Herrick Brothers – Angus Gordon

Introduction: Well good morning everybody – it’s lovely to see the room absolutely full. We have Angus, and he’s stepped into the breach again, so … Angus Gordon; needs no introduction, I’m quite sure.

[Applause]

Angus Gordon: I think this is about my sixth visit here so it’s been going on for a while, and I’ve gone through all the books. It started when I wrote “In The Shadow of the Cape”, but still, if anybody doesn’t know … most of you are familiar faces, but “[In the] Shadow of the Cape” is the story of our family at Clifton. And then I wrote the woolshed book, which is about historic woolsheds of Hawke’s Bay’, being over a hundred years old. And I missed a few, not too many, and I’ve got a lot in that book – a lot that actually burnt down since. So I’m pleased I got the record – I think there’s about four that don’t exist now. And as you know, with shearing being what it is, and wool being what it is now they’re becoming even more historic. So I’m very pleased that I got that done when I did.

And then I went on and wrote this book here, which is the homesteads of Hawke’s Bay [Historic Homesteads of Hawke’s Bay] which has been my big seller, and it just goes on and on selling all over the country. Because I got it printed in Auckland by a company called Mary Egan & Co, and it was beautifully finished – they did a great job. And then we have a distributor. So I was in KMart … ’cause I used to market a lot of my books; these books I do because I don’t print very many. But I printed four thousand of these and we’ve just about sold all of them. And I went into KMart the other day and there it was sitting in the book shop there at KMart; and I was so pleased. I said, “How did you get hold of it?” They said, “Oh, it’s our best seller. We’ve been selling that for years.” [Chuckles] And it was right in the door – I was a bit worried because the sun was shining on it and the front cover was getting a little bit warped, so I was getting a little bit nervous about that. So that’s been my great success.

And then, to finish off, I did my grandfather, Eddy Herrick, so it’s really to round it all off; I’ve sort of done my whole family and the woolsheds and the homesteads. I’ve rounded it off with Eddy Herrick, who was my grandfather, my mother’s father. And he was a true character, and we were sort of brought up with him; I think he died when I was about sixteen. So he was a bachelor by then; his wife had died quite early when she was seventy, and he lived on to ninety-four. And he would come and stay at Clifton; my mother was the only Herrick really around Hastings … oh, my uncle, Jasper Herrick, was here as well, but … no, Jasper lived down in Waipawa. So he [Eddy] lived over here at Muritai, which is just across the road from this place. [Duart House] And so he would come out to us on the weekends, or [at] a time when we looked after him, and it was marvellous. He always had a pipe; you knew when he was there, the whole house smelled of pipe smoke. [Chuckles] And we had a lovely leather chair in the corner of what was called the ‘Smoking Room’ in the library; he would sit there and we would go in and we would ask him all these – or me particularly – ask him all these questions, and away he would go. And they were all his deerstalking exploits down in Fiordland. Now it’s extraordinary, really, but he spent over twenty years going down there just about every year, to Fiordland. Originally my grandmother, Ethne, went with him and she shot some very good deer as well, but eventually she had such a big family – she had eight children – that eventually she was sort of stuck at home. They lived at Lindisfarne … well, they were quite well off luckily, so she had plenty of help. But they were living at Lindisfarne House at the time, so Lindisfarne was their house which her father had built, funnily enough, and he didn’t live in it … or he lived in it for about a year and then he sold it to them because EJ [Edward Jasper, or Eddy] Herrick at that stage was in partnership with his brother, Frank Herrick, down at Tautane Station, which is down at Wimbledon.

So we were brought up on all these stories – it’s hard to believe they were true, the things he told us, because he went down there for three or four weeks, into Fiordland in March, for the roar. That’s why I called it ‘Legends of the Roar’, because it was just so much a part of our lives. He had all the heads in his room; he had everything there. We’ve got two of the biggest heads in Clifton now – we’ve got the moose head, the first moose that was ever shot in New Zealand; there were only ever three shot, three males, and he shot two of them, and the other one was shot by a Hawke’s Bay man as well who was sort of an acolyte of Grandad. It’s hard to believe what they put themselves through. If you’ve been into Fiordland, and I presume a lot of you have, it’s about as wild as it gets.

