Whittle, Eileen Interview

Good afternoon. Today is Thursday 6th May 2021. I am Lyn Sturm and I’m about to interview Eileen Whittle. Eileen lives out in the country at Puketitiri, west of Hastings. It’s over to you now, Eileen, so if you give us your date of birth …

You’ll have to prompt me.

We can do that. [Intermittent background hum]

Well, I was born in Ashburton when there was six inches of snow on the ground, and it was on 2nd September 1930. My parents had a farm out at Winchmore which was about seven or eight miles from Ashburton, and I loved it out there, grew up to love it.

My Dad was a farmer of sheep … half-breeds … and oats, and grew grain. The war came and my Dad wanted to go overseas. He sold the farm, and yeah, we had a mortgage on it, ‘cause he’d gone to the First World War. No, because of wanting to go to the war, he was sure that he would go; he was turned down. Mum and Dad had six children at that time, and they were a bit lenient on people who had larger families. So we [he] got a job out with the Farmers Co-op and we lived out there at Wheatstone on a lovely place and he managed that.

And then he got a job at The Elms, Kaikoura. We were only there about eighteen months but it was like years … all our family felt as though they’d been there a long time. It was such a change from Winchmore where we lived in the beginning. And by then we had two or three more in the family – no, two.

So how many children were there altogether?

Nine, but not at that time. We loved it up there, it was so different. My aunt, who lived with us almost from the time I was three, took us each Sunday for adventure trips around, walking through trees and everywhere, and it was just wonderful. And we were introduced to the native pigeon, tui, bellbird and other birds that never ever came to Winchmore, and I just loved it.

I started school at Allington [Allenton] School in Ashburton. We were picked up by the school bus and delivered back in the late afternoon.

And then we went to the Tinwald School. If I go like that, you’ll know that I’m in deep water. My mother said that she would never like to have children going to Tinwald School, [chuckle] but that’s where we ended up. But then we went to Kaikoura, and it was a Catholic community mostly; at least I think it was … and [the] headmaster didn’t like anyone who wasn’t a Catholic. So I wasn’t a Catholic. That would’ve been 19 … no, I’ve forgotten. If I go like that, you’ll know that I’m in deep water. Because the house at Rokeby, Rakaia, had people in it we had to wait until they’d gone; and Dad went and worked there as manager until the house was ready. But my brother Peter and I went to Papanui Technical College. We both loved it there, and we had to bike five or six miles there and back from my grandmother’s house.

Then we went to Rokeby – that’s out from Rakaia. It was great living there … wonderful soil. And I had learnt to milk a cow when I was four and a half with a Jersey heifer who had … yes, she had teats about just an inch long ‘cause she was very young … because no one else could milk her. That’s where … it was the beginning of my milking story.

Four and a half!

But we loved it there. And then in 1945 … I don’t know whether it was 1945 … my parents left there; my Dad had a manager’s job but they went to live in Ashburton and he came and went each day.

I was fifteen in 1945, and I had such trouble going to school. I went to school with a boy on the farm. They had a horse and gig and he and I went to Rakaia each day and got on the train to Ashburton Tech. [Technical School] It was great fun, we’d go to put the horse in the blacksmith’s yard and let her go, and then at night time or late afternoon we’d go back home; harness up the horse.

I left school at fifteen in September, and in the next year Dad asked me what I would like to do – nursing, teaching or whatever it was; he said, “Well, you could be a tailoress if you wanted to.” So I said, “Righto”; so I went to Ballantyne’s and was there for about two years.

Because I had to work on Saturdays and Sundays – one was a Jehovah’[s] Witness and one was a Seventh Day Adventist, and the other was just an ordinary person – I cleaned and washed and did all sorts of jobs at both places, and I really got very, very tired. Anyway, I had to go to the doctor because suddenly I wasn’t well, and I had terrific blood pressure; so the doctor said, “You’re a country girl – you go back and stay there until you get okay to live in town.”

So I went and stayed with an aunty and uncle. They had six children and one of them was always a bit naughty to me, so when I was out in the yard in their horse trough – there was a tap there – he would’ve been about nine or ten, and I picked him up and put his head under the cold tap. And he wasn’t pleased about that; he went and told his mother, and my aunt came round the corner with six children, three girls and three boys. And my aunt said, “What have you been doing with my Collie?” But it did cure him from being naughty to me. Anyway, I did enjoy it; I used to ride the horse there.

