About Poppa Barry
Poppa Barry's Story
Barry Luckman (Poppa Barry) comes from a family of seven siblings – four brothers and two sisters. When he was a youngster, his father worked on the hydro dams down the Waikato River, and he was born at the Cambridge Hospital, which was local to the small township of Karapiro, where the family lived.
Then, when he was 10, the family moved to Tauranga. By this time, he had lived in a state house his entire life.
He went on to attend Tauranga Boys College, followed by an apprenticeship in diesel mechanics with the Ministry of Works.
As a young man, Barry developed a love of the outdoors and for its wildlife.
To help put food on the table, he took up hunting as a sport.
He bought an old ex-army .303 rifle for £7 and headed for the hills.
He taught himself hunting skills, and how to survive alone in the wilds – skills that have endured to this time. Wildlife, be it indigenous or exotic, and the bush were, and still are, his passions.
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His greatest joy was perhaps when, in the early 1970s, his now wife Dalwyn said “Yes,” when he asked her to marry him.
And a few years later, they became doting parents to their beautiful daughter, Shani, and son Haydn.
He’s now in his 80s, and this is a time of reflection. He watches the glow of a good log fire at night, and feels its comforting warmth caress his tired, aching muscles.
He smells the sweet scents from Toropapa and Tarata out in flower – their intoxicating perfume wafting through the cool night air.
And he remembers the laughter and banter with his four brothers after returning home from a successful hunt in the hills. He listens to the tales told of past times and of stories recounted when they were all together.
“Yes, I remember!” he muses.
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