Carter, Margaret (Peggy) Interview

The date today is the 25th July 2018. I’m in oral interview with Mrs Peggy Carter. Peggy would you like to tell me what your full name is, please?

Just Margaret Carter.

Do you have a second name?

No, I haven’t. My maiden name was Mackintosh, and it was long enough without a second name.

Now last month you actually had a very special occasion – would you like to tell me what that was?

Well, on the 17th June 1918, I was born, and so I was a hundred years old.

It’s pretty special, isn’t it?

Well, people seem to be making a big fuss over it. I think it’s one of those things you’ve just got to accept, the same as you accept any other birthday.

That’s well said. Peggy, did you have some parties? Did you have lots of people come and see you?

Well, we had … on the Saturday all the immediate family had lunch at Diane and Roger Hall’s place at Havelock North, and then on the Sunday morning, as well as my family being there, quite a few of my friends – my long-time friends unfortunately have all gone before me – but there were quite a number of friends came from ten to twelve, and they had morning tea and a glass of champagne, and generally socialised. And most of my friends were from various occupations – I wondered how they would all communicate with each other. There were, besides the family, there was my doctor, my hairdresser, and friends from … well, retired from work. But anyway, they all introduced themselves, and I had some students there, great-granddaughters who are at the … I think the Dunedin University … Otago University. They’ve got a … granted a very substantial scholarship to study medicine, about growing parts of your body. Say your nose has come off – about how they can grow a new nose for you, perhaps attaching it to your ear. And as my doctor was there she was very interested in all this research work that my great-granddaughters are doing. And so there was a real mixture of people from students right up to … well, there was nobody else there a hundred, but they might’ve been in their eighties. And so … no, it was quite a happy morning tea, and they were all surprised to get a glass of champagne to wish me many long years ahead. [Chuckle]

I think that’s really quite special. And Peggy, you actually don’t get a telegram from the Queen any more, but tell me what you got, and from whom you got recognition?

Well there was a photo of the Queen, and a very nice photo. There was one from the Prime Minister, which I was rather surprised because I’ve never been a great Labour supporter, so it was rather a surprise. And there was one from the Governor-General, and … who else was there? Anyway, that’s about all I can think of, but we can look – get them out later and you can look at the lot, if you like.

That’s really very good, isn’t it?

Peggy, what I’m going to do now is take you back in time one hundred years, to when you were born. Would you like to tell me whereabouts you were born, and who your parents were, for example … grandparents maybe?

Now my father came home from the war early – Alec Mackintosh – because in Egypt he’d got malaria, and he was invalided home from the First World War. My mother and he were married – I presume it was in Taihape. And then when I was on the way Mum wanted to go over and stay with her mother and my grandfather, who was working on a Station at Moawhango. But my mother had to ride out – my father drew a block, a soldier’s settlement block. The original property had belonged to the Bees, and they had actually a lot of land up around Kotemaori and Putorino. At one time I had all the data about the land at Putorino when there used to be a Land Office in Napier, but some of the family will have all the data about those subdivisions for the Returned Soldiers. And anyway, my mother stayed with her parents, and I was born in Taihape. Well then I presume I came home. But there weren’t any houses like they did for the Second World War. They had to split their own timber, fell the totara trees, and a lot of the timber for the whare that they build had to be all pit-sawn.

And I can’t remember, but my mother says one of the first things I did as soon as I could walk around was put my foot in a billy of boiling water. But of course you couldn’t go to the doctor … well, I suppose you could’ve if you liked to ride sixty miles. But anyway, I daresay … we ended up with five siblings, and I daresay over our growing up time we fell out of trees and did all sorts of things, and tripped over. And I can remember the Minister coming out, and he used to stay the night because he used to have to ride out to our place – there were no roads, there were only bridle tracks. And I can remember my mother saying “well, take Mr Dysart” … he ended up Head of the Presbyterian Church … “down the native bush”. We had a lot of native bush, and my brothers and I were taking him and he fell over a supplejack – he wasn’t used to bush – and he fell over the supplejack growing around. And he shot down a [chuckle] gully, and John and I couldn’t help but laugh. And even when we were growing up we always called it ‘Dysart’s Gully’. [Chuckle]

And then we used to get the mail about … could get it once a week or once a fortnight, and we used to ride out to the Putorino Post Office. And my father had came [come] from Scotland and we always used to get a Scottish newspaper that he was interested in. It was … I never used to mind riding, but I seemed to be the only brave one about that.

Our next-door neighbour was seven or eight miles away, and I used to ride to their place, and I remember saying “well, I always ride to your place – why don’t you ride to mine?” And she said “my mother won’t let me in case I fall off.” And I said “well, doesn’t it matter if I fall off?” [Chuckle] But I’ve never been afraid of anything, like you know – getting on a horse never worried me, or anything like that or doing anything new.

But I was a bit late starting school – I was nearly seven, and my father used to ride with me in to the school on Monday morning, and ride home on Friday night after school. But for that year I used to board with a couple that had no children, and as I say, go home on the Friday night. That was because the education system was changing. Everybody had learned A,B,C,D, and it was changing to a,b,c, [sounds out] and Mum was going to start teaching John, my brother next to me, and me by Correspondence School. I was actually in the first decade of pupils at the Correspondence School. And anyway, then we had Correspondence School. Jim, my third … in the family was coming up and he was rather a slow learner. I think Mum thought it was going to be a bit too much like hard work, of teaching three of us kids. So my father then bought three hundred acres in – near Putorino and built a new house on this. And by this time I was about twelve, and we then went to school there, and we had to walk about three miles over a … well, what was the bridle track.

Then we sat for our Proficiency exam – in those days you had to get your Proficiency exam to get free tuition at high school, or you could get the Competency exam which … you could go to the Technical College. But being up in the country you had to go to boarding school, so it meant that the boys and girls went to boarding school. So I went to the Napier Girls’ … oh, well I’m getting ahead of myself. I was still at Putorino and we had a seventh form, because it was acceptable during the slump because so many of the farmers’ children couldn’t afford to go to school. But we were a bit more fortunate than most insomuch that my grandmother MacIntosh in Scotland had left money for our education.

But on the morning the earthquake struck, I was in school, inside – most of the kids were out but I was in the senior class, and we got outside. And a lot of the kids used to come to school on horses, but the horses went mad. They were galloping round and round the horse paddock, and Miss Maughan, our teacher, wasn’t used to horses and she said to me “Peggy, you’re good at horses – you go out and catch those horses for the kids who’ve got to get home”. So I went out and I caught the horses, but I didn’t know which saddle and bridle belonged to which horse. I knew which horse belonged to which kid. But the kids were all over the place – way up the road, and … anyway, they were rounded up and brought home and told me which was their horse … well, I knew which was their horses, but which was their saddle and bridles. And I saddled them up and set them off home. And one of the families were [was] the Scott family, and they had to go right round down the coast road.

And we ourselves – the East Coast Railway was going through at that time. At the time of the earthquake it ceased working, but a truck from the Public Works Camp came to pick up the Public Works children that were at school. That was the time when the highest roll, so I was told, has ever been at the Putorino School, when the children from the Public Works Camp were there. Anyway, they sent a lorry round to pick up the Public Works kids, and … oh, I don’t know, I suppose there were about four of us … we all went home with them because they had to pass our place to get down to the viaduct.

But I can remember the road had opened up and it had great big cracks and that. And then after we got home, and the chimney was down, and Mum had preserved dozens of bottles of fruit and it was all over the … and I remember we had to bring in a wheelbarrow and a spade and shovel. And John and I shovelled all this broken glass and food into the wheelbarrow. And of course the water tanks all came down … because we and our homestead depended on rainwater, and we had two big tanks. And I can remember you used to go round and tap on them [tapping] to see how much water you had left in them – you could tell by the sound.

But anyway, we must’ve recovered from the earthquake eventually. I remember we had to cook outside, and we had a camp oven. But in those days we always had to make our own bread, our own butter, and it wasn’t so easy. And I expect there was somebody working for us that had to be fed, and it wasn’t so easy cooking on a camp oven.

Then I went away to the Napier Girls’ High School – I was a boarder there. I did quite well at school. The last year I was there I got eight prizes, which was more than anybody else got in the school. And we had – Mr Bernard was invited – the Labour Government. It was the first time the Labour Government had been in power and he was the Member for Napier, and he’d been invited to the Napier Girls’ High School to present the prizes. Anyway, I wasn’t very impressed with him – he had a very beery-smelling breath and he seemed half-drunk. And when I came up for my last prize he said “I think I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” [Chuckle]

And then I … well after I left school and went home. But in those days you sort of stayed home and helped at home, both in the house and on the farm where you were needed. But one day somebody came across … over home … and said they needed somebody in the Post Office – would I come and help them? And anyway, I went and I worked in the Post Office for a while. And it was also the telephone exchange, and you had to see the right people got connected up. Well I worked in there for a while, and I remember being commended from Napier, that it was one of the best-run sub-Post Offices in Hawke’s Bay. I’ve always been very careful with my bookwork.

