Hanna, Valda Fay (Fay) Interview

Today is the 18^th of the third 2016. Today I’m interviewing Fay Hanna. Fay is a retired horticulturalist and now Fay is going to tell us something about her family and … from start to today. Fay would you like to tell us something about your family.

Yes, I would. I think I’ve got quite an accomplished family when I think back of what my ancestors went through. My grandfather was a Dane and he came here as a very young man and as I understand was not very much English. He worked as a labourer around the area until he got established. He met my grandmother who lived in Otane and they established their family in Otane – called Kaikora North then. He opened a bakery. He had four sons and a daughter and they all lived to work in around this Hawke’s Bay area.

My father was hard. He was the third son. He married my mother who was Emma Mear.  And her parents and her mother – she was one of a second marriage.  But my mother had come here from England in the … sometime in the 18th [19th] century and brought all her family with her, and they also lived around the Hawke’s Bay southern area. My grandfather losing his life very early in a mill accident because they were in timber.

My father met my mother around the 1928s I would think, married and bought a property in Ngamoko. It was the time of the Depression, I don’t know quite how they did it but things were very tight. I was born in 1931, my brother a year later and my sister two years after that. My very, very first recollection was being put to sleep in the hay, in the hay barn just at the milking shed. As I said, times were very tough it was in the Depression. Father was a sheep farmer in reality but I think to make ends meet they had a few cows because then – it brought in a monthly deposit to the bank as it were, to keep them going. Father went out and shore sheep and from memory, and I don’t know how correct this is, but he used to talk about shearing sheep with a friend and they did sheds and worked very hard and he used to talk about getting 30 bob a hundred – which to those that don’t know that lingo was £1 and 10 shillings, which wasn’t very much.  But he earned that and mother milked the cows to bring in some money during the month.

We had a jolly good childhood when I look back and very good teen years. We went to the Norsewood School which was four miles away. The farm was at Ngamoko which is four miles straight into the Ruahine Range.  John [?] drove the school bus and he collected us and took us to school and we went out through Garfield and picked up various ones and he brought us home and dropped us off at night. And incidentally he took us also to High School many years later, but that’s another story. Mr Stretton was the Headmaster at the time. He was just about to retire and there were Miss McGuire and Miss Wilson and there was another teacher. Usually a junior teacher that came but that varied from time to time. There were four classrooms then and it is one of the remaining schools in that area. Ormondville School, the Norsewood/Matamau School, who else, Makotuku, all those ones have closed down and they all congregate in Norsewood these days I’m told. My sister and I were there last year and we went in to see the School … given a great welcome, and it’s amazing what 50 years later does to a school.

During that time Fay, what was it like living out in the country? It must have been pretty quiet because there was no television, no … fun you made yourselves.

That’s quite right Frank. We made our own fun. Coming up from Norsewood you went down quite a steep hill – well, I thought it was very steep in those days. When I look at it now it’s a bit of a bump, but when you come down the hill … it was called, what we used to call … we related to as the Valley and it was made up of small dairy farms, mostly dairy farms, about you know, anything, 60 acres 70 acres – something like that. Howard had quite a big holding for that sort of thing, there were 200 acres at the house and he later bought 50 acres up this hill.

But in those days there were small holdings and of course there were young families. The Thompson family came very soon after my parents. They had three kids, all of our ages, and of course we played a lot together, we made our own fun.   We went eeling in the creeks we dammed, in the summer we used to dam up the creek to make a swimming pool where we all learnt to swim, and then the winter would come and it would wash it away and we’d have to do the whole thing again next year. The weather was a lot different to what it is now. You will see photos of me and my siblings making a snowman. We used to get snowed in quite regularly and of course there weren’t the tractors and things to clear the snow to get up the hill, so you just hankered down and you didn’t even have to go to school, which was pretty good. We did get a lot of snow but we had lots of fun. We had sport at school of course. We had great competition between Ormondville and our school and Takapau with rugby and basketball as it was called then.

Norsewood was quite a community. It had three garages and the Post Office. We had umpteen churches which was quite amazing really. Some of them are still there and some of them aren’t. The Salvation Army used to come up every Sunday and collect us all in a baby Austin car and we had Sunday School at the various parents’ houses, and that was fun. We all used to squash in this little car as you can imagine – and they were resident in Norsewood. Mr Coombe was the garage that we used to go to and after the War the Reisma brothers built one. There was two hotels, there was a picture theatre and during the War we used to go to the matinee and then during the winter, as we got older, we had lots of fun. Winter entertainment was dancing, balls. All the areas in the … everybody’s … every little community – like there was a community in Ormondville. There was a community at Makotuku and all – and one in Takapau – and all these little towns which are just about obsolete now, but they were quite a thriving business area for the community surrounding them. You must remember that we didn’t hare off to Hastings or Palmerston North or something like they would these days if they wanted to buy anything substantial. Dannevirke was our nearest town, which was quite big. That was where the doctor was and the dentist was and if you wanted something like a car, you were looking at cars, that … this was  when I was young, that was a bit before the time of everybody having a car. Fortunately Howard, my father, always had a car. The weekends were the social time for a family to go and have Sunday dinner with Uncle Joe and Auntie Mary or they would come to us, or we would go to some other friends, the Ellisons or something, some other person, and that was our family entertainment in the weekend. That was in the winter and you went and had Sunday dinner in the middle of the day and then you went home of course to a big open fire. There was no central heating or television or anything like that. We read a lot. We all had to learn to play the piano. We had singsongs round the pianos. My mother’s family were very musical and when we went to Dannevirke to Auntie Mary’s and Auntie Hattie’s you always ended up by … everybody was round the piano and you used to have to play your latest thing that’s – you’d fumble through – that you’d learnt that week on the piano.

So Robin’s Return, The Blackhawk Waltz and all of those…

Yes, all of those things and we learnt to sing. And we learnt to sing lots of old songs that you only hear now in films perhaps, war time things like ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in the Old Kit Bag’, all those sort of things and we all sang. We were all expected to sing. My father had a lovely voice, my mother had a lovely voice. It was just a natural thing to all stand round the piano and yell your lungs out, whether you were in tune or not, but we were usually on tune. Yeah … it was just part of weekends in the winter.

In the summer it was different because that was the busier time on the farm with shearing, the haymaking, all those things. I don’t know how it originated but very early on in my life I can remember that on Sundays mother packed the cake tins and the pie into the boot of the car and we all scrambled in and we went down to the Manawatu River to have a picnic. Now, nobody said “are you going to the picnic?”. Everybody just arrived. Everybody knew if they were free and they didn’t have visitors, even if they did, everyone went down and you will see somewhere in the file a photo of these picnics. Mum, Dad and the kids all went and that was lovely. Paddle really – I can’t ever remember there being a very deep part to swim but we got in it and the water ran round us and it was all fun.

‘Cos this was really the upper Manawatu wasn’t it?

Oh yes, yes it was the source of the Manawatu. And that was all very nice.   As we got a bit older, as I say all these little communities had balls, the Women’s Institute, the RSA, the National Party. Keith Holyoake and Mrs Holyoake always came to the National Party Balls and mother and father got very friendly with them and I actually went and worked … my sister and I actually went later on in life when we had finished schooling, we went down to Nelson and worked for the Holyoakes in their tobacco farm, much like kids today sort of come out here from other countries to do the seasonal work. But we had lovely entertainment with the balls.   We made all our ball gowns. We had at least four or five long gowns with the white gloves and the white cape and you went … you might go with a partner but usually when you were quite young you went with your parents. Dad had his dinner suit and always wore a black tie as the men did. Mother had her long dress and we all danced to Billy Te Tau’s orchestra And Billy Te Tau was the pianist and Ellison brothers had their violins and Mr Brown was on the drums. It was grand fun. We learnt all the old dances when we were very young. We learnt those at school actually for the fancy dress ball that we had each year – and we all learnt to waltz and to one step and do the Valetta and the Maxina and the Gay Gordons – all those things that you probably – listening to this  – you kids don’t know anything about but you missed a lot of fun.

