Sanko, Patricia Jane (Pat) Interview

I’m introducing Pat Sanko, in [of] Hastings. She’s going to talk a bit about herself and her ancestors. Right, over to you Pat.

Hi. My full name is Patricia Jane Sanko, and today is the 25th day of June 2018. My former occupation was administrator/secretary. I was born in 1945 to William Daniel Moroney and Emily Elizabeth Moroney [née Brooker], and I was born in the Hastings Hospital and spent the first twenty-two years of my life at Pakipaki. My father died when I was ten, so I was brought up by my mother, really. I have a sister who is eleven years older than I am, and a brother who is five years older than I am. Both are still living.

My father’s parents came to New Zealand; the grandfather in 1878, and his name was William Moroney and he came to New Zealand with two of his brothers. They landed in Napier where they actually set up a business as a taxi company, which was horse and cart taxis. Eventually the brothers moved, and William purchased property in Pakipaki and his two brothers went to Central Hawke’s Bay. In 1875 William sent for his fiancée who was Jane McShane, and she was twenty-one years old and a cook; and she arrived in New Zealand on the sailing ship ‘Helen Denny’.

What year would that have been?

I just said, 1875. My grandparents built a hotel in Pakipaki but the Māori opposed the application for a liquor licence, as a member of the community had been killed on the railway line when he was drunk; so the grandparents had a boarding house which provided accommodation for the freezing workers who worked at Borthwick’s Freezing Works, which was situated in Pakipaki prior to the 1931 earthquake. The grandparents had nine children, and they celebrated their golden wedding in 1928 with seventy guests.

My father married my mother, who was Emily Elizabeth Brooker. The Brookers also were resident in Pakipaki and they had a family of ten children. My mother was the housekeeper or housemaid for the Moroneys, and unfortunately my father got my mother pregnant. And so they were married at the Sacred Heart Church in Hastings, but because the mother was pregnant they weren’t allowed to be married on the altar – they were married in the sacristy. And they only had two people at their wedding, that was Mr and Mrs McCracken who were their witnesses. My grandparents were not very Christian-like in their attitude towards my mother, as my mother … number one, came from a much poorer family; number two, they were not Catholics; and of course Mum had been their housemaid. So when my sister was born my mother wanted my sister to be named Margaret, but the Moroneys said that the first-born girl had to be called Mary, and so they took her to the Sacred Heart Church and had her baptised; and our mother didn’t even attend the baptism. And this type of behaviour, really, continued. And my mother would have to dress my sister in her best clothes for family functions, and Dad and my sister would go to the big house and Mum would stay at home by herself.

My mother was a very generously-spirited woman and never ever said anything ill against her in-laws. When my grandmother was dying – the grandfather was already dead – it was a Sunday, and the family wanted to go to Mass; so Mum went and sat with the dying grandmother while the rest of the family went to Mass. And Mum used to say that she knew that if Granny opened her eyes and saw Mum sitting beside her, that she would actually have got up out of the bed, she would have been so astounded. [Chuckle]

What about the morning teas you went to?

Oh yes, right. My Brooker grandparents lived just over the railway line from us, and so Mum and I went to my grandparents for morning tea every day until I was five. And I’d never been away from my mother, ever; and I turned five so now I’m supposed to be a big girl and I can go to school. I was sent to the Pakipaki School which was just down the road from home. And I was so homesick that I used to wake up crying every morning, and my mother said, “Well, if you’re going to cry I’ll give you something to cry for”, and she used to smack me. And so I would go to school crying, and my cousin, Bill Brooker, used to go along on his bike laughing at me, which didn’t make matters any better. And when I was at school I just hated it so much, and I used to ask to leave the room to go to the toilet all the time. But I never actually went to the toilet, I used to stand in the hedge looking down the road at home, because I could see the house. Anyway, the teacher was so concerned about me using the toilet so often that she sent a note to Mum, and Mum had to take me to the doctor to get my kidneys checked. And in actual fact I was never ever going to the toilet any rate – I was just standing in the hedge.

[Chuckle] That is so funny.