But it was his happy place, and he would head off from here in this old car, a Sunbeam, and he would load all his gear up and off they would go down the South Island … drive all the way down, Granny sitting up in the back. I’ve got a picture in here somewhere of her sitting up in the dickey seat. So he started going down there in about 1919, I think it was … ‘18. He had some friends called the Deans down there, and the Deans family wanted him to come and shoot, ‘cause a lot of these red deer had been released … stags, big ones from England had been released and they were wandering in the wilds over there. So the first time that Eddy went down Granny went with him and they went into the Rakaia River; they crossed over there and they went right into the Rolleston Ranges. It’s pretty wild country in there; they climbed in there and eventually they did get a head. It wasn’t a magnificent head but it was a pretty good head, which … now, we gave to Lindisfarne. It’s in the Lindisfarne stairwell. So that was his first experience.

But they were all hankering to get down and shoot the red deer in Otago, so eventually he went down there. He and Granny again went down there; it was a magnificent trip. They went down from here with another chap called Major Wilson who was from Bulls in Rangitikei. It’s an amazing drive, ‘cause they went all the way down, [a]cross in the ferry – I think the ferry in those days went from … like, when we went to school it went from Wellington to Christchurch – so that cut out a whole lot. When we were going to Christ’s College – David Belcher’s the same – we went down to Christchurch overnight. So that would’ve saved a lot of time. And they would get there and they would all get together. So there was a famous shoot they went in there called ‘The Blue River’. And they went to Wanaka, which was called Pembroke in those days, and down the lake to the end of the lake, to Makaroa – [of] course the road goes straight through there now so it’s nothing very wild at all because the road goes straight past the whole area. But in those days you went down the lake and there was an inn at the end of the lake; this lady had this inn for all the stalkers. And the area was divided up into little areas, and they got ‘The Blue River’. And they went in there and had a dramatic time, and why I know all this is because Grandad wrote it all down; it was all recorded. So some of these stories that we thought were completely far-fetched … it was all there. He’d actually given talks about it in his time. So it wasn’t far-fetched at all, it was real.

At that time Granny shot a magnificent [deer]; took her all day to shoot it because it was across a valley on the other side. She and Jim Muir – I’ll talk more about Jim Muir in a minute – went all the way round; took them all day to get round to get downwind of it, and then she shot this magnificent deer. Granny was such a good shot that Jim Muir, who was my grandfather’s great friend, a guide who he went with for twenty years. The two of them just did everything together. He said she was a better shot than he was. [Chuckles] She did all the shooting of the red deer at night for their meat; so they would shoot the small red deer and hang them for meat, and Granny was in charge of all that stuff. So she was quite a tough woman in those days … can you imagine? Not many women were down there in Fiordland – well, that was Otago.

Then they got the bug. What’d happened is that the wapiti [elk] had been released into Fiordland in the early 1900s, into the middle country. So there were [was] Bligh Sound, George Sound, Caswell Sound in that area, which is right sort of in the middle. They were released, and they’ve never moved out of that area, and they’re still there to this day. But what happened was – as you know the red deer became a pest in New Zealand and moved everywhere – the red deer moved in. At some stage later on they had to do a big cull of the red deer. At one stage they were talking about getting rid of all the wapiti.

A big expedition came over from America to go in there with my grandfather’s help, and others, to study to see whether the wapiti were actually destroying the forest, and it was discovered that the wapiti weren’t destroying the forest, the red deer were. So that’s when they started, way back … started culling them way, way back causing the erosion and things like that.