You’re quite right. Today they don’t even dance together. They stand apart. We actually held one another.

And wriggle. When I look back I would not have changed what I had.   As you got older we had to go to High School. In that era where my family was concerned, there was no suggestion that you should go to university and further your education. It was just something that wasn’t done. Perhaps with very wealthy families in townships where people were in professions, that was probably a different thing, but we in the country – went to High School, did our three years, got our School Certificates, and then we went and worked, either in Dannevirke or the boys took apprenticeships. My brother did a carpentering apprenticeship, my sister did hairdressing and I got a job in the Post Office. For winter we did our balls and things but also in Norsewood there was a bowling club and a tennis club. My parents both bowled and I played tennis and then some bright spark thought it would be a good idea if the girls formed a marching team.  Now this was right out of the blue and we were a pretty motley crowd, when you think of the marching teams today who were all girls of 4 of 5 and they’re all slim, and they’re all out of the one mould. Well, we weren’t.  We had short ones, and fat ones and tall ones and skinny ones, but we had a lot of fun and somewhere along here there’s a photograph of the marching team. Laurie Reisma and – used to coach us and he had a garage and when it was pouring with rain we had to go and march in the garage. He used to collect us up and take us in. That was fun.

The other thing in winter we did, we were all very close to the Dannevirke Pipe Band. All my cousins that lived in Dannevirke, this was before the war, Auntie Mary had five sons. Les died very early in his teens but the others all belonged to the pipe band and they were all drummers. After the war George Peters who was the pipe major got everybody together and we used to have Inglesides. We used to have them at the Matamau Hall and at the Oddfellows Hall in Dannevirke, and we used to have one from memory, every fortnight. I can’t remember if it was a week or a fortnight. But there was one law – you could not jive or one step or foxtrot, you had to do the traditional dance, and when we all started some of us didn’t know various things. I knew them because we used to dance around the kitchen round table on the farm because my mother was a great dancer. George would lead with one of the girls that knew the steps and we all had to do the traditional dance and it was great fun, it really was.

So what age would you have been then at that stage?

Probably about 17.

So you would have just started working?

Yes, just … yes. The war broke out when I was small of course. Well I was 8 years old. I thought I was 7 but I was 8, so that you know … the time the guys got home from the war – I was still at primary school if I remember when the war broke out. I’d be about 17 when I left High School. I took commercial at High School. There weren’t very many options in those days, you either took a commercial class or you did English class where you learnt French. Well, I took the commercial class and did figures. And that was good, we seemed to get through. We had our science teacher, our music teachers, we all learnt to play the piano – not at school, but we sort of came out – we did history and geography a lot of course and English, spelling and all those sorts of things. But none of my friends went on to University – it was just something that didn’t come up. I was fortunate enough to get a job in the Norsewood Post Office. They were very few job openings, but there was the Norsewood Post Office and the Telephone Exchange which had to be manned, and there were three six hour shifts from 6am to midnight and I started on one of the shifts, and then I was promoted to do the work at the counter.

Now in those days the Post Office was a lot different to what it is today. We did everything at the Post Office. We collected income tax, we paid our pensions, we registered cars, you name it, we did it and fortunately for me a John Oliver took over from Mr Wells, the elderly Postmaster who retired to Westshore, and John Oliver was younger, much younger – I should imagine he was about 40. He was a very good teacher and he took this raw recruit off the exchange and he taught me all the things that I should know. How to register cars, how to do births, deaths and marriages, how to do the War Pensions, anything that came into the Post Office – and everything did then – and I was very, very well trained, which later on in a few years, when my parents built a house in Hastings and I moved down here with them when I was 21, I was transferred to the Havelock North Post Office. But that’s another story.

Going back to the farm, it was fun. In those days we had – the school year was in three terms, so that you had plenty of time at the farm. We didn’t go away from the farm for holidays a lot. We used to come down to Westshore as we got older and mother and father would rent a cottage at Westshore, which was in those days so stony you could hardly walk on it in bare feet. Dad used to wear tennis shoes when he went.  But that was a lovely place and there was a dear little dairy there that used to sell lovely lots of chocolates, and when father was in a really grand and expansive mood he used to send me along to the shop with some money – and I can’t remember how much it was – to me it was an awful lot but it probably wasn’t – and I used to buy an assortment of chocolates, and then we used to go and eat them at Westshore with our sandy uniforms and sandier hands probably, but that was about the only holidays that we ever used off the farm.

We used to help with the docking and the shearing and all those sort of things that went on. When there was dipping we couldn’t do much then but it was all fun. We used to help dad bring the flock in when there was something had to be done on the farm and we all did it and you were just expected to do it – it wasn’t a chore as it were, it was just an expectation, and in those days Dad used to sort – after the sheep had lambed – he’d sort the ewes with twins away to put in a paddock on their own which wasn’t so heavily stocked as opposed to the ewe that just had the one lamb. And we all did it. Mother helped, that was all fun. And then dad built a woolshed. Up before then we used to have to take the sheep up the road to Mr Dazzler at the end of the road and shear the sheep there, and mother would cook the midday meal in the kitchen at Mrs Dazzler’s because the men liked a big meal in the middle of the day. But then Howard built a woolshed. Well that was fun because we used to hold woolshed dances and the two pens … the holding, the little pens where the shearer pulled the sheep out, they were given a good scrub and things because mother used to serve the supper – we had to have somewhere to put the supper, and again Billy Te Tau used to come and play for the dance music. They were great times too. To me it was a big issue, but probably there weren’t a lot of people there, just the immediate neighbours. There was probably only about 30 people there but it was real fun and everybody came, Mum, Dad and the kids, it was a family outing and that was fun.

And it was on the farm at home.

It was on the farm at home. There was – of course we didn’t have to worry about – there was no booze, no liquid refreshments like that at all, and going from that it makes me think of – for my 18^th birthday my father gave me a baby Fiat. You’ll see a photo of it somewhere in the archives, and it was like the balls, sometimes I’d pick up a girlfriend and we’d go in the car but you never went – once you went into the ballroom, into the hallway, you never ever went out again. We didn’t smoke, we didn’t drink, there were no issues like that at all, you went to dance and we danced, and we’d have a big supper and it was great. But there was no issues about getting home or if you were with a guy and you actually had a partner that took you, you didn’t – he never drank either. There was just no – nothing like that.

And of course those were the days of the big enamel teapots.

Yes.

With the mothers on the bench behind, pouring the tea.

Yes, yes, and talking about the mothers – in the hall the mothers always sat along one side, and God help you really if you – you couldn’t be naughty, you couldn’t do anything because there were all these pairs of eyes on you, and of course everybody knew you, everybody knew your history, so you couldn’t even be slightly naughty. I don’t know what you would have done, but you certainly didn’t leave the hall with a boy.

And of course, the men were all at one end of the hall grouped up as well.

They were all there at the door talking, and the mothers…

Pretending they weren’t looking at the girls.

And the nice thing about it when I think back, Howard always used to come and have a dance with me or my sister. Dad always used to dance with me but if I – I would expect the guy that took me, if I went with a chap, to go and ask my mother to dance, and he would. And it was all – it was very much a family affair.

It was etiquette of the time.   Now Billy Te Tau was his name?

Te Tau.

