Hard work stacks up for couple

DUNN AND DUSTED: Stonemason Michael Dunn and his wife June are nearing the completion of a 70m stone wall that has galvanised public interest at a property on the corner of High St and William Donald Drive, in Masterton. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

Veteran Masterton stonemason Michael Dunn and wife June were yesterday putting the final touches on a 70-metre stone wall that took the couple three months to complete.

Mr Dunn puzzled the wall together from hand-picked greywacke boulders along the eastern and part of the northern boundary of a residential property being developed by Ian and Denzil Wilkinson on the corner of High St and William Donald Drive, Solway.

The months of painstaking work by the couple had magnetised the attention of passersby, he said, who were still stopping him to check on the progress of the wall both at the site and beyond.

"I was at darts the other night and a guy asked about it and how I was going. Some of them are even calling me Mr Wall Man."

Mr and Mrs Dunn were yesterday completing the entranceway, where they mounted a plaque acknowledging the couple as the builders and sealed inside the wall a glass jar containing a handwritten note from the Wilkinsons.

The wall, which stands a metre high and is a half metre wide, was the first Mr Dunn had built in Masterton after constructing a similar wall in Martinborough and in Greytown and building the greater part of a Wairarapa residential home from stone.

Mr Dunn emigrated to New Zealand from Britain in 1974 to work with Canterbury Stone on the Beehive and the BNZ Bank in Wellington. He moved to Masterton about 14 years ago from Stokes Valley.

Mr Dunn learned his trade, in which his Masterton-based son Peter is also working, at a stonemasonry company called Thorntons in his home city of Liverpool.

He had completed 50 years in the trade before he retired and earlier said there are few genuine stonemasons still at work in the region.

Mr Dunn was to this week start on another stone wall, also to be fashioned from graywacke boulders, that will grace the Gateway Motor Inn a couple of doors down from the Wilkinson property on High St, he said.

The wall would be smaller and he also would build at the site a stone fountain surround and matching seating.