I omitted to say that I was horse-mad and aeroplane-mad. My brother and I saw the first aeroplane down at the [?]; it went over our property when I was about four or five, and we thought, ‘Oh, that’ll be King[s]ford Smith’, so we rushed inside, and my brother and I … we couldn’t get in there fast enough to say, “I saw it first! I saw it first!” But [in] later years my brother became a pilot at is own expense, and flew when he could – not a job though. And I went on to love aeroplanes; I’m just crazy about aeroplanes. I envied the women who came from America delivering war planes. And I did have a go at flying, and loved it, but it was very difficult because I was already married when I was doing these things.

Later on Mr Frogley offered me an aeroplane. He said, “There’s an aeroplane” … I’ve forgotten which one, an Avro or something … “in the shed, and if you like to get the chooks out of it and all the rubbish, you can have it.” When I broached the subject to my husband he said “It would have to be in a shed. We can’t afford a shed for a plane; we need sheds for hay.” So end of story about that one.

But when I left some casual work at Rokeby, my mother rang one day and said, “There’s a job advertised in the paper that would just suit you, at Hanmer Springs.” And I said, “Oh dear! Have to go way up there” … I said, “No thanks.” Anyway, later on the ad [advertisement] was in the paper again, so I wrote away; and the lady that I was working for was not pleased, but I went up there and strangely enough they actually wanted two girls. And the other girl was a girl who was in my class at Papanui Technical College. I just loved Hanmer Springs. If you don’t have that bit of fun in the seventeens, eighteens or nineteens, you never have it again. It seems to be a time of life, but nowadays, perhaps it’s not.

I’ve got to get my brain to sort out here. [Break, during which the topic changes to Eileen’s husband]

Do you want his name? Rob Whittle, and he was in the Air Force at Wigram. A carload of airmen would come up to Hanmer Springs to do hunting, shooting, playing tennis or whatever, just to get away from Wigram for a while. We had a great deal of fun with the other girls there, and I lived in an annex to the hospital where they had nurses, ob [obstetrics] nurses, physiotherapists and people like that … occupational therapists … living there. I don’t know how many but about twenty I suppose. Anyway my mother was expecting our youngest sibling and my aunt was taking care of the family, and my Dad rang and said, “Do you think you could get some leave and come and help my Aunt Cis?” So that’s what I did.

But meantime, three or four airmen were there; they were playing tennis. One of the men came to the door for one of the girls to come out with him, and he said, “How about you coming, too?” So I was on shift work, and I had about four or five hours between that I could go; so I told him that. “Oh yes, that’ll be right.” Anyway, we went up the Lewis Pass road; one of them had a gun and wanted to get a few rabbits, which is another story – rabbits by the million. The fences there had big holes dug … not many that I saw, but big holes dug where they would go down; and the rabbits would follow the fence down and fall into the big hole. There were hundreds and hundreds in the big hole. Anyway, that’s where I met my husband. We took a walk, the two of us, around Horseshoe Lake, and the kowhais were all out; they were absolutely beautiful. And he picked a sprig of kowhai flowers and gave them to me. About a fortnight later I had a call from the man who had asked me if I’d like to go out with them; and he said, “I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you here.” So I said, “Yes”, and I said, “well I’m leaving here to go down to help my aunt while my mother’s in the home with the youngest.” And he said, “Well perhaps you’d like to meet me in Christchurch?” So when I boarded the bus eventually, he was there waiting for me. We went and had coffee and toast because there was no cake or anything because of the war shortages; and he asked me where my parents lived because he came from a farming family in Puketitiri. Oh, I said to him, “Would you like to come out for a day to Rokeby?” So that’s what happened.

But my brother was going out hunting with a boy he went to school with, and he [Rob] was coming up the same day. There were no taxis there at Rakaia that I know of, but anyway, he got off the train and started walking. And my brother’s friend was biking out to where we lived, and he said, “Do you want a lift?” So my husband said, “Yes, righto”, and they took turns at doubling up out to our place.

