I am a rural Southland boy who became a university academic, who took up tumble-polishing beach stones upon retirement. I live in Whanganui and make visits back to Southland beaches at least a couple of times a year to fossick for lovely looking stones to take home to polish (my longest fossicking trip was my Southern Sojourn in 2023).
I was born John Leonard Paterson in Gore Hospital, Southland, New Zealand, in May 1955. With my parents, brother and three sisters, I lived on a sheep farm (The Mains) just outside of Waikaka, a very small country town some 24 kilometres north of Gore. I once wrote in an article in “The Smallfarmer” magazine:
My country childhood involved expeditions to every part of our farm – sheds, stables, pasture, river, pond, old railway line, shelter belts, pine tree plantations. I could be cowboy, farmer, hunter, explorer. I spent a lot of time fishing for trout in the river, building tree huts, hunting for rats and rabbits with Lassie, my fox terrier, riding horses, swimming in the river in summer, sledding down the snowy hillslopes in winter… In autumn I gathered pine cones to sell to the “townies” to supplement my pocket money, at other times plucking the wool off dead sheep to sell to the wool buyer in Gore.
I no longer hunt and fish, spending time with pets instead. Waikaka and the farm I grew up on, The Mains, feature prominently in this two-part TumbleStone Blog Post about old maps, “Maps as a Resource: New Zealand’s ‘Maps Past’”. See also “Jasper Stones and Petrified Wood, Shepherd’s Creek, Waikaka”.
It was a reasonably isolated upbringing in a conservative community. Our mother took us regularly to the Presbyterian Church and we attended Sunday School and Bible Class. I went to Waikaka Primary School and then Gore High School. In general, I was a quiet and conscientious pupil, keen to learn, doing especially well in English and Geography, though my teachers all noted that my handwriting was atrocious! In 1973 I went to the University of Otago in Dunedin, the first time I had spent more than a day in a big city. With four years of study, I gained a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Geography. I then moved to Wellington for a couple of years before studying at the University of Waikato. There, in 1981, I gained a Masters of Philosophy in Geography, writing a thesis titled “David Harvey’s Geography: A Study in Recent Philosophical and Methodological Change”.
I had decided to pursue an academic career and had unusual interests in religion, philosophical ideas, and human geography. I went overseas to start my doctoral degree in Geography, in 1982 going to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, with my new wife Jean. For five years I conducted research that eventually resulted (a few years later) in a thesis titled “Geography and Religion, Agriculture and Stewardship: The Practice of Agricultural Stewardship in the Christian Farmers Federations of Canada”. I returned to New Zealand in 1987, before I had completed the thesis, to take up a job as a lecturer at the University of Waikato, Hamilton.
I initially lectured in the Department of Geography, then later in the Social Science Research Programme. I am a quiet and kind of introverted person, and was not a brilliant lecturer. I know that I often lacked animation when delivering material. But I structured my topics well and tried hard to communicate effectively. My doctorate was finally completed and awarded in May 1999, some 17 years after I started it. It dominated my life and thinking for a long time, although by this stage I no longer personally identified as Christian. The thesis summary can be found here. In the early 2000s, I made some changes to my university lecturing style, using popular music and extracts from documentaries to enliven the sessions, to help make my teaching of social research methods more engaging. Judging by student feedback, it seemed to work.
Part of my job at the University was to supervise the research of graduate students on a wide range of very interesting topics. Among the Masters theses I supervised were “The Unforgettable Fire: Towards a Geographic Analysis of U2’s Political Pop” (Colin McLeay), “Alternative Worldviews, Alternative Agricultures: A Case Study of Biodynamics in New Zealand” (David Christiansen) and “Unpredictable, Incurable, Unemployable? A Collection of Constructed Narratives Exploring the Experiences of People with Chronic Conditions in Relation to Finding and Keeping Work” (Lynley Uerata). Doctoral theses I helped to supervise included “Symbolic Order and Material Agency: A Cultural Ecology of Native Forest Remnants on Waikato Dairy Farms” (Mairi Jay), “Keeping it Together: A Comparative Analysis of Four Long-Established Intentional Communities in NZ” (Olive Jones), “Cyborg Art: An Explorative and Critical Inquiry into Corporeal Human-Technology Convergence” (Elizabeth Borst) and “Baristas: The Artisan Precariat” (Gemma Piercy). I always enjoyed the interaction with these students.
And it’s always a good idea to take up another major life project after finishing a previous one. So as my own doctoral writing was coming to completion near the end of the 1990s, at the age of 41, I became a smallfarmer. I bought my first home, a lifestyle block, having previously only rented urban housing. I bought Waikoha Smallfarm, a five hectares property at Te Pahu, some 30 kilometres east of Hamilton. At this time, I was with my second wife Heather, both of us divorced from previous relationships. From 2000, we ran Crofter Mains, a herd of Dexter cattle, a rare breed from Ireland characterised by its short stature. For a number of years at this time, my academic research interests focussed on smallfarming in New Zealand and rare livestock breeds. I was also active in Smallfarming NZ and the NZ Dexter Cattle Society. I also wrote a regular column in “The Smallfarmer” reflecting on agricultural and environmental issues which often had their origin in my doctoral thesis.
In 2003, Heather and I spent six weeks in the UK, visiting Dexter cattle breeders. We also visited rare breeds centres, the last remaining open-field agricultural village at Laxton, the Chillingham wild cattle herd and neolithic standing stones and stone circles, including Stonehenge and Avebury. I have always been drawn to ancient stone monuments, even managing to visit Carnac in France to see the rows of standing stones there. In 2017, I was privileged to be able to visit the Isle of Lewis in northern Scotland and see the Callanish standing stones.
Between about 2005 and 2009, I developed a website on the Dexter cattle breed and its history, dex-info.net (parts of it are still accessible in internet archive sites – see here for the website as it was in early 2007). This experience gave me some confidence to start TumbleStone Blog in 2016.
Heather and I eventually parted ways and our Dexter herd was dispersed. My academic research interests turned more to social research ethics, an area I had lectured in for many years. I also chaired the Research Ethics Committee of Waikato University’s School of Social Sciences, later becoming Chair of the NZ Ethics Committee (set up to serve non-university organisations). These Committees reviewed research projects to assist researchers to follow relevant ethical guidelines. I met my current wife Petra not long before I sold Waikoha Smallfarm in 2013 (I have no children). Shortly after that, I took early retirement from the University of Waikato (see my Post about my colleague David Neilson). Again, I needed another major project – I started to look for a retirement passion/hobby. During a tour of the South Island early in 2016, I decided to start collecting beach stones to tumble-polish. I began writing TumbleStone Blog shortly afterwards when I realised there was practically no New Zealand-based internet material on tumble-polishing at that time.
Petra and I have had the privilege of overseas travel and have especially enjoyed a handful of visits to Devon in England (hence my series of Posts on Slapton Sands).
We currently live outside of Whanganui on a one hectare block with Dancer and Penny, Petra’s two horses, plus Ollie [now deceased] and Fluffy (cats) and Jasper (dog). In my home office there are still lots of books about religion, philosophy, sociology, stone circles, Canada, Scotland, farming groups, smallfarming, organics, and livestock. But now there are also a lot of books about geology, stones and tumble-polishing. There are also other bits and pieces collected over the years – a collection of children’s story books, books of cartoons, lots of old music cds, and a couple of stacks of jigsaws.
HOME – FOSSICKING BEACHES – BEACH STONES – TUMBLE-POLISHING
Thank you for sharing your story. I enjoy your blog and return to it often. How perfectly fitting that your wife’s name is Petra!
Appreciate your positive feedback!