Wilson, Colin Noel & Carol Ann Interview

Today is the 1st June 2017. I’m interviewing Colin and Carol Wilson of Hastings. Colin in particular is well-known in Hawke’s Bay as part of the Cliff Press and Pictorial Publications. Colin, would you like to start off by telling us something about your family history? Thank you.

Right. My grandmother and grandfather, Archie William Wilson; Edith Mary Wilson – they started in Palmerston North. I think my father was actually born in Palmerston North. The family moved to Hastings and Archie worked for Dunning’s Bakery on the corner of Karamu Road and St Aubyn Street, and he worked there for many years. 1931 he was clearing the rubble underneath the bluff in Napier with horse and cart, and he put a pick into his right-hand shin and he ended up with an ulcerated leg for the rest of his life. So at forty-seven I think it was, he retired, and he died ninety-three. So its a fairly long [chuckle] retirement, isn’t it?

Now you say he took over the bakery?

No, no, he was working for Dunning’s Bakery.

Was that ever known as Wilson’s Bakery?

Well Wilson’s Bakery was down on the other corner where Basil Le Prou had Heretaunga Motors. Yeah, so he was an interesting man; he was part of the Hastings Bowling Club, Hastings Street there. He did a lot of bowling throughout his life; he had lots of time to do it of course, because he was retired all those years, and had this ulcerated leg. He also told me a story one day, that he was coming up to fill the cart … the horse and cart … with rubble, and suddenly the horse reared up. And somebody had jumped off the top of the cliff. Suicide; there was quite a few suicides over that 1931 period. And he said he’ll never forget this. He went round the front of the horse; this body had concertinaed down to a couple … two or three feet high, and he said it was quite a dramatic event.

He also told me a story when he was sitting on the seats of the Dunning’s Bakery one morning; they’d finished the bake, and ‘bout seven o’clock. He was sitting in the sun there; little Salvation Army girl walked up to him with a box in her hand and she said, “Pop, have you got a shilling? For Jesus, for God.” And he looked at her for a few minutes and then he said to her, “I think I’ll be seeing him before you, lassie. I’ll give it to him.” [Chuckle]

I used to take him fish and chips on a Wednesday at Duart House, and he used to walk up the passageway, and all the oldies’d be there, and their noses’d be twitching. And old Pop would open up with grand style … open up his fish and chips and then sit there and eat them in front of them. [Chuckle] He was a real character; he liked his booze … he liked his whisky. He used to roll home to Gascoigne Street. It backed on to the racecourse. I always remember that he got a black and white telly [television] … one of the first black and white tellies. And we were living in the house next door to the YMCA there which is now Birthright; and if we were really good as kids we were allowed to go round and watch the black and white Phillips telly. So those were good days.

Grandma – she was a great cook. And they had of course, coppers out there, and I always remember when Fay was arriving and we were sent down to Grandma and Grandad while Mum was in the Home having Fay; we had bath night, and it was always boiling up the copper and ladling it through the wall. And the oldest got in first and the youngest got in last – you don’t ever throw out the water in case the baby’s in it. [Chuckles] That’s where that term came from. And we used that copper for cooking the crayfish we used to get off Cape Kidnappers; take them down there. And Grandma used to use it for making almost the equivalent of Sunlight Soap – every month she used to make the soap.

Cooking the Christmas ham, too …

Oh, the ham, yeah – everything went into that copper, it was the focal point.

Carol: Col, what was her maiden name?

Colin: Compton. I should really ask Bill … one of them that I drink with at the RSA – it could be a Compton attached to them.

Carol: It will be.

Colin: She was then adopted … I think she was adopted … by the Wiggins family down off Willowpark Road there.

Carol: Oh, that’s the bit I wanted to find out.

Colin: I think she lost her parents. The Wiggins family took care of her.

Carol: Okay.

Colin: So moving on from there; of course Dad was working for Charlie Wake … Archie Wake.

Carol: Start at the beginning with your Dad.

Colin: Yeah. He got polio when he was five years old, and he ended up on the San Hill for one year to give Archie and Edith a blimmin’ break … [?his?] Mum and Dad. Then he took on swimming, and I was very, very surprised. He used to swim every morning and try and get that right leg of his going. He then took on a milk run with Charlie – no, it was Archie. Charlie was Dad’s good friend; Archie Wake had the milk run, and Dad would go out and deliver the milk in the morning. And in 1931 he was coming back with Archie’s truck, and he stopped by the Assembly Hall there and went across the road; he was going to get into the barber’s chair, have a quick haircut before he went off to join Cliff Press for the day, and there was a guy about to get into the chair. And he saw Dad come charging through the door and he said, “You want a haircut?” He said, “You got work to go to?” And he said, “Yeah, I have.” He said, “Well, I’ll sit down and … I’m retired.” So Dad got into the chair and had his hair cut, and he walked across the road towards the truck, and next minute the earthquake came. And he looked behind and the whole brick building came down, and the hairdresser and the guy in the chair were killed. And luckily the Assembly Hall stayed up; the truck was straight under that. So it was a very lucky escape.

