Merv Tyree, then a vice-president of the South Canterbury RSA, views trees outside the branch’s former Timaru premises in 2017. The trees were subsequently cut down, which Tyree opposed, and the property sold, which he also opposed.
ESTHER ASHBY-COVENTRY / The Timaru Herald
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350337258/veteran-merv-tyrees-varied-life-old-salt-gun-restorer
OBITUARY: One of a small group who restored a World War II artillery gun, fired in recent years for Anzac Day and other ceremonies, has died recently in Timaru.
Mervyn Tyree, known as Merv, was 85.
In 2018, Tyree together with John Smallridge, both former Royal New Zealand navalmen, and Terry Farrell, an ex-artilleryman who served with New Zealand forces in the Vietnam War, embarked on a project to restore a 1941 QF 25-pounder howitzer.
From 1967 the gun had been displayed outside the Beverley War Veterans’ Home in Timaru.
When the property was bought by the South Canterbury RSA, with the home demolished and new clubrooms built in 1975, the gun was retained and displayed at the entrance on Wai-iti Rd.
By 2018 the gun was in need of some “tender loving care”.
The group that restored the howitzer in 2018. From left are Merv Tyree, John Smallridge and Terry Farrell.
Doug Field / The Timaru Herald
Tyree, Smallridge and Farrell, all then members of the SCRSA, spent six months stripping, cleaning and restoring the gun.
“Merv was a key part of the process,” Farrell said.
“He had been a leading mechanical engineer in the navy and was very clever.
“He was able to put things together.”
Later in the year, after many years silent, the gun exploded into life again at the Aorangi range to commemorate New Zealand and Australian Vietnam Veterans’ Day and the Battle of Van Tuong.
Since then the gun has been been fired to mark numerous Anzac and Armistice days as well as Queen Elizabeth’s platinum jubilee in June 2022 and her death later that year.
“Merv and our group gave the SCRSA and the community, something to be proud of,” Farrell said.
Tyree grew up on a farm near Pleasant Point and joined the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1956, serving for nine years as a diver as well as a mechanical engineer.
“He went to Antarctica on the Endeavour as part of an Edmund Hillary mission with [tractor manufacturer] Massey Ferguson,” his son Ken Tyree said.
This was the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition in which Hillary used the tractors to make his famous “dash” to the South Pole.
In 2016, Merv Tyree described the HMNZS Endeavour as “a wooden ship with iron men”.
From his time at Antarctica, Tyree brought back a jar of salt he found in 1959 outside Ernest Shackleton’s McMurdo Sound hut, which the famous British explorer had used between 1907-08.
“He kept the salt for more than 50 years, then gave it to the navy; now it’s kept on the bridge of the Aotearoa,” Ken Tyree said.
Merv Tyree handed the salt over when the HMNZS Aotearoa was launched at Devonport in 2020.
He served on navy ships to Malaya, during what was called the “Malayan Confrontation”, as well as to Korea, Singapore and the United States.
Merv Tyree with the jar of salt he found outside Ernest Shackleton’s hut in McMurdo Sound and which he gifted to the Royal NZ Navy.
Bejon Haswell / The Timaru Herald
On leaving the navy, Tyree worked in a range of jobs. He was a taxi driver, a concrete truck driver, and a self-employed welder; he made gear for Ken Tyree’s opal mining in Australia, and while in Australia managed a 6500-acre bloodstock farm in New South Wales.
“He came back from Australia in the late 1990s and bought a kiwifruit orchard in Waihi and increased the productivity 30%; he was a bit of a perfectionist,” his son said.
Merv Tyree then worked as a lift builder.
In 2013, he returned to South Canterbury and Timaru in style, driving a 13-tonne custom-built motor home that was fitted out with state-of-the-art equipment and named Endeavour after the vessel on which he had served.
Travelling in style: Merv Tyree inside his “ship on wheels” motor home in 2013.
John Bisset / The Timaru Herald
Tyree designed the luxury motor home himself and had it built to his specifications. When completed, the motor home was valued at between $700,000 and $800,000.
“The motor home was basically a ship on wheels,” Farrell said.
Tyree became a vice-president of the South Canterbury RSA and president of the Royal Navalmen’s Association South Canterbury branch.
“Over the years we socialised with family,” Farrell said. “Merv was a really nice, straight-up guy. He called a spade a spade.”
“He was amazing,” Ken Tyree said, “the best dad you could have.
“More than anything he became more of a mate as I got older.”
Merv Tyree pins a poppy on Alex Reid in Stafford St, Timaru, in 2018.
Doug Field / The Timaru Herald
