After a lifetime on High Street, Motueka’s “kerbside jeweller” is closing up shop for good.
Patrick Westrupp – known to everyone as Walt – has been in the trade his entire working life. His father, Bo, started the business in 1956, with Walt joining him six years later.
He laughs that his “very mechanically minded” dad was a little dubious about having him in the workshop at first, because Walt had shown little proficiency at metalwork during his time at Parklands School and Motueka High School.
However, at age 15, he was in the shop as an apprentice watchmaker – not because he saw it as his calling, but rather “I just wanted to leave school, and I needed a job.”
Times have changed a lot in the 75 years Westrupps has been open. Watches used to be entirely mechanical, then in the 1980s the shift began towards quartz pieces with batteries.
“Some of them are really interesting pieces, especially with today’s technology. Quite mind-blowing,” Walt says.
The 79-year-old has always loved being at the counter, much to his father’s consternation.
“Dad used to call me the ‘kerbside jeweller’, because I was always out the front yapping, instead of out the back working.”
In 1982, Walt and his wife Dale took over the business.
“It was a challenge,” he says with a rueful laugh. “I thought I knew everything, and I knew absolutely nothing.”
Watches have always sold well, and Walt loves repairing grandfather clocks, as they are something a whole family can enjoy. He has less happy memories of the glass-domed anniversary clocks, however – they used to be very popular and extremely delicate in their mechanics. He recalls his father sending him back and forth on his pushbike between Poole St and Courtney St to tweak repairs on two separate clocks that needed to be perfectly balanced.
Upon his eventual return to the shop, Bo asked what he had learned from his day’s work.
“I said, ‘don’t take any more of those clocks for repair.’ Well! I was nearly fired.”
The workshop behind the retail store has no fewer than 20 clocks around its walls and counters, all in various states of repair. Many were left under the auspices of “I’ll come pick it up sometime,” Walt says with a laugh.
He remembers when his father gathered up all the abandoned or broken clocks and took them to the dump – then at the base of the hill where it is now. When Walt went to toss them onto the incinerator fire, Bo stopped him and told him to stack them against the dump fence instead.
“The following week, they started coming in for repair,” Walt grins.
At one point, he floated the idea of dropping repairs to focus on retail, but his father advised against it, saying repairs were what built the business. Walt now sees the sense in that decision.
“The workshop has actually propped the shop up,” he says. “Jewellery retail is hard yakka.”
Ring sizing and engraving have gone by the wayside, however – there’s not enough time in the day to get it all done.
His two children have gone in different directions with their careers, although son Callum spent a few years in the shop alongside his father. His top-notch window displays were missed when he left.
Walt tried to sell the business a few years back, but because the building needs earthquake strengthening, there was too much uncertainty to get a sale over the line. He is now hosting a closing down sale until the end of January, alongside Raewyn Dreaver who is moving the last of her Saville’s Giftware itinerary.
“The idea is to get rid of all my stock,” he says. “I don’t want to take it home.”
Walt used to enjoy barefoot water skiing and was the pipe band’s drum major. He also enjoyed his time as a Harrier, as running gave him the headspace to puzzle out problems.
He’s not sure what retirement will bring, but “I’m not going to be sitting around,” he says. And indeed he can’t – his Citizen Eco Drive has a trickle-fed solar panel under the dial, so Walt will need to see daylight to keep that timepiece ticking.