Certainly was.

But in those days of course, they used to ladle the milk off. The ladies used to come to the gate with a little tin can – “How many scoop[s], Madam?” And you had to run the thing over to the pails on the back of the truck and ladle so many ladles in. But Dad worked very, very hard, and he told me the story that one day he was finishing his run he actually sat down in the gutter and cried, with the pain in the right leg, you know, the leg. But he still went on and worked his guts off, eh?

Carol: He had a built-up boot always.

Colin: Yeah, built-up boot.

It’s always taken for granted. And a lot of these people that did the milk rounds did them early, and someone was milking the cows earlier than that to produce the milk.

Carol: My brother was a milk boy, and I used to go and help him sometimes, and it would be freezing cold.

Colin: And then of course Doug Crawford’s father – he had the poultry farm down Norton Road there, and that … all mixed up with the Wakes. Charlie actually went over to Wanganui … went to Wanganui for a while.

So the milk boy, and … mind you, as I say, Dad was involved with Ernie Cliff in Queen Street, where the current Stanton building is now; the little narrow building off to one side of the current Stanton … don’t know what they call themselves these days.

The original Cliff Press – actually, Carol’s right – it started in the Herald-Tribune block there in Karamu Road, but I think they must’ve bought that narrow building … double-storey building … in Queen Street opposite where the Hart Printing House was. And in 1931 of course, that all come [came] tumbling down. The second floor in that was a reading room; people used to go in there in the morning and read the papers. And it all come [came] tumbling down; and of course like a lot of businesses that came crashing down in 1931, those people tended to start up again. But a lot of them actually went bankrupt in five, six, seven years … just too much debt; and that’s what happened with Ernie Cliff. So Dad and the foreman, Cliff Beckett, stepped up and bought the bankrupt business. And then of course they moved under the Assembly Hall in Heretaunga Street in one of those rental areas there.

So originally the Cliff name was …

Carol: Ernie Cliff.

Colin: Ernie Cliff came from Dunedin in the early 1900s and set up there. He was an interesting character. He lived on the corner of Nelson Street and Roberts Street; the double-storey house is still there. The dentist had it for a while after him.

Carol: That’s in the book, Col.

Colin: Yeah, it’s in the book. And he also had an association with Chapman-Taylor. Now that came about when Chapman-Taylor started a newsletter out in Havelock North in that house on the corner there in Duart Road. Chapman-Taylor had the cottage and so forth. And he used to hand-set the newsletters in those days, and it was a big job; he used to put out this foolscap newsletter; I think it was weekly. And it got to such a job, and people were wanting it that he went and saw Ernie Cliff one day, and they became friends for life. Cliff Press then started printing ‘The Village News’, as it was known.

Carol: And it [there] was something else called – I’ve got a copy of the original one …

Colin: Yeah, well I’ve still got all the original types out there in the shed on some of those newsletters that’ve been put out in that time. ‘Course Ernie Cliff used to put out one himself, didn’t he? It’s in the book.

Always remember looking in the door in Cliff Press, ‘cause you could see all this big black machinery; huge thing …

In Heretaunga Street?

Yes. Today, two or three small machines could probably do the work of all that …

Well he had a silly little office off to the … as you’re coming through the door on the right hand side, and the linotype was right in the front there; because Dad was a linotype operator, and when he wasn’t doing the office he’d hop over and do the lino. Cliff Press put the first lino in in Hawke’s Bay in 1921; it was before the paper even had it. And of course the linotype machines were considered in that time to be the eighth wonder of the world, and that really brought Cliff Press on.

But Ernie Cliff also, with Chapman-Taylor … he got Chapman-Taylor to build him a beach house out there at Haumoana, and the Chapman-Taylor beach house is still there today. And when Chapman-Taylor left town, Ernie kept up with the friendship right through to the end.

So from there, Cliff Beckett and Dad worked away; had the library next door. The [?Blakesly?] sisters [were] involved with the City Council and the library for many, many years. A story came through that one of the councillors came and dropped in to see Dad, and they’d had a Council meeting the night before and they’d decided they were going to put the rentals up on all those buildings under the Assembly Hall. And he said, “Noel”, he said, “I suggest you write in and make a plea for it to stay as it is.” Ha! So Dad wrote the Council a letter and said how they were struggling to make ends meet, and thanked the Council very much for leaving the rents as they were for the years he’d been there. Consequently the Council backed off on their increase, and for another ten years he never had an increase. [Chuckles]

Letter was very worth while.