Then I got married and had three children. And my husband went to the war and he was killed at the war, and so I was a war widow with three children. Then I moved to Napier and bought myself a house.

You said you got married – what was your husband’s name?

Richard Francis Sturm – he was killed in Libya. [William Christian Sturm – Richard Francis Carter was her second husband]

And you said you had three children – what were their names?

Yeah, three children. Malcolm – he’s just recently died. He was a barrister and solicitor here in Napier. And Margaret was the eldest, and she’s Margaret Clark these days.

And of course your daughter, Diane?

Yeah, then Diane. She never saw her father. Well, it was a fairly long, dreary time at the war. My brothers went to the war and one thing and another. And then when the war was over, well I married Dick Carter. They used to farm at Putorino too. And of course we thought … we hoped … we’d get a farm in the ballot too, because they were running ballots for Returned [Soldiers], and he was working for his father on his father’s farm, but we never got a ballot. And well … we thought well, if we wanted a farm, our accountant had said the town milk industry was a good thing to get into, because at the end of the war the towns were all very short of milk. And what milk there was wasn’t very healthy. A lot of the herds were very bad with TB. And the TB testing came in and the whole of the milk industry was turned around. They had a separate lot of farmers … dairy farmers. You had nothing to do with the ordinary seasonal milking because you had to have a quota of so many gallons a day so that the authorities knew how much milk you could produce, and how much they needed for every town. And our accountant said to us that was a good thing to get into, because you made a lot more milk being town milk. They had to pay you for the extra feed you had to have during the winter, and you were working in worse conditions because you had to milk through May, June, July and August and you had to be reimbursed so that there would be enough people to supply enough milk. And therefore they had to pay you a bit more than the ordinary seasonal milkers. And … well, that was all right, so we thought ‘well, how the hell are we going to make enough money to buy a farm?’ Because farms have always been just about out of everybody’s reach.

And Dick bought a milk round. You had to buy your milk round from the City Council – they used to – I think they were about $2,000 just for the right to deliver milk. And then you had to buy a truck, and then you usually had quite a few boys. Oh, there were subsidies on the milk that you supplied to the boarding schools and the hospitals, and there was quite a lot of book keeping with that. And we had a dairy as well, and I worked in that. And there was somebody working in our house from one o’clock in the morning to ten o’clock at night, to buy our own farm.

Well eventually we bought a farm at Meeanee, and we had to borrow money. Mr Fabian was our solicitor at that time … Mason, Dunn & Fabian … and he managed to borrow some money from the Church of England. And anyway, we got into our farm with a big mortgage. And … well, we didn’t know much about … well, both of us had been brought up on beef and sheep farms – we sort of knew all about that. But town milk was a separate entity altogether, that was sort of … well, the Secretary of the Milk Producers in Napier said “oh well, ask some of these farmers”. But every farmer told you a different story, so you didn’t know where you were. But the Ag Department was very good, and we got quite friendly with most of them.

But I was putting money into the farm, and I said to Mr Fabian – well, at the end of the war women were still pretty much second-rate citizens. They were considered not to have any brains, and you know, you were pretty low-class if you know what I mean. And I said to Mr Fabian, “well, a lot of this money is my money”, because I’d got some from the MacIntosh Estate and I’d always been careful with what money I had, and I always saved every penny I got. And he said “well, the best plan” for me to do “is to make it into a company.” So we made it into a company, and we called it Latona Farm Limited – it’s got there Latona Friesian. And Dick was … when we bought it, and it was in October – I don’t know what year now. Dick was going out to learn the cows and … and then he came home one night and he said “Mrs Kitten says there’s a few pedigrees, and it always costs you money to transfer pedigree stock”. But she said she’d transfer them for nothing if we were interested. Well Dick came home and he said about these pedigrees, and I said “well, if it’s not going to cost us anything, we may as well have them”. And he said “well”, he said, “there’s always a lot of work with pedigree stock”. He said “you’ll have to do the work”. And I said “right!” And he said “well, you’re the studmaster”. And as I say, it all happened sort of like that.

And we took a couple of yearlings to the Show, and won. And that sort of set us going … we didn’t expect … but we both had a good eye for stock. And – now, how did it go? Well I ended up being the studmaster.

