Kerry Dunlop - Kerry’s your man

If you want to get the job done, Kerry Dunlop’s your man.

In the 15 years since this highly respected Southland sheep breeder and farmer supposedly ‘retired’ to Queenstown he’s achieved just a few things…

A much relied upon member of Queenstown Rotary, Kerry’s organised Rotary’s Meals on Wheels roster for 10 years. If club members don’t, or can’t, show up he’s even been known to leave a Christmas Party to step in at the last minute.

He also led the charge on Rotary’s massive $200,000 Tucker Beach Trail project, which opened eight years ago.

A childhood Lakes Hayes ‘cribbie’ and environmental award-winning farmer, Kerry, was concerned about Lake Hayes’ deteriorating water quality so formed Friends of Lake Hayes in 2005.

In 2019, aged 78, he notched up four or five long hikes a week, including up Ben Lomond, in preparation for fundraising for “Make A Wish”, trekking over part of China’s challenging 21,196km Great Wall with daughter Shona, raising $6,000.

Now 84, Kerry doesn’t shy away from technology either, first purchasing and programming an Apple 2E computer in 1991 to help run the family’s Centre Bush farm – The Gree, 266ha that has been in the Dunlop line for 92 years.

Forever the innovator, he was always looking for more productive ways to farm, joining a pioneering group sheep breeding scheme in 1969, at just 28. Production was key for The New Zealand Romney Development Group. “For every four ewes I sent to the central flock in Hawkes Bay I got to fly up and choose the best ram to bring home each year,” he says. “It was really pioneering stuff in the days before artificial insemination, working with agricultural scientists and farm advisors nationally.”

Kerry crossbred Romneys with Border Leicesters, moving into Coopworths, President of the Coopworth Sheep Society by 1975. He later moved into Texels. “Before retiring in 2010 I also bred wool shedding Wiltshire sheep as prices had dropped so low.”

Very active in Southland Federated Farmers, in 1979 Kerry was appointed to the Alliance Group’s board of directors, serving there through substantial growth until 1991.

“They moved to a boardroom at 61 Don Street in 1986. Ironically, that site was where I stayed with my grandparents as a child, their home and my grandfather’s medical specialist surgery – Dr J.G.Macdonald,” Kerry smiles.

Kerry went to Limehills Primary School, making the Southland Primary Schools Rugby Team for two years and later he played for the Central Southland Junior Rep Team.

Sport dominated at John McGlashan where he was head prefect in 1958.

Kerry was doing his two years’ practical farm work before studying Agricultural Commerce at Lincoln College, when a detached eye retina at 19 put paid to his promising rugby career. “That changed my life,” he says.

He channelled his energies into leadership, becoming fully immersed in Young Farmers from president at Limehills to the national executive in 1970. He was among those to secure Mr Skellerup’s sponsorship for the then Skellerup Young Farmer of the Year Competition.

A typical Saturday involved rural rugby then either the Oreti, Thornbury or Invercargill dances. It was 1959-60: “The drinking age was 21 and we’d discreetly camouflage big bottles of beer in our cars. Elvis would be playing, and you’d grab the right girl for a waltz at the finish,” he grins.

There was a spot of bother with the beer a few years later at Lincoln too when ‘Dr Blair’ found the boys having a few quiets in their room in Ivey Hall. “He sent us to the principal Dr Burns, who banned us from campus for three weeks, so we slept at the Springston Pub all that time, which was probably worse,” Kerry laughs. Students weren’t allowed at the Lincoln Pub then.

At a Christchurch girls’ flat party the following year, Kerry met wife of 60 years Kit – a dietician, and they married two years later, settling in a new home on the family farm.

Here Kerry focused on breeding sheep. “I started recording productivity in 1964, then in 1968 the Performance Recording Scheme computer programme came in.”

In 1980 he studied in the UK and Europe for six months on a Nuffield Scholarship.

It was a busy life with three kids in tow. There was always time for year-round tennis, but Kerry prioritised his community too, a president of Winton Rotary Club, appointed District Governor for Temuka South – 33 clubs, for 2007/08. They lured The Topp Twins south for the district conference in Te Anau, as well as top Chinese dancer Li Cunxin, Kerry and Kit attending international conferences, including Salt Lake City and Birmingham.

Kerry’s not kicking back yet though. A former St John’s Ambulance shuttle driver for 10 years, he’s a Wakatipu Walker, a Queenstown Pedlar and the new chair of the Queenstown and District Historical Society.

He threw his weight behind Greg Thompson’s efforts to get speed restrictions and a safety underpass beneath the Lower Shotover Bridge in 2014. Their petition attracted 450 signatures in a week and won.