Thorn, Kenneth (Ken) Interview

Today is 23rd November 1922 [2022], and I’m Jan Dearing interviewing Ken Thorn. Ken, would you like to tell us how old you are and when you were born.

I’m ninety-six, and I was born on the 25th of September 1926. I was born in Wellington. My mother, who was a native of Napier, was born in Ahuriri sometime, I gather, about 1998 [1898]. She had come to Wellington to get out of the family home and get herself a job. And she met my father there who had retired from the Navy; he’d joined the navy when he was fourteen, at the beginning of World War I. and when he came to New Zealand he changed over to the New Zealand Navy about 1921, I think.

So which navy was he in originally?

The Royal … British Navy.

And were you allowed to join the Navy when you were fourteen?

As far as I know; and he served time during the war. He didn’t talk a lot about what they did, so he was probably at a school in the navy service I would’ve thought, for at least a year or more. But he talked very seldom about his life there, but at one stage, about 1917, ‘18 or ‘19 … round about that stage … they were up in Russia fighting, and it was up the freezing areas ‘cause he spoke of [how] you had to be careful putting your hand on the steel railings on the ship; you stuck to the thing. Anyway, he joined the New Zealand Navy from the Royal Navy because he got a shilling a day extra, or something like that.

And he must’ve met my mother more than once here, and anyway they got married. And in the early stages that was the beginning of the Depression; things were pretty tough. Then I was born – probably made it a lot tougher. And I can vaguely remember as a … well I could walk … we lived in a back alley in Newtown in Wellington, and I can vaguely … I could take you there now except that it’s all been built out.

So you went to school in Wellington?

No. My father suffered quite severely from coughing and he shifted out to the Hutt Valley – hey, I am not a party to the thing when they shifted out. And we were renting various places to live in. At one stage we lived in a place called Moera, and we were living in the back of the shoemaker’s shop. We had a house on the back of that, in Moera. And I started school at Randwick School and I was there for about a year, and we shifted to Waiwhetu and I used to walk to school, which was about … I don’t know, [a] couple of mile[s]. [Chuckle] Got to admit that today I would not walk it, or even virtually at any stage I would be reluctant to walk it. How my mother let me go as a young guy just starting school, to walk to school, I do not know.

So you were walking two miles to school at five years old?

Five years, and I had my primary school education at Waiwhetu School.

And it would be unusual in this day and age to be living out the back of a shop?

I think so. But at that time most of those people lived in the back of the shops.

And so during that time was your father still in the navy?

No. He was working for the Post Office, I think mainly digging trenches and things like that.

You said that you grew up with the Depression, so you have some memories of what it was like during that time?

Yes. Where we were living in the Hutt Valley was [there were] fairly sparse properties there at that stage. There was [were] lots of market gardens. Where we were we faced out to – on the other side of the road – to a great big paddock which we called Dooley’s Paddock; I remember that. And then there was another road, and then there was the Māori land which extended all over the top of the hill. And we faced that. And then they started – it must’ve been at the end of the Depression – they started Government housing, and they were mass building over the land where lots of market gardens were. And later on … I’ll tell you, we lived in one of the houses that was built about that time … my wife and I.

Oh, did you?

Yeah. Finally we shifted to Waiwhetu, and I went to school there. Then when I was old enough I went to Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College.

How old were you then?

I would’ve been about thirteen, I think … twelve, somewhere about that age, I have no real recollection. I used to cycle ‘bout three miles to school and back home again at night.

Did you enjoy school?

I liked school, yes, very much. [The] sort of thing I remember is we had an epidemic at one stage. One of the younger kids than me lived round the corner, and he died overnight from, what do you call it? Paralysis.

Wasn’t polio, was it? Polio?

Poliomyelitis, yes. Went through that. And then I can remember when … I think it was the King had his twenty-fifth anniversary, and we all went to the park; and they had fireworks on display that night. We sang ‘God Save the King’ and went home again. [Chuckles] Yes. My father was English, so you know, he took notice of who was in the Royal family …

You were all good Royalists …

Right. Then I went to College, and then from College I graduated out and had to get a job. I had certain qualifications; at the time there was University Entrance; part of an engineering degree and other odd things that I started. I could’ve got a job as a cadet in the Government, and it didn’t appeal to me.

How old were you when you graduated?

