60 | T HE B A R OSSA MAG
An hour
with Guy
WORDS BY ALICIA LÜDI-SCHUTZ
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETE THORNTON
Guy Ewing is what you might describe as an open book,
but not your standard, bound bundle of pages variety.
No, Guy is like one of those talking books that he listens to
while cycling around the Valley at the crack of dawn. The ones
where you plug in the earphones and just listen to the story
unfold.
Spend an hour with Guy, and that’s exactly what happens.
You discover this well-known Nuriootpa pharmacist was born
in Hokitika on the southern island of New Zealand, surrounded
by lakes and rivers. It’s here he learned to fly-fish and play golf
, taught by his father, a slaughterman who was tough as an ox
with a work ethic to match.
Guy worked beside him, starting out when he was barely
seven years of age.
“I salted the hides and painted the numbers on them… I can still
smell crystal violet. Worst thing was getting rock salt down your
boots, it would cut your feet and sting like hell!” he says, his
Kiwi accent becoming more noticeable.
The family moved to the North Island after his father
got a job at Wanganui, managing a big abattoir.
From about 14 years of age, Guy would spend every school
holidays working at the abattoir and then moved into the
by-products section whilst studying at Pharmacy School.
“I wasn’t squeamish, you couldn’t be. It was really good money.
It was like working vintage all the way through.”
Guy was 15 when he decided on his career path.
“It looked like a good game. Nice and clean too. I was interested
in science and medicine and you didn’t have to put your fingers
up anywhere that would gross you out!”
He enjoyed pharmacy school, a “flash new place” that provided
him with exceptional qualifications.
Yet Guy’s idyllic world would turn upside down just
days after turning 21, when his father suffered a stroke.
“It paralysed him on one side…He lived for about another 30
years with mum looking after him and died when he was 83.
It’s a long time to be sitting in a chair.
“I often say to people it was like dealing with a calculator
where you work out an equation but you never knew where the
decimal point was. It’s a stupid analogy….but he could be talking
complete sense or complete nonsense, it was really hard to tell
the difference sometimes because he didn’t know. It was
a horrible thing.”
Guy talks of the loving bond he shares with his mother whom
he calls “an absolute angel” who he thinks is 86, he’s not game
to ask.
Once Guy was a fully qualified pharmacist he “bolted”
to Australia to “see what would happen.”
“I was mad on cricket and wanted to watch Malcolm Marshall
bowl so I came over to watch the World Series Cricket at
the MCG.