his hat laughing. Peter can’t get too far in his hometown of Ashburton without someone stopping him for a natter.

“I’ve been around Ashburton for all my 81 years,” says Peter, “So long, that I have got to know a lot of people. I like people, I like talking - that’s what I’m good at. Bullshit and blather. Yes, I can yap my head off.”

Peter puts that down to being like his mum with her Scottish bloodlines and gift-of-the gab and he’s hung his hat on a career that utilised his natural way with people. Peter stepped into his father’s co-owned company, Drummond and Etheridge, as soon as he left school. “I left school on Friday and started work on the Monday,” says Peter. “I said," What am I going to do?” and he said, “You’ll be a mechanic”. “Am I?” I said. It was a different world back then and you did what your parents said”.

But it became pretty apparent that Peter wasn’t cut from a mechanic’s cloth. “I was hopeless,” he chuckles, “not my thing at all.” So his father suggested he had better get out there and sell a tractor. And that’s what he did - over the decades Peter Etheridge became the go-to man in his region for a good, honest deal and he eventually took on his dad’s share of the company continuing on the Etheridge name.

“The business started off in 1928 with about eight people and Dad sold cars. Of course it wasn’t as big as it is now and the only reason they survived the 1930s depression was because they serviced all the teachers' cars and all the cars for the rural delivery. They survived it only just.”

Peter enjoyed getting out amongst the farming community most of all and he admits to loving the rural hospitality. “I never had to buy lunch,” he says, another chuckle just under the surface, “when I was first out on the road selling tractors in the 60s there were no mobile phones, nothing and I ate a lot of afternoon teas and dinner with people. They don’t do it now but that’s what we did in the old days, that’s where I did business. Everyone came in for meals, that’s the way it was. But not anymore, now it’s all go, go, go”.

Drive around Ashburton with Peter and you will get a low-down of the town’s history. “The traffic never used to be like this back in the day,” he says restlessly, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “That old building over there was a picture theatre and when it closed down a mate and I pulled all the timber out to build 2 batches at Lake Clearwater.” Peter leans in conspiratorially, “ It cost $1000 pounds”.

Peter has seen many changes over the years and a decade after he’d made his first sale, a pivotal one came his way. Distributing company Cable Price got the agency for John Deere and they eyed up Drummond and Etheridge to be their dealer. “Bert Drummond rang me up and said “come and have a listen to these fullas”. I thought it sounded pretty good and it went from there. We had the opening at the new Ashburton Hotel and we invited people to come and hell, 140 turned up. Woooo! We sold the first two that we had at the doorway. We were off, “vrrrmmm!”.

If you bought a tractor from Peter he’d lean over and shake your hand, “ but now it’s all online, on credit and there’s no one-on-one”. Personal service was his style and his customers could be guaranteed a yarn and a joke. Peter says the farmer’s wife's didn’t look forward to his visits quite as much, “because we spent their money,” he says, a punchline delivered with perfect comic timing. “I can still see us going for a cup of tea and you could feel the tension in the air. Next thing and a cuppa comes sliding across the table, “what are you buying now!”. They’d be angry. I remember one old guy came in with a tractor seat and he said “I want a new seat”, and I said “no you don’t you want a new tractor”. He said “really?”. A few days later we carted out a tractor on the truck for him. I drove into the yard and was unloading it when his wife came out and said, “what’s this doing here?”. I said “this is your new seat” and I was thinking ‘oh my god’ and yes, did they have a barney. Phew!”

Everything was done in good humour and Peter says he has made sure he’s brought that to every aspect of his life. “I enjoyed seeing a satisfied customer after making sure they had the right machinery for the right job. There’s no good being selfish. You won’t be in business if you are selfish”.

“I have been very fortunate to have a lovely wife, Lois, she has been with me since 1967. I had trouble getting her. She didn’t fall in love with me, I had a MG TD car, and she fell in love with that. That was the trick all right. When Lois and I got together we would go dancing, fox trot, quick step that sort of thing, every Saturday night all round the district. We really enjoyed it. I’m no good now…… I’d fall over! But I used to be.”

Peter and Lois live on the outskirts of town. Their property is hugged in by a garden that Lois spends many hours in and the driveway is tree-lined with deer grazing the paddocks. Peter stops the ute at the gate and they come running, he has food in the back and feeds them by hand. A large ten pointer stag wanders over, “that’s my mate” says Peter before adding philosophically, “in life you have to find something you enjoy doing, because if you enjoy it, you’ll do it well. And it’s about enjoying yourself and enjoying your family. It’s as simple as that”.

Inside the house Peter settles into his armchair with a cuppa, a biscuit and a yarn to tell about his childhood. His family lived out on Creek Road, it had a coal range, open fires and a great big garden which his father tended to.”Everybody had their jobs to do at home. Oh yeah, we did! And you did them because if you didn’t you got a whack. That’s the way things were. And then we hooked off to school on our bikes, it was only a couple of kilometres down the road. Then back home for lunch and then back we went again. I guess those k’s added up!”.

Hunting and fishing was a big part of Peter’s childhood and those passions carried on well into his life. In his 20s Peter would round up his friends, a bottle of whiskey and head out at night for a rabbit shoot. He says he tallied up 27,3000 rabbits over the years which earned him a nice little side hustle. “We spent a lot of time outdoors. We were very lucky in that way. We may not have seen dad during the week, we were never invited to go to his work, but on the weekends we would hunt with him”.

It’s been a life full of cups of tea around many rural kitchen tables, a fair few yarns leaning on the giant tyre of a tractor and many, many of Peter’s signature laughs. “There have been a few tragedies along the way, which are very hard, but there’s not many people who live a life without something going wrong. When you get old you start losing friends, that’s the hard thing. But you have to handle it or you’ll fall off your perch”.

And what really gets Peter smiling after all these years? “Seeing a John Deere tractor out in the paddocks working”. After pausing for a moment before sensing a good moment for a joke, Peter adds, “and If I see a red one I go “pfffft”,” a finger jab to drive his point home, “it has to be the right colour!”.

PETER ETHERIDGE