Grandad was a botanist as well. I think that’s one of the big attractions of going to Fiordland, ‘cause of all the bush life. Because he was a fanatic[al] gardener and a botanist, and so he was always recording all the plants. And it was him [he] that nagged the government a lot about the red deer [phone rings] causing all the damage.

We were brought up on all these tales; it was extraordinary. So they went in and did the wapiti, and again, Granny went in there. What they would do is they would go all the way down to Invercargill, and then for some unknown reason they went across to Stewart Island. The boats that went up the coast then were from Stewart Island; one was called the ‘Rakiura’, which is the one that they went on a lot. And they would go up that bloody coast! I don’t know if any of you have been on that coast, have you? In Fiordland? You know what it’s like … just get seasick just looking at it. And Grandad was not a good boats man. It was a terrible trip for them. First of all they went up into George Sound and they were dropped in George Sound, he and his party – I think Major Wilson was there – and they stalked the wapiti. Granny shot a great big wapiti first off – and there’s a Saddle named after her called Ethne Creek, down there – and then he shot five of the biggest heads ever shot, because of course they were the originals, so they were really big. We’ve got one in Clifton in the dining room which is so bloody big it takes up the whole thing, you know, it’s a high stud, like this. And the antlers were fifty-one inches – they measured everything by inches – fifty-one inches by fifty-two inches or something, and very, very big.

And then, he and Jim Muir had heard about the moose. Moose had been released into Dusky Sound which is quite a bit further down. And he was mad keen about how you get the moose. Well the moose were really hard work. He spent, they think, four years looking for the moose in there. They could hear them, ‘cause the bush … if you go into that bush there it’s so dense that you can’t see from here to there … and they could only hear. They would listen, and they could hear the moose, but they couldn’t pin them down. At one time they heard a, moose and it would be going down while they were going up, and then it would be going up while they would be going down, and they could never match up with it. But when he got the first moose, the one that now hangs in the Clifton hallway, he and Jim Muir were there for five weeks by themselves. And it got to the stage where it was so wet – the rivers rise very quickly there because the mountains are so high and the rain’s so heavy; the rain just comes down en masse and the rivers just rise up overnight – and they were very lucky to not get swept away a couple of times. They got stuck; they would take a whole lot of different tents with them, and they would have a base camp down the bottom, and then they would take these what they would call flying tents, and they would go up further, put a flying tent [up] and then they’d go further up, and so on. And one time they got stuck right at the head on Seaforth River, and … very lucky to survive. They had to shoot a deer and they’d all put their hands and everything into the side of the deer just to warm themselves up, they were that bloody miserable.

They got down, and they found when they got back down to the base camp – they had a little boat, ‘cause to get across the rivers they had to have a little dinghy – the dinghy was holding on by one shred of the rope; one shred left so they were very lucky not to lost their boat. Anyway, on the last day the ‘Rakiura’ came back; the captain said, “We’ve got to go”, and Grandad said, “Can we just have one more day?” And the captain went with them, and they went right up and they found a big moose in the swamp country. I mean, I don’t know if any of you’ve seen Seaforth River, but the Seaforth just spreads out down this long valley, and it’s just all water … water and swamp, so they were always walking around up to their waists in water. And he shot this bloody thing in the water … well, on the other side of the swamp. So then they had to go across; they got it – I’ve got a picture of him in here carrying the head on his shoulder, through the water. And they didn’t think twice about it, really.

[Shows slides] There’s a picture of him there carrying the moose head that’s now in Clifton, on his shoulder. Always in water, and they had hobnail boots … you know, can you imagine how long it would take for the hobnail boots to dry out? But they always had fires; for some unknown reason they could always get a fire going, and I think what they did was they took the bark off, ‘cause the wood was always wet. But the first thing they had to do was boil up a billy; that was the big thing in their lives, boiling up a billy. And so they managed to strip the wood down and slit it up, and in the inside it was dry, and that’s how they sort of got the fires going. And once the fire was going they could then put wetter stuff on. But you imagine it! He came out of that hunt and said it was the happiest time of his life. [Chuckles] Luckily in all that time [neither] he or [nor] Jim Muir never [ever] broke a bone. They had accidents – they rolled down mountainsides, they lost all their gear, they got flooded – but they were never hurt, in all that time … imagine! No helicopters to pick you up or anything like that. So that was the story that we were brought up with, and that’s what inspired me to write the book.

