Work in progress
| Contents | Next | In 1931 Cliff left school, and home, for his first job a few days short of his 13th birthday. He learnt about life the hard way, working for — and living with — a variety of people from around the Hikurangi/Whangarei area of Northland. Mainly dairy farmers ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Some of the following is in the first person, written by Cliff, some in the third person, written by me based on his notes. ~ Ian § Walter and his wife were a lovely couple and a pleasure to work for. Their farm was south ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Jack and Maureen (not their real names ~Ian) had a poor gum-land farm, all sloping hillside except for a small area of rush-covered flat where their house was. It was a wet, bleak, inhospitable-looking place. The house contained only the bare essentials of furniture, but ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Charlie was a former bushman and Kauri gum digger, a very shy man, fairly tall and lean, with an impressive moustache. In a fit of recklessness he’d advertised for a wife, and struck gold. His wife was a pleasant, happy, outgoing person whose previous husband ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Cliff wrote about most of the farmers he worked for in the early and mid- 1930s, some at length, but others briefly or in snippets that can be hard to put into chronological order or to construct as a narrative.Much of the following is in ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Cliff worked for WH from November 1st 1935 to January 7th 1936. He was the meanest, most miserable man he’d ever met, Cliff said, worse even than Johnny, who like WH (and Cliff) came from Lancashire. Cliff felt this didn’t say much for his fellow ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Most of my memories seem to do with food, and I suppose this is hardly surprising in a growing twelve-year-old (strangely enough I didn’t actually grow until I started work — I seemed to thrive on it). Dad kept racing pigeons which had to be ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Hay-making is hard work, but more so in those days. The grass was cut with a horse mower. If it was turned to dry this was done by hand with a pitch-fork. It was then raked into windrows with a horse-drawn tumbler rake and swept ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next 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 ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next Colin wasn’t his real name. ~IanMy new boss had the knack of extracting the maximum effort from me for the least possible cost, and he made the most of it, setting me subtle challenges which I felt compelled to meet. He was completely callous in ... Read more