So when I was six and a half, I was considered old enough to catch the bus, which had kids going to high school and to Central School. And my brother, who’s five years older than I, we caught the bus to St Joseph’s School. Now the bus stopped where the current library is but in those days it was a garage called Ross, Dysart & McLean, and we had to walk down to St Joseph’s School which is still situated in the same place; but after school we had to walk from St Joseph’s to Central School. And lo and behold [woe and betide] if we had’ve missed the bus, ‘cause Mum didn’t have any transport. But anyway, we never missed the bus. But my first day at St Joseph’s School was just beyond me, because nobody told me that when you went to a Catholic school, that you said prayers. And I came from a State school to St Joseph’s, where we had to say prayers before we started school; we had to say prayers before we went out to play; when we came back from playing; at twelve o’clock the Angelus bell rang and we had to say the Angelus; before we went out at twelve-thirty for lunch we had to say grace before meals; when we came back after lunch we had to say grace after meals; and before we left to go home at night we had to say prayers. And as well we had religion taught to us – it was from the Catechism in those days – every single day. And I just couldn’t believe it, because nobody told me that I was going to spend all day on my knees praying.

Now when you left there, St Joseph’s, where did you go?

Oh – well when I was at school the Catholic girls went just across the yard to what became Tenison College, but it was just called St Joseph’s High School in those days, and it was just a school for girls. Very small school – the maximum number of pupils would’ve been ninety. Most girls in those days left school when they turned fifteen, because girls were considered that they were just waiting to get married, and there was not a great emphasis on careers. And because it was a small school there was a very limited selection of subjects, so you either had Professional if you were really clever and were planning on being a school teacher or something similar; or you had Commercial which is what I did – shorthand/typing – even though when I went I had never even seen a typewriter.

Hadn’t you? Oh!

[Chuckles] Didn’t have a clue what shorthand was. And General for the people who were considered to be, you know, going to be working in a shop or factory. But the success rate from sitting public exams was phenomenal, because the nuns were very good teachers, even if they were tyrants, but … certainly didn’t physically punish you. But because we did shorthand and typing, which for School Certificate was considered one subject in those days, and because we had religion every day which took up a period, you had to have half an hour before school to do shorthand practice, and half an hour in your lunch hour to do typing. And as I was a bus child I actually didn’t have any lunch, because I had to spend … and I couldn’t get there before school, so I had to spend my whole lunch hour doing schoolwork.

Not in this day and age …

[Chuckle] No, definitely. And I would have to say that we actually were not given a lot of encouragement. We were most probably put down more than encouraged because you know, it’s all about trying and not being proud. But the success rate – so much so that big firms like McCulloch, Butler & Spence, etcetera, came to the school to take as many girls as was coming out of the fifth form. Yeah. You didn’t have to apply for jobs, they were just waiting for you; but that was the reputation from the school.

And you were out on the farm at Pakipaki. Did you visit your grandparents’ house?

Well, we grew up … because Mum wasn’t a Catholic and Dad died when I was ten, but Mum was very fierce that she was going to make sure that we grew up Catholics, to prove to the Moroneys that she was worthy of … [Quiet chuckle] So Sunday – I actually used to go to Mass on Saturday and Sunday – so we went to Mass, and we came home and there would be hot scones waiting that Mum would have baked in the coal range. And after that we had the roast dinner, and then we had the sponge cake and also the barracouta loaf of bread that Mum wet and put in a paper bag and put in the oven to freshen up for tea.

And after we had our roast dinner we went to, across the railway line to our grandparents … the Brooker grandparents … where as many of Mum’s brothers and sisters who lived in the area … everyone came home every Sunday for afternoon tea. And there were a lot of kids who used to fight and pick sides. And the afternoon tea was absolutely phenomenal, because my mother did the scones and the cream cake, somebody else did the pikelets and the cream horns, and somebody did the ginger crunch and the nut loaf. Everybody brought two plates of food. We had an enormous table, and the children sat up to the table on forms and the adults stood behind. And as my older sister said, the grandparents’ house was nothing more than a tin shed; and it most probably wasn’t, but that didn’t count – it was the love that was in the house, and all of these people that were part of your life – that was the important thing.

What occupation did most … of the Brookers have?

Most of the Brookers were farm workers or orchardists. So they were all to do with the land.

Didn’t work at the freezing works?

No. The ancestors would’ve worked at the freezing works; but in 1931 when the freezing works were demolished, Mum would have been about twenty, I think, so most of her brothers … three of her brothers actually went to Wellington to the Railway Workshops and became railway engineers, which was a very brave thing for young men from Pakipaki to go to Wellington. And one ended up in Cross Creek, where they changed the chains or something …

For going over the Remutaka Hill.