And he enjoyed the day out there. The thing was that when he arrived my aunt had put on morning tea. And we had a big table, and my four young sisters – the eldest one was five years younger than me – they were all sitting with their chins on their hands with their elbows on the table, just standing watching my husband. [Chuckle] Anyway, they all accept my husband, and during their lives, or still, just love my husband. And they all married men who were – except one – very, very like my husband.

Then when he asked me to marry him, I thought, ‘Oh I can’t go up there – I can’t live in Puketitiri.’ Anyway, I did go up there for a couple of weeks’ holiday because Rob’s mother invited me up, and my mother said, “Yes all right, dear.” She probably said, “Behave yourself!” [Chuckle] However, we’d already become engaged, and I went up there for a fortnight. I went back home and I said to my father, “I can’t possibly live up there.” And he just said, “Well, where thou goest, I go.” So that was it.

But I grew to love Puketitiri very much. We married at St Giles at Papanui. My dad gave me one of his beautiful Huntaway dogs to take up there, because my husband had decided that he wasn’t going to be in the Air Force, because he went in there to learn more about engineering. He was apprenticed to Arthur Farmer in Queen Street in Hastings for engineering and gunsmithing. When he got out of the Air Force we went up to Puketitiri. We had already bought his uncle’s twenty acre farm in Puketitiri because he was a very old man. We were there for two years, and we did up the house as much as we could afford.

The same year of 1950, a farm had been abandoned at Puketitiri; we decided that we were going to buy it. It was quite a mission … the farm was, in today’s money, $7,000. It was very run down, but we did buy it. The man wanted the best of trees to build a house at Havelock North; so he wanted six; they were immense pines. And we cut them out [a] couple of years ago, or allowed a man to cut them out; they were a hundred and thirty years old, and they were beautiful, beautiful trees.

And while I was at Hanmer Springs, my cousin who was in charge of the money for the Post Office, Hospital and Forestry, invited me for dinner with a meal at the Lodge, Hanmer Springs, which I think burnt down. He said, “Would you like to come up with me to look at some pines which were planted in the very first year or two of the new century?” That would be in 1903, somewhere there. Well, I fell in love with pruned, cared for, pine trees; and the first year that we were married and owned that place we planted about fifty acres … maybe not … of pine trees. They were thirty years old when we cut them. We replanted the pine trees that same winter, and they’re now in the third lot of trees.

But we had six children, and … ohh, they’re just wonderful children. Later on we had Victoria and Margaret doing Correspondence School. Victoria was in Form 4; Margaret was in Form 2 perhaps. Victoria was a year ahead. They did very, very well with correspondence … Correspondence School was marvellous, and then when they did that, you put it in the envelope in the container and it went back to Wellington to the Correspondence School. They both got UE [University Entrance] … Victoria, was it UE?

Victoria: Yes.

How many years were they doing the Correspondence?

Eileen: Well … Victoria, were you three years?

Victoria: Yeah.

Eileen: And Margaret was four, because she was very much slower. Victoria became proficient in Maori, and Margaret … because they went to Hukarere [Girls’ College] to start off with … Margaret dropped the Maori with the Correspondence School. But later on Napier Girls’ High School amalgamated with Hukarere, and there was [were] some snide remarks about them still living at Hukarere when they could live at Napier Girls’ High. So we weren’t going to put up with that sort of thing, and we went to the headmistress and said, “We’re taking our daughters away from school, and we would take on the Correspondence School.”

It was such a happy time when our girls were with us and grew up … we knew them; we loved them. We had four girls; the others went to Woodford [House] because of Miss Hogg, who was headmistress of Woodford. She said, “If you want your daughters to learn something really wonderful, something that they’ll never lose, go to Woodford.” So that’s what we did. It took us quite a bit of money to send them there; we were a bit pinched for money. People have the idea that they’re all wealthy people that go to Woodford and these big good schools, but it’s not that – it’s the parents want the best for their children, and they want them to grow up to know what they’re doing, and learning. I too loved Woodford, and all the things that went on there.

Our youngest daughter was so wonderfully musical, but right now she’s milking cows. She became a florist at Havelock North, and [an] absolutely wonderful person with colour, and she made beautiful, beautiful bouquets and things. [Of] course I enjoyed every minute of it all. I was always very interested in education.

Not long after I was married I sent to the International Correspondence School for their course on tailoring, dressmaking, all those things. It was a longish course, but for me it took five years because I had things to do in the domestic scene. And I milked cows for a long time – oh, but just before that – I had seventy-eight cows to milk. I always loved cows, and milking cows.

