Cooper, Kay Isobel Interview

Today is 25th September 2017. I’m interviewing Kay Isobel Cooper of Hastings. Kay is going to tell us about the life and times of her family. Kay, would you like to …

I’m going to talk about my father, Robert [Brigham], first. He was born on the 3rd February 1906 in Ecclesfield in the County of York, West Riding, England. There was a long line of Robert Brighams – I’ve got them back to 1795, and there’s been other ones from each family; the eldest boys called their son[s] Robert as well.

My father came to New Zealand as an eight year old and only child, and his father died not long after that; they were farming in Whangarei. Dad went to Whangarei Boys’ High School as a boarder from 1921 until 1925. He was in the rugby team each year. The 1925 Year Book referred to the First XV rugby team going to Auckland to play Mount Albert Grammar School, and that was a smooth trip. They actually went on a ship from Whangarei port into Auckland port; the train left Whangarei to get to the Onehara [Onerahi] harbour and then they went ‘bout six to a cabin on the ship. Their match was at Eden Park, a curtainraiser to Auckland University and Wellington University, and it was followed by a formal dinner and then sightseeing on Sunday. They left Auckland at 8.00pm Sunday and were back at school by midday on Monday. He was a prefect in his senior years – I have photos of him as a prefect and in athletic and rugby teams, and medals for the same. In Dad’s album is a school class photo labelled ‘Hukerenui South School 1919’, with a young Dad standing at the back, so I presume that is the primary school he went to.

Dad was very active in the community in Eketahuna where – I was born in Dannevirke but I don’t know what age I was when we moved to Eketahuna – and then we lived in Nelson for a while. He started up the St John Ambulance Brigade in Eketahuna in 1941, and was involved in being on duty at sports games and activities where the officers were needed. Dad had a large black painted wooden equally sided suitcase that he made himself, with compartments and a perspex cover hooked over them on each side. The compartments were filled with bandages and medication in case needed. He was also a volunteer at [and] the St John Divisional Superintendent for Eketahuna and Nelson until 1950 when he became Superintendent for the Nelson Cadet Ambulance Division. He was posted to the Reserve in 1953. He attended the rugby matches in Nelson and Rob and Ian, my two brothers, and I often went with him. On two different occasions Ian and I were knocked out with a flying rugby ball and our father used smelling salts to bring us round.

He was also very active in scouting in Eketahuna and became one of the major leaders and organised groups and camping trips and seminars. He formed a Rover[s] group there. He was also a member of the Masonic Lodge, but we children knew nothing about what he did as he used to fob us off by saying that they rode goats. I recall that he went each Thursday night dressed in a dinner suit with a white apron rolled up in a bag. He was Vice President of the Nelson South Swimming Club and actively helped at our swimming club nights and carnivals. He was also a member of the Nelson Bowling Club.

Dad had nicknames for all the family: Mum was ‘Big Blossom’, I was ‘Little Blossom’, Rob was ‘Scob’ and Ian, ‘Ianerbeanerbangerwoop’ and Carol, ‘Snowflake’. Because he was born in Yorkshire in England he teased us with words like ‘glim’ for light and ‘bung’ for cheese. For some years Dad was at the Wairarapa Farmers Limited in Eketahuna, before opening a cycle and sports goods shop business there on his own account. On transferring to Nelson to [he] managed the sports good department store at Burtons Limited. He later was employed by Wilkinson Field Limited before taking over [?Snowsho?] Dairy and Milkbar as an owner.

Dad was very good at sport and must have enjoyed working with sports goods. At home he would string tennis rackets in his workshop at our house for sportsmen, and make leather sports bags. He made me a leather sheet music bag when I was learning to play the piano accordion and then the piano.

His vegetable garden covered the whole of our backyard with every kind of vegetable. Raspberries, loganberries, gooseberries grew up one side of the section. At the front of the house was a large lawn with trees and flower gardens that [where] the children played ball, made high jumps, and daisy chain necklaces. During winter nights Dad joined us in one of our activities playing a type of indoor cricket in the entrance hall of our house. We had a large two storeyed house and the stairs went up one side of the hall; and we played with [paper] mache balls and softball bats, and more than once a lightbulb was broken. I don’t recall my mother growling at us. He also had a very large collection of European and Maori smoking pipes in his workshop that he had collected. Dad made home brew beer and experimented with all kinds of fruit wines which we were allowed to sip on special occasions. He loved having friends in for parties and singing all the popular songs around the piano. He could not play the piano himself, but a friend, Tony Scott, could play anything at all. I used to sneak out of bed and sit in my bedroom doorway listening to the music.

Dad was a keen car enthusiast, and we seemed to change our cars very frequently. In fact when I was in my early teens and not keen to go on the usual … every Sunday … drives, I did not get to ride in one or two of the cars. The Sunday drives we all loved as children because part of the ritual was taking the thermette in a small sack with kindling and paper to light a fire under it when we got to the destination. That boiled water for our afternoon tea drinks. We usually went to the beach at Tahunanui or Kaiteriteri beach and the Maitai River. After we’d played for about an hour or so we were called for afternoon tea with a hot drink and homemade cake and biscuits baked by Mum each week. Occasionally we were allowed to buy an icecream at the store at the beach.

We had lovely holidays; one that I remember when still living in Eketahuna was camping under the pine trees at Foxton Beach. Mum and Dad had a large tent for their sleeping and family eating; Rob, Ian and I slept in a trailer that had a large metal frame covered with canvas over it, much like the cowboy and Indian films that we saw. Being under the pines in what seemed like a forest to me, and the tent and the cowboy and Indian trailer, is all that I remember about the holiday. About two years ago I took Melissa, our youngest child, and her children to look around Foxton Beach as I had not been there since I was a child, and I reminisced about that childhood memory.

Other times Dad organised home swaps with other families who had homes in Wellington and Christchurch and we were able to explore new territory in cities. I was about twelve years old I think, when we were in Christchurch, and I went raspberry picking to buy myself a TipTop watch. I had been given a watch by my parents when I was younger but it had a large face and wide strap which I did not think fashionable and I wanted one like everyone else had. In later years I could not bear to be the same as everyone else.

Another exciting holiday was to Takaka, Collingwood and Farewell Spit. We stayed in the only hotel in Collingwood which was a wooden two storeyed old building with metal fire escape ladders down one side. I embarrassed myself badly when my parents were having before dinner drinks in the lounge bar and I was fiddling with my white bead necklace around my neck when the string broke and they scattered all over the wooden floor. I think I was ten years old and was feeling very grown up and privileged; once again I flushed bright red. We visited Pupu Springs, [Te Waikoropupū Springs] the largest springs in the Southern Hemisphere, tame eels that we fed with blancmange on a spoon, stalactite and stalagmite caves near Takaka. At Farewell Spit Dad raced down the beach in his car with us children screaming with encouragement. Dad died in 1957 when he was fifty-one of a coronary infarction; he had had his normal early morning cold shower in the upstairs bathroom when he felt enormous pain and Mum called an ambulance, [but] he died in hospital after a few days. Since then great strides have been made for this condition.

My mother was Winifred Beryl Davis, known as Beryl, and she was born on 14th January 1916 in Ashburton. She died in 1996 at 80 years old, in Hastings. She and my father married on 25th February 1939 in Ashburton. She was the youngest of three children to George Edmund [Davis], born 19th January 1883, and Sarah Ellen Davis née Rowberry, born 1885. My mother lived her early years in Christchurch, and reminisced [how] as a child [she] walked over the hills to Lyttelton for picnics with her family, and commented how far it was. When still young her father was transferred to Dannevirke as the gasworks manager and he died there in 1925 when my mother was nine years old. Her brother, Hugh, was born in March 1910 and he was six years older; and my mother’s sister, Enid, was four years older, born in [on] 10th September 1911.

Hugh’s first wife, Pamela, died only a few years after they were married and we children only knew Aunty Billie – Noeleen, the second wife – whom he married soon after. They had no children and they were very well off as Uncle Hugh made a lot of money early in his life by fixing motorbikes and buying hotel properties. They treated us like adults when we children visited, and [we] were allowed a small glass of port to drink before dinner and to smoke a cigarette if we wished. That was amazing; amazingly, only Ian out of the four of us ever took up smoking for a brief time.

I have a very annoying habit to other family members which I feel I inherited from Uncle Hugh because he had to have every speck of fat taken from his meat before eating it and I used to do the same – I still do, actually. Consequently we were behind everybody else at the table finishing our meals. I actually rarely eat red meat now, although not because of the fat; I was told in my twenties that red meat went putrid in one’s stomach before being expelled, and I have mostly eaten white meat and fish ever since. Another reason was that I had severe migraines at that time and I was experimenting eliminating certain foods from my diet to see whether that helped.

My mother’s mother was widowed early, and they managed frugally after the First World War when there was no father in their lives until Hugh started working and helped his mother financially. My mother worked in a legal office in Dannevirke when she left school. In her late teens Mum had rheumatoid arthritis in her feet and was bedridden for a year; she knitted lots of garments during her confinement and won prizes for her effort. Later, when married and throughout our childhood, she knitted dresses for Carol and I in different colours, and jerseys for all of the family. She taught us to be proficient knitters too, as well as teaching us to sew our own clothes in our teens, which I did through my married life; and I knitted clothes and sewed for my three children.

Mum had all her teeth removed as a supposed cure for arthritis, in those days when she had the arthritis, and now in 2017 it does not bear thinking about those archaic methods. She was [had] deformed hammer toes and enlarged big toe joints, and her feet gave her enormous pain for the rest of her life. Uncomplaining, it was only when one of us children accidentally bumped or knocked against her feet that we realised what pain she had. She always had trouble getting soft shoes that fitted her feet and was very conscious of how they looked. They very quickly became misshapen. I know she tried to wear fashionable shoes when I was in my teens, as I was able to fit them too and loved wearing them around the house playing ‘ladies’.

When we moved to Hastings, Mum went to a specialist, Mr Tane, and he suggested cutting off three toes on each foot and reducing the bone on each big toe. She agreed, and he removed the three smaller toes on each foot intending to remove the ones next to the big toe and big bone at a later date. However, Mum was in such terrible pain in recovery [that] there was no way she was going back. In fact the amputations did not improve her pain, or being able to get shoes. The remaining toes bent towards the stumps left and made balance and wearing shoes even more difficult. A shoe shop in Mahora, Hastings, [was] opened by Noel and Margaret Sutherland about the early to mid seventies, [and] Mum was able to buy a particular brand of soft shoe that she could wear and tolerate when out socially, but it was still the first thing she discarded on her return home. When the shop closed after a few years her only option was to get specially made shoes from Napier Hospital. She loathed these ugly shoes and felt very conspicuous in them. She got Parkinsons at age seventy, and because that creates low blood pressure she had difficulty in staying on her deformed feet; and in the last two years of her life wore knitted booties as she could not bear shoes on her feet and needed a walking frame.

Back to 1959 – when widowed for two years or so, Mum married Eric Lawrence Taylor after Dad had died. Eric was [at] an RSA [Returned and Services Association] reunion in Wellington two years beforehand, and Dad’s stepbrother who we did not know, suggested that he introduce himself to Mum as she had been recently widowed. When my siblings and I asked questions about our father and our lives with him before his death, she would put us off by saying, “Not now, dear”, as she did not want to talk in front of Eric about our father. Naturally Rob, Ian and I were very resentful that this man had come into our lives, and we were rather unpleasant to him. When I was a mother myself I realised how good he was to Mum and how difficult it would have been for her, left alone with three teenagers and a much younger child at forty-one. Eric had not been married before; thinking back now, I realise how difficult it would’ve been for him too, coping with belligerent and resentful teenagers. Carol, who was only seven when Dad died, accepted him much more readily.

Eric Lawrence Taylor was born on 17th February 1916, and after the war he started Overland Transport with Bruce Halstead carting Cascade beer over the Taihape Road. He later worked at the Heretaunga Dairy Company and the Pakowhai Shingle Company. He was a middleweight champion boxer and wrestler, and used the name Eric King; he was also nicknamed Pinky. He volunteered for World War II when he was eighteen years old and served in Egypt, Greece, Cassino and Crete. Eric told us a story of while he was in Greece – the soldiers, he [himself] included, were drinking red wine from the large wine vats and one of them fell in and drowned, and the rest of them kept drinking.

Nicknames – Mum was called Bill and Billie by Auntie Enid, because she could not say Beryl when they were children; and as I have mentioned, Dad called her Blossom; in fact it became ‘Big Bloss’ as he called me Little Blossom. Eric, our stepfather, called my mother Henry – I don’t know why he did that. Mum had a group of friends both in Nelson and then Hastings, when the ladies – or ‘girls’, they called themselves – took turns having afternoon tea. When we children arrived home after school we were allowed into the sitting room to say good afternoon to her friends and to choose two pieces of cake or biscuit from the afternoon tea trolley. When we were older and even into adulthood, we teased Mum about when she said she was ‘going to [the] girls’, or ‘the girls were coming to her’, and they were probably in their late sixties, seventies and nearly eighties at that stage. She was supportive to older women on their own who lived near us and she was always visiting, taking food and caring for them. She was very good friends with Joan Dawson, who she first met in Dannevirke about 1941, through Auntie Enid. Later by chance they met up again in Eketahuna as Joan went to live with her in-laws while Andrew, her husband, was serving [in] World War II. Joan tells me that she and Mum went to the movies every Saturday night with a blanket and a hot water bottle each as the hall had no heating in those days. They kept in touch while we lived in Nelson; again, coincidentally, they lived in Hastings at the same time and were able to see each other frequently and talk over problems over the telephone. Joan said she considered Mum to be the sister she did not have.

When we lived in Eketahuna I remember Mum doing exercises on the lounge floor on a pale creamy fawn shagpile carpet. This was in 1949, and I used to lie with her and copy every movement she made. Mum had a very good figure and upright bearing and wore very fashionable clothes. I was mortified more than once when adults compli[ment]ing her commented that she and I could be taken for sisters. This was when I was in my mid-teens; we were both slim and had red curly hair, and I didn’t know ‘til later on that at that time Mum was obviously pregnant with Carol. When we moved to Nelson Carol was born only a few months later, so she was still doing exercises obviously when she was pregnant.

In the morning she wore what she called ‘morning clothes’ for the house chores, and in the afternoon she changed into afternoon clothes with fresh lipstick to greet Dad when he arrived home from work. Another memory is when we were packing up house to move to Nelson from Eketahuna – Mum was burning rubbish on the family room fire when the chimney caught alight, and she threw an enormous amount of salt on to it to successfully dampen it down. The fire station was not far from us but I do not remember them coming. Dad was already seven months in Nelson – he had moved there earlier and bought a house for us all to move [into]. I inadvertently set the chimney alight years later in 1979 at Thompson Road, and remembered my mother’s solution which was also successful.

I don’t remember exactly [when], but one or two years after we moved to Hastings Mum started working for Farmers Trading Company as a fashion buyer for women’s clothing, which I realised in later years was very resourceful of her as she had not worked in paid employment all the years of her marriage to Dad. She went on clothes buying trips to Auckland, and because of her dislike and fear of flying she went by train from Hastings to Palmerston North where she had to change to get another train from Palmerston North to Auckland and return the same way. When we flew from Wellington when we were leaving Eketahuna, we flew on a Friendship, Fokker Friendship – I think that’s what they’re called – and it seemed very bare inside, like … all tin around … and my mother was absolutely horrified. That’s why she had this fear of flying; she said never again was she going to do that.

I went on a holiday once from Nelson to Wellington, and they had the boat called the ‘Ngaio’ then that went overnight. Mum seemed to have loss and tragedy in her life – when her father died when she was so young; the rheumatoid arthritis, then her mother was killed tragically a few months after my Dad died; Dad dying when she was only forty-one; Robert, my older brother, died when he was thirty-six; and finally she outlived Eric, her second husband. She seemed to be a calm and a cheerful, contented person although I think she kept the peace, and a lot to herself.

I’ve already mentioned, and this is probably a bit disjointed, but my father – Bob, he was called as a nickname – died in June 1957 when I was sixteen, and my mother at forty-one years of age was left with three teenagers and one seven year old; obviously so devastated she would not talk about her life with Dad to us. In those days in the ‘stiff upper lip’ English tradition, adults did not talk about or include children in the deaths of their parents. In fact Carol, my sister, was seven at the time and was thought too young to attend the funeral … something she’s never forgotten and still feels resentful about.

A few months after Dad’s death Mum sold the large wooden two storeyed – probably early 1900s – house in Nelson, and uprooted us all to Hastings where we all stayed with Auntie Enid, her husband and our Uncle Ernie, and youngest daughter and our older cousin, Brenda. Also living there was Nana, my mother’s and Enid’s mother; she was too frail to live on her own in her flat in Palmerston North. The plan was that she would live six months with Auntie Enid in Hawke’s Bay and six months in Nelson with our family. However, after her first trip to Nelson she vowed she would never fly to us again in the Fokker Friendship planes of the day, so Auntie Enid had her full time. One of the reasons my mother moved to Hastings was that she could once again take her turn in having Nana for the six months of each year; the other reason was my mother had always felt very isolated in Nelson from her mother, sister, brother and families all living in the North Island, because the only way to get to the North Island was by air, and I’ve already mentioned about the overnight ship, the ‘Ngaio’. But that was discontinued, presumably because it was uneconomic[al]. Actually, my mother was also terrified of flying for the rest of her life.

Now I’ve got that we went in an old Douglas Dakota DC3 to Nelson in the first place, so I’ve got the wrong plane, with no air pressure and very bumpy. And I’ve said already Dad was in Nelson so it was doubly terrifying for Mum with the three children and heavily pregnant. Mum disliked the house in Nelson as Dad had bought it previous to the move from Eketahuna, as men seemed to do in those days without consultation of [with] wives. Mum was seven months pregnant with Carol, and the rest of us, me eight years, Rob seven and Ian nearly six; it would’ve been impossible for her to travel to Nelson prior to living there to help choose a house. On arrival I can remember my mother being shocked at this large cold-seeming two storeyed house with big verandas on two sides.

I often think about how after Dad died, we Brighams descended on Auntie Enid and her family and took over her large old home. My two brothers slept in a tent in the back yard as it was summer time. Within six months my mother had bought a section in Riverslea Road South, and a new compact three bedroomed and open living bungalow was built by Morgan Brothers, a firm well known in Hastings, and we moved there about April or May 1958. I realise now that [at] an early stage of my life I was introduced to death and the trauma of loss of loved ones when I was young, with Nana dying only a few months later.

I was born in Dannevirke on 4th of April 1941. I was the first child to Robert and Beryl Brigham; my parents married on the 25th February 1939 in Ashhurst [Ashburton] New Zealand, when Dad was thirty-five and Mum twenty-five. Her brother, Hugh, was best man and her sister, Enid, the bridesmaid and her [Enid’s] daughter, Doreen, who was four or five years old was flower girl. Mum wore a cream satin slim gown and carried white lilies. I don’t know the colours of the attendants’ dresses. For the occasion a sepia photograph shows the men wearing lounge suits, carrying what looked like white gloves. The dresses were long with wide stripes, dark and light, so as I said I don’t know the colours.

My parents had four children; there was me, then Robert Hugh, born on 27th August 1942; Ian Raymond, born 18th October 1943; and six years later Carol Lynley, born 2nd November 1949. I inherited very red, very curly hair with pale English skin which freckled in the sun. In fact I have often thought I looked a bit like Janet Frame, the author, with her bushy red hair. Mum also had red hair but no freckles and she assured me that when I was in my late teens they would disappear. Lies – they never did.

We lived in Dannevirke for two and a half years and Eketahuna until I was eight, when the family moved to Nelson which I’ve mentioned, and we lived there for eight years. Dad died on 20th June 1957 when I was sixteen. It left a huge hole in my life and took a long time to accept. In fact a short time after Dad’s death and in August 1957 when the family had moved to Hastings, my brother Rob and I got arthritis in our feet which made them very painful and swollen. This could have been on account of the stress we felt at the time; we were a disjointed family without a father and it did affect us all badly.

My feet got better because I was competitively swimming over six months or so; Rob was in hospital for a very long time and he was taking aspirin by the handful. Months later my feet improved, and got better over the summer, swimming. Rob’s feet were so painful that he was not able to walk, and spent months in Hastings Memorial Hospital and then Rotorua Hospital. During the winter of 1958 he came back walking again which we thought of as a miracle but he had to swallow handfuls of aspirin for pain. He died of cancer at thirty-six years old, leaving a wife and four small children, and I firmly believe it was started off with bleeding from the kidneys after he’d been taking all these aspro.

I have had stress related problems ever since then, like migraines; iritis, which is a stickiness at the back of the eye, and untreated can cause blindness and is a type of arthritis.

Our first year in Hastings was horrible and a difficult time in many ways for me. However, I was employed straight away, and was welcomed by the Heretaunga Swimming Club through contacts from Nelson. I have fond memories of meeting Robyn Skittrup and her family who welcomed me to their home on many occasions. Robyn and I became good friends and later she became my bridesmaid when I married. I worked in office administration when I left school at Roach’s Department Store, which was also organised by a firm in Nelson; and then I worked at Farm Mechanisation, with part time fashion modelling for two retailers, McKay’s Department Store in Nelson, and Roach’s Limited, Hastings, and [also] fundraising for charities.

In 1959 I went to the Blossom Festival dance with friends and met Frank Cooper. I was seventeen years old. Little did I know then the impact of that occasion. Two years later we became engaged, and married when I was twenty years old, on 3rd June 1961 at St Matthew’s Church in Hastings. Frank was Presbyterian and Reverend Button from the Anglican Church insisted that Frank be baptised before he married me. Frank always felt rather resentful about that.

We’d planned to build a house on the [Cooper] farm, and had plans drawn up with Frank’s eighty-four year old father’s agreement, but he reneged at the last minute. In fact Frank’s very controlling father had refused to meet me or attend our wedding. He told Frank he thought him too young at twenty-three years old to marry. Four years later I drove to the farm with Craig, our first baby in my arms, and introduced myself nervously to the father at the milking shed. He was very pleasant, and after a few minutes told me they had “work to do, girly, and I’d better be off”.

To start married life we rented a house in Nimon Street, Havelock North for six months while owners Don and Pam Burgess were overseas. For the next two years after that we rented the Robertson’s old family home in Brookvale Road as they had built a new home on another part of their orchard. That meant we were nearer to the dairy farm where Frank was employed by his father in Thompson Road. Frank had not received wages from his father, also [named] Frank, for his years of working on Spring Farm. There was a promise of inheritance which did not eventuate, but that is another story.

In lieu of wages, his father purchased a Ferguson tractor, mower, rake and discs for Frank to set up a business spraying crops and grasses for farmers around the Hawke’s Bay plains. An agreement was set up with his uncle, Bob Wilson, to mow his grass for hay each season. The business was Cooper’s Specialised Weed Control and gave us our income. His father died at ninety-three years old in 1970, and his mother, who now owned the farm, paid Frank and Jim for their work on the family farm.

I loved being in Brookvale Road where we had chooks, bobby calves and a cat and a dog. There was a stand of plum trees on the section which I sold at the weekend from the gate to passing public, as well as water melons that Frank grew on the farm. Finally, in March 1964 we were able to put a deposit on a small wooden three bedroomed house in Puflett Road, from [with] money that Frank’s mother, Maisie, gave us from an inheritance she had received. I was seven months pregnant with Craig and I when I left my employment at Farm Mechanisation Limited. During the last month of pregnancy and with extraordinary energy I painted the outside of our newly acquired house. I can still remember it being [a] pale creamy colour with white trim around the windows.

Craig was born on 16th May 1964, and Garth was born one year later on the 21st May 1965. I had acute back problems after birthing Garth, and was hospitalised for treatment and wore a back brace for several years until it improved. Mum was wonderful support during those years; it was so helpful, as Frank was working very long hours, seven days a week.

Because of ongoing pain and problems I was advised by my doctor, Ian Abernethy, not to have more children. Frank and I didn’t feel our family was complete and made enquiries to adopt. In May 1967 rather earlier than we had planned we were advised about a baby girl born in Waipukurau Hospital. She was six weeks old. It was an exciting trip, with Frank and I and the small boys in their pyjamas driving down one evening and seeing her for the first time. She was a blonde, golden skinned baby, and we just could not leave her behind. With cooperation from nursing staff at the hospital, she travelled home with us the same evening. After six months waiting period – in case her birth mother changed her mind – we were able to legally adopt Melissa.

Keirunga Gardens was across the road from our home in Puflett Road and we enjoyed many hours and happy recreation times in this lovely reserve. The property in circa 1905 had an interesting history and the owners of the property, the Nelson Trust, gave the land and house to the then Havelock North Borough Council. In the mid 1960s they could not afford the upkeep. I became part of a group of volunteers who gardened and tidied the grounds and I spent hours there while Melissa was in the pushchair or running around when the boys were at school and kindergarten. We had happy years in Puflett Road with the children, and we all made good friends. Frank and I were both involved with the children’s activities, and I had played badminton and then got keen on squash where we made more friends.

In 1976 the architect, Peter Holland, designed a three bedroom concrete block and timber framed house for a site in Thompson Road. While the house was being built we lived in two caravans on the site for eight months, because our house in Puflett Road had sold more quickly than anticipated. We moved in in August 1976. I designed and created a very large garden, landscaping and converting paddocks. I planted lots of roses, spring bulbs and English style trees over a three acre area. Frank bought a large water pond from Natural Springs which the family call ‘The Lake’.

Earlier in the mid 1970s, because dairy farming was no longer viable with increasing land values, Frank and his brother, Jim, planted apples for export, grapes for McWilliams Wine and peaches, tomatoes and squash for Wattie Canneries to increase and create viable income for three families to live on. In [the] 1977 fruit season I decided to again pack export apples for a neighbouring orchard. In the years from 1959 to 1963, Frank and I and my brother, Ian, had all worked packing export apples and pears for Archie Palmer for four hours each evening, as well as working at our daytime jobs. About 1981 I started working for Brian Townsend Furnishers; I was a consultant interior concepts, advising on colour schemes and selecting curtains and upholstery. Also I was doing the monthly accounts for him. This was in a part time capacity as Melissa was still at high school. In March 1985 I started working full time at Whakatu Wool Scour Limited in the office and I was there twenty-three years.

The family had settled easily and happily to living and being involved on the land instead of being bystanders to Frank’s working life, and all seemed to be well until the recession hit New Zealand in the middle to late 1980s. The sharemarket crashed, interest rates and land values had increased greatly, jobs disappeared, houses and farming land had to be sold. In our case, because we had borrowed heavily for the developments ten years earlier, it became difficult to keep the farm financially viable and we had to sell under pressure in 1989. The previous few years had been shaky because of the increasingly high interest paid to the bank … it was like twenty-eight percent. I also wrote letters to the government of the day, the Labour Party, saying how difficult it was for farmers paying that kind of money; but it doesn’t make any difference, does it?

Watties no longer wanted local peaches only three years after we had planted – they could get them cheaper from China. Also we had a contract with McWilliams Wines to supply Sauvignon Blanc to them; they realised after two years being planted that they had too many grapes and offered growers $4 a vine to pull them out, which our accountant suggested we do. This had been an enormously stressful time for a few years trying to hang in there.

After the sale of the farm, with no money left, Frank and I moved to a townhouse in Ballantyne Street in Hastings where we stayed for four years. However, it was not the happiest time in our lives and after the trauma of leaving the farm and our home there, I was exceptionally unhappy.

I decided in 1990 to travel to Britain for a working holiday for five months. I was able to take time off from my employment at Whakatu Wool Scour as it had been changed from Robert [David] Ferrier, I think. I lived-in as a companion for elderly people in Central London, then Deal [in Kent], then the New Forest with time to explore and sightsee each day. It was actually a wonderful time because I worked in the mornings, had the afternoons free and then did breakfast and meals at night, and they didn’t eat very much. After two months Melissa joined me and we backpacked and stayed in hostels through Ireland, United Kingdom and Europe. It was my first time backpacking; I didn’t have a proper pack but it worked out really well. It was a wonderful time and I was very reluctant to come back to New Zealand.

In December 1993 I moved from Ballantyne Street to live on my own in Queen Street, Hastings. After one year Frank and I attempted reconciliation but it was not successful. Although I am still married to him we have not lived together since December 2003. Today I am well settled in my 1926 old character house. I am an avid reader and have belonged to book discussion groups for a long time. I love films of all kinds including international films; I take an interest in local politics and right now we’ve just come through the two hundred and seventeen [2017] politics [election] which is still not decided.

Over the years I’ve taken part in many community affairs, like Anglican Young Wives, share [in]vestment groups, school committees, the Suffrage & International Women’s Committee, and a businesswomen’s group. Also I was president of Plunket Mothers and the women’s Dinner Club. I have tried all sorts of hobbies like painting, basket weaving, pottery, art, history, etcetera, at night classes.

In the 1970s as part of the Anglican Young Wives Group we played tennis in the summer at Fox Roger’s private courts in Greenwood Road, taking turns to look after our young children while mothers played. In the winter we played badminton at the St Luke’s Hall, which is now no longer standing, and the children were looked after by the other mothers in the supper room. Sport had played a big part in my life – as well as swimming I had played netball, badminton, squash and golf, all with passion, and I managed to achieve a 9 handicap at golf. I’ve been a volunteer for Women’s Refuge, Meals on Wheels, school reading, taking boys’ sewing at Havelock Intermediate, and Connections Hospice Shop, the Cancer Society, and children’s reading at Riverslea School.

Other than visiting Australia numerous times over the years as brother, Ian, and his family have lived there since the late 1960s, I didn’t start travelling on my own to further countries until 1990 when I was forty-nine years old. Since then I have explored countries new to me and would like to think there will be new adventures in the future.

I have written down a few special memories so I’ll start talking about those if I remember things. I must’ve been between eighteen months and two and a half years old when the family moved to Eketahuna, as my brother, Robert, was born in August 1942 in Dannevirke, and it was October 1943 when my second brother, Ian, was born in Eketahuna. My first memories were in Alfredton Road, Eketahuna, and we were living in a wooden style bungalow with the passage up the centre of the house, rooms each side, with a big living room/kitchen at the back. My own bedroom had a tallboy with a hinged lid with a set-in mirror, and on it a green flower vase with embossed flowers, that got broken. I now think that happened when the lid came down accidentally, so it’s just a little memory. Another memory that has always stuck in my mind was early one dark morning, Rob was in his cot and Dad had left for work and Mum was chasing and shouting at sheep that had got into our vegetable garden. [A]nother one was the little boy next door – David Hansen I think his name was; we were playing doctors and nurses, and I poked a stick in his ear and got into trouble from his mother. When I started school I was not allowed – on doctor’s orders – to sit on the floor mat as all new entrants did in those days, because of a kidney chill. At home I remember laying on a wooden armed cushioned couch in the kitchen/living room to convalesce. Only years later did I find out that Nana Davis had Bright’s kidney disease and Mum was worried that I may have inherited the same.

When I was about six years old I had my first experience in a huge thunderstorm, which absolutely terrified me. When my mother was comforting me she explained that it was the fairies moving house, and the packers had dropped the piano down the stairs – a totally believable story for me. I told it to my own children and then my grandchildren who were more sceptical.

During 1947 history tells me there was a polio epidemic in New Zealand, although I have no memory of this; and only [discovered this] when I moved to Nelson and met Yvonne Rollo’s older sister, Nancy, who had the withered leg and a big boot from polio. Friends my age today in 2017, cannot believe I knew nothing about it but as I have mentioned I seem to’ve gone through a dreamy or protected life as a young girl. I was probably still reading all the time.

Still in Eketahuna, we then moved to a more modern house in Church Street which was opposite the local swimming baths where my father taught me to swim. Because he had the key we were able to go there very frequently and I soon became a very proficient and competitive swimmer, winning provincial and school titles from them on until I was seventeen years old. My father, as far as I can remember, put a canvas belt around my middle which had a hook in it and he used a long pole that he held onto while I swam backwards and forwards on [across] the width, obviously until I could swim without the pole.

When I was eight the family moved to Nelson to live in the early 1900s two storeyed house at Waimea Road; we were there for eight years and then Dad died, as I’ve said. I feel that life in Nelson was uneventful, but was obviously enjoyable and happy as all [I have] are happy memories. Next door to us lived the Spencer family with five boys who all played the bagpipes, as did their father. They used to practise the reed in the evenings walking up and down their back path. Tears still come to my eyes whenever I hear and see the bagpipes.

On our first day at the Nelson Hampden Street School, Rob, Ian and I were sent off on our own, which may have been normal in those days; not like today where often both parents see their little darlings inside the classroom on their first day. Perhaps Mum was pregnant with Carol and Dad having gone to work made a difference, but I still cannot work out why we were going on our own. I was extremely lucky, although I didn’t know it at the time, when I was met outside my home by Yvonne Rollo who lived two doors down and asked me if I’d like to walk to school with her. Obviously that was my saving grace, as Rob and Ian were so scared of going to school alone that they hid behind the Rising Sun Hotel which was between home and school. I did not know about this at the time and heard the story years later. I think I was a very unobservant child as I seemed to be unaware of lots of happenings during my childhood. During these years we had been taught lots of rules and regulations, like always wear clean underwear in case you have an accident; don’t cut toenails or fingernails on Sunday; only common girls have pierced ears or ankle bracelets – a rage when I was in my early teens – and then only rough girls play hockey; only wear black for funerals and so on.

I must’ve been a reasonable pupil as I seemed to manage well the subjects of academia and apart from talking too much, don’t recall being in trouble at any time. I was at the Hampden Street School until Standard 4. I then started at Nelson Intermediate where I was streamed into the second highest class which was Room 6 with Mrs Kane, my teacher, a short, stout, white-haired woman. I was a good all-rounder at athletics as well as swimming so was reasonably popular. For some reason I disliked sewing at Intermediate School and one time my teacher made me bicycle back home about three miles to get my sewing that I had left behind. Her perseverance must’ve worked, as in my teens I made dresses at home for the swimming socials as we girls chose to have a new dress each time. For years I sewed for myself, and beautiful clothes for Melissa; and knitted for all the family and for friends who could not knit. My secondary years were spent at Nelson College for Girls where I took commercial classes as my father felt that office work would be a suitable occupation for girls. Why he did not suggest nursing or teaching as lots of girls my age were choosing I do not know, not that I had any leaning towards either anyway.

Dad had encouraged us in all sports and joined us [up] to a tennis club even when we were quite young. Again, only Ian and I showed any aptitude to [for] sport and we were also good at athletics. Because I was good at sport I had a wide group of friends at school but my special friends were Yvonne whom I met when I first arrived in Nelson at eight, and Maylene and Annette who all swam competitively, so we saw lots of each other after school hours; and still keep in touch, and quite often, with Yvonne and Maylene.

Now I’m now going to talk about swimming because that was my huge love for eight years … eight or nine or something. Swimming was my love, and as young person from eight years old until seventeen I trained each morning at six am for an hour, and again in the evening for another hour. We didn’t swim in the winter time in those days like they do now, because there was [were] no pools – they were all outside cold water pools. I belonged to Nelson South Swimming Club in Hampden Street and swam in the competitions each week and also at Nelson Swimming Club carnivals. The club went to Blenheim for us to compete against the Marlborough Swimming Club and each year we competed at the Nelson-Marlborough Swimming Championships where I invariably won breaststroke and butterfly races. My claim to fame was being breaststroke and butterfly champion for Nelson-Marlborough and Hawke’s Bay most years, and competing in Dunedin at the New Zealand Championships, but only managed a third there. In Eketahuna we lived across the road from the swimming pool, so using the pole was a bit like learning to ride a bicycle when the teacher holds onto the seat and lets go if they feel the learner can manage on their own. I presume we children in our family were all taught to swim in that way, but only Ian became interested – as well as I – and he was also a breaststroke champion and butterfly swimmer for Nelson and Hawke’s Bay. As mentioned, my speciality from my early years was breaststroke, and I was improving at a rapid rate at primary school and at the swimming club because of the recognition I was getting then.

I remember standing at morning assembly at Hampden Street Primary School on the tennis court as there was no assembly hall, and I was called out as the most improved swimmer. [Traffic noise] I felt so embarrassed at being called out and when bright pink. The ultimate embarrassment and shame was not knowing which hand to hold out for the headmaster to shake. I soon learned, because in the next ten years I had to go and get prizes or silver cups frequently for swimming – unfortunately, not for academia. I also became proficient at butterfly which was a reasonably new swimming stroke in New Zealand at that time, and we swam it in those days with a breaststroke kick which was easy for me and I won competitions for that stroke too. It wasn’t until I was about sixteen years old that the dolphin kick came into fashion, and I found that I did not have the strength to swim that proficiently. Maylene swam backstroke, Annette was a breaststroke swimming like me and Yvonne was a diver and besides training together we biked together and socialised during weekends and after school. I still keep in close contact with Maylene who is in Maroochydore, Australia, and Yvonne still in Nelson.

In Nelson the social side the swimming club was very important especially at the start of our teenage years, as we spent every day of every weekend swimming and playing at and in the pool with a big group of boys and girls. We also had frequent evening socials on Saturday night during the winter at the school hall. On Saturday afternoon the girls made thin sliced white bread sandwiches filled with tinned spaghetti, of all things, for supper. We danced the evenings away and got pashes on different boys in turn. It all seemed very innocent, and great times. During the season on carnival and club nights trestle tables were set up beside the pool and helper parents offered cups of tea and scones or pikelets to swimmers and spectators alike. For us younger children it was a great excuse to stay up later as in my siblings’ and my case our parents were very strict on early to bed rules, certainly compared to my friends. Both my mother and father were the volunteers for making the suppers afterwards as well at the pool and very involved. When we went to Blenheim for carnivals we travelled in a hired bus together with coaches; and swimmers singing popular songs or being silly, as teenagers do, was wonderful and we were still mindful that we were competing and wanting to win when we got there.

When Mum, Rob, Ian, Carol and I moved to Hastings, Ian and I were welcomed to the Heretaunga Swimming Club by Ron Shakespeare, who was the swimming president for Hawke’s Bay at that time and had been contacted by the Nelson Swimming Club. Being extremely unhappy and vulnerable because of Dad’s sudden death, it was a blessing to be involved so soon in something I loved, and I made good friends with Robyn Skittrup who also swam breaststroke. I often thought that she may have wished I hadn’t come to Hastings as she was the top breaststroke swimmer until I came, and so we were rivals as well as friends. Some of the parents were not pleased that I had come as a rival for Robyn and yelled out encouragement to her during races.

Again there was great camaraderie with the other boy and girl members. At the weekend and after swimming carnivals we went to Marie [Mario] Cesarini’s dairy in Heretaunga Street East for milkshakes, creaming sodas or icecream sundaes. This was when I was sixteen and seventeen years old and a senior swimmer at the club. It all seems so innocent now in 2017, and we did not even think about hanging around the streets or outside pubs as most of us still had to be home at a reasonable hour like about ten pm.

When I was seventeen years old and a year after arriving in Hastings, I met Frank Cooper at a Blossom Festival dance where I went with friends from work so swimming took a back seat from there on. It was a great era for me, and I still believe that if teenagers are involved in some kind of sport or ballet or music today, then those years are fulfilled with practice and passion, and beside[s] being occupied in a great way they have something to look back on with fondness.

I’m just going to tell you now about the [number] eights in my life; I’ve noticed when I was doing some family history that eights kept on coming up, so I’m just going to mention now the eights in my life:

Carol is eight years younger than me; I was eight years old when we moved from Eketahuna to Nelson; Melissa was eight when we moved to the farm; she was eight when I had iritis, which was quite a major thing in my life at the time. My mother, Beryl, died when she was eighty; Grandma Fox died when I was eight; I was sixteen when Dad died … that’s two eights; Dad’s father died when he was eight; he and his mother came to New Zealand when he was eight; we lived in Nelson for eight years; Frank and I lived in Havelock for twenty-eight years; Frank sold the farm when I was forty-eight years old; we lived in Ballantyne Street for four years, which is half of eight; Jacqueline, my grandaughter, was eight when I started doing the family history [a] few years ago. While I remember, when Ian [and I] – I used to have a lot of time with him when he was in Australia – were talking, he felt he was the special one in the family and I thought I was the special one in the family, so I think that Dad must’ve had a special way of making each child feel they were the special one, which was rather nice really.

Now I’m going to talk about holidays and travel, and as I have mentioned earlier my father used to take the family on lots of holidays … lots of holidays, it was quite special; yes, and every Sunday we went to the beach or somewhere. And Frank, on hearing my stories, was keen to give our own children similar holidays that he had never been privileged enough to have had himself.

One of the things we did with my parents … a house swap in Eastbourne was one of our holidays when there was just me, Robert and Ian, and I remember only the backyard area where we had a photo taken with Dad, and swimming in the sea. But I remember we went to a corner dairy to get the newspaper – just little things like that. And they had a lovely backyard but there was [were] lots of stones in it because it was a really beachy holiday.

And another one, we went to Curious Cove in the Marlborough Sounds; I must’ve been nearly nine then as Carol was only about six months old. We stayed in a bach above the sea where I learned to row a boat, and had green fizzy drink for the first and last time. [Chuckle] We had to get there by boat to Curious Cove in those days, so there was no transport once we were there. And then about the mid 1990s Frank and I went with Jan and Norman Speers and friends to the Marlborough Sounds for a holiday, and I was able to reminisce and my childhood holiday there.

I think I was about ten years old when I went to Hastings to stay with Aunty Enid, and I’d travelled overnight on the ship ‘Ngaio’ from Nelson to Wellington, and then by train to Hastings under the supervision of Sally and Harold Palmer who were good friends of my parents in Nelson. Years later Sally told me she was amazed that I did not eat anything on that trip, and I explained that I did not want her to spend her money on me, not knowing that she had been given money by my parents for my food and other costs.

At twelve years old I flew to Auckland with Yvonne to stay with her married sister, Nancy, and her husband, Allan, in Browns Bay and we had the most wonderful holiday sightseeing all the wonders of a big city. Allan was a big tease and I was the one he seemed to target most as I was the most naïve I guess, and the others had great laughs at my expense. And one thing, when we were eating prunes and custard after our dinner one night he told me to look away at something. I did, and when I turned back he’d eaten my prunes, which I was saving ‘til last, so I’ve never forgotten that story either.

With Craig, Garth and Melissa we had lots of caravan holidays at Clifton Beach in Hastings, Loafers Paradise in Taupo, and the camping ground at Mt Maunganui. They were regulars and favourite things to do. In fact we parked the caravan in those places for the month of January each year. One time at the Mount Garth, who was about eight years old … oh, there’s that eight again … did not return by dark, and Marie Clare who was in the caravan next to me and good friends from Hawke’s Bay, realised that he hadn’t turned back. And eventually the whole camp was looking for him and we were getting quite panicky, when he nonchalantly sauntered back and wondered what on earth all the fuss was about. He’d been up the top of the Mount with other boys and they didn’t think anything about coming back late. When Garth was a toddler Frank had to put a farm standard post and calf netting around our backyard in Puflett Road to keep him in and safe. Craig didn’t worry about doing things; he stayed around with me more I suppose.

A major trip was the South Island, including Farewell Spit; the West Coast visiting the old coal mining and gold mining towns like Denniston and the others; tramping the Routeburn Track and the Milford Track, and then across the island and up the east coast, finishing with an overseas circus in Wellington. We caravanned then, and that was one of the more memorable times I think, when we visited Denniston and the West Coast.

We all went frequently, at different times and all together, to Australia to visit friends and family; Ian and Cathy and James, their son, was [were] in Brisbane and Sydney. Once as a special treat Craig and Garth went with my mother, and another time Melissa went with me on one of our many trips there. While Ian and Cathy were in Brisbane Frank gave me a novel and exciting present for one birthday … a stack of $20 bills which had been taped together like a concertina, to fall out in a long line to pay for the airfare to visit them. Ian and his family lived in Brisbane and Sydney from the 1960s and Craig has lived in Melbourne and Sydney. Maylene, who was at school and a swimmer with me, lives in Maroochydore where Frank and I have visited many times, sometimes with our friends, Lois and Graham Wood, from Wellington.

Heather O’Neill whom I met in Greece, lives in Melbourne, and I’ve been there and also travelled with her to India. I was a late starter travelling to overseas countries other than Australia, as most New Zealanders go travelling overseas when they’re nineteen, twenty-ish. Instead of going to Europe on an overseas experience as most young people do now, I married Frank when I was twenty, and he was not able to leave the dairy farm to travel. In the early 1960s many of our friends were marrying in their late teens and early twenties, and had children then with the intention to travel overseas once their family had grown. Certainly that has worked for me, but Frank was not so interested in travelling when the family were older so I’ve mainly gone on my own, or occasionally with other friends, or visited family.