How on earth did he get the name Billy Te Tau? Was he a Maori?

He was a Maori and he farmed, he farmed just out of Norsewood. He was a lovely man. I mean he was just part of the community. I mean I had a 21^st birthday before I came down here which was the usual thing in a small community, and everybody was asked and Billy Te Tau came and played the music for my 21^st birthday.

So he was very much part of the community.

He was part – I’ll tell you about a little aside here – last year in 2015 my sister said to me in May – she had a birthday on the 28^th of May and we usually take each other out for lunch on our birthdays, and she lives in Waipukurau just right now, and then. I said “what do you want to do for your birthday? I’ll come and take you out to lunch”. She said “well actually, I would like to go to lunch to Norsewood” and she said “I hear there’s a very nice little restaurant – not a restaurant really just a little cafe type thing and we could have lunch there and look round Norsewood.”  Which is a much smaller Norsewood than in our day, but still it’s there. Mr Coombes’ garage has been made into a museum, there is various other places of historic note that has been preserved. So, I took her up to Norsewood and we had lunch and then walked round the village. I call it a village because I’m used to Havelock but we walked around the small community and called in at all the shops and things – didn’t know anybody but the school was having their lunchtime, and I said to my sister “I want to go and have a look at the school.”  She said “you can’t go in there” and I said “watch me”. So I opened the big gate, which wasn’t there in my day, and everything had grown. There is now six classrooms I think, instead of the four and as I said some time before, all the surrounding areas have closed their school and they all bussed to Norsewood. So we walked in and introduced ourselves and we were given a great welcome, and it was something that I was delighted that we had done. And when we’d finished there I said to her “why don’t we go up to Ngamoko and have a drive around the old stamping ground?” So off we went and we decided that we’d go and see this neighbour’s son who had bought my father’s farm eventually, and the neighbour’s small holding, and he had virtually taken three or four properties and made them into one farm. So we said “well, we’ll try and find it”.  So we went up to Ngamoko and we went down where I thought he still lived and pulled up at their family home that they’d always had and went in ,and this strange man came out and said “oh no, he didn’t live there now, he only rented the house”. So that was alright so we said “did he know where the owner was?” and he said “no, I’m sorry I don’t”. So we kept on going and to cut a long story short, we went right up the end of the road to where father used to shear the sheep, the Dazzlers, and we called into various people down the road and – we didn’t go into our old house – but we went into various neighbours, and nobody knew where this man was, and what is more they didn’t know the people next door. And so we went on, and so I said to Jill “I’m not going to be jolly well defeated with this”, so we kept on going and we went into the Reisma’s place where I used to play with Shirley, and they didn’t know him, and so it went on. I even stopped a couple of cars coming up the road and nobody knew where this man now lived. And they didn’t know who I should ask, and I suddenly realised that in my day everybody knew everybody, and you went and played with their kids and you had picnics with them and all the rest, but nobody – it was an area of people who were renting houses.   I don’t know where they worked, I presumed they worked on properties somewhere around or in Dannevirke, or in Waipukurau, one of them worked in – so that the whole lovely community that we grew up has just disintegrated.

Yes, this has been symptomatic of so many communities and where the farmers amalgamated they might not even live on the farm and they rent the houses to other people and so community disappears. No, I understood.   So then you came home disillusioned that no one in Norsewood knows anything about the past.

No, they don’t and so I said to Jill, “OK well …”  She said to me”I’d like to go past Grandad’s place”. I said “OK” so we got in the car and we went down to the Norsewood/Ormondville Road. My grandfather farmed there.  My father – they all moved after Otane or Kaikora North – we didn’t like to go, we felt a bit disillusioned actually because the house is still there and it’s still recognisable. Of course it’s been altered slightly. So we went down to Ormondville only to find that the school had absolutely disappeared, there’s not even – there’s nothing there now. The – Ormondville used to be quite a little community on its own because the train went through it and stopped at Ormondville, and if you were going down to Hastings or Napier on an excursion as sometimes the school did, you went on the train. So the train station now I might say is still there, but it is a backpackers’ place.  So there is a train that still goes through … it gets here about – at the Longlands crossing about 3.30 in the morning so you can still say that you’ve been – that you’ve slept in a railway station because the station is still there, and … But the Tavistock – no, that’s Waipukurau.  The Ormondville Arms I think. So I said to Jill “I’m going to go in here – let’s go in here and have a look”. Not that we went when we were young ladies – you never went to a hotel when you were a young lady. And the chap was just opening, lighting the open fire and it’s still a hotel that services the area, but he couldn’t tell us where to find anyone either.

Isn’t that amazing?

Yeah, he said “I’ve heard the name” but he said “that’s all”. So anyhow we came back to Waipuk through the – on the Hatuma Road and we’d had a great day and it was full of memories, but it was a bit disappointing to find that the district had disintegrated.

Yes, well that’s why we need all of this history because we’re catching up and putting the districts back together again. Because so many districts, you know, like Flemington, Wimbledon – didn’t even know there was a store there and all sorts of things, and yet they’re not there now. There was a Post Office, there was all sorts of things.

No. We used to go dancing to the balls at Whetukura and it was a dickens of a long way out. Now it’s not, but then it was, you know, a long way from home but we all went.

So that brings you to Havelock.

That brings me to Havelock.

Your new adventure.

My big adventure to the big smoke. My father put a manager on the farm and built a house in Rata Street in Hastings. My brother at that time was down here in Hastings finishing off his apprenticeship with the Hulena Brothers who became quite well known in the Hastings area. Lloyd, Keith who made billiard tables, and Owen who died just a few years ago, used to sit behind me at school poking me in my back with a pencil, and he was a cabinetmaker of some note here. So we came down to Hastings and of course Fay had to be transferred down here, and John Oliver, the Postmaster, took that in hand. And Havelock North wanted a chief cashier, somebody who would take charge of being the main cashier, and John Oliver spoke to the Inspector – you used to have inspectors in those days – and he said “she’s a bit young”. He said “I will guarantee that she knows more about it than the two guys you’ve got on the counter now.”  Which was very nice for me. He had trained – he had given me a very good grounding, I could not have had better. So I was transferred to the Havelock North Post Office and I lived at home with my parents and I still had my Fiat. So it was easy for me to get out to the Post Office. Mr Pankhurst was the Postmaster. Of course I was tiddling out to work one morning – I had to start at 9 so I hoped it was about 8.30 so I wasn’t late – and the jolly silencer fell off my Fiat and I entered Havelock North like a ten ton truck, which brought all the boys to the window because everybody at that stage was sorting mail, and there was about six on the staff because we did deliver the mail.  And everybody said “what’s wrong?” as I got to the door, and I said “well the jolly silencer’s fallen off the car” and they said to me “in your lunch hour take it down to that garage down there opposite the Borough Council and ask for Bill Hanna and he’ll fix it up for you” – and that changed my life.

The muffler falling off your car.

The muffler falling off the car.  And really, the time that Bill and my brother had got together and Bill said to my father, “Howard, if you don’t get rid of this thing soon it’s going to cost you a lot of money”. And not quite then, but in the future, I lost my little car because my fiancé would not let me keep it. So I don’t know whether that was a good move or not because then I didn’t have any transport.

And your fiancé of course was Bill Hanna.

My fiancé was Bill Hanna who had the garage.

And took the car away.

And he did fix it, he did fix it … but somewhere down the track he said to my father and my brother “I think you’d better sell that thing before it costs you a lot of money.” So he did. So that was the beginning of another chapter of my life.

‘Cause those were the days when he had an MG.

Oh, he was very dashing … he had this MG TC or was it a TD, can’t remember … TC I think, and he was very dashing in that. And of course he used to race it at Manawatu in uphill climbs and things like that, but that’s another story again. There’s lots of stories. He had been to the war of course and he’d come home; and before he went to the war he joined the – he was in the Napier Post Office.  I can’t actually remember what he did at the Napier Post Office, but of course he went away a young man and he was away four and a half years, so he came back a very different person, he admits himself, that he was when he went away. He saw a lot of action but fortunately not too much damage but that’s another story again. He came back and he had a cousin, Keith Appley, who had joined forces with Eric Shepherd and they had started a garage service in a little shed – that’s all it was, wasn’t even terribly big.  It was opposite where the Borough Council used to have their premises. It was just up towards – in Te Aute Road – just up from Lucknow Road where Nimons were with the buses.

Middle Road.

Yes, Middle Road, not Te Aute Road, yes. Te Aute Road was a jolly sight different when I came than it is now. There’s lots of stories to put down.

Well, they were all paddocks on the right hand side of Te Aute Road.

There was the hotel, I actually stayed at the hotel for about three weeks before … when I came down to … the Crown wasn’t it? Was it? Bob Connip and Jean Connip were there.

Eardesleigh?

No – was it?

Yes, it was the Eardesleigh but most people called it the Havelock Pub.

Yes, well it was the Havelock Pub, and Bob and Jean Connip were there when I arrived. They were lovely people, and Bill used to come down on Friday night. We used to have Friday night dinner there because he had to work on Friday night, but I stayed there, they were lovely and Havelock was an entirely different place then.

Going back to Bill and how he got involved in Havelock was that Keith and Eric had started this business and they asked Bill – probably through Keith his cousin – if he would join them.  And the garage was just an old shed really, it wasn’t very big, and he said he would join them and put money in it, but on the proviso that they built another building. And when I came down here in 1952 Havelock North Motors as we knew it, or as it is now – what is it now?

The Shell Petrol Station.

Well, the Shell Service Station was just a great big oblong area with boxing all around the outside, not very high, full of metal and they just put heaps and heaps and heaps of metal in it, and they had dug a trench across the metal – why they didn’t put it in first I would not know – but it had to have ties, steel ties to keep it all together. Well that was just going in when I arrived, so it had a long way to go. The Bury brothers built that. I can’t remember their names.

Buster …

Buster was one, and there was a brother.

Yes, they were well known, they learnt their trade when they came back from the war.

Yes, well they did the building. There’s a photo here I’ve got that we’ll look at at one stage or we’ll put in somewhere, but out the back there was just paddocks that used to flood a bit in the winter – this is when we were married and out here in Crosby Street.  But we used to have Guy Fawkes every year with a big fire out the back for the staff and any of the children around. We didn’t have – it wasn’t a public thing, it was just something for staff.  But you couldn’t have a fire there now, but that was just waste space out there. There’s a photo of it all in water. And there was a Police Station further up the road, I think that was there when I came. Mr Bradford used to live there. Perhaps it wasn’t a Police Station as such but that’s where he and his daughter was – Joan. It was up about opposite the other garage and he used to parade down through the village on Friday nights.

Which other garage?

The one there now, it wasn’t there. No, Esther & Horner were up Te Mata Road and there was us and then there was Mouats, the Mouat Brothers. They were at the back of Treachers and the Policeman was Mr Bradford.  The Mouats lived on Hastings Road and then [?] had the garage. There were two brothers, and then there was Doctor …

Bruce Comrie.

Bruce? Yes … 

It’ll come in a minute.

Well, he used to live up by there, the Policeman, Mr Bradford.

Mr Beck used to live up there, he was a Policeman. Mr Farquharson did, he was a Policeman.

I can’t remember, that’s before me.

But Mr Bradford, a Policeman? I don’t think we ever had a Mr Bradford as Policeman in the village. Doesn’t matter I could be…

Is the doctor still alive?

Yes he is, his wife isn’t, she died. I might give him a ring and ask. The daughter’s name was Joan.

I wanted to tell you about my early recollections did I do that?

About the Village?

No, of me. Now I’m going to go back a little bit to when I was born. I was born on the 7^th of March 1931 at Sister Daisy Venables’ Hospital in Ormondville. I think all the babies in the area were born at Sister Daisy Venables’ Hospital. She was the same … about the same age as my parents, sort of born around the 1900’s I think, and they became firm friends and Sister Daise as we used to call her, even danced at my wedding. She was a great character. Then – I think I might have mentioned this – it was in the Depression and father built this land. He bought a farm … before that … I’ll go back a little bit to Dad’s history and Mother’s history.

Dad’s history at this stage. His father had come out from Denmark at a very early age. My grandfather Neils came from Denmark and he was born in Norribork on the 20^th October 1853. His parents had seven children and he came out here to New Zealand. I think from stories I’ve heard, that at that time in Denmark things were pretty grim and there didn’t seem to be – he couldn’t see much future. So he arrived out here and eventually went to … got to Kaikora North as it was called and is now known as Otane as there is a Kaikora in the South Island. He met my grandmother who had also come out from England with her parents – Grandma came out in 1865 and in 1887 they were married in Christ’s Church at Te Aute which has been restored and is still standing. Howard was the third son and they were all born in Kaikora except Uncle Eric. Grandfather started the bakery, and then he went up to the farm which was the Ormondville/Norsewood Road and the house is still standing there today. Howard – they used to walk to school, to the Ormondville School. Things were pretty grim I think, but they got a smattering of education and left when they were about 12 and started working – either on the farm, or Dad and Uncle Ivan got to the stage where they drove flat tyred cream trucks for the creamery. That is where he met mother who used to be a domestic worker in the Nikolason’s home. And everybody was very friendly by the sounds of it. Then they went up to Norsewood. My first conscious thought was, anything that I can remember, is being put to sleep in the hay.

Oh yes, you did mention…

Yes, I have mentioned this – how mother milked the cows, but I just wanted to get that little bit in about the family at Ormondville. When Grandad died Uncle Ivan was left a piece of land there, as was Uncle Chris the eldest one, and Uncle Eric and they all lived in that area – well Uncle Chris and Uncle Eric did and Aunt Jean, Chris’s wife, they all lived in that area and Max and John and their sister – all lived in that area, so they’ve got quite a lot of history there. And we used to go down to Sunday dinner and have it with Uncle Chris and Aunt Jean, and my parents still lived there until they died and my Auntie Net who was Harriet after Grandmother, she looked after Grandad until he died a year after Grandmother.  And I vividly remember going down to their … and he had a little beard. I don’t remember him – I suppose he had a moustache, but he had a little corner up by his eye which I, as a kid, used to stand on my tiptoe and kiss up there where there was no whiskers … and he was a lovely old chap. I remember him quite candidly and when I had a birthday Auntie Nettie would say to him “Father, do you remember what day it is?” And he’d say “What is that, what was that?” And she’d say “remember it’s Fay’s birthday”.  “Oh, oh”, and he’d put his hand in his pocket and he would give me half a crown, and that was two shillings and sixpence and that was a fortune. And if my sister was here she’d say “he never remembered mine or Ross’s but he always remembered Fay.”

