Depression or not, I don’t think my family ever missed a summer holiday at Whananaki or Oakura, and, before I started work for my new bosses I went with them to Oakura. Usually two or three families would hire a truck onto which all our tents and gear would be packed, and we would all sit on top of the load.
The journey was exciting, particularly if it rained. I remember on one occasion the truck spinning three times on the slippery clay surface with loud screams from the womenfolk. Luckily it was on a flat stretch of road. Some of the corners were so sharp that the truck had to back up and go forward twice to get around them. We were always anxious about the condition of the last small bridge before we came into Oakura in case it wouldn’t support the load. It had been known to collapse and was constantly being repaired roughly to make it passable.
Those were happy days. At Oakura the only permanent residence was Billy McGee’s house. This, his cowshed and a small bach belonging to the Scotts were the only buildings. Everyone lived in tents, cooked on wood fires and roughed it. There was ample space for us kids to play, the swimming was good and the fish plentiful. We had sports days, horse racing on the beach and a sing-song at night which practically everyone attended.
I loved the water and only abandoned my swimming togs for bed. As kids we would fish off the rocks, catching the odd one, while the adults would catch loads of snapper from rowboats. Crayfish were plentiful and I remember Billy McGee rowing his boat in one day after tending his pots around Goat Island. He was sitting on the seat with his bare feet uncomfortably perched on the gunwales. The boat was full of crawling, thrashing crayfish bound for a hangi on the beach.
To me this was paradise. Swimming, sunbathing, fishing, bird-nesting and — amongst other things — paying some attention to the girls. There always seemed to be at least one I was attracted to. Mrs Charlie Thomas later told me this was “calf love”.
One day while fishing off the rocks I managed to get a fish hook well and truly embedded in my finger. I cut the line off and took off back to Dad, who wanted to know what I expected him to do.
“Cut it out with a razor blade,” I said. This was a test for both of us: for me because I wanted to be brave, for my gentle father because he hated the very thought of what he had to do. Neither of us chickened out.
The holidays passed happily, as they always did, and were a good start to what was to one of my most enjoyable experiences as a farm labourer.
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At some time Mr E. had suffered some form of illness which had affected half his body. One arm and hand were deformed, as was one side of his face. His arm and hand had little strength and his facial defects made him look and sound a little odd. At that time he was a bachelor, probably in his late thirties or early forties. He was an easy-going sort of man who enjoyed a beer and good company. His housekeeper, Mrs M, was about the same age and divorced, with a son about a year younger than me.
She had been married to a brute, apparently, who used to beat her. He must have been a big brute for she was about the biggest and strongest woman I ever met. She had a big heart, too, and was extremely kind and sympathetic. No doubt it was at her insistence that Mr E. employed me.
Ernie, the son, was a big lad, bigger than me, and still going to Jordan School, about three hundred yards down the road.
It was a complete change from the Smiths. Although the E’s worked hard, they enjoyed life and companionship. They had a gramophone too, which was played often, much to my enjoyment. Their records were mainly of the Country and Western type but one other I remember was a source of amusement to me. “The Captain’s name was Captain Brown and he played his ukelele as the ship went down.”
The Captain’s wife was on the ship
And she was glad she made the trip.
If she could swim she might not drown
So he tied her to the anchor as the ship went down.
Mr E. and Mrs M. milked thirty cows by hand in a tiny cowshed, the remains of which I could still be see from the road in 1979 — a tiny stretch of concrete and a few rotting pieces of timber.
The cows were a mixture of every breed of the day and one soon found which were the easiest to milk — and learned to avoid the tougher ones when no-one was looking. Hand-milking a cow is hell until the muscles in your forearms and fingers reconcile themselves to the task. Hand-milking your share of thirty cows is murder.
I remember one heifer with teats the size of a well-smoked cigarette butt, which could barely be grasped between thumb and fore-finger. To make matters worse it took maximum pressure to expel the milk and by the time she was finished you felt your hands had been through a mangle. After a few weeks, with good going, I could milk on average a cow every six minutes.
Mr E’s hand was a handicap for milking, of course, but he struggled on for all that.
Separating too was done by hand and had to be started long before milking was finished. But for all the lack of facilities it was a joy to milk that little herd after my experience at the Smiths. We would get up at 6.00am and be in for breakfast at a reasonable hour. The night’s milking would be over by 6.00pm.
There were several amusing incidents in the cowshed and milking was often a fun time.
One day when the grass was lush and fresh, Mrs M. was bending down leg-roping a cow when it answered nature’s call with a magnificent stream of muck all over her hair.
