He also appeared as the main Mr Claus at the annual Farmers Santa Parade - which celebrates its 85th birthday this week - as well as for the local Christmas parade in Howick.
This year's Farmers Santa Parade was postponed last Sunday due to bad weather and is now scheduled for Sunday.
Granddaughter Kristen Calder, now a parent herself, still remembers the days she and her siblings and cousins would be taken to see the man in red.
As young children, they knew there was something odd about Santa.
"I knew that it was Pop. With my name being Kristen, he used to pretend to get it wrong - he called me Kirsten and I used to hate it.
"I'd say: 'I know it's you, Pop!''
One of Audain's grandsons, aged about 8 at the time, would be the first to find real proof that their granddad was behind the fluffy white beard - after figuring out that Santa was wearing their Pop's wedding ring.
Audain, who has had a number of strokes over the years, now lives in a rest home in West Auckland.
But his long career as old St Nick is something he and his family still talk about frequently, as it is something their father and grandfather very much cherished, Calder said.
They have several scrapbooks filled with memories from Audain's days as Santa Claus - with old photos, newspaper clippings and letters from children.
Among the letters is one from a little girl who tells him off for not responding to her letter with a hand-written note.
Flipping through one of her grandfather's old scrapbooks, Calder finds the original newspaper ad her Pop responded to.
She also finds a note her granddad has written about his successful interview for the job and reveals he was paid $120 for one-and-a-half hours.
"That was pretty good money in 1984,'' Calder says to him.