Big read: The 'mayor of Maketu'

Shane Beech on his beloved Maketu beach. Photo/Andrew Warner

I am not the first to suggest that Shane Beech might have a bit of an adrenaline addiction.

The hormone has been ever present in the firefighter's life, coursing through him as he freed families from mangled car wrecks; warming him as he paddled through frigid midwinter waters on a surfboard to rescue some poor sod.

Recently, he bought the biggest, fastest jet ski he could find.

He couldn't tell me the make and model, all he cared was that it could take him the 15 miles from Maketu to Astrolabe Reef in 20 minutes on a good day.

He will invent any excuse to blow out there; Coastguard "training", checking that the buoys are still floating.

But don't be fooled - he's out getting his high.

He sucks and fishing and suffers from seasickness, but Shane Beech has been president of the Maketu Coastguard since 2009.

Out of uniform

You wouldn't know he was an adrenaline junkie at first glance. Out of his uniforms, in his woolly jumper and sandals he was every inch the contented campground owner, the mayor of Maketu.

Actually, the sandals should have been a dead giveaway - it was a bloody chilly day on Maketu's beautiful cliff-edged coast, overlooking the estuary and shallow channel.

Once when he was a kid more than a hundred sharks became trapped in one of the coastal rock pools by the outgoing tide. Mr Beech has never forgotten the sight of all those fins swimming around.

"The locals came from everywhere to come down and have a look."

The memory was just one out of a lifetime's worth for a man who has happily spent all but a few of his 53 years in the same town, on the same property.

He was the seventh of nine kids his parents Jack and Peggy raised in Maketu Beach Holiday Park, which they had opened in the mid-60s.

They had bought a house and cut it into three pieces - a tearoom and two cabins. His dad was a roading contractor and would bring the machinery home on the weekends to carve the camp, bit by bit, out of the hill.

Mr Beech loved his campground childhood. In those days families would come and stay for more than a month at a time and he would get to know them well.

In recent years, he has hosted the third generations of those original families.

It's the life he always wanted.

By the time he was ready to leave school, Mr Beech was determined to take over the camp some day.

"I used to tell my parents 'you know I'm going to buy this place one day'. I wanted this and the other brothers and sisters could go elsewhere."

The plan

Young Shane Beech had a plan: finish school, do a carpentry and joinery apprenticeship, head overseas to make some decent money, come home to live the dream.

It was all ticking along nicely. He was building houses on Norfolk Island after three years in Australia - he'd even met a girl, a waitress at the local watering hole, originally from Paengaroa of all places - when his dad had a massive heart attack.

Mr Beech came home to help his mum, bringing his soon-to-be wife Julie with him.

His dad's health never improved and he passed away. Mr and Mrs Beech bought the business. They raised three kids - Courtney, Damian and Callum - and built the Maketu Beachside Cafe and Restaurant.

Over the years he has rebuilt 100 per cent of the camp's buildings, adding more to meet changing markets.

His mum stayed close, and five of his nine siblings still live in the area.

"Mum has just turned 94, she's still pretty active. She's got a lovely home up on the cliff up there, looking down on me, making sure I'm still doing my job."

Shane Beech bought the Maketu Beach Holiday Park from his parents in his early 30s. Photo/Andrew Warner

Roped in

In the late 80s Maketu's fire brigade decided to build a new fire station.

"I got my arm twisted to come down there and help with the building of it, never thinking that I would become a fireman - I was just helped out," Mr Beech said.

"So I had a few weeks there then the chief at the time said 'well you're here now, you may as well come to training'. So one led on to the other."

Two years later he was bumped up to management. He spent the next 25 years as either the deputy chief or chief.

Last month Mr Beech took off the chief's helmet for the last time, remaining a firefighter but retiring from leadership.

In those 27 years, he saw a lot. The highlights were the babies, hurrying into the world in weird places.

He helped deliver one in the back of a car at the Gull petrol station in Paengaroa. The parents had been on their way to hospital to deliver, but things were happening too quickly and the ambulance was busy.

