Page 34 - J G Book

The Champion of Utuku
“There was a creamery – just a small outfit at Sandon Block managed by a chap
named Thomas. He got to hear that Harold and I could play draughts, so he invited us
back to his bach for a game, at the same time warning us that as he was the Champion
of Utuku, we would have to be prepared to take a beating in good part.
We couldn’t get down to his bach quick enough to have a go at him.
He took me on first, again hinting that I was up against something big.
I cleaned him up with nearly half my men still on the board, so then he played two
games with Harold with the same result.
The atmosphere in the room was then was “sooner we went home the sooner he
would like it”
And we were never invited back again.” (John Kenyon’s reminiscences)

Utuku would have been a pretty good distance on horseback from Waipuru Rd. for a
game of draughts, even to challenge the local champion!

Shortly after that John Wilson Kenyon left Sandon Block farm and went to work as a
shepherd, not far away, at the 3,500 acre Braemore Station.

Three years on the steep, cold and windy hills of the Sandon Block farm must have
been enough for James George, and by 1912 he had decided to return to dairying.

The next record we have of James George is an advertisement for sale of a high
quality farm in the Waikato, at Newstead, in 1917 – and in keeping with his usual
dairy farming style, a note that the top class herd had been culled for the last five
years.

30 graemekenyon@hotmail.com 4/11/16