A re-enactment flight on Saturday, celebrating the anniversary of his first visit to Haast, brought the memories flooding back for Mr Glubb and his friends - only this time the flight took him over familiar places to be greeted by familiar faces.
Fifty years ago, the Loreto College pupil accepted an invitation from the Eggeling brothers to stay at their Haast farm for the May school holidays.
In what was to become an annual event, the holiday journey involved a 2.30am start to catch the railcar from Christchurch to Hokitika, before flying south to Haast.
The adventure was a return favour for the times Mr Glubb's parents had hosted the Eggeling boys at their Blenheim Rd home during term-time weekends.
As children, the Eggeling brothers and their cousins, the Buchanans knew more about airplanes than cars, buses and trains.
Roads to Haast were not completed until the 1960s with the Dominie service ending shortly after the Fox Glacier road was finished.
‘‘Everything I did in that fortnight was a new experience. I had never ridden in a railcar, never flown in an airplane, never ridden a horse, never shot a deer, never caught an eel . . . I think I learned the most in that fortnight than any other fortnight,'' Mr Glubb recalled on Saturday.
When the boys went home there were jobs for them to do, so David pitched in too.
He took to Haast so well he visited frequently and even lived on the coast for six years, running the Haast motor camp.
Betty Eggeling recalled when the boys came home from their Christchurch schools they would ‘‘explode'' with energy and required a lot of feeding.
‘‘But we seemed to keep the sheep and bullocks up to them. And plenty of plum duffs,'' Mrs Eggeling recalled.
She and her husband Charlie, who died in 1995, had four sons and two daughters.
Charlie would keep the boys under control ‘‘fairly well'' until they got out of earshot, Mrs Eggeling said.
If they heard a ‘‘Cooee'' or the crack of Charlie's stock whip, they knew they were in trouble.
‘‘It was just a huge shock for us to go to boarding school. We'd never worn a pair of shoes in a lives,'' Kerry Eggeling recalled. Cliff Eggeling said he had never seen a train or eaten ice cream until he went to school.
‘‘I take my hat off to Mum and Dad . . .
‘‘Boarding school got our brains working so we could be more academic. But it was a hell of a hard for them. Mum had all four boys at boarding school at once,'' Cliff said.
The flight from Hokitika to Haast used to cost £4 10 shillings for each of the passengers.
To charter the Dominie which seats eight, now costs about $900 an hour.
Pilot Ryan Southam, of Gore said only 10 of the aircraft were still flying in the world.