Fifteen? Maybe sixteen?

Did they have Matriculation?

No. I looked in the newspaper for work and … oh, after a week or so I saw an advert in the paper, and it needed a person with the qualifications that I had. And I wrote and applied for the position. I didn’t know what it was or what they were doing but it was a job. And I pestered the person by telephone until he said he had no other applicants and he would give me a trial. And he was a one man band surveyor, and I could sign up with him with the Survey Institute, and he would teach me. And the qualification … I had to serve four years and pass the exams. Didn’t know what they were about; had not a clue. And I signed up, and all he really wanted me for was a chain man … a labourer. And we started off together and I worked for him for about a year and a half, and unfortunately he died. He was an old school person, and we had plenty of holidays but you worked for it, scrambling across the hills and whatnot. And yeah, I had a lot of respect for him, he was a good guy. Anyway, we had a new boss; and there was my new boss, the girl in the office, and me.

So how old were you then? About sixteen or seventeen, yes?

Yeah, sixteen, seventeen. And with my boss dying, the first stage of me beginning surveying … I’d cut lines in Wainuiomata with a slasher, and I held the chain and pulled that. Any rate, we changed over a bit, and with my boss being crook, one of his sons came out from school. And I had to go to Paraparam, [Paraparaumu] and we stayed at a private hotel there. And I had his equipment, and I was laying out and staking out a subdivision of a road and some lots; I had never done anything remotely using the equipment, and I had to teach myself how to do it and put these marks in. And we were successful.

Just going back a little bit, Ken; you said you cut lines with a slasher. What kind of lines are we talking about?

That you could see through. We measured up hill, down dale, and you had to clear it away so that you could run the tape through, which I was employed for; held the end of it so that the surveyor chap could measure it.

So surveyors would not do that …

Yes.

… in this day and age – would they cut things with slashers and so forth?

Oh, debatable, but I imagine some of them under certain circumstances would do it. I would think nowadays, they’d probably get a dozer in and clear the ground.

With your new boss, how long did you work ..?

He came in, and he must’ve been reasonably impressed with me because he kept me on. And after when I got near to the end of my cadetship – by the way, my original cadetship, I got thirty shillings [30/- or £1/10/-] a month. I don’t know whether you know how much that was, it was very little. But okay, we got through that, and then my new boss, he was [a] good guy. And he and I stayed together, and my wages went up to something I could actually almost live on.

So where were you living at that stage? Still at home with your parents?

Yes, still at home, my family supported me.

They probably needed to.

Yes. We’d worked together for probably five years, and I qualified [in] 1951, but prior to qualification I was basically a partner with him in the business. He accepted, and I went out and ran the chain, and was surveying for him. I knew what it was and I could do all the necessary work; and yeah, he took me as a partner.

So you virtually started as an apprentice …

Yes.

… and finished up as a partner?

Yes. And I stayed in the firm for twenty years. By that time we were quite a lot bigger; there were six or seven partners in the firm at that stage, and unfortunately, I fell out with some of them right from the beginning. They were more interested in money than anything, I felt, and some of the practices were not … as a good, loyal person to the firm I didn’t agree with them. And we’d bought a share in this practice in Napier in 1964, and part of the agreement – on me departing I had to talk to my wife and get her consent – would she move with me to Napier.

I feel we’ve missed a bit out there, Ken – I think you’d better tell me how you met your wife and when you got married. Was this all in Lower Hutt?

Lower Hutt.

Think you should tell me that story.

Well, what happened really, was my parents … my father particularly … was keen on racehorses, and every year they went to Christchurch to some race meeting. I wasn’t involved in any of that. And this particular year they went off, and the woman across the road asked me over for tea one night. We were quite friendly, you know, and anyway, I went over to tea; and I thought, ‘Aargh … I have to do something in return.’ So I volunteered to take her daughter out to the films. Hey, movies were a big thing at that stage. And we went to the pictures, and later on that girl was the girl I got engaged to and was getting married [going to marry]. She informed me [chuckle] that she’d informed people that she was going to marry me. [Chuckles] Any rate, yeah, we got married. We bought a house and it was an ex-State house. And we had a couple of kids, two boys; so that when this business of going to Hawke’s Bay … and I have to admit that we used to take our holidays in Hawke’s Bay … that’s what we did, you know. Part of the deal with my other partners was I would take the share of the business that was here. And the partner that had been left up here – he was Pat Dagg – and Pat was quite keen on me [??] And I came up here, mainly because the guy we bought out had gone to the university in Dunedin as a lecturer on surveying.

