A festive season cheers from Peter Carr.
When Peter and Robyn Carr moved to Cambridge it was a matter of convenience.
By 2005 they had grown tired of the bustle of Auckland and decided it was time to move south to be closer to their three married daughters in Wellington.
They managed to knock off 142km of the 640 km distance between the North Island’s biggest centres – and settled in Cambridge.
Peter Carr recalls the town was a consistently pleasant stop when heading south… but in truth, all they knew about it was that it had the Cambridge Superloo.
“We found a real estate agent – and the rest is history,” he recalled.
Auckland’s loss was Cambridge’s gain – fast forward to 2024 and Peter Carr is a life member of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, served as chair of New Zealand Fieldays Society from 2016 to 2019, received the Waipā Networks Award for services to business in 2013, served as president of the Retirement Villages Residents of New Zealand from 2020 to 2022 – and his views appear fortnightly in his “Age of Reason” column in the Cambridge News.
And, as of New Year’ Day, he is also a Queen’s Service Medal holder.
“Extremely humbled,” Carr said of receiving the award.
“And you know there is almost always a partner who get rather left behind in all of this – and in my case I have enjoyed total support from Robyn.”
More than that actually – when the couple decided it was time to downsize from their initial Cambridge home, it was Robyn who asked “why should we move twice?”
“Robyn pointed out there was a new retirement village at the end of the street – there were 10 homes there, today there are 200.
Thirteen years ago this week they moved not to a smaller home in the suburbs, but to Lauriston Park – “and we’ve never regretted it”.
It was there in 2019 that Peter Carr invited me to speak to the residents at Lauriston about what we were doing at the Cambridge News – and later I asked “can you write?”
Enter The Age of Reason, a right wing view of issues – although one which is influenced by having a vocal arch critic – one of those three daughters.
That’s Peter Carr, Justice of the Peace, a past Lions District Governor, Rotarian, a member of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron from 1981 to 2007 who chaired the race committee and was course marshal during the 2000 and 2003 America’s Cup, a life member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport – and now, QSM.
Cambridge Public Toilets and Super Loo.
