Arthur Brasting, pictured in his store, Arthur's Emporium, was a colourful character who poured his generosity into the Northland community.
Arthur Brasting, pictured in his store, Arthur's Emporium, was a colourful character who poured his generosity into the Northland community.
The eclectic life story of Northland stalwart Arthur Brasting perfectly mimics his wildly colourful craft and knickknack store, Arthur's Emporium.
The 85-year-old died on November 10 about six months after he was first diagnosed with cancer.
Brasting's son, Toby, who runs the emporium, summed his much-loved father up: "He wasloud. He was opinionated, and he had a heart of gold."
Arthur Brasting was a mad-keen fisherman with a sharp sense of humour, according to his family.
While most people know him as the joker with the bellowing voice behind the counter of his beloved Whangārei emporium, little know he opened the country's first burger bar.
Or that he was a qualified pilot, police officer, and chef. Or that he once saved a stranger's life from a taipan, one of Australia's most deadly snakes.
Brasting was born in Mt Albert, Auckland, on October 14, 1936.
His weird and wonderful collection of life experiences started as a child when his family lived on the same road as a brothel in Avondale.
Their home had the only telephone in the street so they'd get American soldiers knocking on their door after a visit down the road asking to use their phone to call a cab.
As a school boy, he and a classmate fell into a fierce rivalry to see who could get the strap the most.
"By 2 o'clock in the afternoon if we hadn't had the strap we did something to deliberately get it," Brasting recounted in a written record of his life.
One school year he was strapped every day.
"Being the fire monitor was always a prize during the winter because the fire monitor burnt the straps and that was always worth another bloody thick ear."
Not only did he excel at provoking the strap but he was also talented at hockey, softball, and shot put – for which he held a record at Avondale College, eventually broken just before 2009.
Arthur Brasting in his element on the sea.
He left school early to pursue a career as a pilot in the Air Force at Taieri in Dunedin. A 17-year-old, Brasting passed the exam but wasn't allowed to fly as he needed School Certificate.
His fervour to fly saw him wrap up a stint as an Air Force radio operator to train privately. His final three weeks were spent working in the stores department.
There they were getting ready for a "great big" Government auction of surplus parts from the Air Force – wooden propellers, Tiger Moth propellers – all graded serviceable, repairable, or unrepairable.
He and a friend switched the serviceable labels to unrepairable and bought all 50 propellers for five shillings each.
Eventually, Brasting qualified as a pilot – an event he had described as a "very important day" in his life, although a few bumps in the runway occurred when he was grounded by local aero clubs – twice.
The first was officially because Brasting and a fellow pilot in a separate plane had been chasing each other around a factory pole.
Brasting suspected the true reason was they had landed on an airstrip on the coast, rather than at a proper aerodrome, so he could have a cup of tea with the captain of the aero club.
Arthur Brasting and friend Geoff Clarke's beloved Tiger Moth plane they picked up for the equivalent of less than NZ$300.
His passion for flight drove him and a friend to purchase a Tiger plane - one of the first practical light aircraft designed – for 140GBP (the equivalent of around 270NZD today).
Brasting used the plane to fly to Muriwai Beach with a mate to collect toheroa and to steer their large bounty clear of the police and the fishing inspector.
"When we gathered enough we flew to a farm owned by Fletchers in Waimauku where there was a topdressing strip to land. Once we landed I pulled the hopper lever and dumped all the toheroa on the ground then we took off and headed back to Māngere Aerodrome."
"A fish inspector and a bloody policeman were there waiting for us. Of course we told them it wasn't us and told them to search the plane. It was great fun!"
Even the date a 21-year-old Brasting first met his wife Jen in 1957 was recorded in his flying log.
He spotted the dental nurse and a friend roadside and gave them a lift from Tirau to Matamata, during which he asked if they were keen to go for a fly.
"From then on Jen became my front-seat passenger all the time."
A year later the couple tied the knot in their work gear at the Morrinsville Post Office.
After that, Brasting joined the police force in Hamilton for two years before the adventurous couple booked a two-berth cabin on a boat headed to England.
Arthur Brasting enjoying his time abroad with wife Jen.
Their travel cravings took them all around the world – although Vietnam and Cambodia were left unticked on the bucket list because of last year's Covid lockdown.
They carted their son Toby across continents and when his two children were born, they became Brasting and Jen's travel companions.
"Having kids is great; they're a good excuse to go out and do lots of fun stuff," Brasting once said.
During the couple's stint in the UK, they became managers of a hotel bar in Staines, where Brasting trained as a chef.
A young Arthur Brasting during his time as a professional chef in the United Kingdom.
At one point he unknowingly booted a Lord "somebody-or-other" out as he only ever ordered a half pint of beer but ate a pound of peanuts.
It turned out the Lord was a personal friend of the hotel owner "Captain Courage".
"They came down like a bloody cloud of s*** on top of us!"
A night out back in New Zealand saw Brasting stumble onto the idea of the country's first-ever burger bar.
"One night we were having drinks at about 9.30pm and decided we needed something to eat. We went downtown but the fish-and-chip shop was closed and there was nothing open."
"I thought it was no bloody good because people are like I am in the middle of the night."
And thus Kapai Burgers was born out of a converted old grease bay in a Cambridge garage.
"We had a job with the Health Department because they'd never had to certify a shop without a front window and door before."
They were able to expand their successful venture with burger bars in Te Kuiti, Putaruru, and Tokoroa.
"People travelled for miles to get a Kapai Burger."
Arthur Brasting and family outside his first Arthur's Emporium store in Whangārei.
So it was no surprise that his Whangārei store Arthur's Emporium became legendary.
The couple opened the timeless business in 1978 – thinking it would be "a bit of a giggle" - just across the road from where it stands on Clyde St today.
But Brasting had said it became "a way of life" and was "hard to drop" even when he retired.
The "mad-keen fisherman" even had to give up his commercial fishing gig of almost three years in order to keep pace with the store.
Brasting wove his love of fishing into the Whangārei Deep Sea Anglers Club as a generous sponsor and contributor to the Junior Tournaments.
His giving nature also encompassed the SPCA, of which he was a lifetime member.
