Retired Ashburton farmer Ken Cookson has an adventurous life to look back on after turning 100.
Wife Rhonda believes life in the outdoors has helped her husband keep good health into his old age, while Ken himself says he has been lucky and Rhonda looks after him well.
‘‘I didn’t think I would ever do that (live to 100),’’ Ken said.
‘‘I’m very lucky to have a good wife and a good home.’’
In his younger years, Ken enjoyed many South Island adventures with his late older brother Allan.
They included an ascent of Mt Troup in the vast and largely untouched Fiordland about 1952, and many hunting trips in remote parts of the Canterbury high country in the 1950s and 1960s.
He was a keen fisherman, a life member and patron of the Ashburton smallbore rifle club, Mid Canterbury junior tennis and intermediate golf champion, representative rugby player, and table tennis player.
Today Ken and Rhonda live in the house, on Aitken St, built by Ken’s parents in 1912.
Ken grew up in the architecturally designed villa, attended Ashburton Borough School and Ashburton High School, before working for Pyne Gould Guinness as a stock clerk.
In 1944 he was called up for World War 2 military service.
The war was soon to end, so it was after only a short stint with the Southern District School of Instruction at Burnham, he returned to PGG, where he worked as a stock agent in Mayfield and Ashburton.
While he enjoyed his life as a stock agent, he dreamed of having his own farm.
He achieved this goal when he was 32, buying a rough block of dryland at Westerfield. He introduced border dyke irrigation and transformed it into a productive mixed farm.
He farmed there until he was 85.
Retiring into Ashburton, he retained his interest in the outdoors, enjoying many trips to the beech forest at Staveley, and working away in his sizeable vegetable garden.
Ken hit the centenarian milestone on November 26, celebrating with family and friends.
