How Well Do We Know People in our Community?

Jane Lenting

Growing up in Christchurch Jane’s early years were rich in experiencing the wide-open spaces of the Canterbury hinterland. “My parents would take us camping in the holidays. I remember the sheep, the mountains, the rivers, and the freedom. It was idyllic.

Between 1961 and 68 we spent three 4-month periods in New Caledonia. My father was a dentist and as there was no dentist in Hienghène, he did pro bono work in the local community. We lived in tents and my schooling continued by correspondence.

Those times engendered my love for remote places, different lifestyles, and cultures.

Back in Christchurch, maths and science were my subjects of choice which led to an Electrical Engineering degree at Canterbury University.

On leaving university I applied to do Volunteer Service Abroad. My post was in Vanua Levu in Fiji, where I taught maths and physics. It was a Catholic Boarding School catering for both boys and girls.  There were few Europeans. The teaching was in English to a New Zealand syllabus.  In the holidays I would walk to see my students who lived in remote rural coastal villages.  It was humbling to see the parents so proud of their children’s progress. 

My first job back in New Zealand was with the Ministry of Works Pipeline Project, working as an electrical engineer in the design of infrastructure for the reticulation of Maui gas. I worked in Wellington, New Plymouth and briefly in other places in the North Island. 

In 1991 we found ourselves in Aberdeen, Scotland.

In 1988 a tragic accident had occurred in the North Sea, where an oil rig had exploded and 167 men were killed. The subsequent Government enquiry was conducted by Lord Cullen and was extraordinarily thorough.

As a result, companies who owned the oil rigs needed to make their offshore facilities safer, both in equipment and culture.

I worked in electrical design for platforms in the very north of the UK sector of the North Sea.   An important part of that was in the various techniques for preventing ignition in a flammable atmosphere.

Sometimes I would visit a platform for a few days. I would be flown by plane to Shetland, then transferred to the platform by helicopter, making several landings on different rigs before getting to my destination. They were extremely safety conscious. On my first helicopter flight the neck of my dry suit didn’t fit snugly, and they would not let me board a helicopter until a replacement had been couriered to Shetland.

We often arrived in the dark. When someone asked me if I had seen the spectacular display of the Northern lights, I had to confess I hadn’t. I’d been too intent on watching my feet on the helideck.

Back in Wellington I worked for BP for 16 years as an engineer then refinery planner before studying viticulture and oenology at Lincoln. 

Now Martinborough is home, but we still escape to remote islands when we can for holidays.

Lyle Griffiths