David Salter came to North Otago for what he thought could be a six-month stint.
This week, he retires from the law firm where he has worked for the past 45 years, and where he was made a partner in 1984. The firm’s associates, Louise Laming and Nicky Elliot are being admitted as partners.
Mr Salter, 73, was philosophical about retirement: "you’ve just got to call it quits", he said.
"There’s so many other things I want to do. Life goes on," he said.
But he would miss the people and any nervousness around retirement was about the loss of contact.
Brought up in Dunedin, it was an AFS scholarship to the United States during his last year of secondary school that inadvertently planted the seed of law in his mind.
It was to prove a pivotal experience, arriving in Minnesota in the middle of winter, a thick layer of snow on the ground for about seven months, and discovering that most Americans knew "nothing about anything beyond their little world".
"They thought New Zealand was near Greenland. Those that knew where it was thought it was connected to Australia by the Sydney Harbour Bridge," he recalled.
The neighbour was the local attorney and Mr Salter became friends with him. His work seemed interesting, although law was something Mr Salter had never previously considered.
He had been "pigeon-holed" into studying maths, physics and chemistry — all sciences, which he admitted he was "useless" at. The prospect of studying science at university was not going to work so, returning to Dunedin, he completed degrees in arts and law.
It was during his studies that he met his future wife, Georgina Hapuku, better known to netball aficionados as Georgie Salter, colossus of the sport, both as a player and a coach.
The couple met on a blind date, set up by Mrs Salter’s friends; she was at teachers college in Dunedin and, back then, a "quiet little girl". The couple were married at 20.
"I was always Georgie’s husband and I was happy with that, just to hang on to her coat-tails really."
After the 1975 world championships in Auckland, where Mrs Salter was a key member of the New Zealand side which finished third, and having just finished his studies, the couple did their OE for two years, based in London.
They returned home when Mrs Salter was expecting their eldest daughter Kara. Mr Salter still had to do his professional legal studies course in Dunedin and he discovered he could not get a job in the city.
He got a call from then Oamaru-based lawyer Dave Pasley to say there was a vacancy at the firm now known as Berry and Co where Alec Neill, later to become an MP, was a partner.
On his very first day, Mr Salter was taken by Mr Neill to the courthouse and was "just thrown into it", despite not even having his practising certificate.
"It didn’t worry anybody in those days."
That same day, he crossed the street to a bookshop to order his weekly copy of the Listener magazine. As he gave the woman behind the counter his name, she looked at him and said "so you’re the new lawyer in town".
That familiarity was a far cry from the two years spent living in London but, in a way, that was what was good about the North Otago community — "everybody does know each other and looks after each other".
In the early days, Mr Salter was doing criminal law and then he got interested in family law, an area that he specialised in. When Judge Ross wrote the new Family Proceedings Act and pioneered family group conferences, Mr Salter developed a practice along the new lines.
He was later Oamaru’s senior court-appointed Lawyer for Child while also maintaining a commercial practice.
Berry and Co — which also has offices in Queenstown and Invercargill — was larger than just Oamaru, or North Otago, although the rural base of the firm was still the "heart and soul" of the practice, he said.
The firm’s namesake, George Berry, who retired from law in 2015, was an incredibly innovative lawyer, involved in the likes of the first golf course development in New Zealand with Millbrook, and the late Bob Robertson’s Infinity Group. As a team, the Berry and Co crew were all involved in that work, he said.
Asked what made a good lawyer, Mr Salter said compassion was required. It was about being empathetic to the client’s problem and then analytical around how to approach and resolve it.
During all his years spent in Family Court, which was usually a very difficult time for clients, there were seldom thank-yous offered, not that they were expected.
It was about getting them through something that had been very difficult. With more mundane conveyancing work came more gratitude expressed, even though the work was not as challenging.
Asked how he coped with often stressful situations, Mr Salter said he was always good at not letting it get to him.
He tended to keep an eye on the goal.
One of the pleasures of practice was the summer programmes where law students got a feel for what a law office was all about. Various young law practitioners had spent time at the firm and moved on and it had been rewarding watching their development.
It was a challenge to keep young lawyers in Oamaru and it was so good to have some in their midst. Working in an office like Oamaru provided a "taste of everything" — which was why he stayed and eventually became a jack-of-all-trades.
He never had a desire to be a big city lawyer, that role taken by his brother Jonathan, who followed him into law and became a partner at Simpson Grierson in Wellington. Instead, he enjoyed the rural lifestyle afforded on a 20ha property where he practised "very gentle farming", running cattle.
Mr Salter also had strong involvement in the community, serving on numerous community and charitable organisations, including chairman of the board of trustees at Waitaki Girls’ High School for seven years and as a ministerial appointment on the Otago Polytechnic Council.
But following the death of his wife from cancer in 2018 and then his son-in-law Cam Schultz, in an accident just over a year later, he had backed away from that involvement.
"I’ll be looking for things now — maybe," he said.
It was the support of the community, including clients he had acted for, which had made such a difficult time more bearable, he said.
His youngest daughter Rihi also studied law, something which came as a surprise — and a delight — to her father, and joined Berry and Co — "she was my early retirement plan".
But fate intervened with the death of her husband and she and the couple’s two young sons are now living in Auckland where she is studying a full-time Māori immersion course, while also still playing and coaching netball. Her mother had always planned to do such a course but ran out of time, Mr Salter said.
Māori culture was something Mr Salter had embraced since meeting his future wife who was of Ngāti Kahungunu, Te Āti Haunui a Pāpārangi and Tuhoe.
Born in Raetihi, she was raised by her grandparents. When she was a young girl, her grandfather moved the whanau south to Wyndham to begin a shearing gang.
The couple married at the Ōtākou Marae in 1972, the first wedding at the chapel there in about 40 years, he said.
While Georgie was having chemotherapy treatment, the couple returned to the marae. The couple’s middle daughter, Arapera, did her Māori induction there while completing her medical degree.
Arapera now lives in Auckland while Kara and her family are back in North Otago. Mr Salter has seven grandchildren, including four in Auckland, so more travel north was likely during retirement.
He was proud of his daughters, saying they had inherited their mother’s resilience, along with her flair and drive.
There was one important item on his bucket list; the year after his wife died, he had booked tickets for Rihi and her family to travel to Ireland which sadly never eventuated.
His grandfather had come from Cork and he had been there with Georgie, Kara and Arapera but never Rihi — "she keeps reminding me," he said, laughing.
Meanwhile, he would be content to enjoy embracing retirement in North Otago amid its "wonderful, supportive community".
"There’s something about the air and the light of North Otago, something about the limestone and the clear blue sky".