And so you came to Napier in 196 …?

I took the partnership about 1968, and we shifted up about 1970.

And where did you live when you first came to Napier?

In … you’re asking me an awkward question, I can’t tell you. Had a great house compared with … when we were in Wellington our first house we bought – oh, dare I tell you what happened then?

Yes.

Bought this house and it faced due north – oh well, the back of it, where all the living was faced due north; had a garden in there – being newly married I was a keen gardener, all in veges [and] what-have-you. Any rate, we were that keen on it we decided that we would enlarge the house, give it a bit more kitchen room more than anything. Any rate, we couldn’t find a builder. Everyone told us we couldn’t do what we wanted to do other than virtually take [taking] the roof off; and you’d have to do that again and that was too much, and oohh … So we were left with the choice of finding a place and [or] building another house, which we did. We moved up to Trentham and built a house there. So we had to leave our new house that we had built, and I had to convince my wife that it was all right. And any rate, we came up to Napier; ooh, now I can’t remember the name of the road. We built – we had about three quarters of an acre so we had chooks and two young boys running around on it.

How old were the boys when you came to Napier?

One of them was starting school, the other was starting secondary school. Our oldest boy went to Taradale High; I think that was open at that stage.

Yes, 1970, I think.

Any rate, he went to Taradale High and he did tolerably well at school, and he decided he would follow medicine. And at the time that he went to Dunedin there was [were] two girls, him … were there any other boys? There were a couple of other kids; so there were five children went from Taradale High to Dunedin. Three kids out of the one class got scholarships to do medicine, three of them. All came back to Napier; [chuckle] oh, two of them are here now I think.

As doctors?

As doctors. My son’s in Wellington, he went all round the world. And my other son was doing school.

And so the house that you shifted to, did it satisfy your wife?

Up to a point; after we got through the second rebuild. We did the kitchen up twice, we had a new front door. Part of the lounge, the windows that faced the sun, mainly were shadowed by the trees. Our house was very nice. We had a pool and a fountain in it, and big walls where we could sit around; and it was very nice. She didn’t like it. [Chuckle] But we put up with it for a number of years, and I flogged it off to a guy from Auckland and he built seven houses on it. And I took the money and ran.

And so where did you shift to? This house?

We had this built for us. We’d done all the survey through here; I knew what it was all about. And she was pretty happy with this.

So Ken you’ve done a lot of surveying in Napier. Could you tell me something about the work you’ve done while you’ve been living in Napier?

Well we did this subdivision. Mainly our work was for developers, although I think one of the subdivisions – we did Parklands subdivision initially for the Council. I think we did about five or six hundred sections there for them. We were only doing the surveying and the survey design, but we’d done this subdivision here, Knightsbridge subdivision, and people were reasonably impressed with what it was like. We did one on the hill up here which … they took our design and our engineering stuff and it became the standard for engineering work here which was good. Yeah. And we had a lot of Taradale – we did small subdivisions here, twenty, thirty, forty lots, because the services had just arrived and tied it to Napier; it’d been the Taradale Borough Council. And it was just fortunate we arrived at that time. We had quite a big practice extending down to the Central Hawke’s Bay. We did work in Central Hawke’s Bay a lot which we still do today.

You’re still working at ninety-six years of age?

So they tell me. [Chuckles] I’m not really working. Hey, I have people working for me.

Ken, I think that still qualifies as working … the things you do.

I am qualified still, and am allowed to work. At various stages, the latter part of my career, Bethany and I have gone out to do bits of work, but mainly … well, there are limitations on my physical ability to do a lot of it nowadays. I can do … I look after the internal staff stuff here.

And I think you also did some surveying in Tamatea, am I right?

Oh yes, we did lots in Tamatea, yeah. You know, I can’t think of any particular ones, but after about the seventies … oh, I could tell you this; that we ran out of work in the eighties, say, and the beginning of the nineties. And I was working for Carter Holt’s; they were the client, and I finished up doing work all the way through to Auckland. We did various subdivisions in Rotorua, Hamilton … where else did we work? But they helped us out a lot; Paraparam [Paraparaumu], we did some more work down there.

