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Chunk Liddle from Otane, New Zealand, is a genuine cowboy and he has the horseshoe tattoos to prove it - "one on each butt-cheek," he chuckles.

With his pointed boots, blue jeans sporting a big silver buckle and Paul Newman eyes that crinkle into a weather-beaten, sunburnt face when he laughs, all that's missing is the accent. Chunk's drawl is Kiwi rather than Texan.

Chunk was born Alfonso Rubenstein Liddle, or so he claims, while his mother was playing bridge in Waipawa in 1943.
"But I've been known as Chunk since I was born. My father asked a mate what he thought of the new sprog - I was about as wide as I was tall then - and he said, 'Jesus he's a chunky little bastard'. The name just kind of stuck," he says.

Chunk's fascination with the Wild West has been with him as long as he can remember. 
"I've always had a hankering to be a cowboy. I was brought up with horses on the family farm out at Onga Onga. Soon as I could walk I was on a donkey or something and I got a top pony when I was eight."

Chunk started rodeo when he left school, did a bit of show jumping and polo and got a job at Tautane station at Cape Turnagain. 
"The manager was a great horseman. I broke in my first horse under his guidance and learnt how to shoe," he says.

He spent the first of four visits to the United States working as a guide in the Grand Canyon. A shortage of blacksmiths got him a job shoeing mules and taking groups into the mile-deep canyon. 

He returned in 1966 and 1969 to fulfill his greatest ambition - to ride bulls at Canada's Calgary stampede, the most famous stampede of them all. 

After his first taste of cowboy life he gave up show riding and polo and turned fulltime to rodeo. He followed the rodeo circuit around the country, competing most summer weekends for close to 20 years. 
"I rode bucking horses, did calf roping and steer wrestling - I had no technique, so I just used brute force to knock 'em off their feet. But my best event was bull riding. That's just a matter of hanging in there."

Though Chunk still does the odd rodeo, he hasn't competed since the late 1970s. Nowadays, after a lifetime of working on the land, shepherding and breaking in horses, he makes his living from the sea. 

"A friend of mine owns a fishing boat, and his girlfriend was crewing for him. One day she tripped over a dog and sprained her ankle, so I said I'd help out for a while. That was 12 years ago," he laughs.

It's been a life of hard, physical work, but Chunk has no plans to retire just yet. 
"Hell no, you get too many jobs poked at you, and the fishing's good. It's beautiful out there, and I'm working with a bloody good mate."

Still, the years are starting to catch up with this cowboy. He looks as strong as an ox but one knee is all but worn out. 
"I've been bucked off and stomped on, I've broken most of my bones and now I'm waiting to get a new knee. This one's pretty rooted and gives me a bit of gyp. It's be nice to think I could get back on and ride once I get it done."

When he's not at sea, Chunk lives on a bit of dirt of his own just outside Otane, in Central Hawke's Bay. He has 25 acres, stables, a corral, a few cattle and a "pardner" with his brand tattooed on her backside - the letter L in a horseshoe. 

Inside, the living room walls are crowded with prayer feathers and sepia photographs of Indian chiefs, and the horns of a Texas longhorn, five foot across, hang above the fireplace. The music blaring from the stereo is - you guessed it - country and western.

Asked what has drawn him to the cowboy life all these years, Chunk lights yet another roll-your-own and thinks for a while. 

"I've been involved in all equestrian sports and you meet a lot of people. But the people I rodeoed with, that's different -- it's a helluva close bond. I haven't competed since '78 but there isn't a week that goes by without some old cowboy mate ringing up for a bit of a yarn," he says.

"And it's an exhilarating sport with a lot of danger. That might have something to do with it, too. Every little boy wants to grow up to be a cowboy."

Published in Hawke's Bay Today, January 2002

Kiwi cowboy Chunk Liddle at home in Otane.
Photo: Warren Buckland, Hawke's Bay Today