By Virginia Winder

George Fuller is full of fascinating and frightening revelations about Pukekura Park.

The former curator, who worked in the New Plymouth park from 1965 to 1990, tells about a secret nightlife, a hidden tunnel, a private obsession and a memory that has haunted him forever.

Orchids and Jack Goodwin first lured George to Taranaki.

When the orchid collection of Taranaki horticulturalist Fred Parker was given to Pukekura, curator of the day Jack Goodwin knew he had to find a specialist to assimilate the plants into the park environment.

So orchid expert George Fuller was employed.

"Because of my general knowledge of plants, I was elevated to curator in 1966," George says.

Slowly, the park seeped into his soul.

"I didn't only work in Pukekura Park, we lived in it. It was home," George says. For 25 years the Fullers lived in the curator's house at 25 Victoria Rd.

A growing obsession

"I was lucky in that I had such wonderfully dedicated people both above me and with me, who themselves had spent a long time in the park ... it grows on you."

For George it grew as wildly as Jack's beanstalk.

"It became an obsession I suppose," he says.

And still is?

"Oh yes," he nods.

George is on the Friends of the Park committee and has also become an historical expert on the park.

Just how dedicated he became is revealed in a story in which he had to juggle his family duties with caring for the park's wildlife.

Nearly his swansong

When wife Doris was expecting their second daughter, George got a call to go home. Doris was in labour and he needed to drop off daughter Claire at a friend's place, then head to hospital.

"It was at a time when we had white swans in the lake and they were very precious," he says.

On arriving at home, George received a phonecall to say one of the swans was caught in one of the outlets of the main lake.

George knew that if he didn't save the swan soon, it would die. But then again, his wife was in labour and needed to go to hospital. At a critical point in his domestic history, George knew he had to make a choice.

He chose the swan.

"I convinced Doris over the importance of this," he says, describing how he packed up the family and drove into the park, stopping by the Kiosk.

While Doris sat having contractions in the car, George played lifesaver. "I climbed into the outlet where the swan had got trapped and lifted this huge, drenched white swan and put it over the dam into safety," he says.

Not long afterwards, Doris gave birth to a healthy baby girl, called Linda, the last of five children.

When the lights go out

"Living in the park, there was sometimes more excitement at night than there was in the day and I was inevitably out there to make sure the park was not knocked around, not vandalised. I was very pro-active in that sense."

Armed with a powerful spotlight, George used to slink through the tracks he knew as well as the freckles on the back of his hand. Then he would stop, listen, focus and shine the torch at potential offenders, who would tear off out the park.

One festive season, when the park was particularly busy and George was in charge of running the summer scene programme, he found himself worn out.

"By the time Christmas came I was not very charitable, simply through exhaustion," he says.

At 2am on Christmas morning he was woken by voices down by the main lake. "If one of the children turned over in bed my wife would hear, but I wouldn't. But if someone clinked a glass down in the park, I would hear it and she wouldn't."

No silent night

This time, it wasn't a quiet tinkle or a murmur - someone was roaring out Christmas carols. "It was harmless, but it was a hell of a din," George says. "I went down and loe and behold, here was a drunken guy weaving around the pillars of the bandstand singing Silent Night or something. He was naked and a group of friends were enjoying the spectacle."

Quietly, but firmly, George asked them to take their rowdy friend and leave the park. They went off amicably with the suspicious curator following stealthily behind.

Instead of exiting harmlessly, the naked fellow pulled out a wooden barrier used to prevent cars from driving beyond the carpark. The reveller then tossed it into the lower lake.

George called the police, inwardly cursing the nudist for his annoying actions. What may have appeared a minor act of vandalism would actually mean a lot of wasted time and money, with a workman having to be called out on Christmas Day.

"By the time this guy got to the main gate, the police were waiting for him," he says.

Standing there nude and extremely drunk, the offender became thoughtful: "He was going to swim out there and get this thing."

The police and George, fearing for the larrikin's safety, worked out a deal that if the man managed to get the barrier out of the lake by 10am, he wouldn't be charged. Finally, George went off to bed.

Yuletide surprise

"At 5am there's a knock at my door, this is Christmas morning. I opened the door and there's this guy. He says 'it's OK mate, I've fixed it for you'," George imitates the man's slur.

"Merry Christmas to you too mate," was the park man's quick reply.