I stayed with them a lot and one of my memories of my Grandmother was she’d fallen and she’d broken her hip and she was put into the Dannevirke Hospital and they weighted her leg out evidently to pull the bones apart and got them together to hold them to knit. Unfortunately the pulley – as the story goes – the rope on the pulley broke and of course they couldn’t get it back so that she was a cripple for the last years of her life. They used to get her out of bed and sit her in the chair in the sitting room as it was called then, and she had a little stool which I rue the day that somebody gave it to someone else instead of giving it to me. It was about four or five inches off the ground with a tapestry top and I had to sit on that and she gave me two four inch nails and on it was some stitches and I had to learn to knit at her knee. Well it was a pretty laborious job because she died when I was seven so I wasn’t probably – I can’t remember what age I was when I learnt to knit but she taught me to knit, and I was terribly proud of myself. I can remember this as clear as anything. I did two rows after much effort etc. and I thought I can now knit and that would be the tail end of it but no. The next day Fay was called to the same spot and the day after, and the day after and the day after until I knitted this confounded square which took me forever, as you can imagine, but being Grandmother beside me I could no more not do it than fly to the moon, because Grandma’s word was law.

And another thing that happened – but I do not remember this – where the kitchen table was when I was toddling around and learning to walk, I fell and I put my hand on the top of the stove and of course it stuck, and Grandma got me off the stove, I don’t know how they did it – the tale didn’t tell me that – but the thing that I was told by my Aunt – she bound that hand up and she poured oil into it every morning, and I mean I’ve got no scars, I’ve got nothing. It just shows you that some of the old ways did work and still work. I thought that was worth recording.

In the kitchen there used to be the phone. They had the phone on when I was young and of course it was on a party line, just as our phone was at the farm. I don’t know how many were on the party line at Grandfather’s but it used to ring and every now and then he was asked to go to the phone, and I can see him now holding the thing out about 18 inches and roaring into this little mike – it was like a little trumpet thing on the front of the phone – and he used to roar into that, but he used to hold the receiver right out here. And Auntie Nettie used to say “Father, Father, put it against your ear so you can hear,” but she used to have to stand there and make him do this all the time. It was great. At the farm where we were there was something like 15 people on the line and we all had numbers like – ours was 18R – so that when you got a short, a long and a short, that was yours and S was three shorts and so it went on. It was a bit of a trick really. Father used to say that a certain lady who was our neighbour always listened to everybody’s phone call. I don’t know whether it was true or not, it probably was. But there it is. We didn’t have the mod cons that we’ve got today.

No, I know. So then you are in Hastings, your 21, you’ve met this dashing young soldier who drives this MG car. You’re working in the Havelock Post Office.

There it is.

Well at this stage how about telling me something about Bill before we – where Bill came from and…

Yes. I can only do it from memory. I haven’t got anything much history of the Hanna Family. Bill’s father, who I unfortunately never met, he died two years before I met Bill. He knew a lot about building. Whether he had trained as an apprentice I do not know, but at the time of the Napier earthquake he was a foreman for the City Council. That was before the war. And while he was quite young he inherited some money. I think it might have been something through a Lodge but I’m not quite sure about that. But Bill’s grandmother, his mother, said to him “you are going to build a house with that money now.” Which I thought was a pretty modern sort of outlook for those times because this was before the war. So that when Bill’s father was called up to go to the First World War he had already built a house in Vigor Brown Street, 71 Vigor Brown Street.  While he was over in England he met this nurse who was nursing in this – I don’t know how much training Nana had had but she was helping in this convalescent hospital – and they married at the end of the war and she was what you would call a First World War bride. He came home to Vigor Brown Street and Nana came out on the big home boat with the rest of the wives. So he had a house already established which seemed to be pretty good in those days.

Bill was born in 1921. He was 10 years older than I was and his sister was born a year later. He went to the Napier Boys’ High School and I think he might have been a clever bugger actually, by the sound of various things that I sort of picked up over the years. And of course – then the war … and he worked in the Post Office and then of course the war came along and he went overseas, came back and then he started with Sheppard & Appley at Havelock North Motors. I think he started off – now I think of it – with an Army India motor bike, because I actually – he still had it when I met him and I actually rode on that Army Indian in his coat, sitting on the back and I loved it. I thought it was great and you see and smell things, it’s all different. And he had that for some time but he didn’t use it, a friend of his used it quite a lot. Before I met him he had joined the car club, the Hawke’s Bay Car Club. I think he was at the inaugural meeting at the Pasedena Tearooms in Hastings. And in those days the Club used to hold hill climbs at Seafield Road just out of Napier.

Out at Poraiti.

Yes, Seafield Road, and he broke all the records – I think as the records were made he broke them, and kept on doing it over the years, and by the time I met him there was quite a big Club and I can’t just remember when we started the Club out at Te Onepu. Yes, it was after we were married because I used to drive a van sort of thing out because we had to have an ambulance out there and it was the ambulance. I drove that out. We had great days. But before I met he used to drive at Ohakea when they had motor racing at Ohakea. He used to go down to Seatoun hill climb too in Wellington where he met Sybil Luck. Won’t mean anything to anybody but she was a – she had an MG and she used to race against him.

She was the Jaguar lady.

Oh was it Jaguar? She had an MG at the start but she had the Jaguar franchise. I met Sybil.

She was quite famous.

Yes, she was. Well, they used to race against each other. Actually they remained friends too because I met her and she used to come up and we used to socialise, but – I can’t remember the name of her guy – but she had a son if I remember correctly but I can’t remember his name either. That’ll come to me in the middle of the night about 3am or something. He used to race too. And that sort of introduced – Bill was always in motor racing. When Angus Hyslop came along and they put their heads together, that’s another chapter. Motor racing was Bill’s interest and when Angus came along, I think he was a very clever mechanic. He was self-taught, he had had no apprenticeship at all, but he could do things and suggest things to other people that they couldn’t apprehend. Angus came along and he was interested and he had this E-type Jaguar and by that stage Bill had quite a reputation around the area and – just going back a little bit, the garage was quite successful. We had car sales and all those sorts of things, and we used to have times when we had car shows where he would get together some interesting machinery and bring it up and the public would come and gaze at it, and he was quite a progressive thinker.  And then we had the car sales etc. which was going strong. But Bill took on this Jaguar E-type and we used to go, at that stage Levin had just started a racetrack and of course it was like Manawatu, it was pretty easy to get down to Levin and back in a day and do some motor racing, and of course that opened doors and it got wider. And then Pukekohe started they used to go up to Pukekohe. That was quite exciting and actually our first date, when I think of it, there was a meeting on at Manawatu. Bill wasn’t racing but he kept up with what was happening. I don’t think he got to the stage where he didn’t have time, but that was our first date. He said to me, asked me, if I would be interested in going down to the Manawatu car racing with him and I said “well I’ve never been to a car race meeting in my life” and he said “would you like to come?” So that was our first date and the rest is history.

But then, as I say, Angus came on the scene and Pukekohe opened, Levin opened, I don’t remember Angus racing at Manawatu, I think Levin took the motor racing of the area and we went down there and eventually they got braver and they did the circuit. Pukekohe opened, Pukekohe was the first of the season and, when they started to get overseas drivers and people like Stirling Moss came out, and Graham and all the other big racing names, that world racing, and they did the circuit. They came here, they went to Pukekohe, we went to Levin the next one, it was across the channel to Christchurch which was a Wigram circuit, and we then went down to Invercargill, that was the third, and we would come back to Waimate. Oh – and I’ve forgotten Blenheim. Before we went to Pukekohe, this Blenheim- I don’t think the overseas drivers there, but they cut their teeth on Blenheim. And I remember one time Bill used to do all the bookings and the ferry bookings and they wanted to charge him for the tow car, the trailer and the racing car all separately and he said no – so they took – Angus said how’re you going to do that? He said, “well we’re going to take the trailer down and leave it at Shelley Motors for a start, and we’re going to drive the open wheeler down” – the Cooper, the first Cooper Angus had. He said “Oh God, you’ve got to have a silencer on, you’ve got to have a rear vision mirror, we’ve got to have this, and we’ve got a number plate,” and Bill said “just …”  So he put a number plate on it and so and so and so on and he went on. And I remember him telling me when they were driving from the ferry to the track this traffic officer stood and watched them and he walked all around the car, but he couldn’t fault it. And then a big grin broke all over his face and he walked away, and so that was the first thing I went to. Then as I say, when Pukekohe came and we got the overseas drivers they did the circuit at Waimate and it took about five weeks all in.

