Burdett, Beverley (Bev) Maria Interview

25th January 2025

I’m Beverley Maria Burdett, and I was born in Gisborne on 4th March 1950.

Talking about my parents and both of their families firstly – my father was Edward Haig Burdett, known as Ted as an adult. He was born on 17th March 1921 in Tokomaru Bay, and was the older and stronger of twin boys. His twin was Clement Haig Burdett, and they were the youngest of eight children to my grandparents, Clement Henry Burdett and Lillian Grace Burdett née Haig. Clement, Dad’s twin, died of diphtheria at age three. I once asked Dad if he missed his twin, and after a long time he said yes. Dad’s brothers and sisters were quite a lot older; the family’s ages span twenty years. The oldest was Frances, born in 1902, then came Sid in 1904, Ethel in 1905, Beulah in 1907; then there was a gap of five years before Jack was born in 1912, followed by Lloyd, or Lad in 1916 and the twins five years later.

My grandfather, Clement Henry Burdett, was born 15th February 1867 in New Zealand in Mangonui, Northland where his father, my great-grandfather, Francis Henry Burdett, was a doctor and surgeon. Francis Henry was born in Birmingham in 1840, the oldest son of Dr Henry Francis Burdett and Mary Elizabeth Burdett née Jones, my great-great grandparents.  He had six brothers and sisters, and he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a doctor and surgeon in Birmingham.  As a single man he travelled first to New Zealand as a ship’s surgeon on the Dona Anita, which left London in August 1864, and docked at Lyttelton, Canterbury on 7th January 1865. He was discharged from his on board duties on 25th January 1865, and he then married Julia Amy Jones – no relation to the mother, different family of Joneses – on 3rd March 1865 at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Lyttelton. Julia was born on 27th November 1836 in Tower Hamlets, Middlesex. That same year they returned to the UK [United Kingdom] where their first child, Sidney Francis Burdett, was born in Birmingham on 18th November.

With their son they then sailed again for New Zealand aboard the Queen of the North, with Francis again the ship’s doctor, arriving in Auckland on 11th June 1866. They were assisted immigrants and made their way to Mangonui, which was the main provincial centre back then, where Francis began work as a doctor. There was a hospital there at that time; and the population was recorded as approximately ten thousand in the early 1900s.  They had a second child, Clement Henry, my grandfather, born on 15th February 1867, and a third on 20th September 1868 in Auckland, named Purefoye Harpur, but he died shortly after birth. That name, or those names, Purefoye Harpur, are names that have come down through the family.

Francis Henry contracted TB [tuberculosis] and died on the 15th June 1869 in Auckland, at only twenty-nine years of age.  Julia and her two sons moved to Auckland and lived in Otahuhu where Julia eventually married for a second time on 13th January 1874. Her sons would’ve been nine and eight. She died on 11th April 1912 and is buried in Waikaraka Cemetery in Onehunga, Auckland.

In the 1880s Julia’s two sons, Sid and Clem Burdett, moved to the East Coast, Sid to work on Waipiro Station for James Nelson & Arnold Beetham Williams from the well known Anglican Williams family, early settlers in New Zealand. My grandfather, Clem, was an apprentice builder before a move to Gisborne where he worked as a carpenter. In 1901 he married Lillian Grace Haig, aged twenty-two, in Gisborne when he was thirty-four, and they lived for a few years in and near Gisborne. About 1908, with two [three] daughters and a son, they moved to Tokomaru Bay where my grandfather built a private hotel and boarding house called ‘Burdett’s Private Hotel’, which they owned and managed until the mid 1940s. They added four sons to the family, the last being my dad and his twin, who died in 1924. My grandfather died on 8th April 1948 in Tokomaru Bay and he’s buried near his little son, Clement Haig.

My grandmother was born on 9th November 1878 at Waipiro Bay on the East Coast, and was named Tere Wharepapa. Her mother was Merekuia Wharepapa Pakerau, and she wasn’t given the surname Haig when she was born – there’s a bit of a mystery about who her father was. Her marriage certificate states Lillian’s mother was Mere Haig and her father was Sydney Haig, a surveyor.

On the East Coast at the time there was a William Sidney Harrington Haig [born 1st January 1849], but there are no official records of marriage or children. He came to New Zealand in the late 1860s and although I haven’t found evidence of him on any passenger lists he does appear on the New Zealand electoral rolls from 1870 on, and was a member of the 1878 Poverty Bay Rugby team. He had a brother, Frederick Alexander Haig, and they were both born in India where their father was a captain with the East India Company. They were sent back to England to live with their maternal grandmother after the deaths of both their parents in 1853 and ‘54 in India. Frederick, born in 1851, entered the Royal Navy on 13th December 1864 when he was only thirteen.

 [In 1921] a letter sent and held at the Russell Museum, written by a man named Ranji Wilcox Ford who had stopped overnight at Burdett’s Private Hotel in Tokomaru Bay, states that when he saw a photograph of his grandmother, Martha Ford, on the wall of the hotel, he was told by my grandmother what she knew about her parents – that about 1877 one of the Royal Navy survey ships anchored off Waipiro Bay, and Merekuia Wharepapa met a Lieutenant Frederick Haig. Eighteen months later when the ship returned, Haig was handed a baby girl and told he had to take her to his people. He had an aunt, the sister of his mother, living in Russell and he took the baby to Martha Ford who must have agreed to take her. Martha Ford later had her christened in Russell with the name Lillian Grace Haig. Lieutenant Haig returned to the UK with his ship and married in October that same year, but died from TB two months later in December 1880.

So my grandmother remained in Russell with Martha Ford, her great aunt, who sent her to the Russell School and cared for her. She was about fourteen in 1892 when Martha was eighty years old and about to move to Auckland to live with her son, Ernest. Martha died on 16th January 1894, aged eighty-two. My grandmother, now named Lillian Grace Haig, was then an orphan, although her mother, Merekuia Wharepapa, was actually still alive but unknown to authorities. With no one providing for her she was sent by the Court in Russell to an Industrial School in Auckland where she was trained as a domestic servant, and released in January 1896 at the age of sixteen back to the East Coast, before moving to Gisborne.

On the Russell Museum website I discovered that my Aunt Fran, Dad’s sister, had presented a gold locket which must’ve belonged to my grandmother, to the Russell Museum to be held in the Ford Collection. It contained photos of Martha Ford and also Dr Francis Henry Burdett, who was described as ‘a friend and protege of the Ford family’. He was also the father-in-law of my grandmother.

