Just an Orange for Christmas: Stories from the Wairarapa

Introduction

History is dead people talking. This is live people talking. Everyday people revealing details of what they did, but also of how they spoke and thought and felt over their three score years and twenty, or even forty.

EVIE, 100

‘I’m not frightened to die. Death’s just a tidy way of getting rid of us.

And it’s good we don’t have to hang on a fence like an eel!’

FRANK, 82

‘As kids we just had newspapers for tablecloths … Going to Featherston — I thought that was London!’

LORRAINE, 93

‘I’d have to say that I wasn’t a very good farmer’s wife. I went docking lambs at the start there, got splattered with blood and said Goodbye!’

My motivation in writing this book is to capture the flavour of life in New Zealand, then and now.

I sat and talked with old people, unravelling memories, making notes, shaping stories. Deliberately fossicking out ‘ordinary’ men and women; we already know the facts about the important ones. Yet the next layer down, the colourful personal detail of everyday life, holds a deeper fascination. One astute yet bashful old character, at first reluctant to talk because ‘I know nothing’, nailed this concept: ‘Yes, all those blooming personal bits and pieces — they’re important too. After all, we don’t know what William the Conqueror had for breakfast, do we?’ It had to be thought valuable and handed down by word of mouth. Then we would know. We don’t know what Captain Cook had for lunch!

So I sat for days with old people in their kitchens, gardens and porches, sometimes in their final rest-homes, occasionally by their final beds. I attended two one hundredth birthdays last year! We downed copious cups of tea and scones while I listened, questioned, scribbled notes. Later came the hard part: shaping a ‘character’ who speaks straight from the page. Dredging through wads of notes, retaining the germ of each person’s life story, discarding the inevitable minutiae of their arthritis and grandchildren and why this year’s tomatoes are rubbish. Creeping inside and trying to remain faithful to the voice as well as the memory. My focus is to extract the ‘essence’, as well as the ‘history’ of these lives. To crystallise character.

I have never used a tape recorder — a foreign gadget for a ninety-year-old, and an intrusion. Archie insisted, ‘I’ll clam up if you bring in one of those blimming machines.’ Others would have talked happily into a microphone or an ice cream cone! Some thrived in the limelight, others lacked faith in the ‘importance’ of their memories. Many cherished privacy. So apart from two who chose to keep their real names, the stories and illustrations remain anonymous. Though the locals will know!

My stories describe how it felt to live in the Wairarapa over the past century, how it feels to be near the end of life, how today’s world measures up. Each character is a survivor, recalling often raw or touching personal details: a young boy sleeping in a shed with snow coming in under the eaves, or chained to a fence, or whipped and starved in an orphanage; a teenager push-biking fourteen miles to town and back to have all his teeth pulled out; an old man never learning to trust a car — or shampoo!; women trapped, or flourishing, or pragmatic: ‘If you were having a baby, you didn’t go to a doctor at all. You just got pregnant, stayed pregnant and then had the baby!’

These stories reflect our spirit: a carefully unravelled web of fact and feeling, earthy yarns, shrewd perceptions, tomfoolery, fantasy and faith.

Stories about ourselves.

One perceptive old lady concluded: ‘What you’re doing in this book, it’s like lifting up a lid. It’s like people who have old tin trunks full of crochet and stuff; they put the lid down on it, and it’s dead. But you need to open it up and let people see inside, then it stays alive. And that’s like our old memories: the lid’s left down on them and they’re dying. But when you start asking us old ones questions, it’s like poking a fire. All sorts of things slowly come back to life again.’

The woman was both ‘ordinary’ and a precious tin trunk of memories. She embodied our legacy of folk history. And my feeling for it.

This book has an obvious layer: stories from the Wairarapa. But the core must be essential New Zealand experience. Reflecting something universally human. And we clearly need to capture this material before it’s too late. How many of us harbour regrets? ‘I really wish I’d written down my nan’s stories …’

We also have a unique opportunity to reach back to the earliest days of European experience in New Zealand. Ninety-five-year-old Harry recalled his grandfather’s story: ‘When he was a boy of twelve or thirteen, a Maori lady put him into a canoe, covered him up with a flax mat and pushed him out into a lagoon to save him from the fighting that day. She gave him some water, told him not to lift the mat and to stay out there till dark. Granddad’s family had given her people timber and stuff. That was her way of showing gratitude. And that’s why I’m here today!’

