Noel Johnstone: A man with ‘imaginative creativity’
Noel Johnstone was not a natural politician. Reserved by nature, with a social conservatism reflective of his deep Catholic faith, his outward demeanour suggested the stoicism of the New Zealand rural male.
Politically, he was not of the party so frequently associated with the farmer. He was a child of the depression, born the same year that his father heard Major C.H. Douglas speak and was won over to the economic philosophy of social credit, believing it to be an answer to the inequities of the world.
Forty-seven years later Noel stood for father's party in the Waikato electorate, taking on National's Simon Upton, another first-time candidate.
Noel was committed to the task. He began his year of campaigning with a full head of black hair; by its end he was so exhausted his hair had turned white.
He got up in the morning, milked the cows, campaigned, came home, milked them again then went out in the evening to do more campaigning, often driving from his Cambridge farm as far afield as Raglan. A steady diet of coffee and No Doz caffeine pills saw him through this unforgiving regime, a sacrifice of time, energy and health, made for the sake of principle.
Noel placed second, reducing the National Party majority by almost 1000, no mean achievement in an era when all elections were presumed to be two-horse races, with third parties at best ‘also rans’.
In a life span that stretched into his 90th year, the 1981 election was Noel Johnstone's most public act.
A private man, not given to demonstrative actions or outbursts, he was nevertheless a successful and innovative farmer whose creativity expressed itself in practical solutions to practical problems. A devout Catholic who loved his family deeply, the greatest tragedy of his life was the loss of his daughter Hilary. A student of history, sensitive to injustice both home and abroad, he never stopped thinking about the future, demonstrating a capacity to evolve in his reasoning and empathy for others until the very end of his days.
Noel Johnstone was born July 12 1934 at the Cambridge Maternity Hospital, the first of the three children of William (Bill) Noel Johnstone and Sylvia Johnstone (nee Ayres).
It was a well established farming family. Bill and Sylvia were both raised on Waharoa farms and Bill had purchased a farm in Fencourt, Cambridge, initially stocked by cows his father had given him, in the late 1920s. Noel was to live all but just over two years of his life on this farm.
The Johnstones did not miss a Sunday mass if they could help it. On occasion a horse was required to jump start the Vauxhall when the battery had run flat, an imperfect technique. Noel's devotion to Catholicism rivaled that of his mother, who had converted to the faith to marry Bill. Noel was a solitary child who spent long hours in his room, making things, reading and listening to the radio. At a very young age he constructed a crystal radio set, using it to surreptitiously tune to adult shows which he was forbidden to listen to, sharing the secret - and the practice - with at least one sister, drilling a hole for a wire between their respective bedrooms and making an additional set of headphones.
Noel's interest in music was fostered through listening to a Saturday night chart show. He had a particular enthusiasm for the cast recording of the Broadway show Li’l Abner, an adaptation of the popular comic of which he was an equal fan. Glenn Miller and later Glen Campbell were other favourites. In his adult life he never lost his early love of the radio, embracing the transistor in the cowshed and elsewhere. His first car, for which he had saved with dedicated purpose, had a valve radio, an addition that made him very popular at army camp.
Noel's formal education began at Goodwood School Fencourt, which had the advantage of proximity.
Bill would take him down to the rear of the farm on horseback and lift him over a fence. Aged ten he began attending the St. Peter's Catholic convent in Cambridge, initially riding a horse and later biking the 9km distance. State school buses would not accommodate Catholic school children in the mid-1940s.
Aged 13, exploring a presumed vocation, Noel went to Christchurch to attend the Holy Cross Seminary, a Jesuit boarding school designed to train priests. After two years - 1948-1949 - and having been declared “more suited for marriage and family” - he returned home, seeing out the balance of his secondary education at Marist Catholic Boys’ College in Hamilton.
On his final day at Marist, as he walked out the gate for the last time, Noel took the opportunity to hurl some abuse at a Brother whom he particularly disliked. The teacher gave chase, necessitating Noel continue the tirade from a safer distance. It was an episode out of character, one that hinted at the boy's ambiguous attitude to authority. Long a student of political dictatorships in his private study and sensitive to injustice by virtue of exposure to the social credit philosophy, Noel was not above some justified rebellion of his own.
The army was certainly no place for such impulses. Compulsory military service saw Noel do his duty at Waiouru, travelling from Fencourt in his first car, a Volkswagen beetle, quite a feat considering the distance and primitive roads in the early 1950s.
The experience also afforded some time in another vehicle that must have intrigued the mechanically minded young man: a Sherman tank.
Bill and Noel were both forwardthinking farmers, intellectually equipped to deal with changing times and technology and as progressive in their practices as their politics. When others were sending cowshed effluent into the closest waterway they devised a method of returning the waste to the land. Electric fences were embraced as soon as they were available, as was solar water heating for the cowshed. The herd was converted from Jersey to Friesian, a shift that anticipated future needs of milk processing.
Noel met Claudine Dorothy Andrews, a court stenographer working in Hamilton at the time, at a dance in the city in the late 1950s. They were married August 26 1961 at St Anthony's Catholic Church, Huntly.
Noel and Claudine were to have four children: Andrew in 1962, Hilary 10 months later and twin daughters Maria and Louise in 1967.
Hilary was born with spina bifida and required specialist care and multiple surgical interventions in her first years. Noel and Claudine met the challenge with great patience and love.
When she was nine years old, out of an understandable and admirable desire to live a more normal life, Hilary asked to be allowed to use the bus to travel to school. On the first day of this experiment, the bus driver, believing her to be clear of the vehicle, accidentally ran her over. She died instantly.
In the manner of his generation, Noel put on a stoic facade. Privately, he wept. Never getting over Hilary's loss, for the next 51 years he visited her grave once a week, without fail.
For Noel's son Andrew his father's most interesting trait was his “imaginative creativity”.
The boy who constructed the crystal radio set became the young man who built a speed boat in his bedroom then the proactive worker of the land who created all farm infrastructure himself, his engineering and welding skills entirely self taught.
Filmmaker Costa Botes, whose 2022 documentary feature When the Cows Come Home was shot mostly on the Johnstone farm, describes Noel as “an interesting, complicated man”, adding, "like some books, you certainly couldn't judge Noel from simply reading the cover".
If Noel’s faith was firmly held, it sat next to a comprehensive understanding of and belief in science and physics, resisted too literal or fundamentalist interpretations of scripture and rejected the type of social prejudices associated with reactionary politics or religion. At age 89 he was, according to Andrew, “still capable of profound change”.
Enigmatic on the surface, “at his core was an indisputable dedication to the cause of decency and integrity”.
He gave generously to numerous charities, consistently expressed concern for those on the margins - particularly the immigrant community, to whom he donated anonymously - his compassion for others expressed nowhere so clearly than at home, where he supported his children consistently and without question.
In retirement Noel took to trapping feral cats on the farm, de-sexing them, then releasing them back where he found them. Thereafter, he fed these animals every day, paying special attention to two - Spot and Maisey - who had taken up residence in the cowshed. As he lay on his hospice bed any mention of cats would bring a smile to his face.
Noel Johnstone died October 4, 2023, on the farm where he had spent his life. He is survived by Claudine, his wife of 62 years, children Andrew, Maria and Louise, their respective partners, six grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren.