Duncan, Ross and Ngaire Interview

Today is 27th November 2023, and I’m privileged to be speaking to Ross and Ngaire Duncan at the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank in Hastings. Ngaire and Ross live in Links Road; at the moment they’re clearing their property after the flood. My name is Judy Shinnick for Knowledge Bank Hawke’s Bay. And Ross, you’re going to be starting off with your origins in Hastings, so would you like to tell us a little bit about your parents, your family, and what’s important that you can remember of those days?

Ross Duncan: Thanks, Judy. I’ll start off with my parents because they were here first. My mother, Doris Miriam Duncan, who was born …

Ngaire: 27th October 1910. She was a Hopson.

Your mother was Doris Hopson?

Ross: Hopson; and she lived on a dairy farm at a place called Lepperton in New Plymouth. Her parents had come out from overseas and they had got a block of land, and they were dairying. She met my father, who was William Henry Duncan …

Ngaire: He was born on 16th April 1909.

Ross: And died?

Ngaire: On 19th May 2004, so they both lived into their nineties.

Ross: We called him Poppa. And he was always working in the bank – he had one job his whole life, and it was with the National Bank. He was transferred to New Plymouth from Dunedin where the family lived after the father emigrated; and he was asked to come to New Zealand. He was the manager of the National Insurance Company.

Where did they emigrate from?

Ngaire: England.

Ross: From England, but I haven’t got the details of that – that’s another programme we’ve got to look at. But he moved – he had a brother and a sister, and the brother moved to Napier and the sister moved to New Plymouth, so they followed – got married, and then I think my brother, Ian George, was born; died four years ago.

So he’s your older brother?

Yeah, my older brother, yes. I have just a brother and a sister called Shona.

Ngaire: And you’re the youngest.

Ross: I’m the youngest. I was born on 11th April 1940, while the war was on. I don’t know the day it was, but it was in St Aubyn Street in the Nurses’ Home there [Sister Cooper’s] which is quite famous. So I have lived virtually all my life in Hastings, apart from two years that I did at YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association] College in Sydney. My parents lived in their house in Fitzroy Avenue; never owned it, they leased it, and they lived there all the time I was involved. I left home at eighteen, so they were there for ‘bout twenty years. And then he went to Waihi, and that’s another story.

What, your dad went to Waihi?

Yes. He went there as the accountant for the National Bank, so …

Ngaire: Transferred.

Ross: And it was interesting, ‘cause my new life started about then, because I was the first one in Hastings Boys’ High School where I was at that stage to have a motorbike; because they moved and I lived in Havelock [North] with friends, and I used to go on my motorbike in the holidays up to Waihi, on a Matchless 350 – great bike.

Ngaire: You spent your last year of high school there.

Ross: Yes. And I got my UE [University Entrance] there. And just before I was due to start at [Teachers] Training College at Ardmore, the YMCA, who I [was] always very involved with since a boy of twelve when they restarted the YMCA after the earthquake …

Ngaire: In Hastings.

Ross: … in a time when they weren’t operating, they started at the Methodist Church in … whatever Road, in Hastings. And then of course we built a stadium, and I was involved with all that, but we’ll get into that a little bit later.

Anything more about your childhood? You know, what you remember about your family? Dynamics in the family, and what your mother was doing as well?

I had a very very loving family; my father worked all the time in his job, and at weekends he’d go and work on orchards. My mother, as in those days, never worked apart from, for a while, she was picking grapes at Havelock. And I used to go out on the days that I was available and would sit there, or help her pick. That was the days when all the grapes were picked by hand.

Ngaire: She did seasonal work.

Ross: But I had a very happy childhood; I was very keen on sport. Went to Mahora School, started when I was five, and I can still remember some of the names of the teachers there. I was the youngest of three, so I followed … one thing I remember from Mahora School was my brother, who wasn’t quite as sporting, but he played a lot of bull rush, and he was called ‘Slimy the 1st’. And when I went there five years later I was called ‘Slimy the 2nd’, because we could always slip past …

You could always get through …

… these big boys.

Ngaire: At high school.

Ross: At high school. But no, I had a very happy childhood. I remember going to the Presbyterian Church which was in Frederick Street. The manse was just across the road from us in Fitzroy Avenue, on the corner of Tomoana Road. And we got to know the minister there, and we had a very happy childhood.

One thing I do remember is coming back from church one morning, and I don’t know quite why but for some reason I had some chalk on my finger. And I went up to the fire bell on the corner by Cornwall Park and pushed this thing, and the glass broke and the fire brigade came, but they never caught me. But it was one thing that I must say ‘thank you’ … [Chuckles]

The particular things I remember about my childhood was that my father wasn’t very sporting in terms of hunting, fishing; but I had a love for that, really through the Ross family – Les Ross and his wife, Nancy. And they had a son, Nigel, who was born the same day as me and that was how I got the name Ross Duncan. My mother and father didn’t have a Christian name for me, so they liked that. And they were very good to me; they took me hunting, taught me a lot about fishing. They had a bach at Te Awanga, and we spent hours and hours there. And it was through Nigel who knew Ngaire’s brothers through school and introduced me to them, that I got a love for boats and surfboards and so on, and eventually met my lovely wife. Now that’s a story we’ll tell along a little bit. So to finish off in terms of my childhood, I was a real keen sportsman, but I was attracted to the YMCA, to gymnastics. Not that I was top – I wasn’t New Zealand standard – but I did quite well in gymnastics, and eventually ended up working for them and teaching.

Through the YMCA?

Through the YMCA. And they were great days – we had tournaments; we’d go all round New Zealand playing volleyball, and gymnastics. And we had speeches and bible readings – that was a religious aspect of it that’s not quite the same these days. But I did enjoy the camping and I liked the outdoors, and spent many days up at Opoutama where the YMCA had leased land off [from] the Department of Conservation. And some great people, like Gordon Roach, Edward [Edwin] Bate was involved [and] Guy Baillie established a camp up there, or they put the money together; and a chap by the name of Ray Whiteman ran the YMCA, and we would have up to a hundred children. And I went through the ranks and ended up as a leader, and then I ended up working for them professionally. We used to go up in the train; and that’s a whole story, but that was fascinating because there was a huge viaduct – the Mohaka viaduct, which is still there; but the train’s not running now because at a place called Kopuawhara, which is just north of Opoutama, [the line] washed out in the floods way back. [1938] And so that line isn’t going now, so we just run from Wairoa down to Hawke’s Bay, mostly with logs.

And from there the YMCA, as I said before, asked me if I’d consider going to College in Sydney for two years at Homebush, and they paid for me to go.

What age were you then?

I was nineteen, ‘cause I had my twenty-first birthday over there, so I was nineteen, twenty and twenty-one. And that was great, you know, it really developed me [in] all sorts of ways, socially and … there was some religious instruction but mostly it was all about sport and learning. ‘Cause the YMCA invented volleyball and they invented basketball, and so we were very prominent in it. And when I came back to New Zealand to work for them I, a along with Russ Manning, re-established basketball in Hastings, so that’s something that I can pin my hat on.

So when you were in Australia, whereabouts were you living?

We were living in a big old spacious home, [a] bit like Stoneycroft here, and I think there was eight of us from New Zealand. Two of us, J B Munro and myself in the second year, and the others, Bill Paynter and three or four others, and then there was quite a few from Australia, about six of them, so there was about twenty of us. We would be lectured through the day, and we had all sorts of experiences … did a lot of camping, and there was social work and psychology and so on; Homebush YMCA College.

So when I came back from there I worked for them for a few years, I can’t remember exactly how many …

Ngaire: Four years.

Ross: … four years, as a Youth Worker here. I had planned to make it my career, but fortunately about that time I met my wife, and I decided that the salary in that and the future for Youth Workers wasn’t so great. So I left there but I carried on as a voluntary trainer, and I’m still involved with the YMCA and still on the board; and so I’ve been involved for quite a few years now.

Tell us how you met Ngaire, or do you want to go into that a little bit later?

No, no – I met Ngaire through my association with her brothers, Robbie, Allan and Noel. They were friends with Nigel, and they invited me around; and they were building canoes, and doing all sorts of exciting things. At that stage they had a tent, and then a caravan and later a bach out at Kairakau, and we spent many happy days out there. This young sister of theirs grew up and suddenly became a very attractive young lady, so we got married in 1966; and our life has been great since then. All the boys are still around.

You mean the friends you’ve been talking about?

Yes.

Ngaire: Not Nigel.

Ross: No, sadly Nigel died just last year, ‘23.

And we were talking more about your career in the YMCA …

Right. The motto of the YMCA is ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’; and that really appealed to me, you know, it’s no good having a healthy body and a sound mind if you haven’t got the right spirit. So I haven’t been what you’d call a religious person but I always had the Christian philosophy driving me in the things that I do, and so the YMCA just fitted so naturally. I felt a little bit of sadness when I left there because they’d spent quite a bit of money sending me to Australia, so that’s one of the reasons I’ve carried on. And as I said, I was still a board member some … I think it’s seventy years since I was first involved, and the organisation’s changed quite a bit. I went through some great years with them when they built the stadium; that was Guy Baillie [who] was the big instigator of that. He was a big car dealer in Hastings for the Vauxhall cars, and he got people around him … likes of Don Wilson, George Curtis and Ray Whiteman was the paid employee … and he had a big fundraising and they built the stadium.

It was quite sad in a way, but a few years later – I was actually the chairman at that stage – the building got too expensive to run; big stadium, two big basketball courts on it, and so we were getting into financial difficulty. So we went to the council and had talks, and we negotiated a sellout to them. Jim O’Connor was mayor at the time, and he said to me two years later, he said, ”Ross, why’d you talk us into that?” [He] said, “So much maintenance.” But however, that building’s still going; it’s called the Hastings Sports Stadium, and that’s meeting a great need, and they have a lot of sports there. And they’re still doing some of the programmes we used to do with fitness classes and so on.

Ngaire: But your interest in horticulture came with the land the YMCA had …

Ross: Yes. Guy Baillie was a great benefactor – he gave enough money to buy thirty acres out at Longlands next door to the Curtis family, with the idea of having the orchard to raise money. And all that money went into the youth work we did. So I would go out there in the mornings and work ‘til two o’clock in the afternoon, and then I’d go into town, have a shower and put my good clothes on and be a gym leader then. And that’s when we took all the classes.

So quite [a] diverse work life, wasn’t it?

Yes, it was. And of course through that, and later when the YMCA had courses for [the] unemployed, one of the things we did was a lot of horticultural work. And I learnt skills there, and so that’s what Ngaire and I decided to do; go and buy some land, which we did, in Pakowhai … nineteen acres … $19,000, I can still remember that.

So I’m just wondering at this point whether, Ngaire, you want to tell us a little bit about your background, and then we’ll talk about your life together.

Ngaire: Right. Well my grandparents came out to New Zealand as supported immigrants. On my father’s side, my grandfather, Robert Tinning, was born in 1883 in Essex and he came to New Zealand as a twenty-four-year-old. He settled in Napier, and then he sent for his fiancée, Emily George, who was back in England. She was born in Bethal Green [Bethnal Green] in London in 1883, and she arrived by assisted passage to Napier in September 1908. They were married at St Augustine’s Church in Napier in November 1908. So they lived in the Napier area for the rest of their lives; they lived in Georges Drive. And then my grandfather bought some land out on the Napier road, and they had a dairy farm out there. And the children were all born around that time – my father had siblings; there was [were] five of them.

And on my mother’s side, my grandmother, Mabel Jane Pentecost, was born in 1886 in Cornwall in England, and then when she was twelve months old the family moved to Brisbane, Australia. Her father was farming at Indooroopilly, and when she was sixteen they moved to New Zealand and they lived in East Clive for a while, and then Hastings. In 1908 Mabel married John Rendle who was my grandfather, and he was born in Durham, England, in 1882, and he died in Hastings, New Zealand in 1962. John came to New Zealand at age twenty-four – he was a bricklayer by trade – and two years later, in 1908, he married Mabel and they left for Brisbane soon after because the work here was quite scarce at that time. In 1910 they moved back to Hastings and lived in Garnett Street where my uncle, my mother’s brother Harry Rendle, was a builder. And he built two houses side by side in Garnett Street; one for the grandparents and one for he and his wife and family.