"We didn't get a choice, it was happening right there and then."

Bringing the occasional life into the world helped him cope with the hard parts of the job.

There had been a lot of death; a lot of injury, mess and drama.

Locals. Friends. Kids.

The second job he ever attended was five Maketu locals killed in a horrific crash.

"It was the start of my fire service career and I thought 'we can do better than this'."

There were many other hard callouts, the microlight crash that killed his best friend among them.

"When the event is locals and you know them, that's hard, extremely hard. You have to put the professional hat on and do the best you can."

The brigade was a family, he said.

"After serious incidents, we tend to come back as a family and talk about it.

"You've been on a high for the last two hours just doing whatever you possibly can. The adrenaline, that's what you're running on and when the adrenaline runs out and reality kicks back in you go the other way.

"In the good old days, we all thought we were bulletproof and could get over anything. I admit I was one of them in the earlier days, but over time it does build up and you have to talk to the relevant people.

"I take my hat off to the fire service, they do provide good counselling."

Firefighting could be hard on families too.

"My kids had a love/hate relationship with me being in the fire brigade. Christmas dinners or their birthdays and sure enough the bloody siren will go off."

His first marriage broke up seven years after they built the cafe and restaurant. Mr Beech later met and married another woman, Raewyn, who had a daughter, Nicole, and they had a son, James, together nine years ago.

Shane Beech stepped down as chief of the Maketu Fire Brigade last month. Photo/George Novak

Rabbit stamping

He was proud to have been able to help people and to step down from his leadership role at a time when the brigade was healthily staffed with volunteers and well resourced.

When he first started the brigade was a dozen guys doing about that number of calls a year, mostly fires in the nearby forestry blocks.

They were mainly known for stamping out burning rabbits, he said with a gravelly chuckle.

"The idea was that if the rabbit came rushing out of the forest on fire, you had to hit it over the head so it wouldn't spread the fire.

"We were tainted with that reputation for quite a few years."

Back then the fire engine was basically a trailer with a pump on it, towed by whoever was unlucky enough to turn up with a tow bar.

"The only fire engine we could find at the time was an old, broken down one that had blown its motor up this side of Auckland," Mr Beech said.

"It was sitting underneath a tree in the middle of a paddock with no motor, an old Bedford.

"Luckily the milkman down at Pukehina had an old Bedford that was rusting away, but it had a motor. It was actually the old milk truck.

A quick swap, some baling twine and No 8 wire and hey presto! Fire truck.

"It was enough to convince the fire service that well, Maketu is genuine, maybe we should accept them."

Grassroots problem solver

It was the same story with Maketu's Coastguard - the official embrace came after the grassroots initiative and No 8 wire problem-solving had met the community need.

They started out with a second-hand inflatable boat liable to conk out at inopportune moments, leaving them to do sea rescues on surfboards.

Eventually, they joined the Coastguard. Mr Beech has been president since 2009 and just last year finally sat his skipper's ticket.

"Boats and me don't really mix. I'm probably the worst person for being seasick, but if it means jumping in a boat and helping some diver that's come up with the bends - I don't have an issue with that."

It's that adrenaline again.

Not so much with the final community hat he wears as chairman of the Maketu Community Board. He was roped into local politics about eight years ago and is in his third term.

One reason he stepped down as fire chief was to have more time for politics. He was seriously considering a tilt at the Western Bay of Plenty District Council next election.

He does not mind the 'mayor of Maketu' nickname.

"I think it's quite a novel thing, no disrespect to our Western Bay mayor. You feel a bit humble because people are acknowledging you and that you're doing something good."

If you were counting, the stack of hats Mr Beech currently wears included - in order of constituency size - board chairman, firefighter, Coastguard president, business owner, father and husband.

"No, I don't have a lot of sleep. I seem to function on a few hours a night, always have," Mr Beech said.

"My wife hates it when I say this, but I'll catch up when I'm dead."