Horne, Mason Arthur Interview

Today is the 2^nd of June 2016.   I’m interviewing Mason Horne, late of Putere about the life and times of his family.  Thank you Mason.

Well, my mother and father went to Putere in May 1926 to buy a farm. They had two daughters and they lived in a tent on the farm until about 1928-29, they built a house.  And to buy the house my father used to buy cull lambs in the autumn in Wairoa and drive them home and drive them to Hawke’s Bay in the spring to sell them. This particular year, must have been early 1928, the service car driver gave him a paper, and in the advertisements there was a mill selling out at Puketitiri.  So he rang Mason Waterworth the agent, he said “Mason bring a buyer out and buy these lambs, these hoggets on the road. There’s a mill for sale and I want to get some timber.” So Mason Waterworth bought a buyer out, bought the lambs there and then.  My father went to Puketitiri. These two mills were selling out … Henderson and McLeod and Gardner were the mills. He bought the timber,  I don’t know how many hundred feet – super feet, for £82.

Wouldn’t buy a board today.

Wouldn’t buy a board, exactly.   It came to Wairoa I think by boat to Waikokopu, and then it was freighted by road to Wairoa and eventually Putere, and they built the house before … somewhere ’28 – ’29 – thereabouts. And the builder was a fella called Bill Brady.  They lived in a tent – Mum cooked for them – with her two daughters.  And in 1930 I came on the scene and we just lived there and Dad ran the farm of course, and had men working for him.  But he still used to buy the hoggets and winter them and sell them and then – the first year he was there, that’s right – the first year he was there there’d been no stock on the place, there’d been a drought, and he went to Gisborne and bought cattle. He bought 500 head of cattle and they cost him an average of £1/6/2d.   A drover brought them through to Wairoa and he drove them up himself, up the Cricklewood Road, and he stayed in one of the holding paddocks there, and he met one of the farmers on the Cricklewood Road.  He said “you shouldn’t be taking those cattle to Putere – no place for cattle, they’ll all die.”  And my father said to him – I remember my Dad telling me this – Dad said to this chap, “I’ve never seen a beast die with a full belly yet, and there’s still plenty of grass at Putere.”  So anyway, that was just a side part of the story.

And we just lived at Putere. My sisters went to the local school, then I eventually went and … started in 1936 I think … to the little school that was on the hill just opposite the house, and we had different teachers. Some of them stayed with us, and then … came along and in early 1940s I went to Gisborne High School for two years.  A year and … not quite two years. I left school the day the War ended, August 1945, and went home to the farm. I remember  the Head – Dad – the Headmaster wanted to interview him.  He said “you know, we can do things with this son of yours” and Dad said “I can’t do without him, I’ve got to have him on the farm. He’s not going to be a learned man, he’s going to be a farmer.”  That’s me.

Anyway I went home and worked on the farm, and we had another chap with us there.  And the odd fencer general, and a chap called Townie Waterhouse worked with us. He was a very well-known and well-respected man.

My first year at school was 1944 and at that stage the Government had RFCs  – rural field cadets – and someone rang Dad and said ”would you take one?”  And Dad said to him “well what do you mean? What do I do – does he catch my horse or do I catch his?”  He said “no, you just treat him as a general hand – general farm hand – and he’s with you for 12 months”.  And the chap we got in 1944 was a fellow called Jim Stewart who later became rector of Lincoln College. He was later Sir James Stewart and he was a terrific footballer, he was a front row prop.  He came from Wanganui – he was a front row prop and he played for the New Zealand Varsities at Canterbury.   As I say he later became Sir James Stewart the rector of Lincoln College.

And he started working at …

He started  – his first year with us … with my father was in 1944.  He came and saw us not long before … Dad had died in the mid ’70s … he came to Gisborne and looked us up –  my mother and father lived in Gisborne then – and he was a terrific chap and he wrote a book evidently – about his life, and Mum and Dad are mentioned in that.

But he sowed super by hand and he remembers that part of it well. That was in 1944   And then I just carried on working on the farm.   When I was 17 I had two or three good dogs and Dad had gone to Gisborne to buy cattle, buy cows.  He couldn’t buy anything at the fair, we didn’t buy anything at the fair but he bought some privately at Panekiri.   And when he came home he said I bought Te Umu cows, and I bought the Morris’s cows.  Mum said to him “how are you going to get them home?”  He said “Mason’s going to go and get them”.  And Mum said “you can’t send him a way up there on his own – he’s only 17.”   Dad said “he’ll never learn younger”.   So he cut me loose with a packhorse and gear and away I went on the road to Wairoa the first day, and stayed with a good friend of ours with a little horse paddock across the road and put the horses in there.   Mrs Deverall looked after me well and the next day I rode to Tiniroto and stayed at the saleyards there.  And the next day I went to Tamu, picked up their cows, came back to Morris’s and stayed the night with them and then drove them back through Wairoa and back to Putere.  It was a great … it was a challenge but I enjoyed it.

