Skip to content ↓

View entry

Back to search results

Name: ETHERINGTON, Geoffrey Field

image of individual

Nee: son of John Westall Etherington

Birth Date: 20 Feb 1935 Naivasha

Death Date: 5 June 2015 Nelson, New Zealand

First Date: 1935

Last Date: 1963

Profession: Farmer - later (1994) a nurseryman in New Zealand

Area: Kinangop

Married: In Dodoma Cathedral 1960 Gillian Mary Florence Hale b. 26.5.1937 Gloucester

Children: Martin (1960); Fey (1962); Paul (1963); John (1965)

Book Reference: EAWL

War Service: KR 6042

General Information:

KR 6042
mini-SITREP XLVII Dec 2016 Daughter Féy Cottar: Our dad, Geoffrey Field Etherington was born in his grandmother’s house on the Kinangop. He arrived while his father was out trying to get a doctor. Born with a crooked spine he spent six months in a cast to straighten it out. Dad’s father, John Etherington, died aged 91 and his ashes are buried in this garden that Dad created. His mother, Eleanor Féy, died in Kenya aged 48 of polio when Dad was 23. Dad has a younger brother, Dan; their elder sister, Nancy, who married Victor Inggs, a SAA pilot in1955, passed away in South Africa in the late 1990s. Dan lives in Canberra and was to have read the eulogy today, but unfortunately he is in hospital with cellulitis, the same affliction that claimed Dad just one month ago. Dad went to school in Kenya and boarded from the age of six. After a couple of years of doing very badly at school, he was moved to another school where he didn’t do much better. For his last two years of school he was moved to England, firstly for a ‘cramming’ year to catch up, and then to another school for his last year. All of dad’s school years were unhappy years as he was bullied by pupils and teachers, and because of the long separations from his parents, which were some times of up to eighteen months. One of the few things that we know of Dad’s childhood is that he and his brother Dan used to get up to mischief at times. Picture a large field of hay, freshly hand-cut and dried ready to collect into haystacks. Now picture two small boys building a little fire in that large field of hay. They thought that because the grass was cut, and the stubble was short it would be a very safe thing to do. Now picture that little fire turning into a large inferno, as the whole field caught fire! Needless to say, they were not popular boys that day. We like to think that any trouble making we have got up to, can be traced back to dad’s genes. After school he studied agriculture in South Africa and then at Egerton in Kenya, and for the first time excelled in his studies. Early in 1955, he was called up and saw active service patrolling the jungles of Kenya as a Field Intelligence Officer during the Mau Mau emergency. He was known as a marksman, but used to say that it was because the person next to him on the rifle range shot at his target accidentally. 35 From 1959 to 1963, he worked on the family farm ‘Ndiara’, and in 1960, on his 25th birthday, married Gillian Mary Florence Hale. In 1963, the British government, as part of a nationalisation programme, bought the farm. Even then, living on the Kinangop was not safe, and he slept with a pistol under his pillow. They decided to emigrate, tossing-up between Australia, Canada and New Zealand; but figured that Australia was too hot, Canada was too cold, and New Zealand was just right. So, in 1963, Mum & Dad, my brother Martin and I moved to New Zealand, and one of dad’s most satisfying moments was to drop his pistol down the long-drop the day he left Kenya. In New Zealand, Dad was an orchardist in Tasman for six years, before moving to this property where they lived for some 40 years. Initially, Dad grew apples, and then later, kiwifruit. He also began growing his own kiwifruit plants in a small greenhouse to sell, but it wasn’t long before this developed into the plant nursery, and then two Garden Centres. During his orcharding years he was involved in many things - Jaycee’s, Fruit Growers Federation, golf, working bees, a scout leader, Waimea Growers association and toastmasters. He developed new hobbies, such as making resin jewellery, and growing plants, and latterly growing and collecting aloes. At 43 he had a bit of a personal crisis, and was discouraged about the direction of his life. A turning point for him was completing the ‘crinkly course’ at Outward Bound. He then took to rafting the Buller River in a rubber boat and we think he, along with some friends, were the first to raft the entire length of the Buller? He did this each year for a number of years, but gave up after two years of accidents in which people nearly lost their lives. Much of the land was planted with apple trees, most of which he pulled out in 1990 to develop the Gardens of the World. Many, including ourselves, thought he was nuts; I thought he was squandering our inheritance. But look at it today - this Garden is a lot more than a monetary inheritance; it is something that his family loves to visit. We are very proud of Dad, for not only was he a visionary, he also had the ability to put his visions into reality. L/R: PAUL, JOHN, GEOFF, GILLIAN, MARTIN and FÉY Apart from his family (three sons and a daughter), Dad left two lasting legacies - the Garden’s of the World, and his aloe collection from around the world, soon to be moved to the Auckland Botanical Gardens; this collection is one of the best in the Southern Hemisphere, if not the world. 36 Two years ago dad was diagnosed with leukaemia, and he started to regularly visit other men who he considered were physically worse off than himself, and made some good friends.
Dan Etherington: My big brother, Geoffrey Field, was just eighteen months ahead of me and always called ‘Field’ by the family. I have only happy memories of our times together on ‘Ndiara’, the family farm in Kenya. Along with our sister Nancy, we shared the tribulations of boarding school from prep-school onwards. School was tolerated but neither embraced nor looked forward to. We took for granted the superb climate on the farm (at 8,500ft on the Kinangop plateau) which allowed the ever beautiful garden that our mother Féy developed around our small ‘cottage’ farm house, to thrive. We enjoyed watching Mum record the birth of each Friesian calf, when she carefully painted their unique black patches on the silhouette forms in the pedigree register. We enjoyed the company of Italian POWs (1943-1945) who worked on the farm. They taught us how to greet and count in Italian. We were fascinated as they built us a very large mansion out of local stone and timber; they were master craftsmen - stone-masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. Mum enjoyed the local Kikuyu women, still in traditional dress with large earrings, bringing in their baskets of white pyrethrum flowers. We were constantly amazed when columns of vicious safari ants were stopped in their tracks and killed by the dried powder that came out of our ‘py-drier’. I can still remember that strong pungent aroma. Our extended family met often for dances, dinners and celebrations. We relished these occasions as they moved between the Rays, the Féys, the Nightingales, the Polhills, and the Etheringtons; all hardworking, innovative farming families. In the wings were the Administrators: the BrookeAndersons, Symes-Thompsons et al. For as long as I can remember, family and hospitality were central to our lives. The four-day Solent flying boat flight to the UK (Lake Naivasha, Juba, Khartoum, Alexandria, Augusta and Portsmouth) was a great adventure that Field and I shared, and often recalled with delight - but that is another story! Boarding school in England was a great shock with post-WWII rationing still strictly adhered to and a miserable climate to boot! Oh for home! We looked forward to Mum’s food parcels with home-made tomato jam and other delicacies. During the holidays we were cared for by lovely host families (Marjory & Hugh); holiday homes and SU camps. The happiest summer was when Mum came over for a real rest from the ongoing stress of attacks on the farm by Mau Mau. Schooldays eventually passed, but just as new opportunities seemed to be opening up, tragedy struck: our beautiful Mum contracted polio in July 1957. It was so sudden, so complete, so devastating. Her death the following February after an amazing struggle to survive was also a time of bonding for Field and me as we drove the van from Nairobi back to the Kinangop with her coffin for her burial next to the original pioneers, her grandparents. Two years later I was Field’s best man when he married Gillian Hale at Dodoma Anglican Cathedral.

Back to search results