What began as a look back on the life of her well-known artist father has revealed the fascinating history of the grandfather Linda Harley never met. Jack Luckman was one of the original settlers at Omokoroa.

'It's like peeling back the layers of an onion. You find a bit more, so you do more research, talk to more people, ask questions and a bit more is revealed,” says Linda, a former Omokoroa resident.

Grandad Jack

'Jack died the year before I was born, so all I had was a photo of him sitting on a rock and that was it. 'That was grandad.”

In the 1930s, Jack was a storeman for the dams and hydro-electric stations on Waikato River.

'They moved every couple of years all the way along the Waikato River, supporting the construction of the dams, so he was in charge of buying everything from the nuts and bolts, to fans, steel and everything for the Ministry of Works,” says Linda.

'I suppose growing up, you just think of them as old people – it's hard to picture grandparents as being young. My grandfather was running big storage warehouses for the hydro dams and I now know that he was joined by his four oldest kids.”

The family moved from Ohura, to Mangakino, Karapiro and then Jack Luckman got transferred to Tauranga. By the time he and his wife settled in Omokoroa in 1947, they had seven children.

Uncle Johnny

'At that time there were about 10 families there and the road was pretty horrible. They bought a section for 150 pounds and their eldest son, Johnny, helped build the family bach. He was 18.”

Now 91 years old, it's Johnny who is helping fill in gaps in Linda's family history. 'He's been a goldmine of information. My uncle was born in 1930 and has really great stories.”

Johnny Luckman was fire chief at Omokoroa for 40 years. 'A car caught alight next to his house so he got his wife and kids to safety, pushed the burning car away and then started emptying the house to save their belongings.

'There was no fire service out there so after that, he created the volunteer brigade in 1967. As a family they were very community-minded.”

Linda's grandad Jack died in 1963 at the age of 56. 'Once they're gone, you lose all their stories so piecing this together relies on uncle Johnny, my uncle Barry and other family members.”

Artist father

Linda's artist father, Fred Luckman, did a lot of work for the local school and is most famous for his mural inside Tirau's iconic dog-shaped information centre. He passed away in 2008.

'He was actually blind in one eye and yet he could still get perfect perspective,” says Linda. 'He lost his sight when he was around four. He poked a stick into his eye getting the firewood in with my uncle Johnny. Amazing that he could still create that art. Just a huge talent.”

Linda credits his creative genes to a family of artisans. 'My brother-in-law is into genealogy, so he found that my great-great grandfather was a blacksmith who came to New Zealand from Tasmania.”

A photo of Reuben Luckman, outside his shoeing and general smithing workshop, with his only son, Jack, is in the National Archives in Wellington.

'All seven of Jack's children were good with their hands and could build anything. He was a hard worker and instilled that work ethic in them. They were brought up in tough in the 1930s depression, but nothing was too much of a challenge. If they needed it, they could create it.”

Idyllic childhood

Linda is the youngest of five kids. 'By the time I went to Omokoroa Point School in the 1970s, there were 15 Luckmans on a school roll of around 100,” says Linda.

She recounts an idyllic childhood where she had freedom to play from dawn to dusk with the neighbours' kids and a trip out was to Barrett's store at Whakamarama.

'That was our closest supermarket,” says Linda. 'Everyone had a vegie patch and we spent all our time fishing, building huts with friends and the cousins and we'd go home at dark.

'I drive around Omokoroa and point out: ‘oh, that was uncle Lenny's house'; ‘that was my auntie's'; ‘there's nana's house' and John was a builder so he built a lot of the houses out there. The Luckmans left their mark on Omokoroa. I'm very proud of them.”

Fred Luckman's bike at the Omokoroa turn-off, when the family arrived at the peninsula. Photo: supplied.