And then somebody else – it was some of the other farmers in Meeanee – we didn’t actually know them, but they must’ve … oh, you know how people talk … one of the came and said to me “well, we believe you’re quite a good book keeper. Would you be the Secretary for the Hawke’s Bay branch?” Well Hawke’s Bay stood from about Wairoa down to Dannevirke, and it was quite a large area. And … well, I didn’t … I said “well, I suppose I can be, but I don’t really know anything about it”. Anyway, so I was Secretary. Well I ended up being Secretary for twenty-one years for Hawke’s Bay.

And then they cut out the Autumn Show, and somebody said “why don’t we have something like a field day to take the place of the Autumn Show?” Well, they said “oh, well, our Secretary can arrange that.” There was a lot of work in arranging … you know, who you were going to have exhibiting, the judges, and all sorts of things.

And anyway, we had our first field day and it went very well. And one of the competitions we had was sort of leadership in leading your animals – Ringcraft, they called it. And I remember, I won the Ringcraft. Well I was a bit lucky there, because I started off leading one of my own. But then the people in charge said “swap animals”, and I swapped with … and it happened to be another one of ours that I’d taught to lead. So anyway, I won that competition, and the judges of the day from Auckland said “what’s Dick going to say when you get home, Mrs Carter?” I said “he’ll just say what a mug lot of judges there were on today”. [Chuckle]

Well, I arranged quite a lot of these field days on different farms, and Kopua Monastery, and I encouraged a lot of young people onto pedigree farms, and generally. And then in their wisdom, the Friesian Board gave me this, and I was the first woman in New Zealand to get that award. Since then there are a number of women who’ve got that award.

And then with the judging competitions, all the farmers were a conservative lot, and still thought that if you were a woman you didn’t know anything about farming. And we always ran a judging competition, so I thought ‘well, I’ll fix that’. And then – we always had proper cardboard sheets, put out by the Young Farmers’ Club, I think – and instead of putting the person’s name at the top, I put the numbers. If you were the first one I’d put ‘Kevin’, and I’d keep a master sheet with ‘Number 1’. It meant that the senior judges from all over New Zealand couldn’t automatically pick out a man’s name. And I myself, began to win quite a lot of the judging competitions, so the Auckland lot – the results all went to Auckland head office – and after a while they thought ‘well, there’s a woman winning in the judging competition, but we haven’t got any women judges’.

So I was made a judge, and still women weren’t very welcome. They were quite rude at times. I can remember at one stage being up at Whangarei at the annual meeting for the Holstein Friesian Association, and sitting at the table with Bernie Kyle and Mrs Kyle, and Mrs Kyle saying to me, was I going to the annual meeting? And I said “yes, I was”. And she said, well, how did I go to the annual meeting? And I said “well, they checked at the Auckland Office that I had enough shares in the farm to be allowed in as an owner, and” I said “and I’m also Secretary for Hawke’s Bay, so there were two reasons, and I’m quite entitled to go to the annual meeting.” And she said “Oh!” She said “I’d love to come to the annual meeting”. And Bernie up and says “well, you needn’t think you’re going to the annual meeting – you can go on the bus with all the other ladies”, and was quite rude to me. And I just said “well, I’m going to the annual meeting”. Well now – if you go to an annual meeting, half the people there are women, you know. And I sort of gradually … well, they had to accept.

And then I think I was the first woman shareholder in artificial breeding. There was a good bull at … down near Wellington somewhere, and they were forming a company to sell his semen, but there had to be enough money in the company. And I think – there was a South Island man, a good breeder down there, wrote and asked would I go on the company. But I think one of the main reasons, he thought ‘oh, well, the Carters – they’re in town milk – they ought to be able to afford the share in the company’.

But that was just another step – a woman being in the business side of farming. And I always did all our own book work, and I think that was when the National Council of Women gave me that.

What I’m going to do, Peggy, is just read out the two certificates that you’ve put in front of me. One was the New Zealand Friesian Association, and awarded for ‘distinguished service to the Friesian breed’, and that’s ‘Mrs M Carter, Latona Friesians’. Now the other certificate that you’ve just started to talk about is: ‘The Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand and the National Bank of New Zealand Ltd, certify that Peggy Carter of Napier has been recognised by her peers as a nominee for the RAS Suffrage Centennial Awards. Your commitment to your community is acknowledged in this, the century of Women’s Suffrage in New Zealand’. Do you want to tell me a little bit about that?