[Chuckle] That Council would’ve got into real trouble, eh? Privacy and … [chuckle] controversy.

Anyway, from there they needed to expand. They had two of these Council units under the Assembly Hall, and so [they] went round the corner in Hastings Street and bought a block of land there, which is now part of the New World Supermarket and they built their first factory. It was interesting … put the big concrete slab down; used every bit of the land.

Carol: 1960, wasn’t it?

You wouldn’t be able to do it these days, build a block wall factory right to the boundaries. The Fire Brigade came down to inspect it after it was put up; Harland came in and he said, “Noel, I’ve come to have a look at your new building”, he said, “for fire and …” Anyway, he’s walking through the building and he said, “Noel – you’ve got no doors in the factory out here; how does your staff get out of here if we have a fire?” And Dad said, “They pick up a shoe and throw it through the nearest window.” [Chuckles]

And they had a lot of trouble with that building, because … who built the damn thing, now? I can’t remember the builder, but they never put a lip on the concrete. You need to put a lip on the bottom of the concrete when you start putting the blocks up to stop the water running inside, and we had trouble with it running across the floor of the factory while the printing machines were running.

Well then of course, Photolithics Printing – they joined with Hart Printing to put one of the first paper plate offset machines into Hawke’s Bay; ‘cause Swailes Hurst were doing offset for many years before then. They even started back in the days when you did offset off limestone blocks – they were a lot earlier than us with offset. But we used to do a lot of the Rolls around the country.

Carol: Electoral Rolls.

Colin: Electoral Rolls, yeah. And in those days you had to set them in lino; every name had to be set in lino; proofed out; Council had to check read them and sign them off, and then you’d have printing of the Rolls. Along come [came] the small offset presses; these offset presses then came with paper plates that you used to take a shot of the actual page rolls from the Council, fuse them onto a paper plate, and then start printing on the small offset presses. And we combined with Hart Printing House and we called it Photolithics Printing.

Carol: How was [were] the paper plates made, Col?

Colin: Oh, the paper plates, yeah … rolls; yeah, they were rolls of plates, and had to be cut to a certain length. And the actual image was electronically etched onto a metal plate, and from there they were put into a tosser, or a powder contained box, which used to swing backwards and forwards. So the powder actually went across the metal surface, and the electric charge picked up on the images of the names; and then that plate was laid onto the receiving steel plate and from there it was put into a cooker. And the powder would then stay on the actual plate as an image, and then it was put onto the offset print.

Carol: That was about 1966.

Colin: ‘66. And very, very quickly this caught on round the country; and we were doing Rolls for all over the country at the time, because we could do it a lot cheaper, a lot faster. And Carol has got a relly [relative] down in Blenheim – he was the Town Clerk.

Carol: No, he was the Registrar in Hastings.

Colin: Registrar at the Court. So it was his job to put together all these names for the Roll.

Carol: Edgar Sawyer.

Colin: Yeah. So here we are … we’ve got a connection with the Sawyers way back. Anyway, he went off to Blenheim, and next minute we had the Blenheim Roll, and so that’s how it all started to go.

During this period in the company, did you train in any specific part of the printing ..?

Well, I say I started sweeping the floors at the Heretaunga shop …

Carol: School days.

Colin: Yeah, school days I used to go there and sweep the floors, and that’s when I found myself sweeping the floors in the New World Hastings factory. And then I was put … I got an apprenticeship the day I left Hastings Boys’ High School at fifteen as a compositor, and I was under Bert Howard. And all the Palmer boys were there of course, doing different roles. Did my five years’ apprenticeship …

Carol: As a compositor.

Colin: … as a compositor. Had to go up to Technical College in Auckland, in Symonds Street there, for four, five weeks a year; have some wonderful memories of that. Always remember … ha! I’m going to sidetrack a bit here … Hawke’s Bay were coming up to try and take the Shield [Ranfurly Shield, rugby] in those days off Auckland; Auckland had a hold on the Shield. And I used to love going up there during the winter months so we could go and see the Herewinis and the Whinerays and the Nathans playing the Shield rugby. And this particular day I was sitting in the grandstand, and right out in front of us we had Thimbo … Neil Thimbleby … and he was marking up with Whineray. He was all over Whineray in the lineouts, and Whineray put his finger up to Thimbo several times; and then he let go Whineray with a [an] elbow, straight across Thimbo’s blimmin’ heart. It’s the first time I’d seen him go grey; went down on his knees, and he never went over the top of Whineray again.