All the girls … I mean the younger two … had two years at home doing Correspondence School; so Elizabeth had two years at Woodford extra, as far as going to normal school … a tech [technical school] … like, she left the Puketitiri School two years before at the end of Standard 4, so she had [Standards] 5 and 6 at Woodford. I think a lot of the Woodford girls, or all that I’ve met, have all got something … integrity and what-have-you. Doesn’t mean to say they’re all good though, [chuckles] but they were at Woodford – well, supposedly.

Victoria: They had to be …

Eileen: [Chuckles] The bus crash out at … Kereru way, wasn’t it?

Victoria: Kereru.

‘Cause a teacher lost her life in that, didn’t she?

Eileen: And there were some children in that accident; my daughter was in the second bus, and her friend said to her, “I’m going on the first bus – come on.” And Elizabeth said, “No, I’m not going on that one, I’m going on the second.” Well it was the first bus that went over; the bank gave way. And we took home a girl … we went there to get Elizabeth because they wanted all the girls home, and there was one that couldn’t get home … so she came. After they’d gone to bed I just tapped on the door to see if they were all right; and there they were, both smoking away, puffing away in the bedroom; there was smoke in the air. [Chuckle] I don’t know that it was their first smoke either [chuckles] … probably not.

Victoria: Mmm [chuckle] … not their first one, but you know … [Chuckle]

Eileen: Our second son went to [Whanganui] Collegiate, because he was having to do too much outside work at school. And his work was going back and he was crying about going to school, which he hadn’t done before, because he was getting back in his maths. So we took him away and took him to … the headmaster said, “Yes, he can come at” [to] “Hereworth.” Well he just loved Hereworth because it was run on military lines in a way. And he went later, because his friends were there, over to Collegiate for four years. Sometimes we were a bit short of money; we’d sell off an implement that we had there. Anyway, that came in handy.

My eldest boy, Tom, went to Te Aute [College], because the Member of Parliament who was going round said, “Why don’t you people support Te Aute? It’s a great school, they’ve got a marvellous headmaster.” Well he was there for four years; not terribly thrilled about it all, which I found out later. But he had a split in his trousers so he got a needle and cotton; and was going to take down the needle to the lady who gave him the needle; but on the way down the stairs a Maori boy came up the stairs, and they knocked each other somehow … or at least it wasn’t deliberate. But Tom fell down the stairs, and … ooh, where’s the needle? He couldn’t find the needle, but he had a terrible pain just under the shoulder bone. So they rang up and said, “Can you take Tom to the doctor?” Well we did that, and he couldn’t find anything wrong; there wasn’t even a mark where it might’ve gone in. But he said, “I think you’d better have an x-ray.” We took him to the hospital for an x-ray, and the darning needle was in his shoulder. It missed the vital nerve by just a hair’s width. Still, he did get over it all right, anyway; but they did find the needle.

But it’s great fun being a parent … it’s thrilling, really. [Quiet chuckles]

And Katharine … she did well. My husband had a heart attack when she was in the middle of UE, and she missed out by a few marks; but Mr Richards, who was a marvellous headmaster, said that she could do it again, and she did get through with it. So that was about the wind-up of secondary school.

[Of] course we did have a lot of pigs on our farm, and Rob shot one. Tom was home for the weekend … wasn’t Easter; must’ve been one of the holidays … and Rob shot a big pig, and he said, “Do you want to take this down to Mr Waiti?” And Tom said, “Oh, he’ll love that.” So he took it down to Te Aute, and it was received with pleasure and anticipation I guess. Mr Waiti cut it up, and the Minister – I’ve forgotten his name; should not have forgotten – but they were cutting up the meat and Tom was there, and he said that the Minister could have that bit, which was [chuckle] a very small amount.

It was a wonderful course for me to take, an apprenticeship, because I made my husband’s trousers, shirts, everything for the family. Not the boys though … oh, I made them shorts occasionally. But it was so helpful to us. My husband paid for all Sanderson’s bills for materials, and I always got the best material I could find. And they were very good for [to] me in there, and I just loved going in there seeing all the materials … just wonderful. [Of] course wool is my favourite; it’s an incredible … absolutely incredible fibre. You can have a singlet … anything in finer wools that are lovely in the summer, and you’ve got a heavier one in the winter. I learnt to love wool at Ballantyne’s, because they had the very best of materials.