I remember Christmases spent with my grandmother were very English … lots of sixpences and threepences in the plum pudding. In her seventies she lived in Gisborne and she was there when I was young, but finally she returned to Tokomaru Bay to live with her eldest daughter, Fran, who had been a nurse and who cared for her until she died on 29th August 1967 in Tokomaru Bay, aged eighty-nine. She was buried at Tokomaru Bay with her husband and youngest twin son, Clement Haig.

Dad, the remaining twin, grew up in Tokomaru Bay and spent his high school years at Gisborne Boys’ High School. During World War II Dad was in the RNZAF [Royal New Zealand Air Force]; he was trained in radar and was later part of a secondment to the US [United States] Air Force in 1943 to help advance the use of radar in the war against the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. He was sent to Guadalcanal, which he told me was absolute misery for them all … the heat, the flies, the mosquitos, land crabs, the diseases – malaria, dysentery and many fungal infections.

Back in New Zealand after the war he worked for some years for the P&T [Post & Telegraph] installing power poles in the North Island, and also as a farm labourer intermittently. He eventually met my mum, Catherine Agnes Griffin, who was one of the eleven children of Michael Joseph Griffin and Mary Ann Griffin, née Heeney. My grandfather, Mick Griffin, was born on 1st August 1879, and emigrated to New Zealand from County Kerry, Ireland. Nothing is known about his Irish life, or when he sailed for New Zealand, but he married my grandmother, Mary Ann Heeney on 8th September 1909 at St Mary’s Church in Gisborne. Mick worked as a labourer. When their youngest child, Pat, was three and Mum was almost ten, my grandfather suffered peritonitis and died in Cook Hospital, Gisborne on 28th August 1930, aged fifty-one.

My grandmother, Mary Ann, born on 7th September 1885, was the eldest of two daughters and eight sons to Hugh Heeney and Eliza Heeney, she [who] was also sometimes referred to as Lizzie. Her maiden name was Coughlan; they both emigrated from Ireland, Hugh from Derry, [Londonderry] Northern Ireland, and Eliza from County Cork, and eventually met and married in Gisborne. Their second daughter, Ellen (Nell), was born in 1888, and then there were eight boys, two of whom died when they were young. Jack was born in 1893, Frank was born in 1894 and died in World War I on the Somme in France in 1916, Arthur was born 1896, and in 1898 another child who they named Tom was born, and this son became the famous heavyweight boxer, Tom Heeney, who challenged US boxer Gene Tunney for the world title in 1928. He lost the fight but married an American woman and remained in Florida until his death in 1984. The last son born in 1900 was Patrick, and he died in 1968. He moved at some point to the East Coast north of Gisborne, and there are now many Heeney relatives on the Coast as well as the Haig relatives from the other side of my family.

My great grandparents, Hugh Heeney, born 11th February 1857, and Eliza Coughlan, born 20th August 1860, met in Gisborne. Hugh had emigrated to New Zealand in 1878, aged thirty-one; he was subsidised by the New Zealand Government who paid the fares of immigrants to New Zealand, bringing skills and increasing the population. He was one of several brothers and sisters to emigrate, some settling in Hastings. These Heeney brothers and sisters were Frank, Rose, Catherine, John, who married Margaret Barry in Napier, and Mary who married Robert Wall in Hastings, and had possibly thirteen children.

From Poverty Bay to Broadway is a book written about Tom Heeney’s life by Lydia Monin, and it contains the following interesting detail about Eliza’s arrival in New Zealand; this is a quote from the book:

‘Eliza was Irish too, but she’d lived for a couple of years in Queensland after arriving in Townsville in 1878. The daughter of a labourer, she ran away from County Cork after a family argument. She made her way to England by selling a turkey and then made enough money to emigrate to Queensland, where a brother lived. There were five deaths during the three-month journey on the Sir William Wallace, and just about everyone on board was in poor health by the time they got to their destination.  But Eliza’s constitution was remarkable, and she survived the journey untroubled.  She landed in Australia without hat, boots or food, and found work as a cook on an up-country [or outback] station, even though she didn’t know one end of a kettle from the other.  An argument with a ‘black tracker’ working on the station led to her premature departure two years later. She was so worried about the tracker finding her that she was carried on the shoulders of European friends for miles.  When her brother died, Eliza moved to New Zealand where she had a relative in Tolaga Bay, and ended up in Gisborne. Miss Coughlan took service with prominent families there, and for several years survived the consequences of a number of scrapes into which her Irish devilment led her. These incidents became family lore in later years after she married Mr Hugh Heeney and settled down to married life.’

Hugh and Eliza’s wedding was on Saturday 23rd February 1884 when Eliza was twenty-four.  In the early 1880s Hugh bought land in Kaiti, Gisborne and worked to clear the ti-tree and scrub, chopping firewood and supplying the locals.  He built his home on this land and the newly married couple settled down. Hugh taught all his boys to box, and held fights in his makeshift gym at their home in Kaiti. He believed that boys must learn to control themselves in every way, and that boxing would exhaust them enough to prevent trouble. The following wise words were written by Hugh when his son Tom was about to fight for the World Heavyweight title – so this is Hugh’s opinion on bringing up boys:

’Youngsters realise when they’re grown up that those days at school are the happiest of their days, and to a parent who loves his children, those school days of his children are no less happy – days of expansion, growth and development.  He watches them grow and expand and react to the influence of the outside world.  It is happiness to watch such growth.  But if he is a wise parent, he will not let home influence slide into the background, and be dwarfed by the keener allurement that the world outside seems to offer.  If they want football – and it is natural that they should – give them football at home.  Never mind the possibility of a broken window or two.  Young blood is naturally gregarious, and the association of young animal spirits knocking themselves about in their games – they never suffer any serious hurt – is building up strong bodies for them.  That is the atmosphere that my children were brought up in.’

Now my mother, Cath, or Catherine, was gentle and kind, and very attached to her family, particularly her mother. She told me that when she was about ten she was chosen to dance around a maypole at school, I think on St Patrick’s Day, but she needed to provide her own long red ribbon. Of course there was no hope of getting such a thing, and she prayed and prayed to all available saints. One morning she woke to find a long red ribbon, and I don’t think we can possibly imagine how she felt … the wonder, the delight! Most likely the ribbon was somehow bought or acquired, possibly by her older sister, Nell, and forever after Mum’s favourite song was Scarlet Ribbons.

During the war she was mobilised, as all young women were [who were] over eighteen, to Lower Hutt to work at the WD & HO Wills Tobacco Company, making cigarettes for New Zealand soldiers overseas. She stayed with others including Eileen, her youngest sister, in a hostel in Woburn. After the war she met Dad in Gisborne at a dance, and they married on 14th February 1949 at St Mary Star of the Sea Church in Gisborne. It was Valentine’s Day, and Mum wore a borrowed wedding dress and veil. The honeymoon was in Napier where they stayed at the Masonic Hotel. My great grandmother, Eliza Heeney, was present at the wedding not long before she died.

Dad bought a grocery business and they started their married life in Gisborne. Initially they rented rooms in the house of one of my grandmother’s friends who was a widow, but it wasn’t long before I came along on 4th March 1950, born at Cook Hospital, Gisborne and christened Beverley Maria. Dad soon found and bought a grocery store, and he and Mum moved with me into the attached one bedroom house. Sharman Grace, my sister, came along three years and nine months later on 3rd December 1953, and we lived there until we moved to Napier in 1959.

In Napier we saw quite a bit of cousins, Suzanne, Maree and Lynette Williamson, whose mother was Cynthia, one of Mum’s cousins. She’d married Douglas Williamson, a mechanic at Matapiro Station, and I remember a holiday road trip before we left Gisborne to visit them at Matapiro. We stayed there over Easter; I must’ve been seven or eight. It was fascinating – their cat had kittens in a wardrobe, and I was awestruck. On Easter Sunday morning a huge basket filled with chocolate eggs and straw appeared on the table, and with three girls to play with we had plenty of dolls and prams etcetera, but we caught bantams and dressed them somehow in bonnets and clothes, and tucked them into prams to push around. Makes me smile now.

Dad had a business brain as well as a very acute sense of what is right. A lovely strong father to have when we were little, and a committed businessman. He was a constant in our lives; they were just there always. Although he had some old-fashioned views, no one took my dad for a ride. I admired him immensely while also being a bit afraid of him ‘cause he was fairly strict, and there was a definite lack of understanding of young girls. But many of us baby boomers forget that our fathers went to the war, and not many of those who survived and returned were unaffected by war in other countries and the events they witnessed. Dad probably came back with an altered view of the world.

My earliest memory is an impression of being held by Mum in bed, and another memory is of my two aunts, Dad’s sisters Fran and Ethel, fussing around and taking care of Mum. But it may be that I’ve been told these things … they may not be true memories. One memory I certainly do have is of sitting in a cream painted high chair and screaming – probably not for long, but I remember blood in my mouth, so I think I must’ve had a new tooth come through or bitten something. Anyway, Mum came and sorted me out.

It was a very happy childhood when I look back, playing with neighbours’ kids, and I remember when very small jumping on the ice in the puddles. It was obviously winter, but I wasn’t aware of that. I also particularly remember going to fancy-dress balls … not balls really, more like competitions for the best costume. We were also often at the beach in summer, with cousins, uncles and aunts and one or other of the grandmothers. Life in Gisborne was full of friends and we were outside nearly all the time when we were young; it was a different world then and we were safe. I began school at St Mary Star of the Sea Catholic School in Gisborne, but our tiny house would soon prove too small for the four of us, and Dad began to look for a bigger grocery, which he found in Greenmeadows, Napier, and we moved there in mid 1959. The house that came with the shop had five bedrooms with lots of storage, garages and stables at the rear. It had been built in the 1800s and had once been a country hotel; there’s a photo with a hitching rail still out the front. Through a carport we had a lovely little back yard where hydrangeas grew and lots of fruit trees – omega plums, granny smith apples, apricots, white and golden queen peaches, nectarines; these trees were beautiful in blossom in spring and then laden with fruit in summer. Mum preserved jars and jars and made lots of jam, and my sister and I would often climb the trees and sit there eating whatever fruit we liked.

Milk was delivered to the shop in metal crates of glass bottles with cardboard caps and the delivery came via big draught horses pulling carts. This continued in Greenmeadows for a very long time; Gil Atkins was the last milkman using horses in New Zealand and he continued until 1984. We’d moved into town way before then, but it was lovely hearing the clip-clop of the horses, the snorting and the reins jiggling in the very early mornings. Dad had a lot of local customers as the only Four Square grocery servicing quite a large area in Greenmeadows; we had a petrol pump outside, and he was often woken up at night to man the pump. We used to visit the wholesalers in town, Williams & Kettle, de Pelichet McLeod and others who supplied goods for the shop, and Williams & Kettle in particular supplied a huge array of items from dinner sets and linen to household groceries and farming goods and implements, so Mum was able to buy at cost lots of lovely things she wanted.

Christmases I remember when we lived in Greenmeadows … it always seemed exciting because the shop would stay open late and lots of Dad’s customers would come into the back for a drink. Usually it was dark, and it seemed very exciting to me. We would go to Midnight Mass at St Mary’s Church in Meeanee, and that was just magical to a child, so late at night, all the candles and everyone in anticipation of the next day.

We both went to school at St Joseph’s Primary, Greenmeadows – now Reignier School – and were there until moving to Intermediate at St Patrick’s Girls School, Barton Avenue, Marewa. I used to ride my bike about six kilometers from Greenmeadows to St Pats down Kennedy Road, which was sealed but just had huge open paddocks and grazing land either side. The road was quite dangerous when I think about it now, with big trucks, buses and cars rushing by. Several of the trucks were going fast enough to cause a gust of air to wobble the bike. But memory’s amazing and I was a child, so as vehicles were limited to about thirty miles an hour back then, it was probably slow by today’s standards.

At that time in Greenmeadows the hotel and Napier Park Racecourse were still operating. We often went to race meetings with Mum and Dad. Dad had a bit of a love of racing and regularly had a punt on a Saturday – Sharm and I both recall the radio turned up loud to broadcast races, something I grew to enjoy as a part of the soundtrack of my childhood. Napier Park racecourse was finally sold to the Napier City Council in 1964, and they developed the area into Anderson Park as it is today. The original old hotel closed in the sixties as well, to be replaced until the nineties by a more modern building which is now also a relic of the past.

By the time I’d finished at St Pat’s Girls I was twelve, and had broken my left arm in three places playing hide ‘n’ seek in a walnut tree … so climbing around the tree with my eyes closed … yes. Fell out, smashed my arm and spent ten days in hospital getting it sorted out, because initially my arm swelled and the first cast was soon too tight, so it had to be reset under anaesthetic. It happened in December, summer, and I was to start high school at Sacred Heart College in the 3rd Form in early February ‘63, but I don’t recall being at school with a broken arm; I think the cast came off before school started.

I was sent to piano lessons when I was about ten, which I did not love but persevered with, and could play okay; passed a few exams in practical and theory. After high school where the nuns at Sacred Heart College taught music, I learned ‘modern’ – a method of playing piano to suit popular music in the sixties. Ernie Rouse was my teacher – he had a trad jazz band, and I did love learning this new method of playing. After traditional classical piano it was a revelation, and so much easier! He was a great teacher and his band was fantastic, one of the best in Napier in those days. But when we were younger the main entertainment prior to television was radio shows such as Life with Dexter, Doctor Paul, The Flying Doctor and others.

In 1961-2 there was a flood on the river plains between Napier and Hastings, and the Ngaruroro River breached its stop banks. Dad drove us out to the ‘dip’ in Pakowhai Road at the original old bridge site so that we could see the river in flood; a scary but exciting sight for kids who didn’t have any idea of the consequences. Later the Chesterhope Bridge was built to span the newly diverted river, and the road was realigned. We learned as adults about flooding on the river plains after numerous smaller floods and just recently the catastrophic Cyclone Gabrielle.

In November 1963 we were still living in Greenmeadows when we received a phone call early one morning from my aunt in Westshore to tell us President John F Kennedy had been assassinated. We had TV by that time, and were able to watch the unfolding story even though it was delayed for a few days while New Zealand waited for film to arrive.

Sharm, my sister, and I were taught by nuns through our primary and high school years, although there were a few lay teachers scattered through those years. I remember Mrs McMurray at St Pat’s Girls in Napier, and at Sacred Heart there was Mrs Bailey who was a seemingly very nervous woman, very thin and hesitant and no match for fourth form girls. One, from Form 1 at St Pat’s to Form 6 at Sacred Heart, was Miss Cassidy, a mobile elocution teacher, who came for fifty minutes a week to improve our broad, flat New Zealand accents. She succeeded pretty much, but we were all merciless with her, mimicking everything and calling her Hopalong – she had a limp.

The whole experience of being at high school was overwhelming – the Form 6 prefects were the most worldly, confident people, and I remember we were all in awe, wondering if it could ever possibly be us! I studied Commercial – shorthand, typing, book keeping etcetera – and I turned out to be good at it, and got on brilliantly with Sister Michael who often threw the chalk and duster at those not paying attention … but I was a goody-two-shoes.

A school bus took us from Greenmeadows to Sacred Heart and picked up all the high school kids for a number of schools – Napier Girls’ High, Colenso, Sacred Heart – until we moved into town, and then I rode my bike and parked it at the bottom of Shakespeare Road – we never locked them, they would always be there when we came back – and walked up and down the steep hill every day to the top of Convent Road.

In the fourth form while baby sitting with a friend at her sister’s house one night I got very sick, and it turned out to be appendicitis. I was taken to hospital and operated on at Napier Hospital which was on top of Hospital Hill. Back to school after that for two more years, but Dad sold the shop in 1965 and we moved to Coverdale Street in Onekawa. This was a typical New Zealand home, only about six years old, and Mum just loved having a house that wasn’t part of a shop – it was a novelty for all of us. Dad for a time was one of the first New World supermarket managers in Napier, and later he became a real estate agent and worked for C D Cox Brothers who also ran a travel agency.

In 1966 I was the only one of the Commercial class left at school, and I finished at the end of the year. I got a job pretty well straight away at the State Insurance Office in Napier, starting in January 1967. State was at that stage owned by the government – more or less the Fire & General insurance arm of the Government Life Office, although a separate entity. Jobs in the public service were pretty much guaranteed for life – the government would never sack you. That’s the way it was back then. I was paid fortnightly, £7 [£17] 10s 1d, or $35 or thereabouts. It seemed like a fortune to me, but soon disappeared – I had to pay board at home now, and my own bus fares, lunches, clothes and everything else.

Dad would play Mitch Miller on the radiogram when we were out at church on Sundays – he loved those songs from the war years, and we came to love them too; we’d arrive home and we could hear the music from outside … just a lovely random memory.

I joined the CYM which was the Catholic Youth Movement after leaving school, and met thirty or forty other people, all part of the group. There was no religion, it was a social club, and we spent weekends doing lots of things along with the young priest who supervised us when we were seventeen to twenty. But Father Tom O’Connor was only about twenty-six, twenty-seven himself, so the perfect person to relate to us and try to reign in behaviour. The girls were mostly from Sacred Heart, the boys from St John’s College in Hastings which is where all the boys went to high school after Marist School in Napier, in the days of segregated schools. We had some bus trips away, drove a convoy of cars to beaches, rivers and lakes in the summer, had our own dances and generally had a lovely time. As we all grew older there were 21st birthday parties practically every month, mostly in rugby club gyms, complete with bands, decorations, supper and alcohol (paid for by the parents of the birthday person) but the alcohol was restricted of course, so the boys would bring booze with them, and we all snuck out for a drink … Blackberry Nip, Apricot Brandy, Asti Spumante which we called ‘Spu’; and a fair amount of spirits as well. Russell Spiller from Batchelor’s Camera Studio would snap these happy times – a 21st was a big deal – and we would rush into his studio to see the proofs on Monday after the ‘do’.

Around this time I got a second job through a friend, working on the tote at Saturday race meetings. This involved travel sometimes to different towns, but mostly just to Hastings during the racing season. The tote, or on-course totalisator, was run with a team of people such as me paying out the various win and place dividends in between the races; you needed to be quick with mental arithmetic and accurate. Before payouts were given all calculations were carried out and approved behind the scenes, then we opened our small windows in the tote building, and outside the queues had formed to collect their winnings. The job paid so well that I did that for a couple of years.

In Napier at the time there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment for young people – three movie theatres, the State, the Gaiety … called the Fleapit by everyone and later demolished … and the Odeon, brand new and exciting. A couple of doors down from the Odeon Theatre was Callinicos’ Milk Bar, and they had what we didn’t know then was a cappuccino machine. Mum loved what she called ‘milky coffees’ so would often take us there when we were in town shopping. Also, a bit further down Hastings Street was Paxie’s Restaurant, well known around town. The owners were from Greece, and other members of the family also owned and ran the National Cafe in Emerson Street which closed in 2015 but later reopened, run by a younger Paxie, still with the old familiar decor.

On Friday nights in the sixties Napier came alive – all the kids went into town. Mostly we just hung around in groups, eyeing up the boys as they drove round and round the block for hours in their Zephyrs, Zodiacs, Cortinas, V8s – they whistled and catcalled, and picked up willing girls while we all oohed and aahed. Hearts thumped and we were giggly and shrill; we applied makeup, only to scrub it off before we went home. Harmless, but exciting. The Emerson Street corners of Hastings Street and Dalton Street both had huge crossed arches on the diagonal across the intersections – Emerson Street wasn’t a mall then. These were lit with many lights at night and added a festive and party atmosphere to late night shopping in town. Long gone now, sadly.

Older teens and young adults mostly hung out at the Palm Grove Milk Bar – teddy boys, who wore loose jackets and stove-pipe trousers and whose hair was slick with Brylcreme, and the girls who wore pencil skirts and ponytails; bodgies, (boys) whose idol was James Dean, the movie star whose clothing and hair they copied, rode motorbikes which they parked in a line outside the Palm Grove in Emerson Street. Widgies (girls) were the female version, rode pillion on the back of the bikes and there was a lot of black leather and zips. What with bodgies growing their hair long and getting around in black skinny jeans, shirts with short sleeves rolled up, neon coloured socks and winklepickers – extremely pointy-toed shoes – and widgies cutting their hair short, usually dyeing it or teasing it to death, stiff with hairspray, and wearing dangly earrings and pale, pale pink lipstick, parents were wringing their hands and wanting to know what the world was coming to! Everyone smoked. The Palm Grove stayed open until 11pm and had quite a reputation. I was not quite in that age group, they were mostly about four years older, and I was not allowed to go in there.

There were locally sponsored dances at the Red Cross Hall in Tennyson Street about once a month I think, although it could’ve been less often. If they were school dances – the combined local high schools – I was allowed to go and my friends and I usually had a fantastic time dancing, mostly with each other. I distinctly remember The Beatles’ Eight Days a Week pumping out as we danced.

The other major entertainment in these years were the dances at the Top Hat Ballroom in Napier to which anyone and everyone went on a Saturday night. They were managed by a local guy, Bernie Meredith, who bought in bands from all over New Zealand and some from Australia; even occasionally international groups. There was a huge crowd every Saturday night at the Top Hat; there was a bar, and supper was usually provided if the function was private. Those were the days!

Most local companies also held balls in the winter, and often these would be held at the Top Hat or local halls such as the Napier War Memorial Hall, which was a beautiful venue overlooking the sea. These balls were more upmarket, with people of all ages. I was allowed to go because it was to do with work; there was usually a mix of people from work and from other companies of the same genre, eg, the Insurance Ball.

My sister left school and joined the Ministry of Works in Napier for a short while, then went off to Hutt Hospital to become a nurse. She got a little car and came back reasonably often to visit. Nursing training took about three years, and in that time she met the brother of a friend she was training with, [Grant Sutton], who she later married.

I had a few dates but nothing serious, and hardly ever more than one or two; but eventually a guy asked me out when I was eighteen, and Brian James Pearcey came into the picture. He’d lived in Napier all his life with his younger brother and parents. Their home was a haven for us teenagers over the years and we had many wonderful times there. So Brian and I were just friends for quite a long time, then a couple of dates, but usually with the whole crowd … we moved in hordes. Brian was a fitter and turner apprentice at Jas J Niven & Co, an engineering business in Ahuriri. When he came out of his time he joined the merchant marine and went to sea as a junior marine engineer with Shaw Savill on the liner Southern Cross. We got engaged and had a party at home in Coverdale Street, and he then left again, but after returning once more he jumped ship in Napier. His father and mine were not thrilled, but I was.

We got married on 9th August 1969, and our first daughter, Deborah Maree, arrived in [February] 1970. Mum then offered to look after Deb while we both worked for twelve months, Brian at Rothmans Tobacco Company in Napier, and me at the Post Office Savings Bank as a ledger machine operator, so that we could buy a section and build a home in Tamatea, a new suburb of Napier reclaimed from the seabed after the 1931 earthquake. We got a State Advances Corporation loan … that’s a government loan … at something ridiculously low, like two percent or less, for $8,000 – the land $1,500 and the cost to build, $6,500. We soon had a builder and construction took only three months; we’d moved in by the end of 1971. Brian’s parents also helped with looking after Deb, and I finished work at the end of the twelve months.

The next couple of years in Tamatea saw the suburb develop and a school and shopping centre built. On 6th April 1973 Lauren Angela was born, and our little family was complete. Brian hauled trailer loads of beach stones to build a retaining wall in our front garden, and we bought in truckloads of topsoil to establish a lawn – the area was silty and filled with seashells having uplifted in the massive ‘31 earthquake. We planted trees and shrubs and fenced the property, built a double garage and lived happily there with the two girls. Deb started at Tamatea Primary School at the beginning of 1975. Brian had begun working at the new pulp and paper mill at Whirinaki, now owned by a Japanese company, and bought a Vespa motor scooter to get there and back, leaving the black and red Holden Kingswood for me.

Meanwhile, in 1974 Sharm turned twenty-one, and Mum and Dad held a party in Napier to which lots of family and cousins and many of her nursing friends came. The next year she and Grant got married, and I was one of the bridesmaids and Deb was a flower girl. I made all the dresses including helping with her wedding gown; I don’t know if my sewing measured up, but she was happy and had a lovely wedding in Napier. Mum was at that time working in a dress shop in Taradale and she found a gorgeous green gown which was just stunning.

In the meantime I redecorated our house … wallpaper everywhere, which was the thing in those days. I imported it all from Australia and we also had Artex plaster laid on a couple of the walls in the lounge. One summer night when Brian was working in the garage, I heard a noise in the bathroom, and thinking the children were in danger I rushed down to their bedrooms … nothing. In the dark bathroom though was what I thought was the biggest rat I had ever seen, and it jumped down from the bath and chased me down the hallway. I was screaming, Brian came running, chaos ensued! Turned out it was a possum, a pet belonging to a neighbour quite near us over the back fence, and it had got out and found it’s way to the Pearcey household.

Itchy feet then followed some time later, and I researched how we could work and live in Australia, driven by the need to earn higher income and also to just be up and away from home. I found a magazine article on Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory where there was a new mine; their head office was in Sydney, and they told us we’d need to apply for work once we were actually in Sydney, so we leased the house, packed everything up or sold it, and left for Sydney in April 1977.

Brian blitzed the interview as a maintenance fitter and turner, and we bought loads of house stuff we thought we might need and flew to Nhulunbuy, arriving later the same month. The town’s population was four thousand people, half of them kids, and pretty much all of them were young couples like ourselves. The company was a joint venture between Swiss Aluminium, or Alusuisse, and Nabalco, which was the Northern Australian Bauxite Aluminium Company, consisting of a mine, processing plant and shipping. We made tons of friends really quickly and had the most wonderful life in this tiny remote mining town where we soon knew most people because the men all worked at the same place. Life was really, really good; the kids thrived, and it couldn’t’ve been any better. We went for two years and stayed for ten.

I worked in a local cafe until we’d been there a couple of years and had at least one trip home to visit family, and then we decided to travel to Canada, England and Ireland with the girls for three months. We stayed with friends in Calgary for about six weeks, in awe of the Rockies and the beautiful winter towns like Banff, which seemed really magical in the snow. We swam in heated outdoor pools even though the snow was all around; fortunately you enter a long ramp into the water while you’re still inside the building, and gradually come outside into the lovely warm water and beautiful scenery.

We flew out of Calgary to London, and stayed for a while there getting our bearings and visiting many of the tourist destinations, and then hired a motor home and toured the south coast, but it was winter, and absolutely freezing. We crossed the Severn Estuary into Wales where Brian had friends who showed us Caldicot Castle; we visited Cardiff Arms Park, famous for Welsh rugby, then back across the Severn Bridge to England to visit Warwick Castle and Stratford-upon-Avon, before heading to Anglesey and the ferry to Dublin. Brian’s brother, Kevin, was living and working there and we stayed with him, squashed into his one-room flat for a few days, and explored Dublin and surrounds before flying back to London and onwards to Darwin where we changed planes to fly [back] to Gove.

We arrived back in March 1980 and moved into a three bedroomed house. The company subsidised the rent and provided all furniture, appliances etcetera plus air conditioning, which was a necessity in the hot climate. We bought some foam-backed carpet and a lounge suite and had them shipped to Gove on the barge from Darwin – we were isolated, especially in the wet season – and I made curtains and zhuzhed the place up to make it more attractive.

We had another couple of trips home to New Zealand over the next years, and then a friend and I bought a tiny boutique which was named Action Outback. This we ran for the next few years, the highlights being the year we held a huge fashion show in what was the local cinema. We removed all the rows of seats and hired tables and chairs, used the cricket green on a makeshift catwalk that the boys built, sorted out music and a programme and sold tickets like hot cakes. Nothing like this had ever been done in town before, and it was a huge success.

In October 1985 I got a phone call from Dad, who told me that Mum had been diagnosed with cancer and had decided not to have any treatment. I jumped on a plane and was gone in a flash, home to help out and be with Mum. Brian worked day shift only as a Supervisor, so he cared for the girls and I flew into Wellington to my sister who had just had her third baby. He was literally maybe nine days old, and we packed up baby and all the stuff needed and I drove us in her car home to Napier. I stayed there for the next six weeks, although Sharm had to return home as she had two older boys, Heath aged four and Blake aged two, at home, as well as the new baby, Kirk. Eventually Mum asked to be taken to Cranford Hospice in Hastings, and she died three days later, on 20th December 1985. We were all devastated, but I’m so glad I had time with her, and it allowed me to get used to the idea that the end was coming. On Christmas Eve Dad and I drove to Upper Hutt where Sharm and Grant live, for him to stay with them for a while;  and I flew back to Gove in time for Christmas with the girls.

As time went on we began to think about what was next. Deb had finished high school, and we wanted more opportunity for her than there was in Gove, but also didn’t want to send her off into the wide world by herself. She had a job at Nabalco and was praised as exceptional while there, so we knew that there was more ahead and we should ensure we provided the right environment for both the girls’ futures. Friends decided to move with us at the same time and we all set off for Perth, which we had visited a little earlier to see whether that could be where we wanted to live.

We settled in the Perth suburb of Como in 1987 after a few months of living in a suburb further south because Brian was working at a mine site quite a few kilometres away. Deb worked at Westpac in the city, Lauren was still at high school in Como, and I got a job with a stockbroker. I was there through the sharemarket crash of 1987 until mid 1988, but the company massively reduced staffing after the crash and eventually there was no further use for a personal assistant to the manager, who was leaving the company anyway.

Brian and I separated in 1989 and I moved to a flat in South Perth; Lauren came with me, and Brian leased a new house, still in Como. Deb moved in with him and we lived this way for quite a long time. Brian and I always had a great relationship and friendship with neither of us bitter and twisted, so while it was hard for the girls to get used to, it was the right thing to do for us, and we remain good friends still.

For a time I began a new career in insurance at MLC, but it wasn’t successful; however, while there I also attended a personal development seminar in 1989, which opened new doors for me. I began working with this company soon after on a voluntary basis until the Perth promoter resigned, and later helped run the office for an Adelaide couple who were the promoters in Australia. Financially though I wasn’t doing very well, but a friend offered me a job – she and her husband had a tour bus company which soon extended to include overseas travel and it grew to be a leading light in the travel world in Perth. I was simply an assistant, both to her and behind the counter, and was very happy to be earning regular money.

In 1991 Deb turned twenty-one, and on a scorching day we had an early morning picnic on the river where Lauren and I were living at the time. That same day, beginning at 4 pm, we held cocktails and a dinner party for Deb at a restaurant, and although the day had been 47c earlier, it was a very happy birthday, and we had a wonderful time. Lauren and I [later] moved to a cottage in South Perth and Lauren had her twenty-first there in 1994 with lots of friends and visiting relatives from New Zealand. It was a lovely summery night, and we decorated the old cottage and had a magical time.

Then out of the blue another friend called and asked if I would like to join her at a Melbourne company supplying clothing to stores throughout Western Australia. The job was administrative – my forte – and I jumped at it; the money was good, so I joined Austin Group which operates Cotton On stores throughout Australia and New Zealand, and was with them from about 1995 ‘til 1999, eventually moving into sales. I loved this job, and with a colleague travelled all over Western Australia as far north as the Northern Territory border, by road. We each had a Ford Station wagon – company cars – and each carried thirteen to fifteen suitcases full of samples plus clothing racks. I loved driving, I loved visiting the shops in the remote towns, and I loved the sense of fun and adventure.

My own life took a turn in 1997 when my now partner Dennis, who I’d known for a long time, moved in with me. The same year, 1997, our first grandson was born on 25th January – Blair James Pearcey, son of Deb and her partner at the time. A year later our younger daughter, Lauren, became a mum as well, when Jack Meiring Pearcey was born on 17th April 1998. Both boys are wonderful and I love [and miss] them.

Dennis always worked in mining, flying in and out to various jobs. One was in the remote outback of the Northern Territory, and we flew to Alice Springs so we could buy stuff for one of the houses the company gave us to live in, and drove with him to Warrego, fifty-five km west of Tennant Creek in the middle of the outback. I worked as a receptionist at the office there for a couple of months, but because there was actually nothing to do I eventually came home to Perth. Dennis’ contract was to close the maintenance department of the mine, so there were hardly any people still there, just skeleton staff to manage the closure. The big issue at that time and what filled the news bulletins was the coming millennium, and the Y2K bug. An idea had taken hold that at the stroke of midnight on December 31st/January 1st all the computers in the world would crash because many systems stated years in two digits instead of four – just 99, or 1999. How could they switch from ‘99 to ‘00? Global hysteria grew to outrageous heights, and people in some places in the world began to stockpile food, water, generators and cash. Millions if not billions was spent in the lead up … and nothing happened.

Dennis got a new contract in 2000 in Kalgoorlie. We had a house sitter at the home we’d bought in Perth for the six months we were away, but I returned to Perth after about three months and joined a Melbourne company, Spartan School Supplies, early in 2000 and began work as their WA rep, supplying uniforms, backpacks etcetera to school uniform shops.

I remember having been at a function with friends and driving home at about 9 pm one night in 2001 and listening to the most frightening news on late night talk back radio in the car. The announcer was saying it couldn’t be true, it was a hoax … what is now universally known as 9/11, the day that changed the world and shocked everyone everywhere. I got home, turned on the TV to watch what was actually happening, called my sister in New Zealand even though it was 2 am there, and also called Dennis in Kalgoorlie to turn on the TV. It was senseless, horrific, unnerving … was the world at war now? No one knew.

Time passed and we bought a slightly bigger but lovely cottage around the corner from the first home. Dennis continued working as an independent contractor and my sister visited with Dad in 2003, the first time she’d been to WA, although Dad had come once before when we first moved from Gove to Perth. Sharm visited again in 2004 on her own.

On Christmas Day/Boxing Day 2004, the same time as the huge tsunami in the Indian Ocean which devastated many countries and killed so many hundreds of thousands of people, Dennis’ youngest daughter, Narelle, died from an asthma attack at age twenty-nine. She was single and lived on her own, and had been a hairdresser. She had always had asthma, but the attack which took her life happened on Christmas night, when she arrived home from a friend’s house – it’s believed she just did not get to her puffer or inhaler in time. She was found lying on the floor just inside her front door which was locked, and it was her mother who found her about 2pm on Boxing Day.

Rebecca, Dennis’ oldest daughter was single at that time, but had a son, Jayden, from a previous relationship. She married in 2008 and had another son, Darcy. Jayden’s now married and has made Dennis a great-grandfather with a little girl, now aged two.  [Three]

In 2005 I joined a company which was an investment property sales and management company. We trundled along doing well until 2007, when the global financial crisis happened, and we rapidly lost the business about six months later – not the only victim of the global situation.

In 2009 with Dennis considering moving on from his current contract and with a decent superannuation payout, we booked a Mediterranean cruise with Deb and Blair, who was twelve at the time. We flew to Dubai from Perth, then on to Athens, where I had organised a guide to collect us and drive us around. We loved everything about Greece and were thrilled with our guide, who was a fount of knowledge about life in Athens. He took us to Piraeus (the port town) to board our liner, Norwegian Jade, and we watched as we left port on the first leg of our cruise.

The first visit was to the Peloponnese area and the site of Olympia, and then onto the ship for a couple of days cruising to the port of Alexandria for a bus tour to Cairo and the Pyramids. Alexandria was shocking to our Western eyes, full of rubbish on every street, and Cairo was not much better. However we stayed at the Marriott Hotel in Cairo which was beautiful, and visited the Pyramids the next day. We were there about a total of half an hour – so disappointing – and then back on the bus. Dennis was particularly brassed off; the number of tour buses and the crowds was [were] hideous. The other disappointment in Cairo was the Museum – it was hot, not air conditioned, and packed to the rafters with other tour groups. However, we did a short Nile cruise in the evening which was a bit of fun, and were soon back on the bus for the long trip back to the ship, and then sailed on to Crete. Dennis got to spend time at the bronze-age Minoan ruins which he loved.

After leaving Crete we shared the next destinations with four other cruise ships … the gorgeous islands of Greece, Mykonos and Santorini. The next morning we woke up to Izmir in Turkey; another bus tour to Ephesus and Kusadasi, and then back to Istanbul, where we were surprised at how westernised it was. Apart from language we felt quite at home and safe in Istanbul; however, we had a guide again which was the best thing we could ever have done. One of the highlights of Istanbul was a visit to the Cistern, a huge ancient underground water storage site – this was an eye-opener, and Dennis and I were so pleased we hadn’t missed it. Near the end of the trip we visited the Grand Bazaar.

The cruise was wonderful, and the long flight home to Perth was broken by a few nights in Dubai. It was hot. Deb and I took Blair to the shopping mall that has a ski field attached – magical, and a lot of fun tobogganing down the ice slopes.

