Geoff Clear - Horses, hilarity and hard work

He’s been a builder, jetboat driver, not so confident horse handler and a very successful tourism events organiser. Geoff Clear may not have excelled academically at school but he did know how to party, which, coupled with a good sense of humour and an enterprising spirit, saw him develop a successful corporate events business with wife Janice some 30 years ago.

Geoff and Janice owned and operated Moonlight Stables horse trekking, relocating that from Arthur’s Point to the family farm after washouts from the 1994 floods. Not a natural horseman, Geoff wouldn’t enter the paddock to feed Janice’s horse at first. “I used a bucket on the end of a stick.”

This Dunedin city boy needed a challenge, “something rather than picking up the ‘chaff out’ department of the horses”, he grins.

Legendary Queenstown tour operator Bill Tapley suggested he build an events venue. Their popular barn-style Moonlight Country, which Geoff designed, opened on their Morven Ferry land in 1999.

Their first Melbourne Cup charity event was a resounding success, repeated annually. “In the first 10 years we did corporate and themed dinners and team building on the farm,” Geoff says. “We did 60 events in a good year and were privileged to host dozens of local weddings and over 70 funerals.”

Geoff also organised the massive World Golden Oldies Cricket event, marquees filling Arrowtown’s Buckingham Street. “That was our biggest event, hosting 1000 – three times in 10 days. I worked 128 hours.”

A professional drummer, Geoff, who’s played for big names like The Chicks’ Suzanne Lynch, Ray Columbus and Ray Woolf, would often multitask as muso and organiser. “Our band was the first to get the cricket guys up dancing. That got me the World Women’s Golden Oldies Netball event soon after.”

Sheepdog whistling contests at dinners were a great crowd warmer, Geoff even performing the ‘Southern Man’ welcome for Prime Minister John Key at the Events Centre with his sheep whistle one year.

In the 2000s Geoff, Bill Tapley, Philip Jenkins and Jan Hunt established the Queenstown Convention Bureau for Destination Queenstown amid a rapidly growing conference market.

Not bad for a boyhood builder whose best mates from Otago Boys’ High all sit on high profile boards: “They were in the top class and me in the lower, but we still meet every year. There are no egos.

“The only exam I passed was my driver’s licence,” Geoff grins. “I started driving our old red Land Rover on Arrowtown holidays at 12. It was the Dunedin fire chief’s vehicle. Dad bought it for us to go to Macetown.”

Geoff’s dad was a self-taught property developer and built the family an Arrowtown crib in Bedford Street. “We’d come skiing every winter, boating in summer. With family friends we’d tow trailers behind ride on lawn mowers first footing. I was about 15.”

Geoff served a building apprenticeship with his dad, working for a while in his wholesale meats business before heading to Arrowtown as a builder in 1986.

“I listened and learned working for older guys like Dave Spence, Roy Bagley and Ron McFadzien. “After work my car had a self-steering mechanism that went straight to the New Orleans most nights.”

In the early 90s he began driving for Geoff Stevens at Twin Rivers Jet, whose then wife Debbie was a great Dunedin friend. He was initially the butt of pranks pulled by other drivers, usually having to shout after work. – the jetboat radio code: ‘The fridge is on in Twin Rivers garage’.

“It was a good introduction to tourism. I met a lot of great people and married one.”

Janice worked at the Mount Cook booking office - the pick-up spot for jetboat and rafting courtesy vans in the late 80s. “We shouted our booking agents drinks and clay target shooting on Kevin Sexton’s luxury launch. It was a chance to get closer,” he grins. Janice was a small-bore rifle champion and “a good shot” - Geoff was impressed!

He then worked as Skippers Canyon boat driver picking up bungy jumpers at the bottom of AJ Hackett Bungy’s 71m Skippers Bridge jump. Naked jumpers went for free, plenty of girls happy to wait on the riverbed in freezing mid-winter temperatures. “It wasn’t so exciting when we got a group of rugby players wanting to get naked,” he grins.

Geoff and Janice married in 1994 and within three years they had three kids under three, including twins.
“We did 30 years in a row without a real holiday.”

During the Stables heyday they had more than 70 horses, the Singaporean-based Chan Brothers using their stables exclusively. “They were huge days. One Christmas Eve we came in at 10.30pm from our last trip – five or six coaches that day.”

Geoff’s other passion, which he enjoyed with his boys, has been motorsport - a member of M-Development’s motorsport team locally.

They decided to retire both Moonlight Stables and Country in 2022 due to health issues. “We didn’t balance our life very well – it was all work and no play, but it’s been a great journey,” Geoff says. “What a ride and what an adventure!”