We mustn’t forget Te Onepu.

Well, we mustn’t forget Te Onepu.

And the flying quarter at Bridge Pa.

Oh yes, I’d forgotten about those.

They were the [?] as schoolboys, Colin Wake and Graeme Robson and I used to bike out and watch these cars.

I’d forgotten about that.

Yes, we used to bike to Te Onepu hill.

Yes, I hadn’t forgotten Te Onepu but I had forgotten the mild thing out there. So there was something happening all the time and all – with the overseas jokers coming out, the drivers – gosh, there were nice, there were some… Jack Brabham came, Stirling Moss, Graham – all these others that came out – lots – there was half a dozen of them – they were all great.  And of course the entertainment – you entertained them and we were very friendly with Ross and Hazel Jensen, the Pukekohe committee you know, and it was one big happy family. We used to stay – go up and stay of course for the few days because it was – you know, there was practise, there was scrutineering, there was practise, then there was the meeting and the day to recover. We usually came home on Sunday.

Names like Bill, the Crosby Special.

Yes, that’s right.

From Dunedin.

And there was Sid Jensen and Palmerston North. He used to drive an MG too, he was very highly thought of, he was a lovely man, and all these guys and with the overseas … coming out. Parnell came out as manager for one of the teams and Angus got recognised as being a rather accomplished driver, and then the Pukekohe and Co committee decided that they would send a New Zealand driver to do the European, as driver from New Zealand, and of course it was in the time of Denny Hulme who, like, became a great mate, and Denny was the first one to be picked. He went, I can’t remember the chap who went with him, there was always two picked ’cause you had to have two people – somebody to look after the driver – the car and the driver.  Denny went and did extremely well as history will note, and then a couple of years later, or a year later I’m not quite sure, might have been a year or two years later – I think it was two years – I think actually when Denny went – they picked someone else as well, another driver as well, two drivers, but I can’t remember – and I think… Not sure, but I think there was a catastrophe there. I’m not sure – anyhow – Denny went and Denny was the one that we got to know extremely well and then Bill – I think a couple of years later – Angus was picked with Bill to go as well. And Bill didn’t – I know that Bill didn’t know what to do. And Angus used to ring up. I could see what was going to happen but Angus used to ring up at night and Bill would get up – usually at dinner time – Bill would get up from the table and I sort of got this – the phone was in the lounge, just … we had an open plan house … just around the corner from the dining room and I’d hear this one-sided conversation, sort of “yes” and “no” and “haven’t” and all the rest of it.  Anyhow, one night he came back to the table and his mother and sister was there and I said to him “when are you going to tell me when you’re going to go?” And he looked at me and Nana picked it up, she said “what are you going to do Bill?” And he said “I’m going to go with Angus Hyslop to Europe.” Well, Grandmother – Nana as we used to call her – she went into orbit and said he couldn’t do that, he had a new son and a baby daughter and he couldn’t possibly do that and leave Fay etc, and I sort of calmed things down and I said “yes, Nana, he is going to do it.” ‘Cos Angus wouldn’t go without him.

So they went off and of course they did very well etc.  Before we got into all this motor racing business, we had been married at Havelock North in the old church, Presbyterian Church, at Bill’s – [he] would not get married until we had a new house to go into so we bought, built a new house in Crosby Street which was a very nice, very sweet architectural design. And one of the things I think I should recall here is that Bill being a Returned Serviceman got two years interest free, $2,000 which in those days was a lot of money. But, of course the State Advances had to approve the plan, so Bill sent it in, or Barry sent it in, somebody sent it in, and Bill got received the letter to say ‘We’re sorry, we’ve received the plans of your future home Mr Hanna but you will understand our difficulties, we cannot approve it, because only pig stys are built on concrete floors’.  And of course this was one of the first – the first concrete floor they’d ever had to approve of. So Bill got hold of Barry and they went along to see this man and Barry described how the layers of different things were under the cement etc and it was going to be a thing of the future and there was no need to worry about it, it wouldn’t fall down or crumble or anything, so we got the loan. And we were at Crosby Street. Pauline had been born and Bruce was a couple of months old when Bill went over to Europe and they were sitting – a week before they went they were sitting together discussing things and they’d agreed between the two of them, I don’t know which one suggested it, but they needed what they called a gofer, and I looked at them and thought ‘what’s a gofer?’   And it was explained to me that you really need in a thing like this – a person who can do the odd jobs and things that you haven’t got time for.  And Bill got straight up out of his seat and said I know the very guy. And my brother at that stage had finished his carpentering apprenticeship, and he was working as an overseer in Watties on night duty. Bill went to the phone and rang him and said – explained the position and Bruce said I’ll go and put my resignation in right now, I’ll see you in the morning. And that’s how it … I always say he was going up the plane at Napier as they were jabbing the last thing into his backside because in those days you had to have all sorts of innoculations before you went overseas, and of course, I’ve got the photo here to prove it. The official photograph is this one that they took in Auckland. They all look as though they are going to a funeral or something, or they had a terrible argument about something but that’s the official photo. And unfortunately those lovely black New Zealand blazers they got – Bill was always very, very careful about security and things and they were at a hotel or motel or something in a locked yard in Italy somewhere, and when they went out to the car in the morning the doors had been jemmied open and the only thing that was in the cars was their three blazers that were in a box altogether, and they didn’t take it out. They usually did but they were so tired this night Bill said that they took what they needed and left the rest and they got cleaned out that night. So we haven’t got that lovely memento to show the next generation. But that was very successful.

Did you work during the time you had your children or did you stop work?

I – we got married in April and I went back to – they asked me to go back to work for the motor registration which was in June, which I did. I suppose we needed the money as well, it didn’t hurt and I went back for that, and I worked then until I was expecting my first child, Pauline, who was born in February a couple of years out. And then when Bill went overseas with Angus I did the office work and I had somebody to look after the children. A very, very kind Mrs Lowe that lived opposite said “I will come and look after the children” and I used to go back … I used to finish at 2.30 in the office and started at, you know, half past eight. So I did the office work which I of course found easy enough with my training, so it all worked in rather well, and we had this lovely little new house and Jill Lowe came and looked after the kids and we stayed in that house until – we only had two bedrooms in it, it was open plan, it was very, very nice place. The aunts used to say to me on the side, “why is Bill only building two bedrooms Fay?”   And I mentioned it to him once and – I won’t tell you what he said – but he intimated that if we had more money he’d build 10 bloody bedrooms.

And that’s another story, but we were very happy in Crosby Street and my brother who went with him, when it was time to come back he never came back, my brother. They came on their own and to cut another story short my brother went into business, did very well for himself. The only time he came back to New Zealand was when my father was ill. Howard just said to Bill, “get Ross back please” because we had the farm still and decisions had to be made etc, business decisions. And Ross came back, taught Mother how to drive – who’d never learnt to drive – taught Mother how to drive because Dad went at 64 … in 1964 at the age of 64, of cancer. Nothing could be done.

So he came back, then he went back to England and he only ever talked about coming back once.  He’s now gone unfortunately, he died about four years ago. He talked about coming back to New Zealand at one stage and he even talked about coming for good, buying … but then he decided against it and I said to him – he said no, he thought he was too entrenched. He’d never married and I said well good if you’re there because I said all your nieces and nephews are about to descend on you in dribs and drabs and you’ll be a jolly good base, and that’s exactly what he was. Well, Pauline was the first to go over and he bought a campervan for her to go on – and she spent five months on the Continent with another couple and they had transport, new transport. And of course the others that went eventually. I never used it but some of the others did, so that was wonderful. But he loved England and…

So when you were living in Havelock, apart from your motoring interests did you have any other interests, did you play tennis still, or any sports Fay?