Let me think. Well I think that people began to realise that I was very involved in agriculture. Well, I can remember a Doctor Somebody coming from Ruakura, and he came to our place – they were doing grass trials, and Dick couldn’t show him where the grass trials were because we had the vet there doing a hamstring operation on a cow, and her leg had to be held up, and I wasn’t capable of holding her leg up while the vet operated. So I said I’d show this doctor where the … and he looked sideways at me. And Humphrey Jaeger, who was the chief man in Hastings – he said “it’s all right. Don’t look at Mrs Carter like that – she’s a farmer in her own right”. And I sort of became quite well-know throughout all the Friesian breed – as I say, once they didn’t want to know you – you were untouchable. But after I’d been in it about ten or fifteen years, different ones … men were coming up and tapping me … “oh, Peggy’s my sister”, [chuckle] when I wasn’t his sister at all. [Chuckle] They were glad to know you, you know. Our stud had done really well – it was one of the top producing studs in New Zealand. And we won – for forty years we exhibited at the Show and never missed a Show, and we often had the champion cow, and we nearly always won the type in production class. I remember one type in production class – the first five cows all belonged to Latona Farm Limited. So I sort of became … and Dick was always behind me. He said it always gave him pleasure when some of the agents coming to sell you super or something – they’d come up to the door and say “where’s the boss?” And you’d say “down the paddock”, and you’d point him out and away they’d go. And [chuckle] they’d come back up and say “oh, Dick told me you’d have all the information I wanted to know”. [Chuckle]

And we had field days at our place. Once one of the stock and station agents had field days at our place, ‘specially for stock and station agents, and one of the things was that they mustn’t treat the farmer’s wife the same as … just a possession, like the tractors, you know – that often – well especially now, a lot of women do all the book work.

But in my day, if we were buying more land, it was nearly always me who went to the bank and asked for a loan. And the bank managers and that all gradually changed their tune about women in agriculture. Well there are a lot of women in agriculture these days.

And I’ve got a grandson who’s a Farm Advisory Officer around Palmerston North, and he called in to see me the other day. And he said he’s got three widows, and he said their management’s absolutely spot on. And he said he’s got three sisters who milk two thousand cows by themselves, and he said you cannot fault them. And he said most places these days the wives have a say, because farms over the years have got dearer and dearer, and usually the wife’s family have put some money in. And if you’ve got money in anything, well, it makes you take notice, I think, and learn.

And the National Council of Women and the Royal Agricultural Society – I’d sort of broken the ceiling in agricultural work. But it wasn’t easy, men were still rude to you until they found you were making more money than they were. [Chuckle] Because they’d say – you know, “what’s your quota of milk, and …” you know. And you were winning at the Show. And then people began to ask you to talk at things – I remember going to the Rotary once, and of course all men in the Rotary. And I had to talk about our trip to China, and … oh, you know, you’ve got to be careful what you saying but you don’t want to be too stingy. And I remember telling them about the toilets on the trains, how they’re just a … in the carriages, there’s just a square cut out. And I said “it might be all right for gentlemen, but it’s not very good for ladies with skirts”. I said “there’s a hole in the floor and the wind all coming up at you”. And I remember a Chinaman coming up … and he was in the Rotary apparently … coming up afterward. He said “oh, I congratulate you on being brave enough to talk about the toilets”, he said “they are just like you said”. [Chuckle] So I sort of became … well, known for kicking up a shindy, I suppose.

Peggy, do you want to tell me the reason that you went to China – because you had sent stock over there?

You’ll be getting sick of me, telling me it’s time I shut up!

I don’t think so – you’re a very interesting lady.

Is it – well …

I’m enjoying myself.

Yes, well Dick and I decided to go to China, just because … and me being boastful and saying “if I decided to go to China, I’d get there”. Well, I’m a bit inclined to get my own way in most things, so I set off. And I’ve got a friend who’s a travel agent and I went in and saw Pauline, and said Dick and I wanted to go to China, and right over to Chengdu, which is in the south western corner of China – you couldn’t get further away. And she said “oh! You and Dick always want to go to funny places”. So anyway we had to apply for a visa, and first of all they weren’t very forthcoming – as I say, it was very communistic, and they didn’t like strangers coming into China. And anyway, we eventually got a visa, but they kept cutting down the time. But anyway, we got a visa – I don’t know, might’ve been for ten days.

But at that time the planes in China – you didn’t reserve a seat. You just said you were going, but you’d get into the plane and it’s all full of people and you haven’t got your seat reserved. And you know, well we didn’t quite know what to do. So after a while – we just sat where we could find a seat – we eventually got there.