I hadn’t known Mrs M. to be so volatile before but her vocabulary proved to be as robust as she was. I wasn’t sure whether to treat this as a joke or not. It certainly looked a laugh although Mrs M. didn’t appear to appreciate it. But Mr E. rose slowly from his stool and, with his twisted grin on his face, strolled over to say, “What’s the matter, Lisa? It’s clean shit!”
Then laugh I did, at the same time looking for a quick exit. I was safe, though, for Lisa focused her fury on Mr E. Finally she saw the joke too and headed off for a wash.
§
The next door neighbours, didn’t get on too well with us. They were proud owners of a pedigree Jersey herd, one of which was the top butterfat producer in New Zealand at the time. Unkind people said that when milking began in the presence of the herd tester, Mrs C, who always milked her prize possession, had a bottle of cream strapped to her leg under her long dress, which she added to the strippings.
One day Mr E’s scrub bull got through the fence and in with the neighbour’s pedigree heifers. There was hell to pay and relations became more strained than ever. A few mornings later, when I was getting the cows in, I found the tables turned. The C’s pedigree bull was in with our scrubbers. The opportunity was too good to miss. I cut the bull out on to the road and chased it along to the C’s cow-shed where, in a loud voice, I instructed them to keep their so-and-so mongrel bull away from our herd.
“He’s only a little fellow,” said Mrs M, “but he’s got the heart of a lion.”
§
Water could be over-abundant on the swamp and it was sad to see £100 worth of lime and super disappear under several feet of flood-water only days after it had been applied. That hundred pounds had been hard-earned and there weren’t many to spare in those days.
But water was a scarce commodity in the summer months and it was there I had my first experience of seeing a horse-drawn scoop in action, when Mr E. built a dam behind the house. The soil was first loosened with a plough and then transported to the dam site with the scoop.
The dam was never a success: it leaked from the beginning — a lot of wasted sweat.
§
The E’s grew all of their own vegetables in what was very poor soil, and were in most ways self-sustaining in food. Home brew and ginger beer were made in copious quantities, so Mr E. was never short of labour for hay-making.
I saw my first pig, a baconer, killed, and this made me feel quite ill: Mr E. simply cut its throat and let it stagger around until it died.
§
Mr E. had a flashy brown mare of which he was very proud. It was decided to get her in foal and I was given the task of riding her around to visit the Forsythe’s entire. Mr E. saddled her up (I’d never used a saddle before) and issued precise instructions on how not to ride her and what not to do. No galloping on the metal road, no faster than a trot, and be careful. The mare had other ideas and no sooner were we out of sight than she began to behave in ways to which I was unaccustomed.
I have never become used a saddle, and the fact that this experience was my first with one, probably didn’t help. To beat me the mare simply stretched out her neck and, with her nose almost touching the ground, took off at full gallop. With my hands desperately grasping the reins and my arms fully stretched down her neck I was helpless. All I could do was hope for the best and hang on until the mare, in a lather of sweat, decided she had had her fling and slowed to a trot. Whether this had anything to do with her rejection of the Forsythe’s stallion I don’t know, but reject him she did, kicking out at everyone and everything in sight.
§
At the Jordan Road junction lived Darcy, a Tasmanian, a loveable character who lived alone on the roadside in his roadman’s one-roomed hut. I often visited him and enjoyed his excellent cooking and generous hospitality. He had a section of the road verge fenced off where he grew his vegetables, and he too brewed his own beer. On my journeys to and from my various farm jobs I would call in to see him for a meal and a friendly chat; a seat by his warm fire on a cold winter’s day was another pleasure I will never forget.
At the E’s we would see him almost daily as he took off for work on his motorbike with a shovel and pick strapped on the pillion. With no shelter if it rained — he may perhaps have got some from a ti-tree bush — it would usually be a very wet and cold man who arrived home from work.
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Another neighbour of note was Johnnie. He had a well-deserved reputation for being careful with money and lived alone in a house up a valley behind the Jordan School. Johnnie was said to have arrived from Lancashire with a shilling in his pocket. With an excess of shrewdness — and the ability to hold on to his money — he ended up owning three farms and a good portion of Walton Street in Whangarei. Excluding only an annuity to his sister, he left his estate to Whangarei Hospital, where he spent his last days. The kindness and attention he received there over-whelmed him.
Johnnie was a hunchback and as tough as an old boot. His cost of living was remarkably low.
His cure for a badly gashed head, after falling from a horse, was to rub salt into it. His lunch while droving cattle was dry bread and a raw egg.
