So many classic New Zealand sporting stories start this way.
A father builds his son a set of rugby posts. Twin sisters grow up on the side of a netball court and naturally want to do what Mum does. The wide-eyed youngster watching boats sail past Ravensbourne grows up to win the America’s Cup.
In Edwin Harley’s case, it was sort of preordained that he was going to be a curler.
He grew up in the Central Otago heartland - and literally had a dam in his back yard.
"Dad and I looked after the curling dam at Cambrian," Harley said.
"We had to make sure the water was in it by March, because it started freezing in April. If you didn’t put the water in soon enough, the ground would still be dry underneath, and you’d get bubbles in the ice. So we always had the water in early.
"Being on our property, I always got the first chance to test the ice, and I’d be ready to go as soon as we had enough ice. You’d bore a hole with a brace and bit, put a wire down with a wee hook and pull it out and see how much ice you had.
"I’d ring up Dad’s brother and say, ‘you better get a team together and come over this afternoon’. And everyone would just drop tools and come for a curl to test the ice."
And so it began.
Harley has done it all in his beloved sport over 70 years, and his name is synonymous with Dunedin curling.
He helped revive a club, played for and coached and managed New Zealand teams all around the world, organised the first major world tournament to be played in Dunedin, and spent 17 years on the local ice sports committee, during which time he literally picked up the tools himself and helped build a Dunedin Ice Stadium venue that is second to none in this part of the world.
At 83, Harley has sent his last stone down the ice, bringing an end to what is surely the longest stretch of competitive curling (or any sport, possibly) in New Zealand.
He remembers vividly the day it all began.
"I was home for the August holidays from St Kevin’s in 1952, and I was watching a friendly game at the St Bathans dam.
"That night, my father said, ‘You’re playing for me tomorrow.’ He didn’t ask me to play - he told me."
It was a Jennings Cup match, the Alpine club against Becks, Harley recalled.
Those two clubs along with Lauder, Dunstan Creek, Cambrian and "Upper Man" (Manuherikia) competed for the challenge-style cup for as long as the ice was smooth and deep.
"If you won it, you had to defend it within 48 hours, depending on the weather.
"So I played. It was a Monday. We happened to win it, and I was put in the team again two days later. Then I went back to school."
Winters in that part of the world were absolutely brutal in the 1940s and 1950s, Harley recalled.
The local schools would close for seven or eight weeks as everything was completely frozen.
So, hanging out on iced-over dams, skating or curling, was just the norm for Central youngsters, and it helped that father Jack and uncle Scobie were handy with the stones.
Harley loved the competitive element of the sport. He played rugby and cricket, like all the boys, but there was something about curling that got in the blood.
It was a community thing, too. Farmers would feed their stock in the mornings and curl in the afternoons, right through winter, and many a yarn was shared over a beer or a dram.
Harley left school at 15 as his father fell ill, so he went home to be a third generation farmer, before moving to Matakanui in 1975.
He played for the Alpine club for 37 years before he and his wife moved to Mosgiel in 1988 when Harley had a farm accident, but he still made sure he made regular trips back to the curling rinks of wintry Central.
It might have been a social sport for many, but curling soon became Harley’s outlet for his competitive nature and leadership skills.
"It happened all of a sudden, really.
"I went to the bonspiel in Oturehua - the two-day one, the national bonspiel - and I was third to a couple of older fellows.
"One of them, in particular, liked his drink. He was the skip.
"The first day was OK, but this fellow arrived at the ice a bit under the weather on the second day. And by about the eighth end, he’d fallen over three times, so we had to take him off the ice and sat him up on the bank.
"I took over skipping, and I’ve virtually skipped ever since."
The problem for any curler wanting to progress in the sport was that no official New Zealand team yet existed.
The breakthrough came when the national body forged a strong link with world curling officials and started generating some excitement around the possibility of having a national team.
Harley remembers the first national trial at Naseby in 1991 and the "green as grass" Otago curlers having to try the newfangled sliding game that is now standard in the sport.
He was chosen to play third in the first official New Zealand team, and won bronze at the inaugural Pacific championships in Japan.
Then the big kahuna of world curling coaching came to give the Kiwis some tips in 1992, the idea being they would then go and coach up more coaches to spread the word.
"When he was about to leave, he said, ‘You could be the New Zealand coach.’ I said, could I? He gave me this big stack of books and said, ‘You are now officially the New Zealand coach."’
Harley was player-coach of the New Zealand team that won its first international game in 1993, beating Japan in Adelaide.
He was coach-manager when the Kiwis won the Pacific tournament in 1998 and made their debut at the world championships in St John’s, in Canada, a year later.
All up, he made five trips to Japan, four to Canada, two to Korea, two to Australia and, finally, one to Switzerland.
The irony, of course, was he did not have a proper rink in his adopted city on which to play his sport.
Many have fond memories of the old Big Chill facility in Kaikorai Valley Rd, but it was no good for competitive curling. Harley and cronies could do a little practice there but had to head back up Central to play.
Nevertheless, it was decided the city needed to have a club, and in 1990 Harley and fellow ex-Central identity Wilson Mawhinney revived the Dunedin Curling Club - which was rather dusty, having been in recess since 1877.
The Dunedin curlers would head to bonspiels in Naseby, Oturehua and the Styx, and a Dunedin Country team actually won the New Zealand bonspiel in 2001.
The Big Chill shut in 1992, so the next major challenge was bringing the ice back to Dunedin.
Harley and great mate Neil Gamble were the drivers of a project to raise money for a rink. And, when the old Dunedin Stadium in Victoria Rd was usurped by the Edgar Centre, the ice sports group was offered the "Freezerdome".
"But we needed a hell of a lot of money. I spent a lot of time at the council and different groups around Dunedin trying to get some funding.
"The end product cost over $3 million, and a lot of work was done by volunteers."
Harley himself donned overalls and boots and helped install many of the pipes under the ice as first the skating rink then the curling rink was opened.
"It’s the only place like it in the southern hemisphere.
"Some wanted smaller ice but we needed to do it properly and go for the international size. I won that argument in the finish."
It meant curlers could play year-round, massively important as the opportunities for outdoor curling dried up as many parts of Central Otago had more temperate winters now.
Indoors or outdoors, the sport never lost its appeal to Harley.
"It’s been great as far as seeing the world. That’s No 1. I would never have been to the places around the world that I have if it hadn’t been for curling.
"I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. And I’ve just met some wonderful people, right from day one.
"You meet great people at curling all the time. The lot of them. Hundreds of people, and you wouldn’t find better."
He took part in a competitive curling match in each of the 70 years since his dad strong-armed him into a team.
The stones are put away now, but the memories will never fade.
"I do miss it, when I’m in there watching them curl. But I’m not a spring chicken any more."
