The Greening of Simon Hall

When hunting, rafting and rallying lost their thrill, an Auckland high-flyer turned his attention to restoring and preserving his piece of wilderness.

Words: Sue Hoffart  Photographs: Mark Smith

Dope growers and deer poachers may be among the few who truly appreciate Simon Hall’s remote forest block. The Auckland businessman points to indisputable evidence on a colossal steel entrance gate that guards his 11,300ha chunk of central North Island. The pock marks were made by an assortment of rogues who have tried to shoot their way on to his land. Simon says while bona fide hunters have long recognized the charms of Pohokura, most other people still view the property as a large, hostile piece of nothing in the middle of nowhere. Access is difficult, the weather is frequently foul and the nearest shop is a full-throttle 75-minute drive away.

Few buyers were interested when it landed on the market seven years ago and Simon paid what he describes as a rock-bottom six-figure price. Since then he has come to value the land in an entirely new way. These days, the keen hunter calls himself a conservationist.The Forest Life Force Restoration Trust, which he funds, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to preserve endangered birds and plants. Last year, staff from his Tasti food-manufacturing company became involved in conservation projects and their 44-year-old boss completed a two-day kiwi egg handling course at the hatchery in Rotorua. Most recently he started work on an ambitious project that will take 4000ha of his land and convert it from pine plantation back to native forest.

In Auckland, the Tasti CEO employs 220 people to manufacture about 10 million muesli bars a week, exporting $30 million worth of them across the Tasman each year. So Simon spends weekdays inside an office, in meetings, on the end of a phone. By contrast, Pohokura exists well beyond cellphone range in the southern Whirinaki forest. Its wild beauty ranges over rugged terrain liberally smothered in bush and virgin native beech forest. Red deer sometimes graze in the open, just beyond the trout-stocked Pukahunui river.

Initially, the property was to be a sort of giant outdoor playground with walking tracks, rafting on the river, a couple of rally cars for whooping it up with friends and plenty of hard drinking and hairy hunting stories after the sun dipped behind the hills – the perfect antidote to city life. Simon still has all the toys and still likes to play music late and loud without fear of bothering the neighbours. Nor has he stopped pouring an evil evening cocktail-cum-truth-serum called the Pohokura Painkiller whose secret ingredient is rumoured to be a single shot of Jet A1 aviation fuel. But he now finds himself hunting less and seeing more, eager to spot a pair of rare blue ducks or waxing lyrical about an unspectacular-looking plant called pittosporum turneri. "It is more endangered than the kakapo," he says of the twiggy shrub. "We’ve got some pretty rare and threatened species here.

"In general people would rather have a nice holiday home by the sea. For me, I get more enjoyment out of having this wilderness property. I really enjoy the involvement with the ecological stuff … going for extensive walks, just enjoying and assessing the different species … discovering, exploring, studying and learning. There are not many privately owned native forests of this calibre. This is extremely rare and unique. And our first job is to preserve what’s here." After all, he has daughters Alana, 10, Corina, eight, and Sabrina, three, to consider.  Simon and wife Annemarie have been bringing their children to Pohokura since Alana was a toddler and the only available accommodation was a tumbledown plywood shack called Clive’s Hut. Nowadays the Hall family and a procession of friends, contractors and hunters stay in an infinitely more comfortable, purpose-built lodge. The building, adjacent manager’s cottage and storage sheds sit above the river, encircled by hills and close to an odd conical peak named after one of Madonna’s infamously pointy mammaries.

Simon likes the idea that his citified daughters will grow up with some of their roots in the wild. Alana has been pig hunting with him and can hike for hours and name most of the surrounding vegetation. Corina is already a crack shot on the target range. Simon’s own Auckland childhood was supplemented with trips to a family farm in the Bay of Plenty where he and two brothers messed about with motorbikes and rifles, farm machinery and a swampy bit of paddock that was fenced off to preserve native bush.

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