No I didn’t. At that stage I had a lot – I joined the Plunket quite early, that was something but not very – but with the kids growing up and with modern schools, Bill kept me in some sort of wagon all the time so I could put the seven aside rugby team in the back. You can’t do it now. And the pushchair, because Tracey was born nine years after Bruce, and there was a lot of school work and things like that I went in, and I didn’t actually play any sport until I came out here actually and I joined the golf club. Bill wasn’t…

Did Bill play golf?

No, he had a back, a bad back.

‘Cause Gus used to play golf didn’t he?

No, not really. They had a…

They had the Crownthorpe…

Crownthorpe, if you could call that playing golf.

They thought they were pretty good out there.

Oh, they were and I used to play up there and we had friends, Owen and Win Steele that we met, he was the Shell rep for Shell when we were motor racing – lifelong friendship, and they used to come and stay down here in this house, and Owen used to play golf and he used to love me taking him up to Crownthorpe because he just liked the atmosphere, and hopefully the farmer would be moving some stock so that he could go and help on one occasion, and he just loved it and it was an institution quite different from anyone else.

So then you left the village and you moved out to here, a farmlet with asparagus growing.

No, we came – we decided – the house – we were having another baby, and we decided we would not add on to our existing house, we would come out here. I knew exactly what we wanted and I told the land agent what we wanted and they took me to everything but what I wanted, and I got really uptight about it. The land agent … and we decided we’d add on, and then the land agent rang up one day and said Mrs Hanna I have found what I think is exactly what you and Bill would love for the family. And I said we weren’t even slightly interested, “we’re going to build on here”. And I said “so we won’t.” When my dear husband came home and I explained to him, he said “Fay, I think you’re making a mistake, I think we should go and see that house,” and I said “I will only go for it if you will take time off and come with me, because the others I had to…”   So we were packed up and we came out and we kept on coming out – to me it was quite a long way.   We kept on coming out Te Aute Road ’cause I said to him, “where is this house?” and he said “it’s out at Longlands”. Well, we kept on coming, we kept on coming. We came up the long drive – there were no trees anywhere. You could see to Amners Lime across the paddock. There was no orchards, there was nothing, but we came up the drive, there was no hedge, and we could see where Cyril Watson was living and his orchard was all out in pink blossom. It was a beautiful day and he came in the drive – there was no trees much but we came in around the drive and the land agent got out to get the key, and I got out one side of the car and Bill the other, and we walked around the back of the car and he looked at me and I looked at him. I said to him “I can see the Hannas living here” and he said “so can I”. So we went through it and I won’t go into details of the state the new house was in because that’s other people’s business, but there was – that tree out there was about that high and about that big round, and the palm that’s at the front gate – Bruce used to jump over that, it was about that high. There was nothing here but lawn. We walked through it – it had four bedrooms, a den and it had a walk-in pantry, it had lots of windows, it had just everything, it was only two years old, it was in its second year and we loved it and Bill walked out to the agent and said – with the proviso that Hulena Brothers would come out and inspect it – give it a pass, we would be only too pleased to buy it. So we did and the Hulenas said “yes, buy it” and here we are and we’ve been here – we came in here when Tracey was – she was a year old in the December and we moved in on Christmas week.

And there was nothing out there expect – Maureen Harper had a stud – pony stud – and there was just a whole lot of little paddocks all falling to bits – it was in a dreadful state. They’d tried to grow an orchard with a few apple trees out in the sheep paddock there but they hadn’t done anything and the animals they had had knocked them down – it was in an awful mess. And there were about 90 trees on the property, gum trees, which evidently in the flowering season were beautiful but they’d never been looked after and the Power Board had hacked them down every year, and when we came here, before we moved in they came to see Bill at the garage and said – “Mr Hanna, we believe you’ve bought Mr Harper’s property and those gum trees have to be cut again.” They said “after this we’ll have to charge you for cutting them – or”, they said “if you would like us we would drop them for you.” Bill said “drop them.”

So we came in a terrible mess down at the road frontage and the kids weren’t very old and they would tell you that every time we got out of bed on Saturday morning and father stayed at home, he would sit at the bar – there was a bar in the kitchen there to have breakfast with the kids  – and say “now what are we going to do today?” And the kids would – the two oldest ones – and say in chorus “oh, the trees”, and we had to do a big racing trailer of trees and rubbish and stumps, because he brought a chainsaw.   And we had to bring the wood up and stack it down at the fence down there every … and we had wood for years. But it was soon cleaned up and by that time he’d got someone to take all the fences and the wire out of the place. The electricity used to go across to a power pole about half way between the neighbours and us until it sagged so much that the tractor driver that came to plough up the stuff ready for the asparagus just about got hooked up in it etc – so we had to do something about that, so Bill had the electricity put under the ground and it comes up the boundary under the ground so nobody could get electrocuted.

And then we planted asparagus. We still had the garage at that time. We had it in ten lots and I had women that came in, who were extremely good, to pick every morning and we used to pack it into crates. Bill used to come home at lunchtime, we’d load it on the trailer and he used to take it into Watties. But then we sold the business and came out here.

We looked at the finances and what we could take off the land, and actually asparagus was good but you really needed 50 acres or a 100 acres to make an income. So that at that stage there was a – it wasn’t Fruit Growers but it was a committee of people who were looking to plant boysenberries in.  And of course it was sold to us as a good income and there was ten acres here and they said that was a good income etc, so that’s how the boysenberries got in. We went down to Nelson, talked to the guys down there who were very, very helpful.  Went around the area ’cause there were a lot of boysenberries there – I think there is still quite a few but I don’t really know, because times move on and I think most of them had died off – like here.   And at one stage there were 25 boysenberry growers here when Bill was doing the work, but of course we had all these boysenberries and we were sending it overseas and it wasn’t really terribly good.  There was a return but a lot took them out after a couple of years and planted other things – like Tony over here, opposite us, he has got his in orchard now giving him far better than the orchard. But we kept on going and it was fun and we met lovely people. I’ve got beautiful photos of the gang that used to come and pick it and tie it up. There’s a lot of manual work in boysenberries, but you do have the period sort of at the end of – by the time you get the cane cut down in February until we always started after Queens Birthday weekend, and you’ve got that period to sort of catch up with other things. I kept on going and did it when I lost my husband and now Bruce has taken it over so it is very satisfactory, as far as I’m concerned.

At what stage did Bill depart us – what year was that?

I thought you were going to ask that. Yes, well we’ve put these berries in and they were very successful and Bill had been a townie and lived in a town all his life, never lived on the land really. He thoroughly enjoyed – he bought the first tractor … we bought was an old Fergie tractor which we’ve still got, and then he bought himself a brand new tractor so that was lovely and he thoroughly enjoyed pottering around and doing the work on the farm. When Bill went – he didn’t see his 70^th birthday unfortunately. When he went I was – had worked with him on the property so I just kept going. I went – ’cause everybody was offering me advice – I even had somebody before the funeral ask me if I was going to sell the land would I give him first offer, which I felt was a bit tricky. Bit cheeky. So as everybody was giving me so much advice I went to see the bank manager who was new to the area, but he came to Bill’s funeral and we both met him, he’d been out here and we both found him very, very helpful. John Spittle was the bank manager at the National Bank. So I went in and we’d only known him for a few months but I put the position before him and asked for his advice, and I said to him at the time “I don’t know whether I’ll take it but I’d like it hear your opinion.” And he said to me – “there are just two things” he said “can you live on your own Fay, out there?” And I said to him “well I don’t really know because I’ve never lived on my own.” And he said “the other thing is” he said “do you know the management of the place?”, and I said “yes”.  And he said “well I don’t see why, if you want to, you just don’t keep going”. So I said “thank you I was hoping you would say that I just wanted an outsider’s opinion.”