My grandparents had four children at that stage, my mother being one of them. She was Phyllis May Rendle; she was born on 10th February in 1917, and she died in Hastings. So she lived into her nineties as well. She went to school in Hastings for most of her life – or all of her life, actually; she left school young, as they did then, and she worked as a housekeeper for the Frogley family in Havelock North. And at the time of the 1931 earthquake she was working there looking after the children and housekeeping, and I can remember her telling me about when the earthquake came, how she stood under the door frame and watched the table scoot along in the kitchen. Yeah, so that was pretty frightening.

But of course after that there was [were] a lot of chimneys that came down that needed repair, and so at that time, my father, Robert … or Bob as he was known, Bob Tinning … was living on the dairy farm on the Napier road with his parents. And he had done his bricklaying apprenticeship with my grandfather, who was a registered bricklayer and plasterer; so although they were farming and my father had a liking for farming, they were called back to repair chimneys. And one of the jobs that they had to do was in the Frogley homestead – they had a couple of fireplaces that had fallen down in the earthquake – and so they were sent to repair them, and that’s where my father met my mother. Yes, so across the road from the dairy farm where she was working, but living in Hastings.

They got married in 1938; my dad had gone back farming – he was working up the East Coast. But when they got married they got a job at Otupae Station on the Taihape Road, which was a very challenging place for a young couple … well, ‘specially a young woman … to go and live. It was very isolated and very, very cold in the winter, and the taps would freeze so she couldn’t do washing or anything ‘til midday ‘til the pipes thawed out from the frost. And of course during that next year or so my eldest brother was born, and so the hardships were very real, with you know, washing nappies that would freeze on the line, clothes that would freeze on the line; and you couldn’t get them off while they were frozen – they’d break, which is something we don’t think about now, really. And then [of] course cooking on a coal range, and also cooking for farm hands, the evening meal. You know, they were long days, and … yeah, very physically hard work looking after the household.

D’you know how many farm hands she had to cater for?

I think there was three that came for an evening meal. I can remember my father saying one time that – ‘cause the Taupo Road wasn’t busy then, and it was a bit of a track really, but anyway, they had a truck deliver whatever they were delivering to the farm. So he said to the truck driver who had his wife with him on the run, “Oh, bring the wife inside – my wife hasn’t seen anybody for two weeks”, [chuckle] “and she doesn’t see women very often.” [Chuckles] Because coming to town was a very big excursion really, from out there in those days.

Yes, you would’nt’ve done it very often …

Not very often, so that you know, the isolation with a young baby was quite challenging, as all of those pioneering women went through.

And of course there was the long drop out the back, and it was a double long drop. So I remember my mother saying that the only privacy that she and Dad had at the end of the day was to go out on the track out the back to the double long drop, and there they could have a talk [chuckles] because with the farm hands around the table … no privacy. Yeah, so I remember that little story from her.

Ross: Just an aside here, we visited Otupae a few years ago and the manager said, “Oh, your name’s Tinning”; she said, “we’ve got a paddock in the farm called Tinning.” And it turns out that they honoured Ngaire’s dad so much that they named a big paddock beside the Rangitikei River in his honour, and it’s still there.

Ngaire: Yes, the Tinning paddock. [Chuckle] Yes, so they have a big map on their wool shed wall, and he was explaining to this group – we were with a group at that time – all about the different areas of the farm, ‘cause it’s a very big station. So when it came to that I said, “Oh, I was a Tinning and that was my father.” So he was fascinated of course, ‘cause that was …

Well that would’ve made it meaningful for the whole group?

It did, yes, it did. So then they had … I think it was only a couple of years there, and then he applied and got the job as manager of the Waipuna Station which is out at Elsthorpe, between Elsthorpe and Kairakau Beach. He managed that station – or they did – for fourteen years, and so Allan, Noel and I were born during that time.

So where did you come in the family?

So I came last … three older brothers.

And can you remember, you know, from your perspective what family life was like?

Oh yes. Of course being the youngest and the only girl, I had to keep up with the boys so, you know, I was pretty much a tomboy.

Pretty competitive?

Competitive, and a tomboy in my younger days. Yeah, so I can remember a few stories about me trying to keep up with the boys. Oh yes … one of them was when I was very little and I used to lisp. And apparently I had cornered a possum in the chook house. And I had a stick in my hand, and I was busy saying, “I’ll get the little thod”, [chuckles] “I’ll get the little thod”, and my mother came to rescue me. A cornered possum isn’t the greatest thing for a four-year-old to be contending with.

No.

Yeah, lots of stories like that, keeping up with farm life. Yes, so in the wool shed I can distinctly remember the smell of the wool in the wool shed, and hopping in the wool packs and all of that; and playing with all the kids. It was great, I loved that; I still … when I smell sheep’s wool I go right back to my childhood of frolicking around in the wool shed at shearing time; for me it was a lot of fun.

So at that stage was your mother having to do lots of cooking for the shearing gang?

No, not so much there, with four children to look after and my father. The Lattin family lived in the other house on the station and they had four boys, and so we were all good buddies and did lots of things on the farm … eeling, we had our pet eels, and used to draw on their dusty back[s] with straw … draw names up in the little creek at the back of the house. And we had chooks and all of that, so …

So it was a good outdoor life?

Yes. And we milked a cow for our house milk. Yeah, just a good country life.

And did you grow most of your vegetables at that stage?

Yes, my mother had a good vegetable garden, and flowers. And of course she was part of the Women’s Institute in Elsthorpe. My dad was on the Elsthorpe School Board, and Mum with the Women’s Institute; and that was a good community life there with the Elsthorpe community. And of course we all went to the Elsthorpe School.

During the time we were there my father bought a little block of land at Kairakau Beach and built a little … well, it was only about a two-roomed, three-roomed place … a small place, a bach. And after the fourteen years he managed the station he ended up going back to his trade as a bricklayer and plasterer, and we went and lived in that little bach at the beach for two years.