But just to tell you a quick story there … we were in Coffs Harbour last year with … oh, couple of years ago now. And we were in Coffs Harbour and we were waitin’ for the League game to come on. We got in the line to get a meal, and … little nuggety guy in front of me, and he turned around and he said, “Oh, who’re you backing in the League tonight?” And I said, “Well I’m not really into the League”, I said, “I’m into rugby more than the League.” He said, “Oh, where do you come from?” I said, “Hastings in Hawke’s Bay.” “Goodness!” he said, “I was the hooker that year”, he said, “1967, the year we got married.” He said, “I was the hooker.” And this nuggety guy was opposite me … hooker? No, prop … he was propping. He said, “He was so tough! I can’t remember his name now.” And I said, “Would it be Thimbo?” And he said, “Neil Thim.. yeah, that’s him!” I said, “He was a wharfie off the …” “Oh, God, he was so tough!” [He] said, “We got done like a dinner.” [Chuckle] And I said, “Well, I’ve got a story to tell you about Thimbo”. And I told him the story about him and Whineray whopping him over the heart. He said, “I feel a lot better about that.”

So on from there … Carol then came in as office girl for Dad. She’d been working for … your dad?

Carol: Mm-hm.

Colin: Les Sawyer at Sawyer & Sons in Stortford Lodge.

Carol: Farm Products before that.

Colin: And before that you were at Farm Products.

Carol: Started when I was …

Colin: Working for Smithy.

Carol: Mm. Before I was sixteen. Frank Smith.

Colin: Frank Smith – he was the accountant there. Anyway, Carol turns up in a little Austin 7.

Carol: No, I earned the money at Cliff Press for the Austin 7. [Chuckle]

Colin: I didn’t think we paid you enough to buy that.

Carol: No, I had to have a bike before that. [Chuckle]

Colin: So I never had a vehicle at all, so of course we used to go out in this Austin 7 of Carol’s ‘til Dad bought a little mini van … the Austin van … so we had a van to go out in; and that was 1965 …

Carol: ‘67, please.

Colin: Yeah, ‘67 when we got married, but we started going out in 1965.

Carol: Oh, okay.

So you met at work?

Yes. I was the office girl.

Okay – well, Carol, would you like to tell me something about your family now?

I was brought up in Stortford Street. Mum bought that house with the help of her parents and her brothers, and everybody helped her to get a deposit on a house in Stortford Street, 107, when Dad was away at the war; ‘cause he was away training and all for five years. And he came home on leave at one stage during there, and [they] got married during that time; it was only a few weeks that he was off, I think – two or three weeks, and then he went back to the war, to Italy. And I’m not sure where he went in the war, I can’t find this information. And [noise on recorder] Mum had Graham before he came back.

He came back badly wounded, and a new baby at home and a wife that he’d only been married to for a couple of weeks in earlier life, [chuckle] and that was hard on them. But we lived in Stortford Street until we got married, and – we didn’t move out of Hastings ever; we’ve always been in Hastings.

Mum left school very young, and she went to Mahora School only. And then she left school while she was at Mahora.

What was her family name?

Her name was Simkin.

Not related to Horace …

Yes. Horace was …

… Jones?

Horace Jones was her brother.

Well, I’ll be blowed! He’s the nicest man.

Oh, lovely.

If you ever had a dispute, Jim Simkin could sort it – he was a real gentleman.

Yes. Yes, he spoke slowly, and got things sorted out. No, I’ve got lovely memories of all my family … the Simkin family … and I really enjoy doing my genealogy because I’ve got a lot of memories of them and the Sawyers.

So with living in Stortford Lodge, Dad was – after he came home from the war, after he recuperated he worked for a wee while on the buses; he helped build the Stortford Lodge shop out the front of the old building that was originally there. He worked there for quite few years after his dad died and his brother moved to Auckland, Dad sold it to … who was it, Col?

Colin: Brian.

Carol: Brian somebody, and …

Colin: Townsend.

Carol: Townsend; and then soon after that the whole place was all pulled down, so it was devastating that it was pulled down, for us. We had such memories of Nana and Pop living in that place for their lives.

Was that the two-storeyed ..?

Yeah.

Colin: It was an old grandstand from …

Carol: It was called the General Store in Stortford Lodge. So that was really upsetting for us all when that was pulled down, to put the car sales there. Lots of memories of that. Some of the memories were great; my grandad used to build … Ernie, Ernest Sawyer … he used to build the furniture out the back; in a big shed out the back, and he had all the old fashioned gear. His furniture was so beautiful, it was like – it’ll be future antiques. Yeah – well done stuff.

