Kevin Grant, dearly loved husband of Carolynne, died at home in Ōmārama, yesterday.
Thank you, Kevin, for your dedicated service to our town and for your lifelong commitment to our community.
Our sincerest condolences to Carolynne, James, Julie and Aaron and your families, and to Kevin's very many friends.
Kevin, you not only made your mark on our landscape but also on our hearts.

Kevin's funeral will be Tuesday, February 7, at the Ōmārama Memorial Hall at a time to be advised.

Below is a story written in February 2019 which tells only a little of Kevin's lifetime of service.

Kevin Grant - Earthmover and Shaper

As Kevin Grant casts his expert eye around the surrounding hills, he agrees, yes, there’s a great deal of the countryside he’s had a hand in shaping.

A man of few words – listen carefully because each one of those matter – he downplays the nearly six decades he has spent breaking ground, making tracks, clearing chaos, and quietly making his mark on the landscape.
He isn't convinced anyone would be that interested in hearing about his life’s work.

Monday, he ‘dropped everything’ and headed to the Tara Hills Station fire to put his skills to use there in his capacity as a volunteer member of the rural fire fighting logistics team. He’ll down-play that too. All in a day's work.
His role – to ‘expose’ the burning hay bales so firefighters could get to the ‘seat of fire’, and to dig trenches and bury any embers to lessen the risk of it re-igniting.

     

Kevin grew up in Otekaieke, where his family farmed. After attending primary school there, he would bus to Waitaki Boys’ High School in Oamaru and back each day. But he reckons he’s had “diesel in the blood from day one”. So, it was almost inevitable, as little more than a young lad, he would begin driving heavy machinery. “I’ve been going since I was 15, I’m 74 this year [2019].” 

Driving a dozer, working for a private contractor, his first major project was to help create the system of canals and flood irrigation channels which make up the Upper Waitaki Irrigation Scheme (Now called the Kurow and Duntroon Irrigation Company Scheme). Construction will begin this year to upgrade that scheme to a piped system which will continue to take water from the Waitaki River just below the Waitaki Dam and distribute it across the plains south of the river.

In 1965, he married Carolynne and it was no coincidence they began married life in Omarama. He was as pragmatic at 19 as he is now. His new job as a grader driver for the Ministry of Works came with a house – the perfect set-up for a newly-married couple. At the time, the depot and the heavy machinery stationed there was key to maintaining the main roads north, south and east of the town. The road from Otematata to Omarama, from Omarama north to Buscot station backpackers, and from Killermont Station to the top of the Lindis were gravel roads, Kevin said.
Back then there were no holiday homes in Omarama, only permanent residents lived in what was primarily a rural servicing town. There was the motel which later became the Omarama Motor Lodge and is now Heritage Gateway Hotel, the Rabbit Board staff and families, plus quite a large community which managed and ran what was the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry scientific research station at Tara Hills.
The population of Omarama would have been under 200, he said, and the town extended as far east as Sutherland Rd.

By 1969, Kevin was working for a private contractor - JR Bishop - who had the job of building a new Omarama subdivision for the Waitaki County Council. The task included creating three cul-de-sacs which extended the township eastwards to just past Totara Peak Cres. As 2IC for Bishop, with 45 staff, together they tackled roading jobs like the Shotover Bridge approaches, the realignment of SH1 at Shag Point, and the bulk of the main race for the Lower Waitaki Irrigation Scheme.
By then the Grants and their young family were stationed in Herbert. James and Julie were born in Otematata and the youngest, Aaron, was born in Queenstown.
But "I was never home", he says regretfully.

It was the time of the great construction projects and he worked throughout the South Island. Closer to home his crew was employed as “daily hire” to help work on the Upper Waitaki Hydro Scheme canals, at Twizel – they had their own separate camp on the construction project. And it was about that time the highway was extended from Otematata to Sailors Cutting.

In 1982, he made the decision to “go out on my own”, bought a D6 bulldozer and hired himself out for “farm work”. It wasn’t the best of times - drought and removal of farm subsidies hit North Otago farmers hard - but it was that economic downturn which brought the family back to Omarama – there was more work up this way.
A lot of the work was “track work” or “general drains” but the winter slowdown on the farm saw him take up the job of keeping the Ohau Ski-field access road clear through winter. “It filled in the winters, there’s not a lot of dozer work in the winter.”
It was sometimes precarious work which caused a few worries "for others", but didn’t worry him overly, he says. With interest rates on loans in the 1980’s soaring to 27% there had to be money coming in regularly to pass back to the bank. However, he does confess he’d not be worried if he “never saw another snowflake”.

When the Omarama Gazette catches up with him he’s working in 30-plus degree heat, but he doesn’t mind that. He’s now on his fifth digger – a Caterpillar 312C Hydraulic Excavator – bought in 2008 which has clocked up 12,000 hours.
Quite a substantial number of those hours have been spent volunteering. As well as fire-fighting duties, Kevin’s helped out with earthworks for the Golf Club, the Omarama Hall and Community Centre and the Fire Station, to name just a few projects. “You live in the community, you do your bit,” he says.

Retirement’s on the cards but not yet. The work is so varied, and because he’s a ‘one-man-band’ he scarcely ever sits still. His checks his fitness app which tells him he climbed the equivalent of 57 flights of stairs and trekked about 7.5km the previous day.
Clearing drains is not so much fun but he does like the farm track work, and he’s also enjoyed using that exacting eye to create landscaped gardens.
“You can see where you’ve been at the end of the day.” Surveying the lie of the land, and getting down to work and sculpting out the required design has become almost instinctive but it still requires absolute concentration, not only so the client’s requirements are met, exactly, but also for safety.
“You have to be conscious of what you are doing all the time, you do get the odd fright - it brings you back to reality.”

As we scan the hills he admits, “There’s not much of this country I haven’t been over” – and points out the Vodafone tower overlooking Otematata, 460m up, at Tin Hat Bluff.