Lindsay Reid - Roots firmly etched in the Wakatipu

Lindsay Reid has never been one to get rattled, despite a teaching and principal’s career that spanned 33 years across Otago, even landing him temporarily on the Chatham Islands.

Instead, renowned for his patience, compassion and kindness, Lindsay saved the scolding and lectures, applying his own unique practical style which produced much more impressive results.

A huge volunteer contributor to the Wakatipu community along with wife Gill, Lindsay, a humble and generous man, had a major impact as a teacher and principal, particularly in Arrowtown, where he was a pupil himself in the early 1940s.

Sport, especially cricket and rugby, were his passions, coaching these, golf, athletics and cross country, encouraging kids in the benefits of sport and playing himself at Otago representative level.

“Dad believed that a measure of competitiveness in sport was good for you and taught the values of cooperation, determination and general camaraderie,” writer and historian daughter Becky Reid says. 

He was a past president of the Queenstown Cricket Club, competing around the region for the Central Otago Wanderers for many years after the family moved back from West Otago to Lindsay’s hardy Wakatipu family roots in 1975. He played rugby for Otago, in the team that took out the Ranfurly Shield in 1957, and was also an Otago Country Cricket rep.

Past pupils fondly recall ‘Mr Reid’s pre-morning tea runs’ through the Bob’s Peak forest to keep the brain active.

Lindsay also led the charge on outdoor education always on hand as ‘Camp Dad’.

His compassion and wisdom saw him serve as a valued member of the Central Otago Children’s Care and Protection Panel and as treasurer of the Queenstown Social Services Committee in the 1990s.

“His philosophy growing up was ‘sport keeps you out of court’,” daughter   Amy, youngest of five, smiles. “When I crashed the car driving friends around on my ‘Restricted’ licence at 15, then got in trouble for smuggling rum into our Girl Guide camp chalet, all the other girls got grounded. Instead, Dad really ramped up my running and fitness programme - always adamant that under his strict training regime, I would be so “into sport, that I’d stay out of court”.

Pupils and Reid's kids all know their times tables well, thanks to Lindsay devising a novel game called ‘Snatch It’, using the rubber end of a milking machine - his own kind of back in the day form of ‘The Chase’.

From age six local grandson Ollie Kirk was advised by ‘Pop’ that “rugby players shouldn’t wear leggings or skins under their rugby shorts, even if playing in the Maniototo in minus 8deg”. “He made it very clear that leggings were for soccer players. I’ve never worn them since,” Ollie grins.

This cheeky sense of humour has always been Lindsay’s trademark.

The son of a hardy Macetown-bred local farmer, farming and the Wakatipu were firmly etched in Lindsay’s bloodline.

He ran sheep and a few cattle on Gorge Road and on his award-winning TV journalist daughter Melanie Reid’s land on Malaghan’s Road.

“Shortly after I’d won a few media awards in TV news and current affairs, I was out in the paddock with Dad one day putting up an electric fence,” Melanie recalls. “He said, ‘Don’t get too big for your boots. You’re just like this electric fence. If you’re not earthed, you don’t work.”

Past pupils recall him arriving at Arrowtown School in the early 1990s with hay bales in the back of his car ready for a lunchtime dash to feed out.

Born in the original maternity home at the top of Ballarat Street in 1936, Lindsay was also from goldmining, storekeeping, wagoning, flour milling and teaching stock, his forebears arriving in Arrowtown in 1866 for the goldrush. Both of his parents were born at Macetown in the 1890s, growing up there, his mother later trekking up Tobins Track daily to teach at Crown Terrace School.

His grandfather William Reid and his brother-in-law owned substantial land holdings around Lake Hayes, including Brookside farm in Malaghans Road where Lindsay lived until he was 10, and the historic Wakatipu Flour and Oatmeal Mill in Speargrass Flat Road. He’d recall his grandmother’s false teeth freezing in the jar some nights.

Lindsay and his brother rode ponies from Brookside to Arrowtown School as kids, the family moving to Dunedin in 1946 where Lindsay went to Musselburgh School, and Kings High where he was a prefect in the mid-1950s, captaining the First XV and First XI.

In 1956 Lindsay headed to Dunedin’s Teacher’s College where he met Gill, also a trainee.

“Mum loved to dance so Lindsay had to quickly find his feet on the rock and roll dance floor,” Becky says. They married in 1959, taking their first teaching jobs at the three-teacher Kelso School.

Eldest child Chris was born in a Tapanui snowstorm in 1961, Lindsay hitching a ride to the maternity home on a tractor determined to meet  his firstborn, only to be turned away by the matron, ‘fathers not welcome’, especially those covered in snow!

Lindsay was sole teacher at Beaumont then taught at Tapanui District High in 1969 before his roots drew him home to be deputy principal at Queenstown Primary in 1975.

The family arrived, horse float in tow with Melanie’s pony which lived in their initial downtown Queenstown Stanley Street yard, often escaping off at a gallop down Shotover Street.

In 1980 he became principal-teacher at Arrowtown School where he stayed for a decade, also later enjoying two stints teaching on the Chathams, at New Zealand’s most remote school.

Lindsay was president of the West Otago – Tapanui Lions and an active contributor to the Queenstown Lions Club for many years, also a president of the Wakatipu Pony Club.

He served on the Wakatipu High School Committee of Management from 1994 and was a local electoral returning officer for 30 years.

Raising five kids, he also worked during school holidays loading passengers on and off the old bubble-style Skyline Gondolas, near the family’s Bowen Street home of 28 years.

Sadly, Lindsay passed away peacefully on 9 July, aged 90.