My first six week visit to United Kingdom was with Jan Speirs in 1988 with the intention to visit famous gardens there. We stopped over in Hong Kong to buy jewellery and clothes. We were not very excessful [successful] buying clothes and shoes as they were made for Asian people in those days and very few sizes were available for larger European women – not that we were large, but we had large feet and wore larger clothes. [Chuckle] We were more successful buying baroque pearls for ourselves and our daughters at good prices. Twice on that trip I left Jan behind on the train station as I was quicker to jump on the train. We had worrying moments, her [she] hoping I would get off at the next station, and I [me] hoping she would get on the next train to catch up with me. On arrival in London where we spent a few days sightseeing [we] literally bumped into Pat and Keith Carran from Havelock North, also travelling in Britain to visit Susan, their daughter, who was living there. Unexpectedly, we also bumped into Marie Clare in Harrods. Jan and I had hired a car and headed off north to visit the gardens we had mapped out, and it was wonderful seeing the grand designs and beautiful gardens of historic grand homes that we had only seen in books. [We] flew to Paris for a few days and we were once again struck by the history and beauty of a grand city. On stepping onto the tarmac from the plane I was so moved I knelt down and kissed the ground. [Chuckle]

In 1990 I decided to work in the UK [United Kingdom] as I’ve said earlier, taking time off work for five months. I was nervous setting off on my own but eventually travelled with two women whom I met through friends, who were also travelling on their own. Rita was about my age which was forty-nine and Julie was in her twenties. We flew to Thailand which was much more fun with the three of us, and did the normal touristy things before arriving at Heathrow. Rita and I had arranged accommodation from New Zealand about an hour from Central London intending to get office jobs. After I had weighed up the cost of lodging and bus and/or train and wages for office temping, I realised I would not have much left over to travel further afield and to other countries. After considering live-in care for the elderly I had a successful interview and was sent to Patricia, a seventy year old who had broken her hip and wrist, and needed someone in her Chelsea home to care for her. The two weeks I was originally to be with her turned out to be six weeks; a former lover of hers, a Lord, was paying me to stay longer which was separate from the agency. After I left Patricia I went to a former woman [female] teacher in Deal, a woman [female] judge, Lady Barbara, in the New Forest and a gentleman in Watford for two weeks each, giving their usual carers respite.

Melissa had arrived in London one month after me and she did the same care for elderly rather than the beauty therapy she had intended to do. Melissa and I hired a car and travelled through England and Scotland, [and] bussed around Ireland before backpacking through Europe by train to France, Italy and Switzerland. We met and made some good friends staying in the backpackers whom we still keep in touch with.

Craig was working in Melbourne in 1992 and Frank and I visited him there. In 1993 I visited Cathy, my ex sister-in-law, who was married to my brother Ian; she was living in Hong Kong, and I briefly went into Guangzhou in China. I went on the water plane, [seaplane] and trained back from there. Cathy had a job working for the boss of McCann Erickson, and this was a wonderful opportunity for me to share her knowledge of the area.

Garth had been in the UK for a few years when I visited him and Sandra in 1995, passing through New York for a few days on the way where Cathy was now working, still for McCann Erickson. Sandra, Garth and I went camping through the south of England, squeezing into a two man tent. Back in Islesworth, [Isleworth] I think it’s called, in London where they lived I was a pillion passenger on Garth’s motorbike, travelling to Richmond and outlaying historic areas of London, a totally new experience for me. After the first ride to Richmond, Garth explained I must not hold on so tightly to him as he could not turn and safely lean the motorbike. It is definitely not my favourite way of travelling.

On my way back to New Zealand I stopped in Greece for a tour of the historic ruins where I met Heather O’Neill from Melbourne. In 1997 I had heard from work colleagues what a wonderful trip they had in India, so I phoned Heather in Melbourne and asked if she would like to visit India with me, to which she agreed. We flew to India with no forward bookings for accommodation apart from our first night in Delhi. We hired a British Austin Cambridge car with a driver, Ashok, and he took us over a ten day period to the different cities and ports around Rajasthan. Ashok recommended our accommodation and restaurants each night as we went. He was also able to recommend specific sites that [where] a tour group would not necessarily go.

Once we had been to the Taj Mahal we said goodbye to Ashok and travelled by train to Varanasi to see the Ganges and all the sights there. We found, because we were two older women travelling on our own, the mainly young men dressed in brown polyester pants and patterned shirts swamped us with questions about why we were on our own. Were we married? Were we film stars? Etcetera, etcetera. Ashok had been very good in getting rid of them when we were with him, but I found it extremely tiring and frustrating always to be batting them off. Heather actually loved the attention, [chuckle] so she was different to me.

With Garth and Sandra, Nadine and Frank Junior back now in New Zealand and living in Winton in the South Island, there’ve been lots of trips to their home exploring areas new to me on the way there and back, and the most spectacular sights of snow covered mountains and beautifully groomed patchwork farms. Flying over is absolutely amazing, really.

I also went cycling in the Loire Valley in France for ten days in 2002, and that was my major sojourn. Dorothy Dallimore and I decided to go with Barbara Grieve and twelve other cyclists from around New Zealand after hearing Barbara talk at Rotary Inner Wheel. She’s still doing it, how many years later? And now she has an electric bike. We spent the whole winter riding each Saturday and sometimes Sunday, and walking every other day to become fit. After the cycling, Joan … now I’ve forgotten her name … she helped us greatly at the weekends. Dorothy and I went on our own way to visit different parts of Europe and I flew to Berlin for a few days. I then took the train to Dresden for more days sightseeing, and then on to Prague; and I was so overwhelmed by the beauty and history of those eastern countries and outlying areas. I had already been to Italy with Melissa so I wasn’t keen to do it again with Dorothy, and it was quite safe on my own.

San Francisco was a must for a few days and then a stopover in Los Angeles especially to go and see the J Paul Getty Museum which is one of the best museums, and it was fairly new at the time I went there.

The next major trip was in 2004 to visit Craig, who had a two year contract with Maxxium Liquor Company in Amsterdam. On the way I was intending to meet Jenny Logan in London and holiday with her in Spain, but she became ill with cancer and flew home to New Zealand, cutting short her proposed two year working holiday. I decided to still carry on on my own and nostalgically revisited London, then flew to Barcelona for a few days especially to see the wonderful architecture of Gaudi. I then took the train and stopped off at Montpellier, Avignon, Aix en Provence and Paris for a few days at each place, and on to Amsterdam to Craig for two weeks. One of our trips was to Maastricht, a wonderful city nicknamed ‘Little Paris’, and near the Belgium border. We hired bikes there and rode out into the countryside. Two young Dutch women, Irene and Gia – they boarded with me for a few weeks when they were picking apples in Hawke’s Bay the previous year – they invited me to stay with them in Schoorl, north of Amsterdam, and we visited lots of other towns and places near them. They were getting married to each other in September 2009.

In 2008 Ian asked if I would like to join him and Jamila to travel to China to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday in October, and because they have had Chinese boarders living with them in Sydney who now work and live in Beijing, we were feted and looked after extremely well. After eighteen days travelling together to Xi’An, Zhou Zhangzhou and Zhengdou I left Ian and Jamila there to fly on to Shanghai on my own [traffic noise] as it had been an ambition of mine to visit that wonderful city and to conclude a lifetime of experience. It was very safe in Shanghai, and I just stayed in a very cheap hotel which had been recommended by one of Ian’s friends. And I had a brown velvet evening coat made there, which I still have and really love.

Then in 2009 Frank and I flew to Canada for the wedding of Craig and Milena. Milena’s a Canadian girl and they married at Bugaboo Lodge near Invermere in British Columbia. We hired a car in Vancouver and Frank and I drove through Kelowna [and] Banff to Calgary where Craig and Milena live[d]. Craig had worked for the last two years in Calgary where he met Milena who was born in Switzerland of a Dutch mother and a Swiss father. That was a really great trip to go to Canada; I don’t need to go back there ever again I don’t think – I prefer the old European cities.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is the honeymoon of Frank and I when we got married – we went to the South Island. [Traffic noise] We had a borrowed car and we went on the ferry. We went to Westport and [at] the hotel we were staying in I could hear rats in the ceiling, so I wasn’t very pleased or happy about that. Anyway, we carried on down to …

Frank: Fox Glacier …

Kay: … and we went on a flight up over the …

Frank: Up … the snowfield below …

Kay: Yeah, on the snowfield; and Frank lost his car keys! But luckily when we got back to hotel there was a car traveller there and he had a whole set of different kinds of keys and was able to open the vehicle for us, so we were completely saved. That was a wonderful trip really, because we’d seen parts of the South Island that I had never seen before even though I went to lots of places with my father.