A living man, voicing living memories of the New Zealand Wars. The absolute beginnings of our story.

These stories emerged from the Wairarapa — but really they could be from anywhere. From Waiau or Waihi or Wales. If traces of universal human experience are not exposed, I’ve failed. They are stories about ourselves. Who we are.

This is not oral history via a tape recorder. It is not regular regional history. It is my attempt to reflect our national identity and folklore.

Our backbone.

CHRISTINE HUNT DANIELL, NOVEMBER 2012

Evie

Engineer? Well, you’re not going to be that, my dear.

Evie was a centenarian, born in Pahiatua in 1905. She had the startling eyes and energy of the birds she’d always identified with. She liked quick things: conversations, ideas, music, humour. Knitting and crocheting always appealed, but tatting was too slow!

Evie’s mind darted back over a hundred years of life in the Pongaroa area. Her recall was astounding: crystallised details of events and personal incidents, the names of her uncle’s horses, the exact words Miss Hamilton spoke on that first day at school.

She was from the era of slates and pencils, horse and buggy, and distrust of the newfangled invention: ‘a motor car … parked under the tree, out of the wind!’

Evie blended her wry perspective on life with laser insights: ‘Kids today tell their parents what to do … you can’t let kids rule the world because then they miss out on being kids.’

I’d like to just fade out. Disappear …

I turned one hundred on 11 June but, you know, I don’t feel old. It’s strange, isn’t it? I had no family of my own, but I’ve lived with young people all my life until I came here to the old people’s village six years ago. It’s such a change. The difference? Always being told what to do!

Always been strong-willed? Yes. I’ve always been a very independent person. Had to be. My mother died in 1908, when I was three. She was only twenty-three years old. I remember her riding her horse over the hill to come and say goodbye to me. No cars those days. I noticed her full neck, and her eyes, they were very prominent. That was my earliest memory, I think, my mother coming over the hill. She went down to Wellington Hospital to have a goitre operation and I never saw her again. She was one of the first in the southern hemisphere to have that operation and evidently it didn’t work. Dad wouldn’t say much. A whole year she had down there in Wellington before she died. I’ve always kept her in my memory.

So I was sent off to live with my Aunt and Uncle Burling at Ngaturi, forty miles out from Pahiatua. They had a lovely grownup family; two boys and two girls. The second boy, Charlie, was nine years older than me and he was like a father, he looked after me. I had one real brother, exactly one year behind me, but we weren’t brought up together. My father wasn’t able to bring us up: he got sick and was basically an invalid for the rest of his life. So one of his brothers brought up my real brother. My brother died young, when he was eighty.

I think I had a remarkable upbringing for a child who didn’t have a mother and didn’t go to school until she was nine years old. It was five miles to walk to school from my uncle’s place, too far for a young girl, and I was too little to ride because I couldn’t open and shut the gates from my horse. So my uncle just gave me school lessons at home. Then they built a school at Kohiku. I clearly remember that first day at school; my uncle took a hatchet and marked the trees all the way. He marked a track for me to follow, so from then on I could walk by myself. I remember to this day him saying: ‘You must never speak to anyone who comes onto this track. Go and hide.’ I used to be so nervous someone would come, and I was very frightened of wetas and bugs and things.

Then there was the river to ford; I had to try and make use of the high rocks and keep myself safe. It was a proper river, way up past my knees. I was little, five foot five inches — though I’m only five foot three now! I was nervous of the river when it was flooding; my uncle wouldn’t let me go if it was a huge flood. In the end they got a little bridge made. It was just built of boards and rope, and every time there was a flood the boards came off and we had to try and walk over on the wires. Then one of the little girls got too nervous and she wouldn’t go to school.

How far? Took me about thirty minutes. First I had to get through the pig paddock. I had to wait until the pig was in the far corner — it would have eaten me! I remember that first day going to school; the pig caught my dress, but it didn’t eat it! Then I had to go through the rushes. They were higher than my head so I couldn’t see where to go, I just had to follow an animal track. The bush and the birds … I remember the quails and pheasants used to come every year and lay their eggs; they allowed me to look in the nests and turn the eggs. I remember that like it was just yesterday.

A great feeling for birds and animals? Oh, yes, I loved the birds. One used to come and whistle to me every morning. And the horses never seemed to play up with me. When I got bigger I was able to ride a horse to school, but I had to tether him well or he’d be home before me!