But then the Herrick family is a very interesting family, because they were the original … his father, Jasper [Lucas] Herrick, came out to New Zealand from Cork as a young boy, only about eighteen year[s] old, as an Ensign. So he ended up coming to Hawke’s Bay, ‘cause Hawke’s Bay was just being settled around the 1850s, so Jasper Herrick came as a soldier, and he rose up the ranks until eventually he was a Captain. And he joined General Whitmore, ‘cause they had the problems with Te Kooti at that stage in Gisborne. Te Kooti had come back from the Chatham Islands … you all know the story of Te Kooti? Anyway, Te Kooti had been badly treated by the settlers in a way; he helped in the first war they had here in Hawke’s Bay at Omarunui – the only war we had, and it wasn’t a war, it was a little battle. It was at Omarunui Pa, and my Gordon great grandfather led a troop of cavalry in there as well.

But Te Kooti was banned from New Zealand; was sent to Chatham Islands because he was accused of spying for the Hauhau movement. The Hauhau movement were a religious group that wanted to get all the land back, and they came down and they formed a pa at Omarunui Pa near Taradale, and were going to have a battle. And then all the Maori came out from Napier with Donald McLean, and they had a quick battle and then it was all over.

But Te Kooti was sent off to Chatham Islands; escaped from the Chatham Islands, and by then he’d established himself as a leader, like – there was a book years ago by Maurice Shadbolt called ‘Season of the Jew’ – and Te Kooti had fashioned himself as the leader of the chosen people, and they were bringing the chosen people back from the Chatham Islands to Gisborne. They landed in Gisborne and then they went about and they massacred a lot of the Maori up there and a few of the whites. Gisborne wasn’t very well established in those days; you’ve got to remember Gisborne was a long way behind Hawke’s Bay as far as pioneering was going, because it was so remote. No roads up there, could only be got to by boat; Gisborne was a lot later, so there weren’t a lot of people up there.

But it caused a lot of dissension down here because everyone got worried that Te Kooti would move south. And he did start to move south, and they decided they needed to stop him, so General Whitmore, who was a big landowner at Rissington, got together a troop, and my great grandfather, Jasper [Lucas] Herrick, was one of the Captains … one of the officers who helped him. Another one was a chap called Captain Canning; they were all dressed in red outfits. And the Maori had developed a very good guerilla warfare by then. And you can imagine, they were trekking around in the bush north of Lake Waikaremoana – heavy bush – with their drums going and everything, so Te Kooti knew exactly where they were [chuckles] … interesting, the old British mentality in those days … he developed this amazing guerilla warfare and they could never get near him. And then when they did he always had himself positioned. Well what happened was eventually they chased him to the edge of Lake Waikaremoana, and Te Kooti got in … they made themselves canoes … and they rowed across to the other side of Waikaremoana. Jasper tried to do the same thing with his troop; they knocked the trees down and they tried to dig out the canoes as well – I’m shortening this up very quickly, you know, I mean there’s a lot more detail – and they just got ready to go across and they got the word from Donald McLean that they were to stop chasing Te Kooti, so they were furious.

Anyway, in the meantime Jasper, he’d bought himself – with J N Williams who was one of the original pioneers of Hawke’s Bay as well – you all know J N Williams of Frimley. J N Williams and Jasper went into partnership and bought Kereru Station which was one of the first blocks in those days, and they farmed Kereru. So Jasper was working as the manager of Kereru and then trooping off on his horse to go right through all that country to chase Te Kooti. So he married a woman called Lydia … what a life she had! Because he was never there, [chuckles] so I think she sat on a hill, poor woman, looking into the distance and all the blue hills and all that, you know, foreign country, and wondering when he’d ever come back. She died of a broken heart. She literally did, I think – after six years she just died. It was a terrible life; I mean, Kereru’s quite remote now, but it was really remote in those days.