This course that you did, this apprenticeship – was that a correspondence course?

No, that was apprenticeship that I had with Ballantyne’s; that was two years. The apprenticeship was in two parts, from the waist down or the waist up. [Chuckles] Well, it seemed to be that to me, [chuckles] because that’s all I had. [Chuckles]

But it was just marvellous with the Correspondence School, and the idea that ‘oh, you don’t learn much from them’ … well, they were absolutely bang on. And you got to know the teachers, and you’d send your stuff in and they would mark it and check it and tell you where you were wrong; and do it again if it was wrong and send it in again. I was never very good with fractions, but that taught me a great deal about fractions; so I don’t bother worrying about fractions any more. [Chuckles]

I used to ice cakes for the Institute or sometimes make their birthday cake, but because I eventually ended up President for seven years, I had access to the records; but [at] no point was my name mentioned, ever, in the records. So I felt a bit hurt about that, but … doesn’t matter. These things don’t really matter; what matters is that you’ve got great faith with God, and that wipes any injustices, and a great help, too. And I’m so glad that I’ve learnt to know God.

I woke up one night after a dream; the dream said ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry.’ And I said [thought], ‘Oh, right, what’s happening? I put my feet on the floor and sat and thought about it, then I thought of my son, Bill. I went as fast as my wonky leg could go; I reached the door and I called out, “Are you all right?” And he was just coming up out of the blankets in a terrible, terrible state. He’d had a dream that he was in a grave in a coffin and he was trying to get out and was trying to keep his feet off a big red hot ball down in the bottom of the coffin. He woke up at that point, and he was just a wreck like an old, old man. And he got out of bed; he said, “I’m dying, I’m dying.” And I said, “You’re not dying.” He said, “I am – I’m dying.” I said, “You’re not.” I said, “Get up.” The sheet was wrapped round his neck, and if I hadn’t gone in at that time he would’ve been dead in the morning when I went to call him for breakfast. He got his feet on the floor; we were both crying by that time, because honestly, it was just such an ordeal. And at half past four I decided that … ‘I’ve got to have someone’, so I rang Victoria, and she said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can”, which was about twenty minutes, half an hour away. But no – she went out and the battery was flat, so she wasn’t here until about eight o’clock. These things give you great belief in God; I cannot do without the Heavenly Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I’m so thankful, and fortunately most of my children do too.

But to get back to other things, we had this broken down farm and no money, but Rob did have a job with his uncle … his father and his uncle and himself. The man came from Invercargill, Mr … oh, it’s gone … and he was in charge, because the rabbits – you could smell the rabbits; the country was so poverty-stricken with rabbits; they were everywhere. So they had a contract to cull out all the rabbits in three years. Well they did get the rabbits down.

But it was a big job in the weekends, cutting kanuka and trying to make a broken farm into a proper one. I don’t know that we have entirely achieved that yet, but I’ve got the most wonderful people, Tony and Wendy and Victoria here now, working away, toiling away. It’s coming into shape. To make extra money we’d cut kanuka for firewood in eight foot lengths. These were enormous kanukas, and my husband cut them and between us we loaded the truck up, which we bought on pay now, pay later. [Hire purchase] That was the Commer truck that was new from Peaches who were in Dickens Street … top end of Dickens Street; and we carted wood. Rob naturally had his driver’s licence and truck licence, bus licence and all that, but I didn’t have a licence at all because I never had a chance to learn, really. However, I did learn very early in my marriage … or before my marriage. And we loaded that up and Rob would take it down and take it to Barry Brothers who were in Ahuriri.

On one occasion or two it fell to me without a licence to go to Barry Brothers in the truck, down the Seafield Road. Oh, I thought I was smart – I just loved driving that truck.

However, in due course the truck was sold for some reason, and we bought another truck that had an extended wheel base used for forestry work, and we had that for a long time. The deck became eventually, a bridge down the gorge for getting the sheep over the other side. We ran Romneys and we also had a couple of Southdown rams; and sold all the Southdown lambs. We got up to two thousand ewes with replacements. One year we lost – it was a long, beautiful autumn – and we lost three hundred or more ewes because we’d shorn them, and it was fine for three weeks after shearing, but the southerly and easterly winds and rain killed them.