And at the time Hastings used to own half the milk treatment … pasteurising the milk along with the Hawke’s Bay Milk Producers – for some reason, Napier was offered a share but they didn’t want it. But anyway, there was … the Chairman of the Milk Treatment Station wrote us an introduction to the Mayor of Guilin, saying Mr & Mrs Carter have been supplying milk for thirty years or something, and we were good farmers, and you know … Oh, in fact it was such a glowing report of Mr & Mrs Carter, I thought they must’ve got us muddled up. But anyway, the outcome of that was that when we got to Guilin the Mayor of Guilin put on a banquet for Dick and I. They seemed to think we were VIPs instead of just cow farmers. Anyway, it was quite interesting, and … well, you really didn’t know what you were eating, but most of it tasted all right except the big head of the banquet – all at once he said “you haven’t had any of this, Mrs Carter”, and he picks up a big spoon and puts it on my plate. And I said “what is it?” And it was – now, what the devil was it? It was a snake, some sort of a snake, but it was all cut in thin strips – it must’ve been deep fried, I think. And I looked at the heap, and I thought ‘how on earth am I going to eat that heap of snake?’ Anyway, I’m a great believer in “in Rome, do as the Romans do”, so I ate up the snake. And it really tasted quite nice – it tasted a bit like bacon rinds. And so anyway, they were quite pleased. He said they’d caught it specially for us that morning, and it was supposed to be quite a treat.

And then when we got over to Chengdu, a Doctor Hoo was there to meet us at the airport, and also the travel agent, but anyway, we thought we’d better go with Dr Hoo, and he took us out to the New Zealand cattle. And we didn’t actually see … they’d divided them into two lots and one lot was further away, and that was where ours were. But we did see most of them and they were all very, very well looked after.

But all the animals in China are very small. I think … well, we thought it must be their diet. The horses are very small, and all the cattle, and they’d imported at one stage, quite a lot of cattle from Holland. And they could never get them back into calf, and I still maintain it was their diet. Anyway, they had quite a number of girls looking after the cattle, and they were all very, very quiet and they were obviously looking after them very well.

They had a bit of a meeting after one of our look-arounds, and they must’ve thought we knew more than we did because you know, they were asking us why the cows didn’t get in calf and that – although I believe the New Zealand cattle had been better that way, that I heard that they’d got them back in calf. But we suggested that they send some of their young men and women to Massey University, and they thought that was a good idea. And we made arrangements at Massey for our interpreter girl to come. She was very interested in the cattle and she spoke very good English, and yes, she’d love to come to Massey.

So Dick and I went … it’s so long ago I forget who we saw there … and he said Hong could come out to New Zealand and have free tuition at Massey. And that was good. And there was a vet in Palmerston North, a Chinaman … Chinese … and he said if we could get Hong out to New Zealand he and his wife would take her under their wing and look after her. Well, everything was all set for Hong to come to New Zealand and study at Massey, and then they had that Tiananmen Square disaster where they took out the tanks and rolled over the students who were crying out for democracy. Well just at that time America opened their gates to the students who were in Tiananmen Square disaster, and Hong went to America instead of coming to New Zealand.

But she always said she was going to come to New Zealand, and then a few years ago now, we had a letter from her saying … because we met up with her in Germany. She was working in a German University there, and then she’d married an American Chinese and she was going back to China. And when they’d seen her people in China they were coming out to New Zealand, and would we send her our phone number so she would ring, and we would meet them in Auckland. And that was the last we ever heard. I think – there was a bit of re-education going on in China just then, and I think, because they would have had democratic ideas, they were probably sent to one of these reformation camps to be re-educated in the Chinese way of thinking. But I wrote letters care of her people, but never had replies. And I don’t think anybody else took her place at Massey, because we never heard, so …

That was all quite an experience really, wasn’t it? You touched on Germany – did you and Dick travel quite a lot?

Yes – yes, we did. Well, I don’t know why, but we seemed to … well, partly because of the Auckland office – they often sent visitors to us because I know we sort of got in … well, not actually into trouble, but the head office in Auckland got into trouble. There were people in the Waikato who’d been in the breeding years and years longer than us, but they didn’t have a herd as good as us. And Mr Roper, the National Secretary, said to me one day – he said “you couldn’t send Lord So-and-so there”, he said. “They never put on a tablecloth. They didn’t know how to set the table.” He said “you can’t send visitors from overseas to people who, you know, are a bit raw” if you know what I mean. I don’t mean to be skiting, but you know. So we used to get a lot of overseas visitors actually. A lot of my things … well, the family have got them.