And so he then moved down to Forest Gate [Station] and married Emily Duncan. Her family owned it; he managed the place and then they became the owners, and they built the lovely house at Forest Gate. If you drive down Route 50, look up on the hill and you can see the homestead on the hill there. He built that homestead, and they had … God knows how many, I think about eight children. He was a botanist as well – they were mad on their plants, the Herricks. They went picnicking one day; they had another property called Oporae, which is out past Dannevirke in the hills, and he was at the Waihi Falls and he slipped and died. His wife, Emily, was left in charge of this big family and this big station.

At that stage the government was just starting to break up the big estates. Seddon, who became the prime minister in the late 1890s had always promised that he would break up the big estates for settlement for more farmers, and so unfortunately for the Herricks, Forest Gate was chosen as the first farm. So after he got killed they announced to Emily Herrick that she had to sell the whole of Forest Gate to the government, and they nominated a sum of three pounds, [£3 – per acre] which wasn’t a lot ‘cause it was all developed country. And so luckily for her she had trustees of J N Williams who was the old family friend, and Sydney Johnston who was at Oruawharo Station, which was just across the way; and they were great friends at Oruawharo anyway. The two trustees managed to get the price up to £5 an acre.

So they lost everything; they lost the whole farm, the house and everything. She moved into Napier, and luckily they had enough money from selling Forest Gate to then go down to buy Tautane. Tautane Station was quite remote in those days, down near Wimbledon on the coast; nine thousand acres of absolutely magic country, because it was all cliffs that came in. So the land didn’t go down to the sea, the land was protected by the cliffs, and then all the land fell inwards down to these beautiful valleys, and lovely, easy country. And so they made a great success of that and the boys all moved in there and Tautane became quite famous as a stud [that] they had at Tautane … bull stud for many years. But Grandad eventually left and came up to Hawke’s Bay, ‘cause his brother, Frank, carried on running it. They ran the place in partnership for a hundred years, and it was run as Herrick Brothers.

He came and lived at Lindisfarne and became a civic leader really – this is EJ – he was the chairman of the Napier Harbour Board for many years and was responsible for moving the port. What’d happened was, after the ‘31 earthquake, as you know the harbour was [in] Ahuriri, and it got lifted up so all the boats had to then be unloaded out at sea in the roads, and had lighters came [come] in with all the produce. Grandad … EJ … and Frank Logan who was a great friend of his and was part of Sainsbury, Logan and Williams, [Lawyers] were on the [Harbour] Board together and a few others decided the port should be where it is today. But no one in Hastings was prepared to do that; they didn’t want it. For some unknown reason the Hastings area – and they were the rich area ‘cause that’s where all the big landowners [were] – they would not agree to it. So Grandad and Frank Logan set about this sort of charm offensive, and they went round and eventually got all of the council and everyone to agree to move the harbour to the point. So that was one of his great achievements, was getting the harbour moved to where it is now.

And he was chairman of Williams & Kettle; he was also, interestingly enough, one of the founding directors of the New Zealand Reserve Bank. At one stage there was a £10 note put out, and the picture on the £10 note was a beautiful picture of Tautane with all the cabbage trees and cattle in the foreground and the hills behind, and that was taken by my uncle, Jasper [Lucas] Herrick, who was a good photographer.

So that was the story of EJ and Ethne. My mother was the last of the family of eight, and when she got married at Lindisfarne to my father, John Gordon, at [of] Clifton, they moved out there. Then he decided to sell Lindisfarne; he knew it was too big – it’s a lot bigger than this place ‘cause it’s three storeys – he said it should only be a school. So he helped them start Lindisfarne school [College] and for that they’ve always been very grateful. So the Herrick history is now part of Lindisfarne history, and they make a big fuss of the Herrick thing, which is quite nice.