Is that when your firm was Dagg & Thorn?

Yes. It was the same firm.

So how long have Dagg & Thorn been operating?

Well, since 1960-something …

‘68?

‘68, yeah.

That’s a long time …

Oh, [chuckles] not particularly, when you live it. Then we started to go back. We had various offices in Napier – we used to have an office in the main drag, upstairs – it’s now a restaurant.

Is this at Emerson Street?

Yeah. And then we moved over to the next street, Dickens Street; we had offices there. And any rate, while we there we were thinking of buying the building we were in, and we sort of thought, ‘Oh, we’ll buy this building, it pretty well suits us.’ And while we were doing that the land agent who was dealing with us suddenly came in one day and said, “No use thinking of buying this. A guy” – he was a well-known financier I suppose you’d call him – “has bought Hawke’s Bay Farmers out and your building is part of their property, and we’ve sold it.”

So you got left high and dry?

Yeah. Anyway at that stage, out in Tamatea which was being built gradually, was a building which had various occupancy and it was owned by a guy in Auckland. And it’d had a chemist built into the building initially – they had a floor built in and you went up the stairs to the floor and what-not; and there was about two thousand-odd square feet in this thing that we could lease. And we went and had a look at it and it was a bit battered; any rate, we did a deal with the guy – we would do a bit of paperhanging and what-not and he wouldn’t charge us any rent for the first year. Pretty good deal. So we had these offices there, and at that time there were three of us in partnership; there was a guy Pat Dagg, Ken Thorn, and a guy named Peter Weston was working for us. And we were all footy supporters, and ordinary guys. And any rate, we looked at these offices, and we had space and we did them [it] up a bit, and from then on we lived in that building just about. And it was good. And then finally, the place had been empty for a long … and they had it as a supermarket down below with nobody in it; and then they managed to convince a guy from Bay View to come in and play grocer, and he gradually built it up there. And we lived upstairs, and we had some hairdressers filled the top. They decided they’d pull our building down and build a new building for the supermarket, and we had to get out. My partner Pat Dagg died; Peter Weston was pretty sickly, and I wasn’t that well … oh, I was all right. And okay – we decided we were going to close up.

And what year was that?

I couldn’t tell you … be about, I don’t know, five years ago … it’d be five … it’d be longer than that when Pat died. And then Peter and I carried it on and we got a notice to get out, they were going to pull it down around our ears. Oh, at that same time we were marking out the building to be built.

The building that was going to put you out of your offices, you were actually doing the surveying for the new building? [Chuckle]

Yeah. And any rate we went and had a look through the office and – what did you take? Where’re we going to go? Nobody had any ideas, and so we threw everything out. Records – waste of time keeping it, we’re closing. And Peter went home, and he was living on his own then up on the hill. I come into this house, my wife had died. I was here. And any rate my daughter and Bethany, were helping us – oh, Bethany was working for us at that time.

Were there others working for you? ‘Cause you had quite a busy, big business, didn’t you?

Yes.

How many employees would you have had at the height?

Don’t forget that originally we were three surveyors. So at various times we had people working for us. We’ve still got people working for us; Bethany’s one of them. But a surveyor who lives out that way, he works for me now, or he’s sort of working on his own but he’s working for me. And when we originally started way back in 1970 we had two young guys come out of university and they both worked for us ‘cause we had work going, you see. We had a chainman that … somewhere – this is going to rock you – I’ve got a photograph of our chainman after he retired. And one day I got told, “Look on the email we sent you; Ray is riding his mower down the road and the coppers stopped him.” [Chuckle] Yeah – that was our chainman, Ray, and Ray for worked for another twenty years with us, and he was part of the furniture, you know, and when we pulled out he left. Oh no, we had a different guy … well there was Ray and there was … I can’t even remember all their names.

No, but you obviously had quite a few people working for you and it sounds like good relationships?

Yeah. We had good relationships, and we had the Government surveyors here; they had a different set up altogether, and they used to bring surveyors from out of college … out of the university … and train them up and get them registered. And we used to get them coming over – oh, we would take them under our hand [wing] and take them out and do the field work and treat them as cadets. And they would go back to the department having complied with the requirements of their contract with the thing.