Another time, just Melissa and Frank and I went with Lance and Meg Peterson up to the Bay of Islands on their yacht. I was so nervous though that I got the most major migraine headache, which I used to get frequently, and [was] quite sick. So that wasn’t [was on] the first day and then I seemed to settle down and think it was okay. We had, I remember, the best scallops I’ve ever had in my life, because Lance had fished for them and he just put them in a little bit of wine, and they were just absolutely amazing – it’s a wonderful memory to have, that. He also had a large plastic bottle that he’d cut – it had the handle piece still on – cut a big piece out of it and we called that the ‘pisser publica’, because we had to use that to go to the toilet instead of using the toilet on the yacht, which was only for very special occasions. Melissa enjoyed it too; and we also, on the way up there or back, went and saw the big kauri forest [tree, Tane Mahuta,] and we all tried to stand around it with our arms [outstretched] to see whether we could fit.

We went to Maroochydore lots and lots of times with Lois and Graham Wood, who I’ve mentioned before; they came with us to holidays in Taupo each summer. We had ‘Grumpy’s Patch’, we called it, at Loafer’s Paradise; he was a Police Superintendent at the prison up there, [at Rangipo] and he was shifted to Christchurch so he was happy to lease the bach to us for … how many years? Four years or something …

Frank: ‘Bout six.

Kay: … and then he was coming back, so they were very special times as well. These are random things that I’m going to do because I forgot different things to mention.

Warren Gundry was our coach at Nelson South Swimming Club, and we also had an American woman who said that she was very famous in America [chuckle] and she started us on water ballet; and we thought we were so great. It was just amazing. Everyone was talking about her in Nelson because she’d come from America and was teaching us water ballet. That’s one rival [random] thing.

And in the winter time when we were teenagers, we biked up to the Maitai [River] and did lots of long cycling weekends when there was no swimming. We usually went in a group, and there was Russell Bain, Geoff [?], Allan … I can’t remember his name but he was a dentist’s son … and he used to go bright red as I used to when I was embarrassed. And I had a real crush on him at one stage. But we cycled miles out past Stoke in Nelson and found that there was banana passionfruit in the bush, so we sat down and gorged ourselves on that. Those kinds of things you just can’t repeat I guess when you’re older.

Also, after I’d finished with Brian Townsend and wasn’t working for him any more, Nola Austin-Smith who had been working with me there, started up a [an] upholstery furnishings and fabrics [business] in the old Embassy Theatre building in Hastings, and I managed the shop for her when she went to customers’ homes for measuring and advising. That was only for a short time as well.

I remembered later that when I was [on] school holidays my father got me a job in a hairdressers, because I thought that’s what I’d quite like to do. But in the holidays all I did was put the capes on people ready for their washing, sweep the floor and do all those kinds of horrible things which I didn’t really like. But I started in McKays in Nelson – was that after Dad died, I think? I was only there for a few months, but I was doing modelling as well as the office work. At the College they had – I don’t know how many years – but they had modelling there too. Mum also took me to Wellington to see whether I could get in there, but obviously wasn’t good enough to be a professional model.

And Dad wanted me to play a musical instrument that could be taken to parties, because that’s what people did in those days … either played the piano or some kind of instrument. And I’d started learning to play on the piano accordion, but I got to the stage where I outgrew the size and had to go up the next size. But I didn’t want to play that any more, so he then started me on piano lessons. Once again Ian learned piano as well, but Rob and Carol didn’t so I’m not sure why that was; maybe we had some ability there as well as the sport. And when I was biking to Intermediate School with Yvonne my friend – we had to bike about three miles I think it was. We must’ve gone home at lunchtime; why I’m not really sure, but as I was biking towards home a car had parked on the side of the road and opened its door in front of me. And I fell off of course but took the top off my fourth finger, and it meant that was the end of my piano lessons because it took months and months for it to heal. And it still has the top off the finger with a firm nail, but it’s misshapen. And of course I now have arthritis in my fingers; very badly deformed fingers on my right hand in particular, so that means that I haven’t got the ability that I used to have for knitting or things like that now.

I also went to ballet lessons and Yvonne went [did] the same. She was actually a year older than me but her sister, Nancy, was a beautiful sewer and for the concerts or the ballet recitals at the end of the year Yvonne always had beautiful ballet clothes. She was a little plump girl whereas I was a very thin, bony girl; when I see the photos – I felt ashamed at the time because she, Yvonne, had a beautiful big pink gauze dress with green satin petals over it, and I had a very obviously secondhand dress with drooping petals on it. And I was this thin, gawky [chuckle] person, but I grew into a tall, good looking, good figured person whereas she still stayed – a lovely, lovely person but she is still short and plumpish. That’s how things go isn’t it?

My mother knitted beautiful dresses; one Carol had was red with her blonde hair, and I had green with my red hair. And they were crepe wool with honeycomb knitting around the waist and the wrist. I also made lots of lovely clothes at fourteen and fifteen years old for the swimming club socials we went to; bought the dress [fabric] in the morning and made the dress on Saturday afternoon to wear to the socials. I also had a paper nylon petticoat and we soaked it in gelatine and dried it standing up in the sun so they stood out under our 1950s dresses, which were four and a half yards of skirts and half a yard for the round neck, no sleeve top. And that was just when rock ‘n roll was all the rage with Elvis Presley and others of that era, and I had an Elvis Presley 45 record at home and I know I used to play it absolutely full blast and dance at the same time, so I must have looked a sight.

The other thing is we went to lots and lots of dances and balls, Frank and I, with groups; and when we were still married we went to lots of balls … lots of balls. We all wore long full gowns, and men wore dinner suits. Rosalie McKinlay, one of our group, was a dressmaker and later on when my children were a bit older she made the most beautiful dresses for me that I absolutely still think of with nostalgia.

We also belonged to the Wine Society for a few years and we had lots of wonderful outings with that too. Sometimes we included the kids at Christmas time and went out to the river at Haumoana somewhere and set up all the trestle tables; and there was swimming in the river … that was when you could swim in the river … wonderful, wonderful times.

And Garth I didn’t mention. He was four years old when he had very painful legs and he was put into hospital … Hastings Memorial Hospital. He was there for six weeks with suspected rheumatic fever, but Tony Reeve, the children’s doctor, said he wasn’t sure that it was that but he would definitely not put it on his record because of any problems there could be when he was an adult with health insurance.

The other thing was when Craig was at university, every Sunday Melissa and I made biscuits, like peanut biscuits or all kinds of slice kinds of things, and we cooked a chook for him to go into the apple box – Frank had picked apples to put in – so a forty pound case of food and apples we sent each Monday morning on the bus to Christchurch. And after he’d been getting it a few times he said everyone else wanted to share in his food box, so when he picked up the box from Newmans depot, he said he gnawed into the chicken and munched on that quickly before [chuckle] he got back to his room, otherwise he’d have to share it with everybody else.

But as I’ve said before, we were packing apples and pears mainly, each weekend before we got married and even after we got married, at neighbours’ packhouses to earn extra money for extra things that we would like. And the children grew up to do exactly the same kinds of things. They were very good at going and picking raspberries across in Napier Road or packing apples, picking apples; they all worked really hard to help their father. They were tractor driving as well so they’ve got really good work ethics now, as adults.

I was also really keen on the garden in Puflett Road – I had a really good garden there, and grew lots of things. I can grow easily from cuttings and then when we moved to the farm we had this huge three acre area that I planted in quite a lot of things. [Phone rings]

So at the farm I had this huge garden that I put a huge amount of work into and I belonged to gardening groups; in fact the gardening group at Puflett Road when the Nelson [family] homestead was given to the Council. But I also belonged to a garden society which was a more social thing, and Jan Speers and I belonged to the Camelia Garden and the Rose Garden Society, so we went to quite a few outings doing those kinds of things. And I actually had a bus load of women that came to my garden to have a look around too when it was still quite new, so that was quite a lot of work. Garth showed quite a bent for gardening at one stage, and outside their bedroom window he had a small garden with miniature roses because that’s the ones that he liked; so he looked after those and that was quite good; they had an interest in that. We also put in a Para pool with big decking around it at one stage which was great; but then they got to an age where they were no longer interested in that so we took it out, because it was a lot of work to look after at that time.

And now in Queen Street I’ve got a very full garden on a smaller section, and I just love it still … really love it, though sometimes I think, ‘Why am I doing this hard cutting back?’ But anyway, that’s still my passion really.

Now I’m going to talk about my grandparents. I don’t know much about my grandparents because on both sides of the family they died – or their fathers did – when my parents were young, which left them fatherless. When I was eight years old, my father’s mother, Grandma Fox as we knew her, died at our home in Eketahuna. My mother’s mother, Nana Davis … Sarah Davis … died when she was knocked over in a motor vehicle accident one night when she was sleep walking on Heretaunga Street outside the Catholic Church and that was on the 26th of April 1958. I had just turned seventeen years old. Nana Davis was always a very fragile woman and often ill, so was not a woman her grandchildren could cuddle up to. In fact she seemed rather aloof, and probably only tolerated us I now think. She loved clothes and especially hats; had a beautiful full length fur coat and a fox fur stole, and was always impeccably dressed. She was only six stone [approx thirty-eight kilos] when she died. My mother said she was often ill when they were children and Hugh, the oldest and only son, pampered her and gave her money for her extravagances once he was working. My mother and her elder sister, Enid, remembered that they had to do all the housework and help with the cooking as Nana Davis felt she was not well enough to do it herself. I got the distinct impression from both my mother and my Aunty Enid that Nana Davis played on this and used it as a tool for sympathy. I know that Nana Davis had Bright’s disease when I was just five years old, as I had a kidney problem and was convalescing at the time I was due to go to school. My mother was worried that it might be the same as Nana but obviously was not, as I don’t remember having any more problems after that.