You obviously had good dogs.

Oh, yes, well, I had three dogs before I went to High School.  I used to take my dogs to school, primary school, tie them up under a tree and go and shift some sheep or muster after school in the afternoon. Oh no, I was never a dog trialer but I always had two or three handy dogs, and I worked them.  Used to help different neighbours out, mustering and shearing.

Yes, that would have been quite an exercise as a 17 year old still to bring … how many cattle?

88 cattle … 88 cows.

I know we used to live eight miles from Tomoana Freezing Works and any – ‘cause I was a dairy farmer, our family were dairy farming since early 1900s, so we always drove the boner cows to the freezing works.  And everything we did on the road – when we took them away grazing … didn’t have any trucks in those days to cart them. 

And the next year I brought the – we got the calves out and I drove them down to Crownthorpe.  There was a friend of ours got grazing up there from a chap Jacobs at the top of Crownthorpe, through Matapiro, behind Matapiro Station, and I drove the cows from home down to there the next year.  No … oh, no … exciting times.

What was it like growing up?  Where did you socialise?   ‘Cause there wasn’t anywhere to socialise except amongst the people you …

Just amongst our locals, yes.

That’s right because there was nothing at Raupunga was there? Did they have a hall there?

There’s a hall there, but the hall didn’t come till … into the ’50s.

And I suppose Wairoa was the closest?

Wairoa … that was 40 miles away.

So I suppose you were a hunter?

Oh yes, used to hunt a lot, deer, pigs.  Had a very good Maori that worked for us, he was a very keen, very keen hunter … terrific chap.   Deer or pigs, we used to … most weekends. My father used to think I was silly going wasting energy pig hunting – I should have been cutting scrub.

That’s typical of a father.  Yeah I know, my own father used to say – I’d say “look, can I have a couple of days off this weekend?”  He’d say “what do you want time off for?”  He said “we had a couple of rainy days during the week”.  He said “you had the time between milking off.”

I’d like to mention Dad with his – he enjoyed wool, and he used to do a bit of wool classing for different stations before he bought the Putere place.  And when he got Putere, after a few years, Williams & Kettle – he was a client of Williams & Kettle’s – they had their wool manager, a chap called – I can’t think of his first name but he was Rickard.  He was an ex-manager of the Mosgiel woollen mills in Dunedin and he came up, and in those times in the off season the local branch would have the wool man stay for a week or two and go round different farms and whatever … meet the clients … and he came to Dad when he came to visit, they’d have lunch or whatever.  And they were talking wool of course, and he said “you know”, this Mr Rickard said, “in this country with this pumice you’ll never grow quality wool. The pumice will break down fibre or whatever”.   And he said “if I were you I’d go for quantity.”   So Dad did, he went and bought Lincoln rams off Lew Harris and put the Lincoln ram over and it certainly put the weight into the wool.

It was more like hair, wasn’t it?

It was, it was.  Then the carpet trade was popular with coarse wool and we certainly paid off with the weight of wool.  So he said when you go for quantity he was dead right, we got the quantity alright.  I always bought, you know, a good coarse wool, open faced ram because of the pumice in the country. You see on a hot day, a ewe under a pumice bank, and she’d – you’d frighten her and she’d run out and there’d be a cloud of dust with the pumice.  But no, they certainly … putting the Lincoln through put the weight into the wool.  Shearers didn’t like it – it was too heavy, but it paid off, definitely.

You’d be machine shearing in those days wouldn’t you?

Oh yes.  Well, the first year or two Dad shore with the blades, and got a mate to come and help him and …

Just going back into the past … where did your father come from?  Was he born in New Zealand or did he come from ..?

His father was a schoolteacher in Fiji, and his father died there, died in Fiji.  And Mum was, she was born in Southland and came up to the North Island.  And her parents died and she was … a very good friend sort of adopted her as a stepmother and father and she was in hotels, they were in hotels and they had the Clyde Hotel in Wairoa – Captain Mitchell, he was quite well-known in the early days in Wairoa, bit of a character.   And that’s where Dad met Mum there.  Dad was – he was in Gisborne working with Lysaght, Fred Lysaght, well one of the Lysaghts anyway, and then he came to Wairoa, bought a farm at – with his sister – bought a farm at Ruakituri and that didn’t work out too well so they went off that and he was meanwhile he was doing a little bit of droving and wool classing and whatever until this Putere place came, and that was 1926.

So – you had older brothers and sisters, didn’t you?

I had two sisters, one died 2002 and the other one is still – she came and saw me the other day, she’s 93. She lives in Beetham Village in Gisborne and still plays bridge three days a week, drives herself everywhere. I don’t think she wears glasses, only to read. She’s still certainly got her full faculties.

And so, you carried on working at the farm.  Did you play any sports, rugby or anything like that?

No, I played rugby at school but I wasn’t much good at it. I played for the local team. I played in Wairoa.

So you carried on working on the farm and at some stage or other you met your wife.

Well I worked on the farm. Mum and Dad left in 1950 bought a farm, 25 acres just outside Gisborne and I stayed on at the farm. Every now and again we’d have a married couple would come but … some of them stayed for a year or so but … some of them were good and some were no good and.  I was more or less baching and always had a single fellow working with us.  And then I used to go to Gisborne to stay with Mum and Dad and with my sisters – they were both married and living in Gisborne.  And we used to go to dances and balls and whatever, and at a wedding I met my wife and … we knew one another … and we would see each other every six months – or I would contact her about every six months when I went to Gisborne.   And we eventually got married in July 1961 and she came to the farm.  They said “how did you propose to your wife?”  And I just said to her, I said … we were sitting in the car canoodling one night and I said “I’ve got a job cooking – would you like it?”  And she said “do you mean you want to marry me?” and I said “well yeah, I suppose so.”   And she accepted, and we’ve been married for 55 years. Two – three children, two girls and a boy.

The girls – one of them’s married in Dargaville and the other one’s married in Wairoa and our son is here in Hastings. Our daughter – eldest one, Tracy, she was very keen on wool  like her grandfather.  She did a wool course at Massey College and then got a job with New Zealand Wool Brokers as their agent in Gisborne and she and a friend, Philippa Wright, who was very keen on wool too and doing the same job she and Tracey our daughter made history by judging the wool at the Ruatoria Show – the only time the girls have ever done it.  In those days – in the ’70s – the Ruatoria Show was quite big.  And she also bought the biggest clip of wool in New Zealand – Waipaoa Station.   She went and bought that.

Where was Waipaoa Station?

At Whatatutu, in from Te Karaka.  Belonged to Clarks. Was Clark and Reynolds.  Beautiful property.  38,000 ewes they had.  The biggest flock of sheep under the one earmark in New Zealand at that stage.

But just going back to the farm for a moment Mason, how big was…

Just under 2,000 acres.

And was it all broken in?

Pretty well, yes, yes – pretty well all broken in. We did a lot of scrub cutting of course. There was a bit arable – we used to crop a bit. Turnips to fatten lambs, swedes for wintering lambs … wintering hoggets, and when we sold it it was running just over 3,000 ewes, just on 200 breeding cows.

So at some stage in the early ’50s you would have started flying super on with aeroplanes wouldn’t you?

Yes, we used to fly off a neighbour’s at Waireka Station, the Dever boys. We used to fly off that and then we built our own airstrip and made a good job of it built a lovely big super bin.  It was very central and none of the neighbours used to use that, it was sited by a very good well-known top dressing operator Bill Cookson. He started it for us and … knew Bill Cookson very well.

Did Jim Frogley ever come up your way top dressing?

I don’t think so.

No, I don’t think so, no.

I don’t think so either.

I think Tutira was as close he got.

He still does it, doesn’t he?

Young Jim does.  He’s got the old Beaver.

That’s right because he – Ralph Brownlee was here the other day and he said he had the Beaver put our super on.  I said “a Beaver?”  and he said “yes”, and I said “are they still going?”  He said “yes, Jim Frogley’s got one.”

I live in Havelock about four miles from where Jim … young Jim … lives and  – still uses the same strip that old Jim used to fly off, and I’d hear the Beaver take off in the morning.   It’s got this big motor that just …

Terrific motors – great planes weren’t they?

Yes, you know young Jim’s probably in his 60s now.

No – they were great names the Frogleys weren’t they?

