My Grandfather Edwin Hart, Ted as he was known, was a dour gentleman whose passion was fishing for snapper and for sharks.

He built a heavy clinker dinghy of kauri, about 5 metres in length, which was powered by an ancient and unreliable 'Seagull' 2 HP outboard motor.

Every summer until his last, he would bait a shark set-line with half a stingray, 100 metres off shore. This had a chain trace with a hand forged hook of about 20 cm, and where the trace was attached to the heavy rope main line, a 4 gallon kerosene tin served as a float. Ted would spend hours of every day for weeks sitting on the seat above the path, sucking on a foul smelling pipe, watching the float with studied concentration. When the float submerged violently, he would carefully tap the ash out of his pipe, and launch his dinghy.

The process he used to do this was unique on the island. A heavy steel cable ran from a 'deadman' dug into the sea floor in the bay in front of the bach, up to a sturdy pohutukawa above the path, and was secured to the tree. A gantry was suspended from the cable, the dinghy was slung under the gantry, and one climbed into the dinghy from an elevated platform, and lowered the dinghy into the tide.

He would calmly row out to the setline, attach the trace section to a bollard on the bow, and detach the main line. Settling back on the stern seat, he would calmly light his pipe, and allow the shark to tow him around the harbour until it drowned. He would then row the dinghy (and shark) back to the bay in front of Eric's boatshed. Here a tripod was set up, and the shark was hauled up for weighing.

Inevitably, a reporter and photographer from the Auckland Star would arrive the next morning and Ted's latest catch would be featured in that newspaper. Then the shark would be towed out to sea, and disposed of. I have no idea why he caught sharks. It's perhaps no different to the fishers who target marlin today. Back in our bay, the dinghy would be hauled up by a bow and stern rope to the gantry and a willing volunteer would operate the manual winch on the elevated platform and slowly haul the dinghy back to its resting place

Ted had been a goldminer in Karangahake (where my mother Glad was born) and always kept a few sticks of gelignite in the small leanto next to the bach. My earliest memory of the gelignite being used was to blow a hole in a lava cap for a long drop for my uncle Jack, whose bach was adjacent to Ted's.  After a huge explosion, Jack exclaimed in horror ... "Christ! Look at the hole. You can't see the bottom of it, it's so deep!". "Ah yes", muttered Ted, "but you'll never fill it!". He was right!