Gus Watson - A Born Creative
A successful artist for 32 years and a born creative, Gus Watson wasn’t always on the trajectory to a creative career.
The youngest son of a well-known Invercargill lawyer, Gus was headed for a legal career, just like his grandfather, father and two brothers before him.
The family of six spent many happy holidays in Arrowtown and once Gus was at boarding school skiing took hold. He scored a South Island McKenzie Scholarship to train in ski racing. He and friends once reinvigorated the NZ Jump Competition which he won, while at Otago University he skied in the NZ Universities Team in Australia. “It was the only thing I achieved at University.”
Eventually he realised law was not for him and worked in an architect’s office before taking on a management trainee course at Hamilton Marine. “I bowled up for my promised raise after seven months and they said, ‘Actually you’re not what we’re looking for’, and I got the heave ho.” However, in that time he’d bought and rebuilt a jetboat that one of the directors had torn the bottom off up a river. “I also cut the top off my Mini and made it into a sports car,” he grins.
Ever resourceful, Gus bought a sewing machine and began making sheepskin jackets before heading to the US in 1968 with $600, $400 of which he spent on a cassette stereo in Duty Free. Despite turning up with only $200, he was allowed in after faking that he was staying with “rich friends”. While ski instructing and serving pizza, at 21, in Squaw Valley, he once hitchhiked to Wyoming and back in three days on $10. “That was really empowering. I felt bulletproof and thought I don’t need money. I can do what I like.”
From there he hitchhiked around the US, sleeping under bridges, and in a snow-laden Canada, on the side of the road.
A kind Customs officer flagged down a truck to get him back from North Dakota to Denver then Gus was robbed at a party. A bucket of cold KFC lasted three days, and after stints in Boston and New York working, and more hitching around South and Central America, he was off to the UK and Europe.
Back home a monotonous job at the freezing works prompted an ingenious idea to create an animated sound and light museum re-enacting the gold rush days. Gus moved to Queenstown, flatting with Dardy Wallace and John Guthrie who then owned a cleaning company. He rented an old dilapidated building of John’s downtown which Gus cleverly transformed into Colonial Sounds, later Sound and Light Museum. “I’d seen things like Madame Tussauds and the Gold Museum in Bogota, and had worked in an asbestos mine in the Hollyford.” With sound effects created by radio DJ, ‘Cham the Man and Sound Hound Rocky Douche’ in Wellington, multi projectors and movies, old letters read and period costume photos, his idea was a great success for 12 years.
In 1975 he built a cabin on Jenny and Peter McLeod’s land, using Fernhill Oregon trees and recycled materials. Gus then built a hang-glider with Dardy. “It was homemade on somebody’s sewing machine and we thought the higher the better so we found a cliff to jump off.”
He then bought a microlight, and despite no accidents there, tragically, Gus broke his neck in a skiing accident in 1980, leaving him a quadriplegic. He and his wife, Suzy, had been married a year and were told on no uncertain terms by a spinal unit doctor having children was impossible and unadvisable. However, Gus pursued a uni friend, Dr Al McLean, who specialised in artificial insemination. “We got a direct hit first time. Having been told, ‘No’, when it worked, that was my miracle - Milly.”
Good friends and the local community fundraised for Gus to fly to Wales where a chemical engineer, Dr Hugh Grenfell, was helping people walk with electrodes strapped on the leg muscles. “I used it lots but you could never get far away from your wheelchair.”
A talented sketcher all his life, Jan Spary then asked him to paint her some hens. “Someone else wanted a horse, and another - children, surprisingly people were paying me.”
The lease expired and the museum closed, so he became a full-time painter. His beautifully, bright and interesting watercolours were exhibited annually all over NZ in main centres, and he’s exhibited at home every January for 32 years.
For years he was invited to a Fijian island and Samoa to paint in hotels.
He flew the microlight after his accident with help from local friends – “just to prove I could”, running out of petrol once and crashing.
To access his First World War ambulance-campervan creation, complete with bed and cooker, Gus used an ingenious hole to park the vehicle in so he could build the back from his wheelchair. He’s also made beautiful wooden furniture, built a 4.2m (14-foot) kitset boat, and enjoys adventures in his Funyak.
He created a photographic book of his life to inspire others with spinal injuries, and gifted it to the Burwood Spinal Unit. “Being paralysed is a bit alarming and people think, how terrible, then they go backwards, but I’ve always been quite positive”.
“I have a lovely partner. I’m really happy and life is great.”