Yes.   And so then you had your children they – your son is in Hastings.  What does he do in Hastings?

He’s with Fruit Handling Systems. He was head boy at Lindisfarne in the mid ’80s, and he met a girl came out as a Rotary exchange student, and they met and fell in love and she went back to America.  And he went to America in 1986. He worked over there and he came back in 1992 or thereabouts, and he was on the farm for a while and then … oh, things changed at Putere, pine trees were growing everywhere, the school – it looked like the school was going to close – things weren’t looking too rosy.  So they moved down to Napier and he was working for different firms and then he got a job with this Fruit Handling Systems and they sold some of their plants to America and he went over and installed them.

That was fruit graders, fruit elevators – I know the sorts of things.  So at this stage you had a holiday place in Mahia.

Mahia – 1970 we bought that.

Yes – and you bought it to go fishing or ..?

Just as a weekend bach and – bought it off a good friend of ours and we used to go out and stay the odd weekend and have a bit of fun … and I never had a boat. I didn’t need one, I had too many mates with a boat, and I’d give them some petrol or whatever and we had a lot of fun and we always got fish and it was very good.  And the old shack – finally almost came to bits, and in 1977-78 we built a – didn’t have any money but I was starting to get bits and pieces here, there and everywhere – and a few friends, and we built a reasonable house.  And then after the accident we moved out there to live. I was getting treatment three times a week, and we moved out there and that’s where we stayed until last year.

And you sold that farm?

Sold the farm in 1998.

So did you lease it during that … or did your son run it, or did you run it until ..?

I ran it until the accident in 1995.  After the accident I was – things weren’t too good and  there was a bit of recession on so we thought we’d get out, so we did. In 1998.

Well it would have been quite interesting even looking back at Mahia – how that has grown too because we started going there … we had a caravan, so we used to camp in the camping ground.  What was it – Ful …

She’s here.  Mrs Fulton is here.  Les died.  He was here too.  He died oh, late – October last year.

Oh yes, ‘cause I met one of the sons runs Kingdom Music in Hastings – music store.  Yes, so we were going up there in 1970 and it was only just a small village wasn’t it?

That’s right, lot of fun.

Absolutely, well you had to make your own fun.

Had to make your own fun, exactly.

So, coming back then to the farm, there must have been some funny things happened over the time you were there. There must have been some identities in the Valley.

Well, one of the chaps that worked for us I was at school with – Barry Clayton Green, who was a pretty famous – has become a pretty famous New Zealand dog trialist. Had some great dogs and oh there’s oh who else is there.

Was the chap – I’ve met him a couple of times – John Smith – was he up there?

John Smith.

John & Jan Smith?

He managed a place up there, yes. John and what was her name?

Jan Smith.

Yes, he managed a place up there – one of the Otoi Blocks.  Oh no … we used to make our own fun. The school was the hub of – you know, people used to assemble at the school.  We’d have a … I was chairman of the school committee and we’d have New Year – it was ‘what are we doing for New Year?  Nothing.  Well, we’ll have a do in the school.’ So we had a do in the school.  It was very good.

And then the Lands & Survey, they bought Otoi Station and were developing it for sale for … where Cliff King got his farm.  And once I was chairman of the school committee and one school committee we had these chaps working on these places, the shepherds, the managers, the fencers and whatever, they had children to school but they couldn’t afford to spend money.  We were getting the school developed and all wanted bits and pieces.  The managers were very good, they’d give us gates and posts and all those sorts of things, but we still wanted money to run the school.  So I suggested we go through to the Crown Lands Commissioner in Gisborne and see if we could get a bit of land and run it.  So we went through and saw the Commissioner and asked him, and I said “what are the chances of getting 80 to 100 acres of land from somewhere seeing you’ve got all this land that hadn’t been settled and we can run it as a little farm”?   “Oh no,” he said “I don’t think … no…” he said “I don’t think we could do that, but” he said “we can give you some land and call it a domain or that sort of thing”.   He said “you can do what you like with it.” So they did and that’s how the Otoi Domain developed.

How big was the Domain?

Oh, it was about 30 acres.

Well, that was a good starting point.