That first day at school the teacher said to me: ‘What can you do? Can you say the alphabet?’ I said, ‘Z y x w v u t s …’ Back to front, like my uncle taught me. I can still say it perfectly like that, backwards, and it’s a long time since I was nine. I’ve taught it to ever so many children on buses, when they don’t know what to do with themselves. They love it.

Well, that teacher sent me outside. She said — I still remember the exact words — ‘Don’t be cheeky, go outside. Come in when you learn not to be cheeky.’ So I stayed outside until it was time to go home. My uncle asked, ‘How did you get on at school?’ and I said, ‘Not very well.’ All I’d done was say the alphabet like he’d taught me.

Then I remember the next morning the school inspector came, and he said, ‘I can’t get any sense out of that child.’ Yes, me! So the teacher said, ‘Take her outside and talk, you’d be surprised at what she knows.’ He took me out onto the steps and I remember he smelt some flowers and got a bee sting on his nose. It’s silly the things you remember, isn’t it?

Our school was just a little one-room building with ten pupils, two to a desk. All through primary school I had the same teacher, Miss Hamilton; she was my friend until she died. We wrote with slates and pencils, and later on with pens and ink. Lots of hopscotch and skipping!

How I felt those first days at school? Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the other kids. I was used to living on my own, as Charlie my cousin was nine years older than me and his brother and two sisters were older again. I’d just been home-taught by my uncle. He had a great big map of the world, and I had to learn the names of all the countries. Then I remember the very first day The Dominion came, the first day it was printed, 1907 I think it was. My uncle had a little stool made and I had to sit on it after dinner, right next to his chair, and listen to him read the news. I had to listen and not talk. We did that for years and years. I clearly remember hearing all the news about the First World War.

Those school days were long days. I’d get up at four o’clock, have breakfast — porridge and fried goose egg — then my job was to get the calves in. I’d go out to the thirty-acre paddock — you couldn’t see me among the bulrushes! I couldn’t see over them to find the calves! That’s how different the farms looked in our day. I’d get the calves down to the gate and often as not the wind would have blown the gate shut and they’d tear back down the paddock. I’d race after them, howling, and try to get them back. We milked twenty-nine cows by hand, morning and night, and then the calves would get the last bit, the ‘stripping’ we called it.

Then I’d walk to school — and home again for lunch! I’d eat whatever they had, soup or chops. Whatever I left at breakfast or lunch was set aside and I had to eat that at the next meal. No, ‘I like this’, or ‘I don’t like that’. Thirty-minute walk back to school. Half past three, walk back home and more jobs, getting in the wood for the morning, that sort of thing. On the way home after school I’d sit on a log in the bush to fill in time so I didn’t get home too early. I knew I had to do my jobs, but I didn’t want to get home too early and have to do too many extra jobs.

We lived on a small farm, made all our own bread and butter, sold the butter for sixpence a pound in Pongaroa. My uncle grew plenty of veges and fruit, apples and apricots, all sorts. We didn’t have to buy much. Once a year a big covered brake drawn by four horses came in, driven by an old man from Persia or Arabia or one of those places, ‘Back-again Joe’ we called him. He had everything in that brake: groceries, watches. What we bought? Flour, raisins, sultanas, tea — very black tea, not like the sort you get today. You could get presents for a wedding, and great big tins of boiled sweets. If we had a school picnic, they’d throw those sweets over the ground for the kids. Nowadays they’d say that was dirty, wouldn’t they?

Our family always had lots of geese and turkeys. I remember having to eat fried goose eggs; one egg would fill up a big pan. I didn’t like those goose eggs, they tasted of the dirty water they lived in. But I was always very fond of the birds; they were my friends. The turkeys would come and sit on my shoulder. There was one with a broken leg so we tied a stick to the leg, and it would sit on my arm and bash me with the stick. A pheasant in the bush down from our house used to lay eighteen eggs each year. She always allowed me to pat her head, take an egg and put it back again. The male bird would be beating his wings and carrying on, but she’d send him away. And a quail on the route to school would lay sixteen eggs, every year the same number. I’d look at her eggs and she wouldn’t let the old quail touch me. There’d be feathers flying …

Another thing I remember clearly, we’d have terrible droughts and the eels would die going from one pond to another. The men would hang them by the gills to dry on the fence — great big things, rotting away. I remember that very clearly. We’d go eeling in the creeks and get the little ones to eat. I didn’t like them, still don’t.