Anyway, to go on about their family, because the Herricks really got quite a name for themselves in the wars. In the First World War there were three brothers, Frank, Eddy and Arthur, and Arthur went off to the First World War and became a brilliant leader. Wild as can be, you know, he’d been living out the backblocks of Tautane all those years, so he was quite a character. And he led a troop; somehow or other he survived Gallipoli, but then they went to Palestine … very relevant in this day and age; it was the Turks, of course, not the Palestinians or the Arabs … this is when they had the new machine guns, and he was the only one [who] knew how to work these damn things and so he became an expert on fixing everyone’s machine guns and getting them all going. But he also charged up the hill – they were really being pinned down by the Turks – and saved the day; turned the Turks and they all ran away. But unfortunately, being a bit cocky he carried on, and he got shot by a sniper. But for that action he got the MC, which is the Military Cross. So that was the first Herrick.

And then my grandmother’s brother was also killed at Gallipoli … oh yes, so they were the two that were killed in that war. And then the Second World War came along and my uncles … I had six uncles; there were eight members of the family … six uncles, and all of them tried to join up. Uncle Jasper, who was the eldest, was already in the army; he was the first to get into the army, but [and] he made it to Sergeant. And he was then told by his family and the recruitment board that he wasn’t allowed to go to war, because they said one of the Herricks had to stay behind because there were five going to war. So poor old Uncle Jasper – now we always felt very sorry for Uncle Jasper, because he had to stay here, look after Tautane, look after all their farms, look after the stud, while all his brothers were overseas being heroes and being killed, and blah, blah, blah. [Chuckles] And it must’ve been very hard for him when they all came back, because they were all talking about the war, blah, blah, and it was quite hard for him. But he became a big leader in Hawke’s Bay eventually, and chairman of Williams & Kettle, and Scales [Corporation], and looked after Tautane stud. So he recovered, but he did have a breakdown during the war; his wife left him and ran off with another man. Left him with one child called Robert Herrick, who’s my cousin … first cousin. He’s still alive, still lives here in Havelock and he’s well in his eighties. Poor old Robert was just caught out between the two. But anyway, he’s got a wonderful wife called Galen; she was Galen Smith, and so they’re very happy.

Okay – so then the other brothers decided to go to war, and Terry was the second eldest and so he was in the navy already. Terry was a funny one, because at the age of thirteen – he’d been in Hereworth; they all went to Hereworth, ‘cause Hereworth had just started – and he’d been told by the Master that if he went to England and joined the navy he wouldn’t have to do Latin. [Laughter] So Terry thought this was a very good idea, so off he went, at the age of thirteen, to Plymouth. Terry was the character of the family. My grandfather had a real gift of the gab, the Irish gift of the gab, and he could tell a wonderful story. And Terry was the same; Terry was a very funny man- he used to tell these stories. But off he went at the age of thirteen. The family hardly ever saw him again because he did all his schooling and then the war came. So then he just carried on to [the] end of school and things, and he spent the whole war in destroyers. And he was a Captain eventually; he did all sorts of interesting things, like … the King of Greece was deposed, and Terry was in charge of picking him up off the beaches and taking him to England for safety. So he had a very interesting war, and survived.

I mean, they were in Malta! I don’t know if anyone knows about Malta, but my daughter who now is a pilot who flies for a private jet company, lives in Malta, so we were over in Malta which is just a magic place, last year, and we went to the museum and everything. But Malta was laid siege to; ‘cause of the Grand Harbour and the big harbours there it was the base for the Brits [British], and they had all their navy there. Well eventually there was a siege on Malta and they were completely cut off. And they had to get food, it was desperate; they had no more ammunition, no more food. They sent this massive ship, which had an American name like the Illinois or something like that, [‘Illustrious’] surrounded by about twelve destroyers. They sent this in a convoy to Malta, and by the time that ship got into the harbour it was only just floating. All the destroyers had been knocked out. They’ve got an amazing museum there in Valetta; I went there because Terry was in Malta – loved it. They all loved the life in Malta, they had a good time. I think there was a lot of parties and things like that, and he was a big party boy, Terry.

