Join us on the 1st of each month as we celebrate the remarkable individuals who make our communities special. Today we are launching our new series, profiling local heroes whose contributions, stories, and passions shape the heart and soul of our towns. We begin with Oturehua's Ken Gillespie, a man of many hats and talents.

Oturehua farmer Ken Gillespie is your Type-A overachiever – rural style, a man who gets things done.

Calls come in from around the district most days. 

They all know Ken’s unlikely to ever say, ‘no’. 

“You do what you can to help,” says the man who’s on multiple community committees and trusts across the Ida Valley and beyond.

To Ken, 72, who’s regularly helped local ladies serve homemade soup, pea pie and ‘pud, to 250 hungry South Island bonspiel curlers all in an hour, it’s no big deal. 

“You can do 150 with your hands tied behind your back,” he assures.

Ken and the blokes from Maniototo Lions are old hands, having catered for many local weddings. 

They have it down pat: “You need around 350gms of meat each for country folk and around 300gms for the ones from town,” he says.

Ken, who is a life member of New Zealand Curling and Maniototo Curling International, has the Idaburn Dam on his family’s 1500ha farm, which is now mostly sold, some leased to a nephew. 

Ken’s frequently down on the ice, with others, ensuring it’s suitable for curling.

He also spent many days assisting Irv McKnight, founder of the hugely popular Brass Monkey Motorcycle Rally which ran for 40 years on Ken’s farm.

Ken down on the farm in Oturehua. PHOTO: Supplied

Most weeknights he has a committee meeting or two, or he’s off around the lower South Island helping judge merino shearing competitions.

Water’s pretty important in the dry arid farmlands of the Maniototo - Ken should know after sitting on the Hawkdun Idaburn Irrigation Company for 40 years, 37 as chairman, and served on the Otago Water Resources Group for another 40, and the Manuherekia Catchment Group. 

He’s heavily involved in the Oturehua Winter Sports Club, chairs the Oturehua Hall committee and has been an elder of the local Presbyterian Church for 35-plus years.

To Ken, it’s no big deal being this busy. 

“Uh, you get tied up in things,” he says.

As a trustee of the Otago Central Rail Trail Trust and right in the thick of every community event, Ken’s helped put Oturehua on the map, particularly passionate about local history and showing off the neighbouring Hayes Engineering Works.

A life member of the Maniototo Lions Club, he’s helped cater for many Cavalcades and when the club ran its duathlon, it was Ken up the rear sneaking rides in his truck to the ‘tail end Charlies’.

When someone dies in Ida Valley Ken, the local sexton, and his mates dig the grave in the notoriously tough clay soil of the Blackstone Hill Cemetery. 

“I reckon those early settlers had the last laugh putting the cemetery there,” he grins. 

“It’s hard as the hobs of hell.”

He chaired the Oturehua School Board so when the Ministry of Education changed school terms from three to four it was Ken who went in to bat in a district where the coldest winter temperature clocked in at -21 degrees Celsius in 1991. 

“I asked them to pay for the extra heating. A holiday in mid-July is for the birds.”

Born in 1951, Maniototo farm life is all he’s known, and the cold doesn’t bother him. 

“You just put another layer on.”

He remembers his grandmother working the butter churn, Ken separating the milk and cream as a kid.

Curling tournaments meant a day off school to drag sledges carrying a hot water urn and the ‘secret coffee brew’, cheese and biscuits over the ice to the curlers. 

Ken’s skated on the farm ponds since he was four and curled since he was 21.

Ice is to be respected, he says. But, once he took the ‘never say no’ a bit too far. 

“We were shifting snow, grading the rinks for curling and I took my tractor down rather than the wee community tractor. I told the boys I wasn’t totally comfortable with it and sure enough the back wheels went through the ice.” 

Ken in action during his team's NZ Masters Curling win. PHOTO: Supplied

Ken plunged shin-deep into the icy water. 

“Boy, was that cold!” 

They needed a chainsaw to free the tractor. 

Rugby was big, Ken playing for Maniototo Juniors, and at Carisbrook while at Otago Boys.

After a stint back on the farm from 1968, Ken did a US farmworker exchange to Kansas for 18 months, aged 19, posted to 11 properties in 12 months.

Sheep sales were also prominent in the valley, resulting in a big community day, and night out at the Oturehua Pub.

John Steel got a bit excited once and rode his horse into the pub.

The Antarctic Angels bikie gang liked the Ida Valley Pub too, holding the publicans to ransom one night in the late 1960s. 

Unsurprisingly, the school PTA wasn’t keen when Ken, Irv, and John Weir sought its support to stage the first Brass Monkey Motorcycle Rally as a fundraiser. 

“They said, ‘Bikies?! Hell, no!’ So Irv took it to the Winter Sports Club. We had a yarn and we said, “We can handle that, I reckon.” 

And they did. 

Ken was awarded a Central Otago community service award in 2011 and New Zealander of the Year ‘Local Hero’ Award in 2020, but it’s his team’s two NZ Masters Curling golds and a silver that are “pretty special”. 

He’s also won bronze with the Naseby team at the NZ Senior Men’s Tournament.

Every Sunday from October until April Ken cranks up the Pelton wheel at Hayes Engineering to fascinate the tourists and for nearly seven years he’s run tours, taking mostly Rail Trail visitors to Cambrian and St Bathans. 

“I do a couple of hundred a year. I meet a lot of good people and I love the reaction when they get to Bob Berry’s gardens.”

Ken’s renowned locally for his flat whites too.

As if it’s not time to kick back, Ken’s now helping with the daily mail run – 150km delivering papers, bread and milk too.

“I thought I’d retired a few years ago, but too many people found out,” he grins. 

“You do what you can to help.”