He liked to eat the curd from the pigs’ skim-milk drums and one day, when he was reaching down to the bottom of the drum to get a handful, a Maori employee, who had developed a dislike for him, grabbed him by the legs and tipped him in.
Much of Johnnie’s money had been made from dealing in livestock. A stock agent told how during the depression, when old ewes generally sold for one or two shillings, he visited Johnnie on business. The stock agent saw some old ewes in Johnnie’s paddock.
“They’re worth about five bob each right now, Johnnie,” he said.
“Eee, bugger and ‘ell,” said Johnnie. “I bin eatin’ em!”
Johnnie would kill one and hang it in a tree, cutting off pieces as necessary for himself and his dogs.
One day, having done Johnnie a favour of some sort, Ernie and I were invited to his place to help ourselves to his peaches. It was after milking and we arrived just as Johnnie was about to have his dinner.
We were invited inside and were interested to see a huge pot boiling on the stove. From it came an appetising smell. We chatted away for some time, then Johnnie decided it was time to eat. After cutting a slab or two of bread, he extracted from the pot a large bullock’s leg bone, which had been broken in the middle to expose the marrow. He placed the pieces on a plate and sat down with a spoon and the dry bread to commence his meal. There didn’t seem to be any “afters”.
Johnnie took a liking to me and made several attempts to persuade me to work for him. If I had, and I’d devoted myself to his affairs, I like to think I may have inherited his fortune. I would certainly have earned it.
§
One memorable Sunday we made a trip to Ngunguru where Mrs M. had relatives. A net, set overnight across an estuary, produced lots of flounder. Later, casting the same net twice in the river, we harvested plenty of snapper and trevalli. A beautiful day, plenty of swimming and bellies full of fish and plums — a lot of which we took home with us — left us in fine fettle for a very late milking.
§
In the course of time I told Ernie many of the dirty jokes I had learned at school and he related these to others with great relish. One day I was astonished and bewildered to be bailed up by two small girls as they left school with a request that I repeat them for their benefit. Not having had a sister of my own age (Evelyn was ten years younger) I had always understood that girls didn’t swear, and didn’t use naughty words or tell dirty jokes. So I refused, much embarrassed.
As far as I was concerned, girls were for meant to be put on a pedestal and worshipped for their purity. If they were pretty I fell for them of course, one after the other. A kiss and surreptitious cuddle with such a one was heaven and, since I had real success in this area, I must consider myself stupid to have remained naive and ill-informed for so long.
Jean, the daughter of a neighbour, was sick in bed with quinsy so Mrs M. decided that we should go and see her. This was exciting news as Jean had a sister, very pretty, for whom I had fallen hard. There were two other sisters, pretty enough: the two who had bailed me up and asked me to recite my repertoire of jokes — but they were too young for me. Jean herself was too old but Sis. was dark, pretty, vivacious and my age.
When we arrived we all went through to the four girls’ bedroom and commiserated with Jean, who was very sick indeed.
After a while the adults left us young ones to our own devices, Jean to her sickness and the rest to our amusements. The attraction was mutual and it wasn’t long before Sis. and I were kissing and cuddling and thereby providing all the gratification I knew how to wish for.
It was cold so at someone’s suggestion — but certainly not mine — we all got into bed: Ernie with the two littlies in a double bed and me with Sis. in her single one. After a good deal of wriggling around beside me Sis. whispered that she had taken her clothes off and now had her nightie on. This was a bit startling, but it was her bed! Her bed, fragrant and dark.
The kiss and cuddle game started then in earnest and I am sure Sis. issued all the normal, non-verbal invitations short of actually showing me what to do. Invitations like exploring the inside of my mouth with her tongue and tickling the palm of my hand with her finger.
What did this mean? Surely she couldn’t mean what I had vaguely begun to think she might?
That was impossible to think of anyway. We could hear her Dad’s and Mum’s voices through the wall as they chatted with Mrs M. How frustrated and annoyed she must have been and how neglected my education, for this still did not rupture my veil of innocence. Given a better opportunity Sis. would have done so and it is interesting to speculate how this might have altered my future conduct.
§
However Mr E. and Lisa couldn’t afford to pay my wages. With their normal considerateness they found a job for me (ten bob a week and found) working for someone on the other side of the swamp and so ended one of my happiest experiences. Mr E. and Lisa eventually married and produced a son. Lisa, whom I affectionately called Mum whilst I worked for them, had indeed been a mother to me and it is to my sorrow that I saw little of them in their later years.