The five of you … six of you?

Well by that time my two older brothers were living and boarding in Hastings. The Lattin family had already gone to live in Hastings. So my eldest brother … I think he was in Waipawa; oh, he went to high school in Waipawa, but then he moved to Havelock North because he did his apprenticeship as a joiner/carpenter with the Toops. Then my second brother, Allan, was boarding with the Lattin family in Hastings and going to the Hastings Boys’ High School, so when we lived at Kairakau it was only my older brother, Noel, who’s two years older than me, living there, the four of us – Mum and Dad, and Noel and I.

But then Dad decided it was time to get us all back under the one roof, and bought a house in Hastings so we could all be back together as a family. And that was on the corner of Avenue Road and Miller Street, so it was a big corner section with a half-acre and a big house which was Doctor Comrie’s Rooms and his house. And that stayed in the family up until almost a year ago, because my eldest brother, Robbie and Mary decided – in latter times it was too big for my mum – to buy the house, and they lived there with their family up until just on a year ago. So then the house was sold, and it’s [of] course in the industrial area now. Yeah.

So Dad continued to work as a bricklayer and plasterer from Avenue Road. There was plenty of space for his truck and piles of sand and shingle and stuff that he worked with, and he’s continued to do a lot of work [cough] out at Elsthorpe; he built a lot of cattle stops and walls and pools and all sorts of things with his trade.

I went to Intermediate School – and my brother, Noel, did [as well] – then onto the Hastings Girls’ High School, so I used to bike there. I didn’t particularly like school; I’d wanted to leave, and I wanted to get my driver’s licence the day I turned fifteen, so I used to practise driving around in the back yard in the car.

There would’ve been room enough, wouldn’t there?

Yeah, yeah. And also, leaving school I went to Eileen Quigley’s Hairdressing School in Napier; so I went on the bus every day. Her hairdressing school was above McClurg’s Jewellery Shop and she had several students and it was a six month course. And I got a job with Jackie Olsen who owned the Christine Salon in Clive Street in Hastings, and I went to work for her. She was married to Ken Olsen, and Ken was also a friend of my eldest brother, Robbie, ‘cause he boarded in Havelock with the same family. The connections are interesting through life, aren’t they?

Jackie came to work one day – I’d been there about a year, I think, or maybe two years. Ken was a topdressing pilot, and he was off over to Australia working stints over there doing cotton dusting, as they did in those days – a lot of spraying cotton fields with aeroplanes. So he came back one time and said, “We should go and live there.” So Jackie said to me one morning when I went to work, “I’ve got a surprise for you.” And then Ken popped out from the door behind; they sat me down and said, “Well, we’re going to Australia to live – would you like to buy the salon?” I freaked out because I thought I was too young – I was capable, I knew that, and obviously she did too. So anyway, I ended up buying that with the support of my parents, and continued to operate that for ‘bout seven years. I was eighteen and I was thinking I was far too young; I was nearly eighteen – actually I was seventeen.

In the meantime of course, Ross had come round to our place in Avenue Road, because my brothers were keen on building canoes, surfboards, all that sort of thing, in the shed. It was quite a good shed, and they were very hands on with building, and interested in these things. And so Nigel Ross who was, as Ross said, born on the same day; [Ross] got his name because Nancy Ross and Doris Duncan became friends in the [maternity] home. Doris didn’t have a name for her boy, [and] she named him Ross, and that’s how that came about. So anyway, [cough] Nigel and he remained friends all their lives actually. So Nigel brought Ross around to the shed because he knew my brothers as well. And that was [the] first meeting up; but of course I was pretty young then. Ross went off to Australia to YMCA College, and when he came back after two years he noticed that I’d actually grown up. [Chuckles]

And as he told us before, well it seems like the rest was history.

That’s right, it is, yes. So that’s the way that happened. And then of course he ultimately left the YMCA; went scrub cutting up at the Lawrence’s farm up at Waiwhare Station.

Now the Lawrences … there’s another story there. The Lawrence family were farming; Keith came back from the war and he got a ballot farm – the ballot farm was up at Waiwhare, so he was fine; he was manager of Ponui Station up the road from where we were at Waipuna. Our families were great mates … friends all along, and still are.

Talking about the scrub cutting …

Oh yes, so that’s right. When Ross left we got engaged and he decided the YMCA was no salary to get married on; he went scrub cutting up at the Lawrence’s farm. They’d moved up there by that time, got on the ballot farm at the end of the Waiwhare Road. And then because that was only part of the year he decided it would be good to go into business, so applied to the council in Napier, who had just built the Olympic pool in Maadi Road in Onekawa. And the building was under construction, you know, the changing rooms and all of that. And I remember, ‘cause I had worked two late nights a week at the salon so he came to pick me up one night and said, “I’ve got something to show you.” We were going out together at this stage, and so we drove through to Napier. I didn’t know what we were going to see, but anyway, he drove off into Maadi Road and then turned off into where the Olympic pool was. That structure was up, and I saw this structure partially built, and it was quite long and at the middle of it was like a pyramid shape. And I thought, ‘Oh!’ He’s going to be a minister – this looks like a church. [Chuckles] Anyway it turned out to be the Olympic pool, and that was the main entrance part, and to the right of that was the cafeteria. So he’d applied to have the rights to run the cafeteria, which was quite foreign to all of us, but was one way of going into business. So he did that, and then I would go through on the bus in the evenings.

Ross: And weekends.

Ngaire: And weekends, and work there because there was [were] carnivals and competitions and things at that time with the pool, with all the swimming clubs and things. I think it’s quite different now.

And was this before you were married?

Yes. Yes, and so we actually had my eighteenth birthday and engagement party there in the cafeteria. I cut my eighteenth birthday cake and there was a hard lump in the middle of it, and it turned out to be the ring box. [Chuckle] so that was my engagement ring, in the cake … eighteen …

That’s pretty exciting, isn’t it?