Victoria: It was just shocking, wasn’t it?

Eileen: It was some job getting the animals cleared off.

Did you have insurance?

No … didn’t have money for insurance. Rob had an insurance on himself, but that was all; and on your licence you had insurance for driving, but it wasn’t quite like it is now, though.

And [of] course there’s the hot springs out there – used to go out there once in a while and soak in that; it’s the most magical water. If you can last long enough out there … camp … you can cure your arthritis or rheumatism. Marvellous, marvellous water.

Has it got sulphur in it like the Morere ones?

Oh, Rob

Victoria: Sent it down to DSIR [Department of Scientific and Industrial Research] or someone, but I can’t remember what …

Eileen: I think it had silicon in it somewhere, but I’m not sure, [it was] a long time ago.

For myself, I took out an art course because when I left school they told me to either do black and white art, or journalism. My mother took me to The Press in Christchurch, and yes, they’d take me, but I couldn’t get board. I was a big girl – not that I was fat, but I was a big girl – and people who answered my ad for board would take one look at me and say, “No – if you were a boy …” They already knew that I was a girl, but they said, “If you were a boy we’d welcome you.” So I ended up being with my aunt and uncle and going to school at Greers Road in Christchurch, which is now non-existent. And there was a big orchard at the end of the road; it was three or four miles to bike in to catch the tram. This is very disjointed.

It’s okay.

So I had that night and day, biking into Papanui, and I’d leave my bike along with many others just by the Post Office in a [an] alleyway thing. You could leave it there for a week if you wanted to, and it would not go, unlike now. I actually loved Papanui Tech; it was beautiful as far as school goes. I really came ahead there. Anyway, I’ve never forgotten the advice of art, because art was my best subject along with what makes a journalist; but I couldn’t get board, and the Young Women’s Christian Association was full.

Going back to education again – when we were at Rokeby I went to school with a young man whose parents worked on the farm … or father and brother. We went to Rakaia in this little gig with a beautiful little horse, and we’d go to the blacksmith, and sometimes we didn’t even see him but we left the horse in his yard. And that was always fun, going backwards and forwards to school in the gig. On the way back sometimes, if there was a crop there and it had turnips or swedes, we’d nip over into the paddock and get one each. Later they brought the school bus around, and my two brothers went to school on the school bus; the school bus took all children to school then.

I got married when I was nineteen, and although I didn’t like Puketitiri for a long time, I love it now; and I had marvellous support from my in-laws; I love them all.

When I was twenty-seven I joined the New Zealand Rhododendron Association. We’d been down to Gwavas to see their garden; because they’d had [there’d been] a rhododendron conference, and they were on the list. I fell in love with the forget-me-nots; under the rhododendrons [they] were just joyous. And I have a beautiful photo of my children, some of them, there. In 1953 I saved up money and bought six rhododendrons; and that was the start, but they’re a sad lot now because they’ve been knocked around by trees falling; the big snow storm split about a dozen, and my garden is a shambles now. In fact you would hardly call it a garden at all, but I’m hoping to work on it.

And also, I took out an art course and I loved every minute of that, but when the TV came I didn’t have a place to do the work, because you’ve got to have a place on the wall for your line of sight.

But anyway, I come now, being ninety, of being hobbled and of feeling the cold; my mother-in-law had to go to Haumoana when she was seventy-two; she couldn’t bear the cold any more. But hey – you only need to put on another singlet if you really want to be there.

I dearly love the land, the soil, the magic of the soil. It is just unbelievable. Have a look sometime in the microscope, it’s just living. My husband bought me a microscope so that I could see seeds because I was a seed superintendent for the Lily Society for ten years – that’s the one in Auckland. I belong to the Christchurch Lily Society and the Auckland one. I still send things in to them. But I’ve loved every minute, for years and years of the seventy-one years that I’ve lived in Puketitiri; I don’t want to leave it. I know the trees personally; I love the land, and I love the animals, and I’ve got to thank the Lord for all of his help. Thank you.

Eileen, thank you very, very much for coming and sharing your life with us today. I really appreciate that. We wish you all the best.

I haven’t told you everything …