So you trained a lot of those young ..?

A lot of boys we had come through. We had these two boys that came through university to start off with – they both finished up in businesses of their own here as surveyors. One of them was what Bethany was talking about; he is still practising. He has an orchard up the road there, and he comes in and sees me, looks after me and brings me fruit. [Chuckles]

Now we seemed to have jumped somewhere because I knew you had two sons; when was your daughter born?

She was born in Napier eleven years after my second son was born. She was a bit of a shock.

Yeah. [Chuckle] I imagine with three children you may have some grandchildren?

We have grandchildren, yes.

How many grandchildren do you have?

Grandchildren. This is a bit different. My daughter has two girls; she had difficulty having children, otherwise I would tell you something about her. She is a schoolteacher basically, but she works for a firm looking after young children … can’t think what they are, they have a special name. There is an organisation which covers worldwide that had a system of teaching children growing up, that kids are taught to behave properly, and they have a whole system going through. And she is qualified – apart from any other qualifications – to follow this type of education for children. And she is a teacher; she more or less runs the place. And that’s her complete life.

And she lives here in Napier?

Oh yes. And the system, their place, is right here just down the road from Knightsbridge. Any rate – and she is mad on children. If we ever win Lotto I’ve got to buy her a particular house that she has her eyes on and we will convert it to the type of thing she does.

For children.

With children.

And what about your sons?

Well one’s a doctor in Wellington, and that’s where he lives. He’s got a house that he has rebuilt twice in the town belt so that he’s got trees round him, native birds everywhere. I was talking to him on the telephone the other day and he was saying the kakas are coming down on to the terrace there and taking stuff off your hands.

The other one, he’s a real throwback – h e started off working on a dairy farm up in the Bay of Plenty. Nowadays … thank God he came back to Hawke’s Bay … he worked on various farms round the place here. He married a local girl here, had a couple of kids, and then they split up. And yes, that ‘bout sums it up. And he moved to Auckland and he became a high tech [technical] guy for a chemical firm up there, and he runs their telephone service and all the rest of it. And he’s still there.

So you have a very long association with Hawke’s Bay with your mother having been born here, and then you, and your family …

Oh, my daughter lives here. The son that’s [who’s] in Auckland, he comes here every three months, every two months; he comes down and spends a weekend with us. He talked his present partner into shifting down here but then he couldn’t get his job to move with him, and it became a bit different.

Auckland people like coming to Hawke’s Bay …

I don’t want them here.

[Chuckle] Now there’s one thing that we haven’t really covered and I think we definitely should, and that is, you’re a bit of a sporting hero with golf. When did you start playing golf, how old were you?

I have a feeling both my father and mother played golf at a nine-hole golf course in Lower Hutt. I had damaged my arm and I was unable to play cricket and I think I was stopped from swimming at that stage; I used to be a very keen swimmer too. And I started to go over and carry the clubs for my mother, and while she sat with the ladies and had a cup of tea, I would whack the ball around and I learnt to play golf. So I learnt to play golf – it was during the war and things were pretty tough for things like golf balls; and somehow or other my father and mother knew somebody who would give me some golf balls. And I went round and saw this fellow, and what did he do? He gave me a butter box full of golf balls. Some of them were pretty rough, but let’s face it, for a beginner they were pretty good. So at that time when you couldn’t buy a golf ball I had a box of them, and … didn’t matter if I whacked a couple of them over the fence – I learnt [taught] myself to play golf. And then my father had shifted on from the nine-hole course to the adjoining place which was the Hutt Golf Course … Hutt Golf Club … he was playing on the big golf club. And somehow or other an opportunity came about … oh, I had joined the other nine-hole club and was playing there and I had the opportunity to join my father there which I did.

On the eighteen-hole golf course?

Yeah, on the big course. And [it] turned out I was quite good at it.

Think it was better than quite good … what was your handicap?

Oh yes. Well on the nine-hole course I had holed in one, and I’d got down to about 6, I think. And then I went to the other course and spent a lot of time on there. [Chuckles] It was at the stage I was starting work, and there tended to be days when I couldn’t work but I could play golf.

So it was a real love of golf?

Well, particularly at Christmas time; I remember one Christmas – now this was with my original boss, and he never came back to work until February – and he left me with a job to do and there was no time limit on it; and I was a dirty dog on him – I spent a fair bit of that out on the golf course.