Later on that morning, George went down to check on things. Yes, the barrier was back in place, but there was more. "I found a woman pinching coloured lights!"

Another time, he was woken by a racket only to find a young swordsman practicing his fencing by fighting the columns of the bandstand.

One of the most amusing wake-up calls came one summer's night when George heard a noisy group of young people down by the fountain lake. He pulled on his clothes and snuck along a path around Cannon Hill to overlook the pump house.

Naked and naughty

As he got closer, he heard a girl say: "Don't put it in yet, I'm not ready."

George giggles: "I thought 'should I investigate further?'"

Then he realised what was up. "They were going to collectively disrobe and swim out to the fountain and this girl was a bit slow and wasn't ready for them to start."

The coin was put in the slot that used to trigger the fountain and the last person shot out to the centre of the lake.

Fountain Frolics: George Fuller remembers a night when the Lower Lake's fountain was a shower-bright stage for a group of human water sprites.

"I have to say it had aesthetic appeal really as these people draped themselves around the fountain like statues, and with the lights and water flying everywhere ..." he drifts off remembering the scene.

Then he pauses. "It's a bit mischievous of me ... I thought it would be fun to hide all their clothes ... and I did!"

Whoops of laughter. "I took them away."

But then practical George had misgivings. He played out a scenario of the nine naked youngsters having to report their stolen clothes to the police and then himself being called out to help. "So, I took them back."

While this tale was amusing, George took his role as park custodian with sheriff-like seriousness. He was determined to keep the flora and fauna safe.

A boy with a knife

Over the years, he became extremely skilled at reading people's body language, observing behaviour and predicting outcomes.

One time his gut feeling was right, but a tragedy still happened.

"One day I heard someone slashing at the vegetation, just beyond the end of the main lake. I thought 'I've got no men working up here, what's going on?'"

So he went to investigate. "I quietly moved in there and there was a high school boy with a knife, slashing at the tree ferns."

The weapon wasn't a pocketknife or sheath knife, but a stiletto. "Which is a long, pointed dagger," George says, shivering.

After watching for a while, the curator patiently, carefully began talking with the boy. "It became very obvious he was disturbed at school. He confided in me somewhat."

George asked him what he was doing with the dagger and the boy told him he was going to make a replica in metalwork at school, so needed this one for a pattern.

"I thought, 'this is very, very weird that a teacher would allow a pupil to make a stiletto'."

He asked the boy his name, but doubting George, having been tricked many times before, wasn't certain he believed the answer.

The boy's bike was concealed close by, so the curator asked if he could look at it. The lad agreed, and George wandered over. By the bike, he found a schoolbag with books bearing a different name to the one he had been given.

Unforeseen tragedy

Armed with the boy's identity and deep personal concern, George left the lad. "I talked to this boy a long, long time and he was very, very disturbed."

George rang the school, told them the student's name and expressed his unease about the knife, urging them to take it from him.

He pauses, his face turning grave. "Shortly after, I read in the paper that he murdered his sister with that knife."

George gave evidence at the trial of Inglewood 14-year-old Paul Julian, who was charged with murdering his sister on 9 November 1969. But the plantsman won't reveal any more. "It's something you would prefer to forget."

Following the trial, the teenager was placed in a secure unit at a psychiatric facility.

When he was released in 1981, Julian attacked again. On 9 June that year, he killed a woman called Jeannette Butler and 16-year-old Allan Schrider.

The knife incident with the boy in the park will always haunt George. He wonders what would have happened if he'd taken the knife from him and handed it to the police. "I don't know if I would've made any difference ..."

Tunnel secret safe

Then he turns to more certain history, telling a tale about moving water and earth.

During the dam-building exercise to create the main lake, the engineers diverted the Pukekura Stream from its natural course. "They dug a channel about 100 metres long to take it around the north-easterly side of Cannon Hill. It goes behind the pavilion. And to achieve that, they had to dig a tunnel and that was quite a big task; it was all done manually."

The upshot of this is there is a secret tunnel that can be climbed through to get to the sportsground.

But George (75) won't tell where it starts or where it finishes.

Even now, 13 years after his retirement, he is still protecting Pukekura Park in his own way.

And sharing its many-layered history with anyone who cares to listen.

Go on, ask him about the Carrington pine ...