But I shifted over here – I must’ve taken sick or something because I woke up in hospital, and then the hospital said “you can’t live by yourself at a hundred years old”. I could’ve, but anyway … and they sent me here. And then the family had to come in and clean out. And Diane was just saying that she thought Ian must’ve had – you know, a lot of the things about the Putorino School, and the roll and that, because I had that … took it to a bookmaker and had it all properly done, and it was put into the archives of the Hawke’s Bay Education … or School, or wherever they put it. So anyway …

And we used to be invited to the Royal Agricultural Show in England. We were invited to a Show in Germany because … oh, the German Secretary had been out to New Zealand, and the head office had said “oh, we’ll call on Carters – Mrs Carter’s the Secretary of Hawke’s Bay, and they’ve got a good stud”. So we always wrote to the German … well we even had a couple from Zimbabwe visit us once. They had a Holstein Friesian stud in Zimbabwe. And he had his arm blown off fighting with the Hulus [Zulus] or whatever they called them. We never went there ourselves although we had been invited, but we saw pictures. They had a very good herd of Friesians, and they had originally come from England. But they showed us all the accommodation they had for their workers; they had a special school built for the workers’ children; they had inside servants and outside, and they used to grow a lot of maize and a lot of food for Zimbabwe. But they were pushed off their farm when they started to push off all the white settlers.

But Ian (King) Smith – there used to be write-ups in the paper, and we used to read them – about going to the meetings and growling about them pushing everybody off, because the next thing they’d be short of feed because there was nobody capable of growing enough food that the established farmers could produce. And anyway, all at once you never heard anything more of him, so I think he was either shot or put in prison

No, we got to know the President of the British Society very well, and they used to invite us. And when they came out to New Zealand they usually stayed with us. But they used to lease their farm from Lord Somebody, and then when their son sort of grew up and married, their son went to Canada – I don’t know whether they took their cows or not to Canada.

And we went to a Show in France, and I remember being on somebody’s farm up in Scotland, and they’d just been to the Royal Highland Show and they had a couple of lovely cows. And if you want to know anything about the cows, in those circumstances it’s better to see the herdsman rather than Lord Somebody who owns them, who doesn’t know one cow from the other. And anyway, you can sort of tell who’s who, and I went up to the herdsman and I was talking to him, and I said “oh, that’s a lovely cow there”. And the cow must’ve thought I was quite nice because next thing she’s right up beside me and I’m patting her, and I said “oh, well this is a lovely cow”. And he said how good she was in all ways. And he says “oh, lady, you do know your cows, don’t you?” [Chuckle] So … oh no, we went up to Scotland … I suppose it was to see herds and that up there.

And then one time when Dick and I just went on a tour, we went up to see the farm that my father had been on before he came out to New Zealand. He came out as a farm cadet, and then he’d only got out here when he went back, to the war in the Horse Brigade … Mounted Horses, or Mounted Rifles I think they called themselves.

So – oh no, I’ve had quite an interesting life. It’s had its ups and downs, but you know, farming’s an interesting career.

It’s been your life, hasn’t it?

Yeah. As I say, most of my life … I brought up four children and a herd of cows. [Chuckle] And we helped Ian into his farm – he’s Ian Carter, and we helped him into a farm by selling quite a few – oh … don’t know how many we sold. But when we had this displenishing sale to help Ian into his farm at Dannevirke, they were New Zealand record prices, so …

It didn’t come automatically that your herd got better and better, it entailed a lot of reading about how bulls were performing in Britain, in Canada … we imported semen from Canada and the States that you know, you had to study. And then Dick and I’d perhaps have a discussion over … “now, do you like this bull?” Or “do I like that bull?” And we’d both read it up and decide which one would suit our herd better. If we had very tiny teats that were too small, well they’d you know, tell you what sort of udders the bulls were leaving, or what sort of feed them.

And of course a lot of the farmers in those days, fifty … sixty years ago, weren’t very well educated. For one thing most of the farmers had to go away to boarding school, and farming … some farms weren’t that prosperous. Well one of the bank managers told me – I suppose I must’ve gone to ask him for another mortgage for a bit more land or something – that in farming there’s a bigger difference between farmers’ income than any other section of the community. If you own a shoe shop, if it’s an ordinary … you know, everybody in a shoe shop earns practically the same. People in a bookshop earn practically the same. But he said, not with farmers. And I know our next-door neighbour – he used to get half as much milk as we did and pay twice as much tax because he never kept his books right.