I know. Nowadays eighteen’s like … you’re just growing up; but in those days it was the done thing. We were engaged for a year, and married in April 1966. We were living in Hastings – we were in a flat for a short time and then we went to Charles Street and shared a house. It was the Marriott’s house; they were school teachers, and they went off for a year to do their overseas thing, and they rented their house out. And at that time Ross had association with the YMCA [and] they got Fred and Susan Chu out from Taiwan. Fred was a physical instructor and he came to work at the YMCA; and he ran the YMCA for a few years before he went on to teach physed [physical education] at the Hastings Boys’ High School. So they needed somewhere to live, and so we shared the house. We were working long hours and weren’t there much, and they had a little two-year-old, Dwight, and Susan at home. So the little sun porch became our sort of kitchen, off the kitchen … yeah, it worked very well; we worked in very well for a year or so. And then we bought the bare land out at Pakowhai.

That’s on Links Road?

On Links Road.

Now you were telling me before you bought nineteen …

Acres, for $19,500.

Ross: That would be pounds then.

Ngaire: Oh, pounds, I mean, yes … yes.

So d’you want to tell us about your life on the land then, and the family?

Yes. So the first thing that comes to mind was we were thinking of, you know, buying land, and this little advertisement in the paper – just a little private advertisement …

Ross: For Sale.

Ngaire: And so we went out and had a look, and then we decided to take my dad and Bill Lawrence – long-time family friend, and farming at Elsthorpe – out to have a look, and the response from them basically was, “Why would you put a noose around your neck with that much money?” You know, [chuckle] … they thought it was a lot of money at that time.

Well it would’ve been …

It was. Everything’s relative. But we went ahead anyway; and we worked hard at that. And I was working long hours; Ross was actually at that stage working for Patrick Dingemans on the mushroom farm out at Longlands, and then we were working weekends on our land to develop it because it was bare land. Well there was actually two acres of boysenberries near the back of the block which was very run down.

So what was your vision for the land?

The vision was to create an orchard and primarily at that time, gate sales, because we were on Pakowhai Road as it was then …

Ross: Very busy road.

Ngaire: … which was the main route through to Taradale – well before, of course, the motorway went in. Yes, so we developed the land with a number of varieties of stone fruit and berry fruit and apples. Ultimately, when they all grew we started harvesting, with early stone fruit in December, and going right through ‘til May, harvesting right through that time.

With different things …

With different fruit … several varieties of nectarines, several varieties of peaches, plums, apricots, early apples, later apples … oh, and the berry fruit early in December.

You set that up from scratch?

Yes, we planted it, apart from the two acres of boysenberries that were already there, which were very run down, and the posts and wires needed redoing. At the very back end there were some Golden Queen peaches, but they were very young trees; but we kept them. So that was all that was on, the rest was bare land so we planted it all up. And yeah, the gate sales went really well. [Of] course in those days it was the heyday of gate sales, before weekend supermarket shopping and two parents working – so there was a lot of bottling done. There were people that would come over from New Plymouth, Palmerston [North] – all around – with their trailers at the weekends to buy Golden Queen peaches to take back and bottle and that sort of thing. Corn … we grew a lot of sweetcorn. We leased other land while that was developing, that had mature orchard on it so that we could have an income while the fruit trees were growing.

One of the first things we did was we thought, ‘Right, well we’ll have an early crop of potatoes to harvest before Christmas, ‘cause they make good money. That was in about the first year, I think; and so down the back of the property near the Tutaekuri-Waimate Stream was, we thought, considered to be relatively frost free. So we planted this block of potatoes, and they were up and growing beautifully … all the green tops. And Labour Weekend, which is October – would’ve been 1968 – that year [there] was this huge frost. And we went down the back to check on the potatoes, and here was this paddock of purple-topped potatoes, frosted and wilting down on the ground. So that was our first attempt at cropping; it was a bit of a failure. [Chuckle] But we carried on and made a success of that …

So were you both still working ..?

Yes, working off the land. I still had the salon; Ross was doing the work at the mushroom farm.

So you spent your weekends and … evenings?

Weekends, yep. Weekends and evenings, yes.

Ross: Like normal development, we had cashflow problems and we had to supplement our income. It’s very interesting; in that year, about 1970, just when we started, we bought a brand new Ferguson tractor, 135. Just yesterday, which is …

Ngaire: 16th November 2023.

Ross: … nine months after the flood [Cyclone Gabrielle] when the tractor was completely inundated, we got the tractor going again. And it’s the tractor we had in 1970 – we still own it, and we just fixed it up enough to carry on, so …

Ngaire: Good old Massey Ferguson. [Chuckle]

Ross: And that’s mostly down with our son, who’s got land down the road. We ended up with thirty acres that we own, and we lease in that area.

Ngaire: In 1992 we bought a block of bare land around in Korokipo Road, and planted that up. But we still leased other land, you know, while that was growing. And our orchard was mature at that stage so it could support that out labour. Then of course there was a downfall in the apple prices and things; very challenging time for orchardists at that time, and we made a decision to exit orcharding …

What year was that?

That was about … ooh, gosh … near 2000.

Ross: What we did … our business plan, was to develop orchards but lease other orchards. And we had probably another three orchards, neighbours and so on, and that was [to] help our cashflow. But the thing that really helped us was that the neighbour next door, the Pattullo Nursery people, had a machine – it was a small one – and he said, “This is for planting trees.” And a friend of ours, John Dorrington and I said, “We can do something with that – we’ll make a tree planting machine.” So we developed this machine, got a tractor for it; and we ended up for the next six years planting close to two million trees, all over – Waikato; we would go down south every year and plant cherries there with this machine; we’d take it down on the back of a ute. And that was really a big help from a cashflow point of view. John Dorrington, Bob Gregg from over the road and us [ourselves] would go down, and that was a good bit of wizardry. Interesting how things have changed; originally we could do … by hand we’d do ‘bout seven hundred trees a day; the machine got it up to about seven hundred an hour. And now it’s all electronic with GPS, so the machine drives along automatically. You can get off the tractor and it puts the tree in with marks that are made in the soil. We’re not involved with that now, but while we were doing that our son ran our orchard.

Yes. Can you tell us when you had your family?

Ngaire: Yeah. In 1971; so I sold the salon when I became pregnant with Troy …

That’s your eldest?