I have no memory at all of Grandma Fox other than when she was staying with us in Eketahuna and sharing my bedroom. When I arrived home after school one day my mother told me she had died and not to go into my bedroom, which of course I did anyway – I sneaked in to find her completely covered with a white sheet. We have photos of her with Rob, Ian and I in Eketahuna but I do not really remember her as a living person. She looked a solid woman with white hair. Dad also has photos of her in his photo album, so that’s all I really remember, I suppose.

I did have a great aunt Ada; she was Nana Davis’s sister. There was another sister to the grandfather that [who] died when my mother was only eight. [So] there was Ella and Ada – they were both unmarried women because their fiances had died in the First World War. Aunty Ada I remember rather fondly, because every time she came to stay with us in Nelson she always brought us sweets and I still have a picture she gave me of a girl in a red raincoat with red hair and a little Scottie dog and she was talking about rain rain every day, don’t go away, [rain, rain, go away, come again another day] or something like that. So that’s all I remember about.

Uncle Ernie, he was Aunty Enid’s husband. When we stayed with him he always had a messy garden, but he was always out in the garden and loved his gardening. And he allowed us young children to go out when it was dark because he always had a bonfire, and we cooked potatoes in it and ate them blackened. And of course my parents didn’t do things like that, so we thought that was all rather special.

I do remember my father when we were in Eketahuna – the neighbours had chooks and my father used to kill them for them ‘cause that [she] was a widow with children. He used to wring their necks and they used to run around the lawn. Oh, I used to hate it – couldn’t bear it. And Aunty Enid used to kill chooks too, and she used to clean them. And we were sitting on the front step with her as she was cleaning and the smell I remember was absolutely disgusting. [Chuckle]

One day my father was cutting the hedge with a hand held scythe, a curved blade, and he must have been holding the hedge while he was cutting and cut very badly into his wrist which took a long time to heal and for the rest of his life he was always holding it and in the wintertime he wore fingerless woollen knitted gloves because it used to give him a lot of bother.

Today’s the 27th September, [and] these are some of the things that she omitted, so here we go, Kay.

Yes, I don’t think I talked about the different sports that I did and also the different clubs that I belonged to over the years.

The different clubs I belonged to or [have] done things for over the years is [are] school committees for primary school mainly, and including when the boys were playing rugby. Frank and I went to the rugby fields of both Craig and Garth every Saturday and then made the afternoon tea for the boys, so we did that for the three or four years that they were going to Havelock North High School. I was also Cub leader briefly, when they didn’t have anybody else and they [chuckle] were desperate to have somebody; they usually have men but they didn’t have any that time. Unfortunately I had to give it up because that was one of the times I got iritis and ended up in hospital.

I’ve also worked at the Hospice Shop – this is all after I retired mainly – Hospice Shop for eight years and now I’m in the Joll Road Charity Shop. I’ve done school reading for eight or more years after retirement at the Riverslea School. Three or four Rotarians go each Friday morning and we take two children each; been doing that for a very long time [and] Frank’s been doing it many more years than me.

I also belong to the International Women’s Day Committee. It was a fund raiser, and each year we had a garden party type function and the funds we raised for [from] it we gave to the Women’s Refuge. And that also funded the new teen school in one of the Napier-based schools, where a group of us had gone down to Porirua where they had teen girls who had had babies – it was an opportunity for them to go back to school and learn while their babies were looked after at the teen school. They also had breakfast there if they wished to.

I belonged to three book groups [and] I still belong to two. One of them has now been going for forty-five years, with most of the same members. We read the same book and then discuss it, and we have turns at someone’s home for the evening. We start at seven-thirty; we have a glass of wine, and then a cup of tea of chocolate biscuits afterwards.

I was also president of the Women’s Dinner Club. Now that was a group that [where] one of the ladies we knew shifted from Auckland to Havelock North and had been doing that there. So we got a committee together and we invited women speakers from all over New Zealand to come. One time we had Marilyn Waring who was a politician at that time. We had a lot of well known politicians, but we had other women who were well known in their field[s] as well, and it was really tremendous. I’ve also belonged to a brunch group and that again started because three or four of us were at the movies one night and we were talking about, “Why don’t we start up something where a group of us meet for brunch each month?” And that’s been now going for twenty-five years; and there has been a few drop offs with people dying or moving away, [but] we still have eleven members who come most months.

I belong to an investment group and we call it Ten For Three; that was when the sharemarket was at its height. And we had again, a group of women – we met from different places … oh, there was ten of us in the group; that’s why called it Ten and the Three was for three years. We wound that up when the sharemarket crashed but we did all right out of it … got money back, plus some.

I also belong to the Heritage Rose Society and different garden clubs over the years as well. In fact I was one of the members at Keirunga when Keirunga and the Nelson homestead was given to the Havelock Borough Council at that time. They didn’t have enough money to [for the] upkeep, so I used to go along with Melissa in the pushchair.

Then my sports things … as I say, swimming really took up all my time as a young person. Then when I had little children we used to go to the badminton hall at St Luke’s hall in Havelock North. And the other mothers looked after our little children [in the] supper hall while we went into the adjoining hall to play badminton. I played when I was expecting Craig and Garth.

And then when the children were … oh, still pre-school, a group of us used to play tennis at Fox Roger’s property in Greenwood Road in Havelock North, and the same applied – the other mothers looked after the children while we all had turns playing tennis. I belonged to the Havelock North Squash Club and I did reasonably well at that. And I think the boys might’ve been at school and Melissa was still pre-school, and they also did the same thing.

I then joined golf. I was reluctant to join golf because I thought it was an old person’s game, but when I started I got really keen and got down to a 9 handicap briefly, but most of the time I was probably about 12. And then I gave up for a few years; I played Saturday golf for a while when I started working, and then I gradually stopped. Then quite a few years later – very recently – I’ve started playing golf again.

Kay, did you ever go away with groups playing at other golf courses round New Zealand?

Oh yes we did. The idea when I played golf was Frank was going to play too, but he liked working better than he liked playing golf; but we did go with other couples, like Wendy and Ian Lawson, Diane and Ed Gilmour and Pat and Keith Carran. We went to quite a few different places for weekends – Rotorua, Taupo … it was really fantastic when we did that kind of thing, it was just lovely times.

I started writing my story in 2009 and have written quite a few chapters but never got it finished, and haven’t got round to doing it again. But this is a little story about the Dutch clock that I still have hanging in my lounge. It was a very old clock, and I just loved the look of it and thought it would go beautifully in our new farmhouse that we were building in 1978, I think it was. And I found this lovely Dutch clock at an antique auction – I think it was McKearneys in Hastings. I asked about it and I felt it was within my means but I was unable to go to the auction. So Frank offered to go for me even though he had no experience in bidding. He was very nervous and apparently the bidding went far too quickly for him to keep up and went over the amount that I had suggested, so he didn’t get it. But in anticipation, all day long I couldn’t wait to get home, and when he hadn’t got it I [it] was [a] great disappointment, and I kept thinking about it for days afterwards. However, one month later my birthday came up and I received a large cardboard box with no wrapping paper around it, and [it] looked full of crumpled newspaper inside. Delving through it I found The Dutch Clock! Frank had been back to the auction rooms, finally persuaded them to tell him who had bought it, and he bought it for me.

Another time there, similar time to that, he was going past Clive on his tractor and he saw a Georgian brass firescreen that he thought would look really nice in our lounge as well. So he came home and told me about it, and I went and bought it. And he tells me now that it cost a lot of money for that particular time. I still have that too, though I no longer have an open fire because of the new regulations in the Hastings District Council.

The other thing that happened … when we moved to the farm in 1976, I started planning to have a very large garden. So I planned out where I was going to have it and Frank dug it all; it was a whole acre in that particular part, and then another acre beyond and an acre in front of the house, that [where] we planted lots of little English trees they were then, but to grow. But Frank suggested because the farm was full of springs underneath, that we could dig a huge hole and we’d call it ‘The Lake’. The Lake was absolutely fantastic and round that I planted all kinds of water based plants. I planted lots and lots of roses as well. But one time for Frank’s fiftieth birthday we decided to have a special party for him based around The Lake, and people dressed up in their very good fifties clothes. We had a little rowboat so we put that on to the lake and everybody had turns rowing around it with their boater hats on; and we had a wind up gramophone that Frank had bought some years earlier, which he still has. We also had a large birdcage which was a walk-in one, with all the doves cooing …

Frank: An aviary.

Kay: … so it was absolutely wonderful … an aviary. So the garden took up lots and lots of time. I think I’ve already mentioned about busloads of people coming to view it at different times. But that was a major effort on our part and it made it really beautiful.