Because we got a grant – we had somebody out for the TB testing … they didn’t have TB when their glands were tested. And I put in a claim for these cattle, and they said it was the best documented claim the Dairy Board had ever had. I had them valued by the stock agent; I worked out … we always herd tested, we knew exactly what every cow was producing. And anyway, they gave us a bit extra, but it’s a straight-out grant. It sort of wasn’t to be repeated or something – I forget their highfalutin language, but that was the gist of it. That was a donation and you weren’t getting any more, so be quiet. And Hector, our next-door neighbour, said “well, how did you get some money?” Because they used to only pay you about three hundred dollars for every cow. Well most people’s cows were worth more than that. And I said to Hector “well look, I’ll do your claim for you, Hector, but I’ll need all the dockets from the Works which you’ve got” – and he didn’t herd test – “and all the, you know, dockets that would be revelant” [relevant]. And he said “oh! But I haven’t got those dockets”. And I said “well – if you haven’t got anything to back me up with”, I said “I’m afraid I can’t do your …” But that was typical of a lot of farmers sixty years ago. They screwed up their dockets and put them in the shoebox, and the accountant had to …

Sort them out. Did you and Dick retire from the farm?

Well we got sharemilkers on, and they’re a … sort of stabilised contract for sharemilkers. There are ones who own their own cows, and ones that … and we had a sharemilker on for a good few years. And then when Dick died I stayed on for a good while, and I only really sold up last year.

Well, we’d gone from sharemilking into straight-out lease because I’d got sick of doing the book work, or … the GST was getting bigger and bigger. And some of the people … you’ve got no idea how hard it is to teach people that can’t learn. And the GST was ten per cent. Well Christine – oh, her husband was a sharemilker – she couldn’t even … know how to get ten per cent of anything just shifting the decimal point. And two or three years later, she said “you must’ve had a lot of patience trying to teach me how to do the GST”. [Chuckle]

Well I still had a bit, and then the last lot – they got behind with the rent, and there was a big downturn in the dairy industry, and they were behind in the rent, or further and further behind and they owed me a good few thousand. And I thought ‘oh, I’m getting sick of this – this is …’ And they were supposed to keep the farm in the condition they took it. Well, on the runoff, they let the yards all fall down. And I offered to buy the half-rounds for the loading ramp, and they let that all fall to bits, and I reckon I lost a lot of money on the sale of that property, because they let it go back. And so I said to Ian – I said “look, I’m getting sick of work and I think I’ll sell up”. And Ian said “well, it’s your decision. If you’re sick of it, well …” So that was what …

So did you sell up and come off the farm, then come into Atawhai?

Yes, yes. Yeah, I bought a cottage. Well, I bought the cottage before I really sold … we had ten acres on a separate title and I sold that ten acres and bought a cottage here. But I still kept the … you know, the main farm and the runoff up Pakuratahi Valley.

Oh no, I never minded the book work, you know, it never worried me, and Dick didn’t like doing it yet he should’ve been able to because when he left … he was brought up by – him and two siblings – were brought up by their grandmother because up at Putorino their mother had died. And his grandmother lived in Lower Hutt, and he lived with them up until he left high school. And he went to work for Levin & Co – it was another stock and station agent. I don’t think they ever had an office here. And he went into the part where you’re learning to be an accountant. And he was learning to be an accountant, but … well, the only time was if I added up say the GST, at morning tea time I’d say “there you are – add up that – see if I’ve got it right”. And he’d add it up but he didn’t like … he’d rather be digging post holes. Well he could do those jobs where I couldn’t. It was how we sort of … Although I always helped in the shed – I always went for the cows, and was in the shed with him and that. But his mates used to tease him and tell him he didn’t need me in the shed [chuckle] but he perhaps didn’t, but he liked to have me there.

And we were just talking about … at the lunch table … about one of the biggest changes – the first to change when they went over to decimal currency and that, and weights – was the freezing works – Dick and I, if we were sending a cow to the Works we’d each have a guess at the weight. Because when you changed over from you know pounds … pound weights I’m talking about … into decimal, kilos, you sort of had to turn your head around to work out what that cow might bring you. And then when we’d get the sheets from the Works we’d have a look who was closest. [Chuckle]

Would you say that your life has been a good one?

Yeah. I’d say overall I’ve got nothing to growl about. You know, I’ve got enough money to live on, and … well, I’ve never been extravagant, and I never want anything. And I think that’s a big help, if you don’t want things.

Peggy, I think we might finish the interview, okay?

Yes.

It’s been an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Oh! Well I …

I mean that.

I don’t know about that.

And thank you.