Then the third eldest was Dennis, and Dennis was meant to be the one that was going to be in charge of running Tautane, but of course as soon as the war came he wanted to join up. He decided he wanted to be a pilot, so he went down to Dunedin and he got his pilots’ licence, blah, blah, blah. And he was training in Dunedin and they had a terrible accident where another plane was taking off – they were bombers – and it had a bomb in it and it crashed on the tarmac. Dennis and another man, without even thinking about anything, raced down knowing that there was a bomb in there – the plane was in flames – and they managed to save the two pilots. And for that he got the George Medal, which is actually the highest award; the VCs [Victoria Cross] given to soldiers. The George Medal is actually the highest award for bravery that you can get. So he went off as a bomber pilot.

At that stage the had a sister, Julia, who’d gone to England and married an American, or English American. He became a General in Britain, later on; he was in D-Day … Julia’s husband was flown in as a parachutist and was dropped behind the lines; broke his leg when he landed, so that was the end of his service, unfortunately. But Julia was like home for all the Herricks, ‘cause here was the family, but they were all over there. So Julia became like their home, and they all went to Julia and she looked after them all.

There was another brother called Brian, who was also very young. He was the first to get killed; literally within the first few weeks of the war he died. He was shot down, and so he was the first. Then Dennis survived for quite a while, but of course being a bomber pilot, he was shot down. So that’s two dead.

And then Larry, the next brother, he joined submarines … he became a submarine Commander. I don’t know where he got that idea from because he used to get terrible headaches … he said going down in the water they used to get terrible headaches … and he suffered from headaches. Anyway, he was a submarine Commander right through the war and did some amazing things, like the landing at Anzio in Italy. The submarine had to go in there and act as a marker for all the boats coming in, so they were right in close. They were being bombed and strafed and everything; they had to go right in to act as a marker to direct all the troopships into the bay. He survived that, so he survived the war.

And then Michael, the youngest, became an absolute war ace. He trained as a fighter pilot; he learned here, and then he went off to the RAF, so he was also a Battle of Britain … Brian was a Battle of Britain pilot, and so was Michael. He survived for years over there. Then he was seconded back to the Pacific because by then, you know, the war was going on in the Pacific, and he flew basically for the Americans a lot of the time – they flew Kittyhawks which was a new American plane – and he became an absolute air ace. He was one of the first to shoot down … well, I’ve got it all here, I’ve done some talks about the Herrick brothers at ANZAC Days and things, so I’ve got the details. I can’t quite remember what he shot down. He was involved in Dunkirk giving air support for the withdrawal there, so he was at all the great battles. And he was the first to shoot down a Heinkel – that was at the Battle of Dunkirk – and then he destroyed another Heinkel, so he got a DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross] very quickly, and rose up the ranks. He was just constantly shooting down these things, so he was obviously a very good pilot. And he was promoted to Flight Lieutenant; then he became Flight Commander of a squadron. And they were posted from there to [Espiritu] Santo in the Pacific – that’s in Vanuatu, which I know quite well – and they were given these Kittyhawks. [Of] course this was when the Battle of Guadalcanal was going on. So they were the first New Zealanders to shoot down an enemy aircraft; they shot down a Zero floatplane; it was attacking the Hudson that they were escorting. And then over the Russell Islands Mike managed to destroy a Zero, after pursuing it for a hundred and twenty miles. He was then attacked himself when he tried to stop the Japanese strafing an American pilot who’d bailed out. He drove the enemy off even though his guns weren’t working. So he just chased him. He landed with his plane riddled with holes, but he survived. And then he was involved actually in the Battle of Guadalcanal with his squadron; he shot down seven of the enemy during that battle, but then they ran out of ammunition again so they had to beat a hasty retreat. Then they went to Bougainville, so the Battle of Bougainville as well, and he shot down fighters there, and got back to the base without any losses. So he survived this intense war over there without getting killed, being an ace. Unfortunately he was transferred back to Europe at the end of the war, and he was put in a Mosquito which he’d never flown before, and he was shot down. They were going to Denmark, and he was shot down in his first mission in a Mosquito. So he’s actually buried at a place called Frederikshavn in Denmark. So he was the third brother to go, and he was awarded the US Air Medal, their top medal, posthumously, for his performance,