… in 1971.

Where were you living at the time?

We lived on the property. There was a cottage on the property that we …

Ross: A double garage really …

Ngaire: Well, we developed it into a house, and lived there for seven years.

You expanded on the cottage?

Yes, so Troy was born on Anzac Day in 1971, and Aaron eighteen months later on 25th October 1972; four years later, Fiona – she was on 9th June 1976. We always planned to build a house, so at that time we built the house and joined it to the cottage. And we moved in there at Christmas 1975 and utilised all of the original part of the house and the new part, which was basically a three-bedroomed house. But we have a room upstairs. We also, with having busy gate sales, decided that a swimming pool was quite a priority because I didn’t have time to take the children as they grew a bit to the Pakowhai School where they went, to the pool because I was busy in the gate sales shop. So we made a priority of building a pool, and that was in 1979. It’s absolutely been amazing over all these years, because it kept them occupied, and their friends, and I could duck down and check and all the rest of it. Our daughter learnt to swim in that pool – the boys were already swimming.

One of the things that we did as a family was jet boating. Now with growing boysenberries at that time, we used to tie the vines up and use baling twine to hold the vines onto the wires. And we went out one time because we were told there was lots of baling twine available to go out and get at …

Ross: Tony Connor’s, initially, then …

Ngaire: … and then John Russell at Tuna Nui Station. So we were out at Tuna Nui Station one weekend to get the baling twine out of the shed. And in that shed … big open shed … was a jet boat, and it hadn’t been used for quite a long time because it had bird droppings all over it, and bits of straw and stuff. And so [we] showed interest in this boat, and John Russell said that he hadn’t used it for a while and he wanted to sell it; so of course Ross pricked up his ears, and it ended up being our boat. [Chuckle] And it was a fibreglass Hamilton jet boat, so that started off our career in jet boating, which ended up by [with] Ross and some mates building jet boats in our shed [and] taking part in marathons.

The first jet boat marathon in New Zealand was back in 1971; I remember going to Wanganui while they jet boated up the Wanganui River, and I drove the trailer up to Pipiriki. So they were interesting days, those early days of jet boating. And we’ve been competitors in family rallies and the competitions in various places in the North Island, and the South Island actually. I won the North Island Women’s section one year, in ‘92 I think it was, and then the next year competed for the same title in the South Island and won that as well. So my name is twice on the big silver tray. We’ve done the family rally – they include slalom, backing, fast, first aid – all of those things, like rally skills. Yeah, so we’ve been placed in a few of those and had lots of family fun, like, the kids grew up with jet boating.

And we did [a] couple of camping trips down the South Island with other friends who’ve got boats; we did twenty-one rivers in twenty-one days one time, ‘cause you could do two or three rivers … ‘specially from the Haast, you could do the Landsborough, the Burke … you know, three rivers in one day. Yeah, very exciting holidays that we had. We would race to finish harvesting Granny Smiths in the May to get away in the May holidays.

So that was your …

Leisure.

Ross: Recreation.

… main holiday time.

Ngaire: That was the main holiday time, to get away in the May school holidays [of] course with children at that stage being at school; and they all went through Pakowhai School. Yes, I think there was [were] three or four families – we would all head off together, cross over on the ferry, go down the South Island, camp and boat.

Wonderful!

Yeah … basic.

Ross: One of the things that appealed in jet boating was the type of people we met. We were asked to go down and defend our titles, as Ngaire mentioned before, down the South Island. But I’ve been involved with the [Hawke’s Bay Agricultural & Pastoral] Show committee, and we couldn’t go – it was on Labour Weekend – and we couldn’t go until the Friday ‘cause of my commitments at the Show. So we asked a friend down south whom we new quite well, could we have a lend of his boat, and he said yes. Another friend, “Could we have a lend of your vehicle?” He said, “Yes.” So Ngaire and I flew down on the Saturday after the Show, picked up this vehicle, went and picked up the boat off [from] a friend. It turned out he’d bought a new one; it’d only done about twelve hours, and we took it down to the Waitaki River.

Ngaire: But on the way we picked up two young friends of ours that [who] were at Lincoln College, because we needed co-drivers for each of our competitions.

Ross: Navigators …

Ngaire: So Alec Burnside and Sean Husheer were at Lincoln College. We organised with them to pick them up, and went off to the Waitaki and [speaking together] did our competition.

Ross: Because of our association with jet boating, a friend who had planned to go over to the world championships in Canada invited us to go over and crew with him. His name was Don Johnson, so Dennis Marshall who was then the Minister of Conservation was a friend, and he came and I was the third person in the boat. And we did very well; we raced over about seven rivers in Canada, and we ended up getting second, beaten by one minute by a fellow New Zealander, Reg Benton. So that was a great experience.

So we toured around Canada in the motor home of the [owner of] the boat behind us. So it’s led to many adventures, and we only sold the boat … what, ‘bout two years ago when I was eighty; I no longer can get out and enjoy the rivers.

Ngaire: And along with that we’ve met some amazing people, and made some great friends.

Sounds like you’re passionate whatever you do. [Chuckle] Tell me more about when the children left home … I don’t know whether you’re retired or not yet … what’s happening now?

Right. Well as I said, the children went through Pakowhai School and then Taradale Intermediate and Taradale High School … oh, Fiona went to Sacred Heart [College] in Napier. While she was there good friends of ours, Paul and Maureen Bryant, were involved in Rotary, and Paul was quite passionate about the Rotary Matched Twin Exchange. We were quite happy for that, and he organised for Fiona a Rotary Matched Twin by the name of Kirsten Lowis from Home Hill, near Townsville in Australia to come and be with us as an exchange student for three months, and then Fiona went over there for three months. And that was when she was at high school. Well interestingly enough, just last Saturday we were out at our property at Links Road, and this car pulled up and out got a woman; [she] came walking towards me and she said, “Hello Ngaire, do you remember me?” And I looked at her and I said, “Kirsten Lowis!” Thirty-two years ago she was an exchange student in our house, and we hadn’t seen her since and we hadn’t really kept in touch, but she said, “I’ve always had you in my heart.” And she was so delighted to see us, as we were with her. And she said she’s not really one for keeping up on Facebook or anything like that, but intends to now. But she just reminisced about eating fresh Fuji apples off the tree … she’ll never forget the huge big juicy Fuji apples, and all the experiences she had with us when she was our exchange student.

