SLT Mason Tolerton
Sub Lieutenant (SLT) Mason Tolerton's employer, the New Zealand Customs Service, received a 2009 Employer Bronze Award for their continuing support of his part-time Navy career.
Ironically, the Navy was what originally got Mason interested in a career with the New Zealand Customs Service.
"In my early Navy career I used to drive the RHIB (motorised dinghy) for boarding when we worked with the Ministry of Fisheries and Customs. This gave me a pretty good look at how Customs worked."
Since then Mason's officer training has given him some transferable skills. He was selected to attend the first New Zealand-run Combined Defence Intelligence and Analysis Course, and he has completed a variety of New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) planning and briefing courses.
Being an officer in the Navy Reserve and working for the Customs service has had many benefits for Mason. He says his dual career has allowed him to contribute to New Zealand in two very different, but compatible, ways.
"At the risk of sounding like a recruiting advertisement, I do get the best of both worlds. I get to have a great job here in Christchurch and I also get to go away to sea without missing out on watching my young family grow up. The operational Navy stuff is great but doing the ANZAC day and remembrance services as the local representative of the NZDF is a real privilege."
Mason has been in the Navy Reserve for over 8 years. While at University he would spend over 100 days a year at sea. Since commissioning as an officer in his post-graduate year at university Mason has completed courses in navigation and watch-keeping, allowing him to go away as executive officer or second in command on one of the Navy's inshore patrol craft.
Most recently Mason spent a month at sea watch-keeping on HMNZS Te Kaha, one of the Navy’s two ANZAC class frigates, testing some new weapons systems, working with the Ministry of Fisheries, and preparing for an exercise.
Mason is looking forward to the arrival of the Navy's new multi-agency focused protector fleet of off-shore and in-shore patrol vessels. He aspires to be command qualified as a part-time captain of one of the new in-shore patrol craft.
So would he ever consider deploying to Afghanistan as some of his shipmates had recently done?
“I’d jump at the opportunity, but getting leave from the home front could be much harder than the work front!”