So my poor old family … my mother was at school in those days, she was the youngest in the family. She’s now ninety-eight, so things’ve moved on a bit; still living in her own house. She had to come back from school to support her mother every time they were [one of them was] killed, so it was quite traumatic. But her mother was [a] very strong, upright woman who just got on with it – she never talked about it, didn’t want to talk about it, and they just got on and packed more parcels. She was packing big parcels for all the soldiers, the New Zealand troops, in England. And that’s what she did right through the war, sending these huge parcels to England, and that I think maybe kept her mind off it. But she died suddenly one day when she was seventy, of a major aneurysm. And I think, you know, the stress of having lost all those children … just the stress of having five sons at war must’ve been quite something. So that was her. And then Grandad died and they sold Lindisfarne. And that’s why I decided, to round off all my books, to write about Eddy.

Have I gone too far? Filled you up with too much information? [Chuckles] I’m sorry, yes I’ve given you too much information.

Peggy van Asch: I think Angus, it would be very hard for any of us to top what you’ve just … [Laughter] But there is a slight connection with Herricks and Duart, because there was a Herrick that [who] was at St George’s School here, and I have a feeling it was Jasper …

Angus: Could’ve been.

… because my father-in-law was here at St George’s and I’m sure I’ve got some photographs and things, and I think it was Jasper.

Angus: Well it could’ve been because St George’s was also a school for Wanganui. And they all went to Wanganui [Collegiate]. It’s quite funny – at Lindisfarne now they’re very possessive about the Herricks, and they’ve got a big portrait that they commissioned years ago; the Leavers’ parents commissioned this big portrait of the three brothers that [who] got killed. And my mother had these little photographs that big [demonstrates] of the boys; they didn’t take a lot of photographs in those days, but they were actually quite good pictures. And my brother, Charles, found an artist in the South Island, Sally Hope, and from those little pictures she managed to create this huge portrait. And it looks like they’re all standing side by side – if you ever go into Lindisfarne it’s in the main hall. Lindisfarne calls them ‘Our Herricks’, and then they discovered that Wanganui Collegiate was also calling them ‘Our Herricks’, so [laughter] they were very put out about all that ‘cause they had such a connection with Wanganui.

Peggy: Thank you very much indeed, Angus, and I think we’re very lucky that you actually have produced all these books, and the history for Hawke’s Bay especially.

Angus: That’s worth $50 – if anyone wants to buy that book I can do it, you know, online.

Alistair [?]: Angus, round about ‘56 or somewhere about there I was at Hereworth with Tim Herrick.

Angus: Yes – he was Terry’s eldest son. He came here to Hawke’s Bay and died not long ago. They went to Tunbridge Wells in England. As a family those Herricks were just dragged everywhere … they just went from England to New Zealand to everywhere. They just didn’t know where they were, so they just went to school wherever they were at the time. When the war finished Terry came back to New Zealand and became actually the leader of the Civil Defence in the North Island; moved to Feilding, and so the family gradually started assembling again.

Peggy: Well on behalf of us all, thank you very much …

Angus: Oh, thank you very much, Peggy.

[Applause]

Haven’t spoken too long, have I? I get accused by my family of talking for too long, and I usually get told by my wife when to stop, [chuckles] but I haven’t got her here today.