We used to lease that to the locals and we built – one or two of the local farmers later on – one or two of the local settlers that came in were pretty good with their hands, and we bludged some timber and whatever, and we built a nice hall there.  I remember they were pulling the hospital down in Wairoa, the old hospital, and I went and said “I’ll go and see this fellow.”  I didn’t know him but I went and there was a young chap, he’d be in his early 30’s, he was in charge of a Palmerston North firm, demolishing the hospital.   I told him the story.  I said “we’ve got no money, but” I said “we want some bits and pieces if you’ve got any to spare”.  He said “well, what do you want?”  I said “well, doors, windows, anything”. And I said “how much would it cost?” He said, “well, you look like a farmer don’t you?” and I said “yes, I’m a farmer”.  He said “you give me a mutton and a dozen of beer – have you got a truck?” I said “yes”.  He said “bring that in and I’ll fill it up for you.”   So he did. Doors and windows and sink benches and all sorts of things, which are still there.

And this was the hall?

That was the hall.   Now it’s called the Putere Domain, and it’s very popular with school … people go up there, and school camps – it’s very popular.   It’s nice fishing … the Waiau River runs right round it.  No it’s very popular.  Good fishing, you’ve got a shower and toilets, tennis court, nice big room.  We built another room on for a dance hall and we used to have a lot of good evenings there. Barbecues, they still have them, no it’s very good.

Yes.  Of course once all the shepherds and fencers and cowmen, gardeners and that left those areas so they just dissipated, the community just died didn’t it?

They did.  They did, yes.  And then we got these new settlers that came in they were all good down to earth people, we had a lot of fun. This hall was used a lot.

Yes, I always remember one night I was up at Papuni Station staying with Ray Crombie who was the manager at that stage.

I remember Ray, yes.

And we went down to the little pub down at, on the back road – what’s the road called?  Tiniroto Pub – and when we were there we … they suggested that they were going to have a dance at the Tiniroto Hall – the school were running it – so Ray and I went back to the Papuni – it was a fair way up the Valley.  Anyway, we went back and got into some corduroy pants and tartan shirts – it was a Western evening – and we went down there, and … got there and all the men are at one end of the hall and all the women are at the other side and they had big supper room with the big enamel teapots.  And this would only have been about 15 years ago. The band on the stage were nearly all the schoolteachers … well, what a night!   It was the most wonderful night.  I was a good dancer and I danced with all these farmers’ wives who were – the men were all standing at one end of the room – had a wonderful night and it took me back, and I’d forgotten what country places …

That’s right.  I remember when we used to have do’s in our wool shed and different wool sheds, great nights.

So back over … looking at Putere over a period of time, did Putere ever revert at all or has it always been grazed?  None of the country has reverted back to …

No. No. No, it was well farmed. Graeme Lowe had two properties there, Waihou and Glenlea. No, they were well farmed.  None of it reverted no, it was… and then the pine tree fellow, Roger Dickie, he bought two properties next door to us, Glenlea and Waihou.

Was your land deficient at all in any of the trace elements, or was it – it was alright. I remember Taupo, ’cause Taupo had the ash … it was deficient in …

Cobalt.

Cobalt.

Yes, well ours was deficient but we used to put cobaltised super on. No, other than that it was very good, it was very healthy country, pumice – but the cobalt … we had to drench our lambs of course, but it was, you know the usual …

And of course you were in a rainfall area too weren’t you?  Which made …

That’s right.  We used to get a lot of the tail end westerly showers would come over, so we were in a good rainfall – our average rainfall was about 80”. So it was very good.

I was just looking at some old photos the other day – the Shotters – they used to farm back … over towards Waikaremoana from you.

Waikaremoana, Wirawira [?], yes.

‘Cause – did that back on to Putere?

No. No.  that backed onto Waihi and then the….

I’ve got a letter here from a chap whose name was Harold Marrett.   Cyril Marrett.  He wrote this letter – he was working Chrystals.  He was a wool classer, and – you were talking about people – he used to go from farm to farm doing wool classing back in the 1920s, and scrub cutting.  But there was one thing I found quite interesting and that was they took a mob of cattle from there to Stortford Lodge, drove them down and didn’t get a bid for them and then had to drive them all the way back and let them go in the bush again at Waihua, or Maungaharuru.

Maungaharuru, oh, goodness me.

And they said they turned them loose in the bush and eventually they asked the – they offered the Maoris £1 a head to pull the cattle out to try and get some money back, but they couldn’t find the cattle, they’d all disappeared.

Yeah. Maungaharuru Range, where is that now?

Well, from Mohaka you look back this way and you can see it can’t you?

That’s right, yes.

But anyway, there’s probably lots of stories you’ll think if when I’ve gone but I suppose because you were born in that area, that was what life was about.

Exactly.

