'I'm Wesley Golledge and I'm a professional boat punter'

In the late ’80s, I got a job pushing punts on the Avon River in Christchurch as a uni student. I personally widened the river bank within the first two weeks. It’s not as easy as it looks, although pushing the punt is all to do with technique rather than strength.

I never graduated, but I did set up my own business on the Avon River, and now run Punting On The Lake in the Royal Botanic Gardens.

I had the idea for punting in the gardens when I was on holidays in Australia.

I saw the lake and thought it’d make a great place for a punt, so when they finished work on the wetlands’ project and brought water back into it, I put in an application. In 2011 I sold up in New Zealand, but there was about two-and-a-half years of red tape before putting the punts on the lake.

The three punts we use are copies of Cambridge punts, built with Australian jarrah and Victorian ash. It took about two months for them to be made – there’s a lot of gluing one piece in place and then waiting for two days that goes on. My winter job every year is to sand and varnish them.

Punting here is seasonal, in the sense that from June through to August we operate on weekends only; then we operate every day from September through to the end of May. Boxing Day through to Valentine’s Day is our peak season.

I dress as an Edwardian-style boater, with lovely high-waisted trousers and braces. I feel we have to dress the part – it’s not a job to do in jeans and a T-shirt. People always ask me how many times I’ve fallen out and the answer is some, so I keep a spare set of clothes in the office. It happens.

My favourite part of the job is pushing the punt and talking to the customers. I always got in trouble at school for talking so much, and now I get paid for it. Enjoying lunch or a late dinner in your own boat at the end of the day, and watching the bats fly in at twilight for a drink are pretty special, too.

I’ve had 118 marriage proposals in our punts so far, and they’ve all said yes. Don’t ask me what I’m going to do if someone ever says no – it’d be awkward, wouldn’t it? I guess I’ll just have to say, “Oh look, there’s a duck”.

-As told to Meg Crawford