In 2010 when I turned sixty Dennis and I decided that with a huge mortgage on our Como home and retirement age looming, we needed to sell to reduce debt. Back in New Zealand, Dad had had a hip replacement and was about to turn ninety, so I decided this was a good reason to hold a celebration with all the family at the Mission restaurant in Napier. It was a lovely night and a special treat for Dad; something I’ll never regret. Because I had been doing our family history for many years, I got it all down into a book to give to Dad for his birthday. He was stunned – he couldn’t believe the things I’d found out about both sides of the family, and he pored over that book for a very long time.

On our return to Perth Dennis suggested that New Zealand would be a good option for our future – we could care for Dad who was on his own without any family nearby; we could get rid of our mortgage and buy in New Zealand at half the price, and he could still continue to fly in and out to work. However, within two months of his birthday in March 2011, Dad died at home on 15th May. He went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up the next day. I jumped on the next plane from Perth, and together my sister and I dealt with all the things we needed to do, through tears and memories. Mum and Dad are both buried at Wharerangi Cemetery at Poraiti in Napier.

Our own plans were already in place and we decided not to change them; Dad had been only one reason we wanted to move, and we had decided New Zealand was the best place for us, so we went ahead with the sale of our Como house and moved to New Zealand in November 2011. For me it was lovely to be back so close to my sister even though she was in Upper Hutt, a good four hour drive, but Kiwis drive everywhere so it wasn’t much of an issue. It was thirty-four years since I’d lived in New Zealand; my girls were a bit devastated, but were all grown up and didn’t need me hovering any longer. Jack and Blair were about to enter their teens, and grandparents were definitely not on their radar.

I initially lived in Dad’s home so I could renovate it to sell; he had kept it tidy but it was way out of date, so I set about that using money inherited from him, and with Sharm’s help and her son, Kirk, who’s a builder, we installed a new kitchen; got it all done in about three months and sold it while I looked for a home for Dennis and I. Sharm and I found the perfect place on Hospital Hill, and it had stupendous views out over the Bay.

Dennis had taken a new job in Laos before we left Perth, and had travelled there before I left for Napier. He stayed there six months, flying to Napier and back on Thai Airways and small planes to the remote location. Whilst there he got quite ill and was taken to a hospital in a larger town somewhere across the border in Thailand; no one contacted me to let me know where he was, and though I called his mobile he was initially too sick to answer, so it was several worrying days before I discovered which hospital he was at. The illness was a mystery, and the language barrier was a big problem as he and the medical staff couldn’t communicate. In the end he was taken by road back to the mine site and slowly recovered, but it wasn’t long after this that he decided he’d had enough; the job was really suited to a younger person, so he resigned around Christmas 2012 and came home to New Zealand to live.

Also in November 2013 Lauren married her man, Clifton Hurley, [Clif] who she’d been with since around 2005, and they organised a surprise wedding in Perth. Luckily I was let in on the secret and flew with Sharm to Perth for the big day. Lauren has always been highly creative – both daughters are – and she planned a fabulous day, one of the best weddings any of us had ever attended. Lauren, who’s been around property ventures all her life including the ones we have all carried out ourselves, now runs her own business in partnership with a friend, designing renovations and re-styling homes for their clients.

Deb has helped her son to buy his own home in Perth via a shared equity model. He has worked for contractors to government department call centres and the like, and Deb has made a very successful career after many years in and around the property industry, and is now one of a team of six designing and managing renovations of all types, particularly additions to existing homes. Many are built in the factory and transported and lifted into position after the home is prepared. Deb’s particular talent is this creative process and making the renovation the best it can be for her clients, who number now in the hundreds. She finally met her partner, Roger, and they have now been together for about three years and are planning an ‘epic retirement’. She’s now almost fifty-five and knows that the next ten years will zoom by pretty fast. Both own their own home, but Deb will soon move to Roger’s home while they renovate her small unit by adding a storey on top. The plan is to sell both homes and buy somewhere in the country to retire in about eight years.

Dennis retired and we booked another cruise for 2016 to Canada and Alaska – in fact it was two cruises. Once home I started to think about what to do with myself now that we had a lovely home and I literally had time on my hands. I enquired and then joined the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank as a volunteer, and was immediately put to work transcribing and editing oral interviews to post online, even though I’d not done this sort of work before; however, I’m very familiar with all sorts of software packages. I absolutely loved it and I’m still doing it nine years later, from home.

In the years since 2015 Dennis and I have had many trips to Perth where both our families still live, and they’ve also visited us. Retired life suits us both and neither is lost for something to do. In early February 2023 I convinced Dennis to fly to Perth for two or three days for the funeral of a great friend of his, and his flight home was delayed;  he ended up there for a week, gnashing his teeth to get home.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch we were experiencing something we’d never been through before … Cyclone Gabrielle. We were relatively safe, though the gale force winds blew down a high fence in our garden and tons of plantation trees around Taupo where we’ve lived since 2020.  But from the East Cape to southern Hawke’s Bay, that cyclone wreaked havoc; the rivers breached – the same two rivers as in the 1961-62 flood in Pakowhai, and the same river in the Eskdale valley that has had catastrophic flooding in the past. This time though, once the houses emerged from the water, what was left were mountains of silt, and millions of tons of slash which flowed down the mountains from forestry work, blocking the rivers and breaking bridges and roads. Everything was completely lost. All farming and horticulture was buried under mud so deep it’s unimaginable.

But we’re still here, although Dennis was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer in June 2023.  I asked him if he’d like to go home to Perth to visit his family on the train from Sydney – trains are one of Dennis’ obsessions in life – and he perked up considerably at the thought.  I was able to snag a cancelled double ensuite cabin on the Indian Pacific for April ’24.  On our return in May he began chemo again, and still continues every three weeks on a less aggressive regime. He’s got a very strong will to live and is defying the odds, making the most of his time with his hobbies, reading and the things he enjoys doing; his inquiring mind is always thirsting for more knowledge. He’s just had his 76th birthday, and his overall wellbeing is excellent, he’s stronger, and very stable.

So in the end I’m not too bad for seventy-five in March this year. My life has been a fortunate one and I’ve often said to Dennis and my sister, “We are so lucky, and so blessed”. When he got ill we needed to re-evaluate everything in our lives, and now we’re dealing with life one day at a time and keeping in touch with our families in Perth and the east coast [of Australia]. We’re all ageing – that’s life; but we’re all happy and dealing with whatever comes.