Yes, yes. That was Uncle Lawrence. And Uncle Ted eventually settled in Palmerston North, and he owned Palmerston North Auto Wreckers; and Uncle Jack was in Otane on the railways. But the others worked on farms or … two of them were orchardists.

What sort of fruits?

Just had more plums and old apple trees. The orchard … my two uncles that [who] were orchardists were not at Pakipaki, so no, there’s not a great selection of fruit. Used to get fruit from Bone’s Orchard which was in Maraekakaho Road. And when I was a child Mum used to get the cream truck because we had cows, and so the cream truck came every day to pick up the cans of cream. And on the way they’d stop off at Bone’s and pick up the fruit for Mum so that she always preserved pears and peaches which came from Bones, delivered by the cream truck, which was quite exciting.

How did she earn money when your father died? Did she get a widow’s pension?

No. My father died when Mum was forty-seven, and he was sixty-three. And so he left her with property and debt, and my mother, with the help of the Farm Advisor from the Public Trust, actually built a milking shed and got electric milking machines and purchased a herd of cows. Now, my Mum didn’t even have a washing machine, let alone having to learn how to operate milking machines; plus because she supplied cream, had this jolly elaborate separator system that had to be taken apart every day and cleaned. And the other thing was that Mum couldn’t have a bull – she didn’t want to have a bull, so she had artificial insemination. And Mum was very modest, and so she would always be talking about cows that were ‘in a bad way’, which as a child is very intriguing, ‘cause you didn’t know what that meant. And she’d be ringing up Mr Southern to come, and Jim Southern was the artificial inseminator who used to come to our house. So Mum milked cows, and she worked extremely hard.

Did the situation with the other family improve at all?

Oh right, yes. I think once the grandparents had died my Moroney relations were very supportive of Mum, because our father was an alcoholic. And Mum stuck with him and put up with a tremendous amount of things that modern women just would not put up with. And she was very well supported by the younger Moroney children, and my Aunty Tot who was a spinster, she actually paid for a washing machine for Mum. It was on hire purchase or something …

But she got one.

Yes. Yes.

Aunty Tot, was her real name Dorothy?

No. Her real name was Imelda Theresa. My father’s family all had nicknames. And it was after Dad died that Mum got a washing machine. No, no – the younger members of my father’s family were very supportive of my mother. Well my mother had been really good friends with these women when she was the housemaid, because Aunty Tot and her were a similar age and so they’d had a really good relationship. But then it changed of course, because of what happened.

Now to go back to Pakipaki, the railway line …

Oh yes – the Pakipaki railway station – because the railway line still operates – the railway station operated for years and years, because the line from Amner’s Lime Works was trucked out from there. And there used to be, closer into town, where they used to actually put stock on to the trains; there was a sheepyards at Longlands, and my uncle Bob actually worked there as a stockman. And they actually used to load sheep and stock which would’ve been purchased at the Stortford Lodge saleyards, so the Pakipaki railway station operated most probably all the time I was living in Pakipaki. And in those days there were five railway houses – there was the station master’s house and another house on one side of the railway line, and then the other three houses were on the other side of the railway line, and they ran adjacent to our farm.

And did you have district parties?

Oh yes – fantastic! There used to be … my mother was a member of the Women’s Division of Federated Farmers; she was actually a life member. And so Women’s Division was a very strong organisation in that rural environment. And I went to Women’s Division from age ten, because it was at night and Mum wouldn’t leave me at home, so I went to Women’s Division. And there was a family … the Speers family … who were very social people, and they used to have lots and lots of parties and … [I] can remember, you know, going to Houngarea Hall and having fantastic suppers.

What was the hall’s name?

Houngarea. Yes, there’s [there’re] two maraes at Pakipaki, and Houngarea is the one next to the Catholic Church. I’ve got vivid memories of doing Auld Lang Syne, which nobody knows about now, but all the functions always finished with that. No … very sociable community; it was a very large community in those days.

Would there’ve been many children at that little primary school you went to?

I don’t know, Erica – I was only six and a half when I finished. There were only about four white kids.

Was there one classroom?

Oh no! No, no, no. No. There would’ve been … no, it went up to Standard VI of course, in those days. No, it was a full sized school. I mean, the Pakipaki School’s still there, but we would’ve had more pupils in those days because there wasn’t a school at Bridge Pa, so Bridge Pa kids were bused to Pakipaki, so there was just one school for Pakipaki and Bridge Pa. It was a full size school.

And is your house still there?