What was the highlight of your golfing … your finest achievement?

Oh, getting to zero, you know …

You’re talking about handicap here, aren’t you?

Yeah.

That’s very impressive.

Aawww … We had at our golf club at one stage … I think they filled out the team that played in the club competition with guys who were zero, and nothing else. And that took a bit of fighting to get up to there; there was something to achieve. And it was good until I got married.

Then your wife said?

Well, yes … mmm …

[Chuckle] “Not quite so much golf.”

Yeah. Oh, actually I’d started taking her out to this and that – took her to golf a couple of times, [chuckle] and she wasn’t keen on playing golf.

Understandable.

Any rate, we shifted out of our building, our firm, and we came in here. And my daughter, Bethany, helped us shift all the junk into the garage and then around, and the calculators and whatnot; and we still had jobs in hand that had to be done. Oh, in the meantime I had had an accident where I broke my femur, and I had to be in hospital for about a month. Up until then I was good and things were going fine. Going into hospital, Beth ran the firm – she still does. And somehow or other, when I came home I didn’t feel like doing a lot of work; I couldn’t do any field work and that was sort of the end of it, except a lot of our clients kept on hammering us to carry on. Now at that time Peter died, we buried him; and I’ve been living here on my own now for twenty years, so it’s pretty easy. She’s in charge, I only do what she says.

So you’ve gone from boss to worker. That was a very unpleasant experience with your broken leg.

Yes. What had happened was the car with my dog in it was parked in the parking area at Taradale, the one around the back. And I’d been to the bank; I came out and there was a young fellow there … I think he was a bit short on mentality … and he was yelling out, “Get the dog in the car – you shouldn’t have a dog in the car.” [I] told him to mind his own business. I was about to get in the car, and I was walking through to go to the back of the car and sort of half-pie bending down to the back door, and this guy pushed me from the back and I fell in the gutter. And I think I was unconscious, or I was going in or out, something like that, but somebody … oh, there was [were] people rushed over immediately and I could hear somebody saying – some woman – she knew who I was. [Chuckle] She recognised the dog, and she knew where my daughter was … my wife was dead. And I knew that, and that was the last I knew. Now I don’t remember the ambulance coming and taking me to the hospital or anything like that.

And so then you had that long stay in hospital …

Had about a month there. Oh, the first part of it, I woke up and there were quite a few people there to see me, including my son from Wellington. “What are you doing here?” You know, sort of thing. Any rate, he was talking … they were preparing me [to] put this blasted thing in my leg … and he had been rung up. And he’d taught the guys – he use to do a bit – well, he still does – the tutoring for the anaesthesia group; and he was talking to these guys ‘cause he knew them. And he said to me, “You’re in the hospital now”, and I said, “Yeah, I thought that. What’re you doing here?” And he said to me, we’re going to patch your leg up, you’ve got a broken leg.” “What?!” And they gave me some dope and I got real nightmares. Yeah, nightmares … things were not as they should be, and I went through two or three days of that and it was dreadful.

So did they put a plate .. ?

No. It appears to be normal, but they had wanted to get us all out of hospital before Christmas, so we were there all of December, part of November I think. I came home, and the dog had been left in the house and there was – it was a bit of a mess, more than somewhat. I don’t know who had fed it – probably the daughter or my next-door neighbour – looked after her to a degree. But the house needed cleaning out, and we’re still shifting out stuff. I have a person which [who] … I shouldn’t tell you this, but the hospital had a person come in to help me. They make my bed and clean the bathroom out, and that’s about all they do. But they came in to help, and they have been doing that ever since I had my accident, or since I came out of hospital. And I think it’s under the hospital getting paid for these people to come in by the – what is it?

ACC? [Accident Compensation Commission]

ACC, yeah. I think I’m still working on that, and I enjoy it. I get some great people come in. I’ve got one at the moment who … she is quite young, ‘bout sixty, little more … and she is great.

That’s good. You look very well and you move well so you’ve made a wonderful recovery, but you’ve decided to cut back a bit on your work.

Had no choice.

Oh well, Ken, we’ll just close there now – thank you very much for your interview. It’s been interesting for me, and I’m sure it’ll be interesting for those who listen to it.