No easy road for Kiwi of the year
East And Bays Courier
Relevant offers
From a street kid sleeping rough Ray Avery has led a movie-script life, capped on Wednesday night when he was honoured as New Zealander of the Year.
The scientist and inventor, 62, has dedicated himself to fighting poverty and ill health in the Third World.
Awards chief judge Jim Bolger said: "Awards like these give us a chance to say thank you to extraordinary individuals who inspire us as New Zealanders."
Mr Avery had a tough start to life. He was abandoned as a baby.
"I was put into the orphanage for the first 14 years and moved around southern England in a kind of Dickensian labyrinth of bad stuff.
"And then I decided to take my life in my own hands – I ran away and lived on the streets of London for about a year before I was picked up in a police raid and invited to go back into the education system."
That "invitation" was the making of him.
He was taken under the wing of a group of Oxbridge professors who taught him science and how to dress, eat, speak, dance and play tennis.
"They gave this kid off the streets a social education and taught me how to communicate."
Science soaked into his DNA and with a healthy dose of entrepreneurship, by age 26 he owned a string of laboratories, drove a vintage MGA car – and loathed himself.
"I hated myself, I thought I was a real prick. I thought if I had money and I had a position that all of the orphanage debris would wash away and I would be accepted and I would have made it and that would make me happy."
So he left England to find himself and in 1972 ended up in New Zealand which with its can-do attitude seemed like "instant home."
In 1993 he faced his defining moment lying in a hotel room in Eritrea in the wake of Fred Hollows’ death, having teamed up with him to build laboratories to make lenses to use in eye surgery.
He was ready to call the project off as too tough.
"When I was lying there alone in that room I had this kind of catharsis that if anybody can do this I can – because I can survive anywhere, I can make anything work. I knew then who I was."
When he finally produced the first lens from that lab it sold for $5 compared to $360 charged elsewhere.
That collapsed the price globally, revolutionising Third World eye-care. There are now 16 million people using his lens implants.
He says the award means he has won the respect of his countrymen.
"I have finally found my way home."
n
The Senior New Zealander of the Year is Otago businessman Sir Eion Edgar, 65, chairman of sharebroking firm Forsyth Barr and a director of Martinborough Vineyard Estates and other companies. He was president of the New Zealand Olympic Committee and is a keen supporter of sports and the arts including backing last year’s 100% Pure New Zealand Winter Games.
n
The Young New Zealander of the Year category winner is Aucklander Divya Dhar, a 24-year-old who has just qualified as a doctor and is a campaigner for policy change, committed to bringing attention to social injustices and climate change.
n
Otara’s Sam Chapman is the winner of the Local Hero Award. Sam has spent 40 years helping those who have lost hope and been rejected by mainstream society. He focuses on giving people the skills and motivation to turn their lives around. He has worked with the Notorious Chapter of the Mongrel Mob and Mark Stephens, known as the Parnell Panther, who credit him with keeping them out of prison.
n
Nelson’s Victory Village, which includes a health centre and primary school, is the Community of the Year. Judges called it a unique example of community-based support achieving positive health, social and educational outcomes.