So I did, and of course Bill died at the end of May and we always started putting up the cane after Queens Birthday which was in a few weeks’ time, and a whole lot of the gang came to Bill’s funeral and I said to them, “well, will you just give me a couple of weeks to catch my breath and then we could start putting up the cane.”  And on the first day, in the middle of June, they came up the drive and Marta, who was the matriarch of the gang said – “now girl don’t worry about us, we’ll get this job done for you.” She said “just keep bringing out the morning and afternoon tea.” And of course they did, and they came back every year. There was a little bit of a funny bit at one stage, well there were several funny bits but one bit that stands out as someone’s just looking at the photos of the hay. They came to me about the second year after Bill went and they said to me “now Fay, would you mind if we had a hangi?”   And this was quite new to me, I’d never heard of them having a hangi. They looked at me and they said “well, we’ve often thought it would be lovely to have a hangi out here but we knew that the big boss, he wouldn’t have eaten the food” they said “would he?” And I said “probably not.” But they said “you will, so can we have a hangi?” So I said to them “yes, you can,” and I was very interested in what happened.

The first thing, at daylight, the men came out and brought the special stones – about four or five of them came out and they dug the pit because there was no pit at that stage, and they dug the pit. And this was all on the day we were having the hangi.   And then the women came out and they lined the whole hole with white sheets or white linen of some description, and the sides of it, and all the baskets that were all lined etc etc, and I was very impressed with the way it was managed and the beautiful food that came out of it. And of course we used the Fergie tractor and someone backed the tractor – when it was opened and brought it all down – up – and we had it in the shed as usual, we always had something on the last – the day after they finished. They always wanted to go home and prepare some food. They wouldn’t let me do it all, prepare some food and change out of their working clothes, they said. And they used to bring the children too, and some of them I see now are great big guys in their 20’s and always come up and give me a kiss which is very nice. And that was lovely and just as an aside, this year in the year of 2016 my son and Shelley the family, have wwoofers to work – and you’ll probably know by now what a wwoofer is – they’re all over New Zealand – they – Bruce always has three caravans and we have three couples and sometimes others, but my grandson now who is 19 said – Granny – this year he took charge, he did a lot of work with the wwoofers – he said “Granny I think we should have a hangi”.   He said “it’s part of New Zealand’s culture”, and I said to him “I don’t know anything about hangis”, I said “I know you have stones and a pit and things.” He said “oh don’t worry about that, I’ll fix all that up” – to the stage (I didn’t see this but I was told) he had all the wwoofers making flax baskets, and they had, the people that we had here, had Christmas dinner out of the hangi, and I thought that was pretty good. That’s a New Zealand experience that probably a lot of them wouldn’t get anywhere else.

You were saying it’s your grandson is it?

My grandson, Bruce’s son, ’cause Bruce took over about 10 years ago I suppose, yes, it would have been at least 10 years ago and he runs the place and I just look at [?] I take them down the odd morning tea when they’ve got the shop open. And of course, he being another generation, has changed the whole format of the property. In my day and Bill’s day we put it into packaging, crates that the canneries supplied, loaded it up and took it to either Watties – we had contracts with Watties, and then Grower Canneries as well when they came. But the whole format of the garden under Bruce has changed dramatically, and I was still doing that when he took over.

And so now a big proportion of the berries have gone.

Half the berries have gone. I found it was too much. Half the berries have gone and he’s taken over, and in the last couple of years he’s taken some more of the berries out and has now got cherries planted, which will come into fruit this year. He doesn’t supply very much to the canneries at all. He individually freezes the berry, the IQF. He sells at the gate, he sells at the market, and he’s also got into glass and he makes jam and chutney and green salad slick, he has a sweet sauce to put on fruit. What else does he have? We have cakes that he gets made with the boysenberries. What else do we have? And this year a new thing, he has bought a very smart van and a new equipment and we serve fresh fruit ice cream.

Oh,do you … down at the gate here?

Yes.

In the season?

Yes, we start the season as soon as the berries are picked there’s fresh fruit and it closes when there’s no berries left.  But we kept on a little bit longer this year because the ice cream proved extremely popular and it’s all made there with the machinery that he’s got and it’s fortunately a new way of making money with the product.

Well, you’re no longer … longer passing it for someone else to take and manufacture and make all the money.

You’re making it yourself.

You are taking all the profit.

Yes, you’re taking it – and he sells a lot of packaged berries during the season. Stores a lot of stuff here and takes the rest out to Whakatu Coolstores and brings it back, but it’s all our berries and it’s all ready and he sells it in various weights, all year really. Of course, he’s on the internet to market.

So now that you’ve extricated yourself from running of the farm – ten years ago you said it happened, you probably still have an interest seeing it’s all happening around you?

Well, yes. People say to me “have you got your name down at Mary Doyle?” –  which people that might be listening to this probably don’t know what Mary Doyle is, but it’s a retirement village type thing. And I say “why would I put my name down for Mary Doyle?”   And they say “why not?”   And I say “wel,l I’ve got a perfectly nice house at Longlands” and I said “my daughter-in-law is in financial planning and she has an office in my house”.  Because Bruce and Shelley built a small house when they came and I’m in the bigger house, and I said “Shelley does her business from here. Bruce does all his business from the den, which I used to use and my husband used to use for the business part of it. I have watched my grandchildren grow up and see them forwarding on in life – why would I want to move? If I’ve got my health – this is where …” I said “they can carry me out feet first.”

OK, so now you are in retirement here in these lovely grounds surrounding your house, sun … the lovely windows you had since your first home, and what could be better?

Well, I play croquet, I paint, I go to aerobics, I entertain. There’s really – they say that sometimes life is heavy on your hands when you retire – well, I’ve got news for people – there’s plenty of things to do, there’s no need to be bored.

Now you’ve opened this Pandora’s box of family history …

I don’t know whether I’m going to get all this done.

I know. So anyway that pretty well covers the whole field doesn’t it? But if there’s something else we need to address we can always put it on as an addendum on the end of this.

Well, I would quite like to speak about my great grandparents and my grandparents on my father’s side and my mother’s side, but I think that’s for another day.

How much would that take?

We’ve talked about Neils and grandmother, well perhaps I could just put a little bit in – we talked about grandfather Neils from Denmark, and grandmother who came – grandmother Harriet, who came from Staffordshire, they were married at Te Aute, I think I might have mentioned that.  But my other grandparents, my mother’s parents, they came out with a big family from England and they were interested in timber and, of course, Hawke’s Bay was covered in timber when they arrived, and they obviously had experience with milling, and they had mills here and in Taumarunui.  Emma my grandmother’s name was, Emma lost her first husband when he was in his late 20’s with a mill accident and had all these children to bring up. She then, later in life, married a George Mear and they had one child who was my mother, she was also Emma Frances. They all lived around here. My various uncles when to the First World War.  They settled around the Dannevirke area and Makotuku area and Taumarunui. Both my aunts, Aunt Mary and Auntie Hattie lived in Dannevirke with various people that they married – Jim Moysey and Alfred Smith, and had big families.  Fay Hanna’s relations had a lot to do and worked very hard in their lives and most of them were in Hawke’s Bay.