And at that time we also had Mary Ann Johansen from Viborg in Denmark who was our exchange student through the YMCA … for one year she was with us. We had a houseful; we had the two boys at home, we had the two exchange students, and Fiona … it was fun.

So when the children left home you continued orcharding?

Yes. During that time too, Troy went to Australia as part of a YMCA exchange; just for a short time, when he was actually quite young. Troy left to go down to Massey University to do a horticultural course, and Aaron did a fitter and turner apprenticeship in Napier. Fiona went to Denmark to do an exchange with the YMCA Service Club.

Aaron – while he was doing his apprenticeship, he and Steve … doing the same course … decided they wanted to save up and go overseas. And so eventually they did that when they were twenty – went over to England and did their big OE. And a year or so later Troy went over there as well, so they’ve done a few years overseas with different jobs. Aaron ended up going to Scotland [and was a] fitter and turner repairing platforms onshore and then going offshore to fit them onto the oil platforms. Then he ended up doing robotically operated vehicles from the ship to the seabed. So he was away for a long time, working all over the world with this ROV work. They came back for a visit at Christmas time, and [then] go off again, and had all sorts of wonderful experiences overseas, and eventually of course, came back to settle in Hawke’s Bay.

Troy, when he came back and he was managing our orchard, there was …

So you’d finished … like if he was managing it, what was your ..?

Ah, well we were still working, you know, because we had the two blocks; we had the twenty acres round at Korokipo, and we had the Home block and others, so it was quite a big … you know, so we were still very involved.

And what about now?

The gate sales we stopped some years ago. We did a lot of marketing of fruit, you know, through the market system and of course export apples. We gradually transitioned the orchard from all the stone fruit into apples, and so gradually over the years it was more export apples that we were dealing with; and exited the gate sales part of it.

Ross: The reason for that was that at that time the Apple and Pear Board were operating quite well, and they did our marketing so all we had to do was grow and grow good fruit, and then that would be marketed.

The trouble with ENZA, [Export New Zealand Apples] or the Apple and Pear Board, was that everyone got the average [price], and those of us that like to feel we’re above average didn’t get recompensed for the extra work we put in. And so eventually the Apple and Pear Board was broken up; now you export either through an exporter or yourself, privately which you’re able to do now legally whereas you couldn’t once upon a time.

The other thing of course that we haven’t touched on … probably not to go into too much detail … but we always were interested in other people. And we did a lot of overseas travel, going to different conferences; or you know, a few years ago we went to Turkey, and Crete, and followed up where a relation of Ngaire’s had housed Ngaire’s uncle during the war. He escaped and got into Crete, and was found by this family wandering around, and of course the Germans were all over the place; and they managed to hide him. We followed that family up, and we went to where they lived; we went into the caves where they’d been housed, and the people over there still knew about Uncle Tom. So that’s an interesting thing …

Ngaire: So with the orcharding, there was [were] a few tough years with the Apple and Pear Board paying lower prices and things, and so we decided … well, the decision was almost made for us; we had a few options, but we decided at that point to sell Korokipo block, twenty acres … oh, we leased it, that’s right. We leased it for a few years, and that person really was very keen to buy it, so we sold that. And then we were able to subdivide off our Home block to an existing neighbour at the back that [who] goes in from Franklin Road, which allowed us to exit orcharding and still stay living on the property with a small area of the back sheds, the house and garden, and the front shed – our packing shed and shop that was – and a small block of citrus at the front. And the shed – we leased that to various people that rented it. Nowadays we rent it out to our second son, Aaron, who runs his business from there; it’s Free Energy Solar Solutions, and so he has a very busy operation from there. So we took kind of retirement from there …

What year was that that you took retirement?

Well …

Or is it just sort of a slow, evolving thing?

We sold out about the year 2000 … yeah, just in the early 2000s, I can’t remember the exact year. So for quite a while; but I still sell some of the citrus from the citrus block. We did the Farmers’ Market – we were one of the first that started in the Hastings Farmers’ Market, and did that for a number of years. I had a jam kitchen where I made jam and chutneys and so the market included all of that and the things that we grew.

So you were sort of exiting in the early 2000s?

Yes. Yep, yep. Fifteen years …

[Speaking together] And was that gradually leading into retirement?

Yes.

Ross: Our retirement … we’ve always been doing things, and it may not’ve been money earning things …

Ngaire: Yeah, so it’s given us the opportunity to do some travel overseas, and our daughter, Fiona, lives in Australia, northern New South Wales, and she’s settled there so we’ve visited her a few times and they come over here for a visit as well. So in our latter retirement, just enjoying our property and maintaining that, and the lifestyle that that leads. [Provides]

But of course this year, 14th February 2023 is the memorable morning that we got inundated with water from over the back; our back boundary was nearer the Ngaruroro River, so when the cyclone hit and the stopbanks breached we got water all through our property and our house. In the house it was over knee deep water, which of course has … yeah, it’s been a huge process of cleaning up, for one thing, and having the house reinstated. Right now the builders and painters are there, and we are looking forward to moving back into our house round the 11th December, because we’ve had to have a rental house in Napier in the meantime. So it’s been, what, ten months, yeah; so our latter retirement is not probably what we thought would happen, but we have to meet these challenges when they arrive.

That’s a very big challenge, though …

Yes. So … and you know, sorting out … of course we lost a lot of things; not as much as some people, but we were all in it together actually, ‘cause Troy and Tracy and family live around in Allen Road, and that was worse off all around that area of Pakowhai because of the water from the Ngaruroro River …

Ross: And the Tutaekuri …

Ngaire: … that came to meet them; and then they got the water from the Tutaekuri [River] over the back of them, and it became a basin. And they had water right up to almost their ceiling, so they were worse off than us.

