Not many people will know that the President of Bowls New Zealand (the one with the smiley, welcoming face at the front of the 2017-2108 BLK National Open Championships tournament booklet) was also an accomplished berry grower.
But Jeanette Sinclair did a 20-year stint in Greytown in the Wairarapa growing all manner of berries: rasp, boysen, goose, and straw, before settling back to a retired lifestyle in Mt Eden in Auckland. And it’s where the story of Jeanette’s bowling life started as a member of the Greytown Bowling Club.
Jeanette became President of Bowls New Zealand in September 2017. “I was shoulder-tapped,” she laughs. “They said they wanted a friendly, happy person, and someone had told the powers-that-be that I was their woman.”
But it wasn’t just a sparkling personality that Jeanette brought to the office of President and the Bowls New Zealand board table. Her credentials included President of Auckland Bowls; International Umpire (including umpiring at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne); ‘Kitchen Lady’ at the Masters Games at the Carlton-Cornwall Club in Auckland (where she now plays); and all round bowling good guy. “I love bowls and I love getting around meeting people.”
She’s also done pretty impressively on the family front – with 3 middle-aged sons and 5 grandchildren. In 1955, her brother Tony was the youngest person to climb Mt Cook. Her sister is Suzanne Sinclair, MP of Titirangi from 1993-1996. Her son Martin Poulsen had a tilt at the Auckland Central electorate for the other side. “I was even a Miss Olympic in the 60’s,” she whispers reluctantly.
It is her girls-can-do-anything attitude which shapes the way Jeanette lives her life. She puts that down to her upbringing in family that wasn’t well off, yet nonetheless enabled Jeanette to have a wonderful childhood. “We even went off on an adventure to an old bach on Waiheke Island to escape the polio epidemic!“
“So when they asked me to be President, I though why not?” And attendees at the 2017/2018 BLK National Open Bowls Championship, where Jeanette can be seen moving about with cheese rolls, will wholeheartedly agree ‘why not’.