No. Our house is not still there. The milking shed is still there; there was a fire in our house and it’s been destroyed. And the gateway’s still there but it’s all overgrown now, it’s nothing like it was when it was our home. But when my grandparents built what was supposed to be the hotel which became a boarding house, they also built a bakery, which was the house which we actually grew up in; and a billiards room in Pakipaki. And so in the actual boarding house, on the ground floor the Moroneys had the general store and post office, and then next door was the bakery and next door to that was the billiard room.

It’s hard to imagine isn’t it, now?

It’s completely hard to imagine; it’s actually quite sad when you drive out there now.

And after the meat works went, they [there] would still be people that worked on local farms and things?

I don’t think so, because I think that it would have been damaged in the earthquake; don’t really know about that, but no, it was closed. They provided accommodation for freezing workers more than anything else. Local farmers – people would’ve lived on the farm. My grandfather’s two brothers, Daniel and Mick, had built hotels in Central Hawke’s Bay. I think one was in Waipukurau but one was definitely in Waipawa, and that was what my grandfather had wished to do and that was why …

And they were Moroneys?

Yes – they were my father’s [grandfather’s] brothers.

Did they ever say why they came out to New Zealand?

Well no, but I’m presuming it was because of the potato famine, and they were coming out here for a better life, but these people were dead long … and my father died when I was ten, so there was no …

No follow on?

No. So my older sister, who’s eleven years older than I, was married – I think it would’ve been about eighteen months after Dad died – and she married Peter McElwee, and he came from Tawa and so my sister moved to Wellington, which meant then that there was just my brother and Mum and I. And we were a really tight family, and my mother was such a hard worker. And my brother had a desire to own his own farm, and he became a farm manager and eventually he managed to get a Lands & Survey farm in Rere in Gisborne. And that was fantastic for them but quite devastating for Mum and I, because it mean that then he and his wife – and they also had three boys the same age as our three boys – were moving to Gisborne, which sort of seemed like a long way away. [Speaking together] But … yeah. Once we got married, Mum only stayed in Pakipaki for one year because it was too lonely for her; and so the property was subdivided into ten acre blocks and Mum moved into a lovely flat in St Aubyn Street . And my mother used to say that she never went to sleep without thanking God for all the good things in her life.

So when I was growing up of course, there were very few white children in Pakipaki because it was a very strong Māori community. And we lived right in the pa opposite Mihiroa Marae; and so I played with Māori kids, and I don’t actually think I even knew the word Māori – they were just the kids across the road. My mother wouldn’t allow us to go over there and play because there wasn’t a great hygiene regime going on, and they used to just go to the toilet outside sometimes. But the Peatman children came to our house all of the time and played. And I actually learned to ride a two wheeler bike because Tyron Peatman had a little two wheeler bike; otherwise I most probably would never’ve learned to ride a bike ‘til I was an adult, because we didn’t have any money for bikes.

And the Māori women used to come – and Mum was sort of like a confidante for them – and they would come; and Kiwi Mako in particular used to come down and have a cup of tea with Mum some nights. And I would be listening to these conversations, and one conversation that intrigued me greatly – but I knew better than to ask what it meant or else I would never’ve been allowed to stay in the room again – was that Kiwi was always telling Mum who was ‘up the duff’. [Chuckle] And the only duff I knew was a plum duff pudding; and [chuckle] I couldn’t imagine what was the excitement about somebody being up the duff!

And the other thing that sticks with me greatly, is the fact that we had a telephone – and not many people had telephones – and Sue Peatman used to come across and ring up a meat order. And she used to ask for several things but she always asked for neck and breast. And once again, I was desperate to know what it meant but I wouldn’t ask, because I would be banned when she came to use the phone. But it sounded so intriguing to me and I used to always wish that we could have neck and breast; and now I know it’s the cheapest cut of meat you can have, and we had our own sheep meat. But [chuckles] it was very intriguing as a child to listen to things.

Pakipaki was a Māori settlement. The white families were employed by the railway and the only other white family I can think of that we had close contact with in Pakipaki were the McDonalds; Alec McDonald was an agricultural contractor. The rest were Māori; and the Mass at Pakipaki in those days of course, was in Latin, and any prayers or hymns that the congregation joined in with, were in Māori.

Did you end up being able to speak Maori?

No, not at all.

That’s a bit sad I think, in a way.

Yes, I know; but Maori people didn’t actually speak Maori anyway. They spoke English. So other than at Mass, where they sung the hymns in Māori …

[Ends abruptly]