And Aaron, who rents the shed at the front for his business, all his pallets of things and all the things he had in the shed for his business were inundated. So we’ve had this massive family involvement in the cyclone and the clean up operation. We’ve had a lot of wonderful volunteers come and help dig out the silt and clean up, and … yeah, it’s just been such a process.

So where did you go initially?

Well in our years and years of jet boating … it was interesting, because we actually exited our house in a jet boat. [Chuckles] That’s our swansong for jet boating days …

And was that early morning, or ..?

No, late. Late – because we’ve got an upstairs room we were fortunate, in that it’s a very sound house. It’s concrete floor, concrete block house. And so our neighbours from next door came over early on when the water was about knee deep to come upstairs with us. And it ended up being chest deep outside; inside it was over my knees deep. During the day Troy came round in his little blow-up kayak that he has, and he canoed in two or three times during the day, and I’d talk from the balcony, saying, “No, we’re fine. We’ve got everything we need here.” ‘Cause we’ve got a gas hob in the kitchen, so I could make a thermos of hot water, and [I] took food and things upstairs. And halfway through the day I cooked a pot of rice and a stir fry and took that up the stairs, so we were comfortable up there, and warm, ‘cause I’ve got a lot of, you know, spare duvets and things in the loft upstairs. So when our neighbours came over … well actually, Brad wouldn’t come over earlier because he wanted to protect his equipment in his shed; he’s got a lot of equipment there. And so when Naomi went back over to get him they came back in chest deep water – he was freezing because he’d been in the water a long time. Managed to get them dry clothes and warmed up upstairs.

But then later in the day – Troy came in two or three times in the canoe to check on us – and then at six o’clock at night he came in with a Surf Lifesaving inflatable boat with a guy at the helm with the outboard motor. And he called out up the stairs – I was out on the balcony – and he said, “This is not an option – you’re all evacuating now.” He said, “Get your gear.” So we went down and the boat took us down to our driveway; and of course they built the road up higher when they redid Links Road, so the water in our property was way deeper than [it was] over the road. So we had to get out of that inflatable there, walk across the road and get into the jet boat on the other side of the road, which took us down to the roundabout – the top of the roundabout was just visible – [turned] left up the Expressway towards Taradale, got out of the boat right up near the bridge where the incline to the bridge goes, and then [were] taken to my sister-in-law …

Ross: By the police.

Ngaire: … Martha Duncan, by police car, and into Taradale and round to Otatara Road. We were there for about eight days ‘til a good friend of mine who’s a property manager managed to get us a rental house in Napier, which is where we are now. And the day after the flood my brother and nieces and folks came out, and they just gathered up clothes and everything that was above the water line basically, and just filled up the trailer and the ute and that, and took it home. My poor sister-in-law … well I know she dished out several bags for different friends of hers, and they all washed clothes and curtains and things for days and days and days. And also photographs … I managed to save quite a lot; when I realised the water was actually going to come inside I managed to grab some photo albums that were low down and pop them up on the landing. Anything that I could grab and put on the landing I would then take upstairs, and come down and do more and more. But there was a box in the office on the floor which I hadn’t got round to doing anything with … packets of photos, you know, that I’d had printed … well they washed and dried them all. Amazing! She sent me a photo – they had sheets out on the carport, and all these photographs all spread out there, and they had them all on the clothes line with a peg – masses of photos, ‘cause I’ve always been a photo taker. [Chuckle] Masses of photographs that they saved …

Oh, that’s great.

… everything. Yeah. But there was also bins and bins of stuff soaked in silt and water that went out. We had bins at the side of the house first, and then along the road edge … massive, massive silt everywhere. Yes, so it’s been quite a year so far.

Yeah, and you’re moving in next month?

Yes, we’re moving in mid-December.

And it looks as if it will be ready for you?

Yes, it will be.

Ross: The builder said it will be …

Ngaire: He’s been very good, and …

Ross: … got to work to that.

Ngaire: … they reinstated the front shed for Aaron early on, ‘cause that, you know, kept the business rolling; and our back sheds. And then there was a big gap in time where nothing happened to the house; but they’ve got on to the house and yeah, as I say, that’s nearly finished.

And I’ll bet you’re looking forward to that?

Yes. Yes, and then Fiona and her little six year old, Tully, are coming over on Christmas Day from Australia.

So d’you think that’s a good place to leave it, on a good note?

Both: Yes, it is.

Anything else you want to just finish with?

Ngaire: Well our eldest son, Troy, and Tracy … early on Troy did his due diligence and decided that a transportable house would be thing to do, because it’s going to be a long haul for their build because they were so badly inundated. So they’re living in their small transportable house on their property, and they’re happy to be back there.

And they’ll build up from there?

Yes. And so all of us … we’re all in it together, [chuckle] basically.

At least, you know, you’ve got that shared understanding about the experience.

Aaron’s had the shed but he lives in Clive, so fortunately his house wasn’t affected. But a year ago in Australia where our daughter lives, the northern rivers flood happened, and that was on 14th February 2022. Yes, so the same thing there, and they were out saving people and animals, rescuing them off rooves and places one year before. So yeah, [speaking together] that’s some of our story.

Ross: The big thing to say is that we’ve been privileged to live in Hawke’s Bay all this time, it’s been marvellous for us. We’ve made the most of it; we’ve had some ups and some downs, but we’re enjoying our retirement and this is just a little hiccup for this year. There’s a lot of people, you know … got a long, long way to go, a lot further than we have. So thank you, Hawke’s Bay, for all that you’ve given us over the years. The floods that you brought us a year ago nearly, are the floods that have created Hawke’s Bay and the fertility. So the wealth and the good life we’ve had with our orchards and cropping and all through the [speaking together] … floods bringing the good dirt down onto the Heretaunga Plains.

Ngaire: One of the things we didn’t touch on was Ross’ involvement with the A&P Show. So that’s going back many, many years when he was asked to be the orcharding representative on the committee of [the] A&P Society. And so every year [there] has been projects involved in it, and quite a commitment to the A&P Society until this year, really; oh, he’s a life member.

So you’ve had a very, very full and fulfilling life, with lots going on.

Yes.

Well thank you both very much; that gives us a lot of history.

Yes … thank you.