"The Oldest Pilot," Plains Folk #538 (Copyright Hoy & Isern)

The sky was overcast the evening we drove out to meet Sid Lister at his home near Timaru, in South Canterbury, New Zealand. That was good or bad, depending on how you look at it. If it had been clear, Sid would have taken me flying in his Cessna. Sid Lister, born in 1911, is New Zealand's oldest living pilot.

Sid was licensed to fly an airplane and to operate a steam traction engine in the same year, 1932. I talked with him for quite a while about custom threshing in New Zealand--much like threshing on the North American plains, except that the government set the wages of harvest hands. We also talked about his career as a gorse-cutter, maintaining the hedge-rows so distinctive of the Canterbury landscape with a tractor-mounted rotary trimmer.

But Sid is best known for his exploits as a pilot. One of the best stories has to do with geese--Canada geese, introduced to New Zealand early in this century.

New Zealand has a history of unfortunate animal introductions. Rabbits, red deer, hogs, mountain goats, Australian opossums--all these and others prospered and multiplied in the absence of mammal predators and provoked government campaigns aimed at eradication.

The Canada geese were not much of a problem until World War II, when the shortage of manpower put pest control programs on hold. After the war, people noticed that the geese were cleaning the forage out of their paddocks. They also found the geese hard to eradicate, because they were smart.

It happened that this also was a boom time for agricultural aviation, with lots of experienced pilots adapting used Tiger Moth aircraft for aerial topdressing, spreading superphosphates. Topdressing pilots were not known for longevity. A published history of their craft appends a lengthy "Honor Roll" of pilots who died for the sake of green pastures.

Sid was flying a war-surplus Tiger Moth himself at this time, 1946, when the proprietors of Mesopotamia, a famous sheep station, asked him to help out with the goose problem. The plan was that Sid, in his airplane, would spook the geese from the pasture and then herd them at low altitude toward a waiting line of shooters.

This got to be a regular routine, half pest control and half sport. "They would fly in a 'V' formation," Sid says of the honkers, "and I handled them much the same as dogs driving sheep. I could drive them fifteen or twenty miles to where the shooters were in a bit of level ground, and then I'd circle these geese and come round and round and bring them down within range of the shooters."

Then came the day, though, when "one of these blokes got a little bit trigger-happy, and he didn't leave enough lead on the goose, and I had a cabin full of buckshot." A fabric fuselage offered little protection, and Sid took a couple shot in his leg. Having no radio communication, he made a pass by the shooters, cut the engine, and shouted out, "I'm driving these ruddy geese, not tagging them!"

The flocks were thinned, but by no means eradicated. Some said the geese were merely dispersed to plague other stations. Says Sid, "We made such a good job of herding those Mesopotamian geese that we've got the bloody things all over the high country now."

Anyway, I still sort of wish it had been clear when we drove out to Sid's place.

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