I’ll tell you something: I remember the outbreak of the First World War. I clearly remember my cousin Charlie going away to the war when I was eight. I used to worry about which men and which horses would get shot. Now they just bomb everything, don’t they? Charlie was only eighteen. He put his age up so he could go. Well, all one night his dogs howled and howled — they didn’t just make a noise, they howled. I said, ‘What are the dogs making all that noise for?’ All I got told was: ‘We’ll know tomorrow.’ I remember that very clearly. ‘We’ll know tomorrow.’ Next day the telegram came. Charlie had been captured. His dogs knew. Once the man came and delivered the telegram, the dogs shut up. You wouldn’t think, across the other side of the world, they could know. But they did.

Yes, Charlie did come back in the end. The dogs? I don’t remember how they reacted when he got back home. It sounds as if I’ve dreamt it all, but I haven’t.

When my mother died, my father didn’t remarry for nine years. He wanted me to go to boarding school, but first he had to earn the money. In the end he married my mother’s best friend, a lovely person. So I came to Masterton and lived with them and went to Solway College. She was very good to me and they had a son and three daughters. There’s only one of them left now. But we are ‘livers’ in our family; my great-great-grandfather was a hundred and ten when he died, just two days off a hundred and eleven! Yes, I remember him well, he was a very active and charming man, very nice to people. Not all people are like that, are they? My father was very nice to people, too. I wonder if I am?

Ours was a hard life, but character-building. You learnt to do things. Get home, do the wood, eat dinner, sit and listen to the news from The Dominion, go to bed. When my dad went to see my mum in Wellington, when she was sick, he’d ride his horse forty miles to Pahiatua and get the train to Wellington. Then next day he’d come all the way back.

Remember seeing my first car? Oh, yes. I was about thirteen and my grandfather came to stay. He drove up in a motor car. A Buick, I think it was. I remember seeing it parked under the tree, out of the wind! But they had fun getting it up the hill to our house — there was no road! They wanted to take me for a ride and I didn’t want to go. I got in but I was frightened, I thought it might run away with me. I trusted my horse but not that motor car!

Talk about primitive days … No lights when I was a child, and the lamps weren’t marvellous. When gas came, that was just wonderful. Cold? I’ve been cold all my life. The fires weren’t great at heating up the room. No bath either, just a tub kept out in the shed and put in front of the fire on Sunday morning while dinner was cooking. I remember one Sunday, visitors came while I was in the bath. My aunt just pushed me under the table, bathtub and all, so I was hidden by the tablecloth. I got dreadfully cold. Had to keep quiet under there till the visitors went, hours later!

But I will always be grateful to my uncle for bringing me up; he treated me like one of his own children. We had a great community out there at Tikaramonga, that was the name of both the river and the district. I called Pongaroa my home. We lived five miles from Pongaroa, four and a half miles from Rakanui, and we’d all get together at school picnics and dances. My uncle would have the first dance with me, then I’d be wrapped in a coat and tucked away somewhere to keep me quiet for the rest of the night, but I wouldn’t get to sleep. Home again in the buggy — no other way of travelling, just a horse and buggy, or cart, or riding. No bridges; we had to ford the rivers.

Then came the day when the pictures first came to Pongaroa. Still pictures of course, not movies. We had to sit on long seats in the hall to watch them. I’d go to sleep and fall off. I loved the pictures, though I can’t now remember anything I saw. After the war we got the silent war pictures, I didn’t think they were so good. The first talkies came when I was in Masterton. We persuaded my father to take us to Black Watch, that was our first talkie film.

Back there in Tikaramonga we’d play football and cricket. I remember going every Saturday to the cricket at Rakanui in the buggy and pair; Bonny and Tommy were those horses’ names. My uncle would always drive and the girls would always sit on the back seat, looking backwards. That always made me carriage-sick. My uncle would wrap me in a rug and put me under the seat of the buggy — must have been worse under there! Then while the cricket was on, I had music lessons from a Mrs Murphy. She’d come riding in on a black horse, in a black hat, black jacket and long black skirt, just like something out of a story book. I learnt the piano, Beethoven and bits of everything; I played well and had a good singing voice but I lost it when I was twenty-nine. I went to sing and it just wasn’t there.

I can also be very grateful my father made me attend to my education. He sent me down to college at Solway in Masterton. I sat matriculation — that was a disaster, there was a fire that night and all our work got burnt. They did give me a written pass, but it didn’t feel to me like a real matriculation. I always did well at some subjects. I’d get 100 per cent for maths and