The people that you worked with, you had to get on and the people that didn’t get on, they went.

That’s right.  We didn’t go out much so we made our own fun and life was good … it was wonderful.

Yes, and your wife is in here?

Yes, she’s in the rest area here, yes.

And she suffers some loss of memory or?

That’s – from loss of memory, that’s right, yes. But other than that she’s well. We see one another most days. I go round there or she’ll come round here.

So this picture of you two sitting in the boat, that’s you two in the boat isn’t it?

Yes.

You would only have been in your 40s then … 50s, wouldn’t you?

Yes, that’d be right.

Who’s the chap sitting in the middle?

Oh, in the middle – that’s me.  And the one at the tiller, the one with the hat on is Ian Barber.

OK, did you know the McGurks?

No, I knew Rod.

I’ve spent many happy days on the old lake Waikaremoana – I’m a member of the Wairoa Fishing Club. I have been for a long, long time.

Oh, yes.  Oh, the Angling Club – oh yes, well you’d know the Mokau …

Yep, only ever stayed in it a couple of times ‘cause I had a Toyota Land Cruiser with a cabin built on the back, so I used to sleep in that or sleep in the boat out on the Lake.

Yes. I was a member of the … we used to fish the Waiau or … and I didn’t go to Waikaremoana – we used to go up now and again but … and get one of the lake house boats like that one there.  I was a member of the Friends of the Urewera, – I knew a lot of the people that … most of those people.

Well this book of Te Putere, you know, that’s the lake and the school house?

That’s the school, yeah.  That’s the lake in front of our house.

I’m going to full copy this book as part of your history.

That’s Cliff’s book.

Yes, but I’m going to copy it – digitalise it, and that will be copied in and attached to your history.

I may be able to get you one of those books.

Well no I don’t need it, ‘cause once – I can just copy it and I’ll give it back to Cliff, and that’s it.  Because you feature in many pages.  Peter Bedingfield, he was at Napier Boys’ when I was there.

Oh yeah, I knew Peter very well, good fellow Peter.

And little Jan King, Cliff’s wife. But this will fill in a lot of the gaps, you know, about the school and the things you did within that.   When that’s attached to what you’ve told me it makes a very interesting story about yourself and the family.

Oh that’s good.

… be pleased if he’s still alive.

He was a character.

Yeah … tell us about him.

Jack Johnson, he was the manager of Otoi Station, and towards the end of the settlement there was the four farmers settled in the one day, and Jack asked me if I’d come down and help him sort up all the ewes – draft all the ewes up – and the supervisor there was a chap called Keith Smith from Gisborne, very nice fellow, but he wasn’t a terrific farmer, but Jack Johnson had forgotten more than he’d ever learnt.  And Jack wasn’t a man to panic in any way, but Keith was wanting to get things done … “come on Jack, let’s get a move on”, and Keith – Jack, who had a cleft palate or … very hard to understand if you didn’t know him – “don’t panic Keith, don’t panic, she’ll be right”.

And that was alright, breakfast time came and we went over for breakfast and Jack’s wife, Maureen, had a banquet on for us, beautiful breakfast  – and went back to the yards and drafting more sheep.  There was a lot of sheep to draft – there was about oh, five or six thousand ewes that came in and all had to be sorted into ages and whatever, and it started to rain. And Jack said [?].   Keith said, “what’s wrong now Jack?”   He had sneaking … he was a funny man but a very capable man.

He didn’t let anything wrong with him interfere with his skills.

No he knew everything that was going on. Very fond of a whisky.

And did you all have your own shearing sheds there?

Yes, pretty well.  Yeah we all had our own wool sheds.

Grandchildren?

Grandchildren?  Yes, the one in Dargaville’s got a girl and two boys, the one in Wairoa’s got …

What ages are they? 

20, 18 and 14.   And the one in Wairoa … my daughter’s got the … Andler & McKay, she’s got the book shop in Wairoa, she’s got a 21 year old and a 19 year old, boys, and Guy’s got a 21 or 22 year old son and a 19 or 20 year old daughter.

So you must be ready for some great-grandchildren then.

I hope not. No, no, they’re good family.

OK, well look, that’s wonderful, thank you Mason.  Thank you for sharing your family’s life.  You’ve – of course now we’re in the hospital wing at Gracelands and your wife is not far away in another room.

She’s in the rest area, I’m in the hospital area and she’s in the rest area.

Yes, that’s right. Ok, well thank you very much and we’ll sign off at that point.

Very good, thank you.