Colin: Who’s got all the old books showing that furniture?

Carol: I don’t know, Col.

Colin: Must be Maureen; I can remember that you had them at one stage.

Carol: His patterns … yeah, I think Maureen might have the book on the patterns.

Colin: All the plans, the patterns. And then after they stopped making the furniture, it was just like an ordinary shop where they bought in the furniture, and I can remember people coming in and paying £1 a week for paying the furniture off. Dad never encouraged them to go into debt for it; encouraged them to pay layby … yeah.

And so the furniture would stay there until they paid for it? [Throat clearing]

Yeah. And it was lovely. It made people much happier I think, to pay it off like that, rather than pay a debt.

A lot of the businesses were quite caring about their customers.

Yes.

Colin: It went further than that, ‘cause Les would say … for instance, Doctor Kurta over the road here with the big picket fence … when him [he] and his new wife arrived from university, or from finishing his doctors’ degree in Dunedin, he came here with nothing. And he went to get furniture to set up, and Les said, “Oh well, take what you want” …

Carol: No. He …

Colin: … “and when you get on your feet” …

Carol: No. He found all sorts of bits and pieces for them. It wasn’t all new stuff, Col.

Colin: Okay.

Carol: Dad helped them when they got on their feet, and that was good. He was our doctor for many years.

Colin: But he’d say, “Take it away; when you’re on your feet, come and pay for it.” And later in life after he sold off to Brian Townsend, he had people come up to him and say, “Les – I’ve always had it on my conscience; I’ve never come back and paid for that bed you gave us.” Years after. And that was Les; he was so good-natured; generous …

Carol: Yeah, “Take it home and try it out.” [Chuckle]

Colin: ‘Take it home and try it out’, [chuckle] was his comment.

Carol: Anyway, that was a great memory. And my grandparents lived in that old house after Lynches had it, before 1927. I can remember my grandmother and grandfather staying there and they had boarders – it was a big house upstairs, and lots of rooms. And the shop was always the part downstairs. And then they built the front part of it when I was quite young, probably in the early fifties … late fifties. I can remember coming home from school one day and the house was full of smoke in Stortford Street; and I can remember the old oven that you had to turn the top on and the bottom on low. And Mum used to bake a lot, and she must’ve gone to town and left the cake in the oven, and here’s this … I come [came] home from school and the smoke was all in the … thing; and I run [ran] flat out round to Dad … so we’re all running back; turned the oven off; and it was all right – we didn’t have a fire thank goodness – nearly did!

Colin: The Stortford Street firm – now they were associated with Curtis … the Curtis family were in Stortford Street, weren’t they?

Carol: Yeah, Colin’s great-grandfather lived over there.

Colin: Yeah. With the [?], the drill people; and the Drummonds. And ‘course printing – Jack Southcott, who worked for Hart Printing House. And then he went home to Stortford Street and started making the wooden wheels for the skates. The big rage were the skates in Windsor Park, and all that jazz. Jack Southcott.

Carol: He had a lathe in a shed that made the skate wheels; well, I suppose for everywhere.

Colin: Jack started with Hart Printing …

Carol: Yeah. But he used to make the blocks, too – the wooden blocks – etching the …

Colin: So it must’ve been part of Cliff Press at one stage, because we’ve got all these wonderful plumb cuts – blocks; instead of making blocks out of zinc – the old printing blocks, he used to sit there and he used to cut these blocks out of peach wood.

Carol: And they’re beautiful … they’re very fine.

Colin: Amazing. We’ve still got quite a few of them, and we guard them jealously.

Carol: Yeah. Now my mum was born and bred in the little old house over the road from the Frimley School baths there, and they used to go to Mahora School. And they crossed through … as the crow flies, she used to say … through like, the Williams property, right through to Mahora School; and they’d come back that way. And that house was with the family for many years until …

Colin: This is the one opposite the swimming pool​ …

Carol: Yeah.

Colin: Well that used to sit on its own; it had paddocks all round it, and I think the only thing down there was the big Williams homestead, wasn’t it?

Carol: Yeah.

Colin: In Frimley Park.

Carol: Yeah, so that was for the family for years. My grandmother moved in there; she had five children and my grandad didn’t live with them. He did sometimes, but he went away for work, and he only had a bike – there was [were] no cars those days. And so her sons and Mum all worked hard and paid for the house together, for their mum. She had four brothers – Leon, Jim, Bruce and Colin Simkin.

And their dad … my grandfather … was – he helped build the Tuai Dam in the 1920s. Yeah, and Mum was born in Wairoa then when they were living there. And then they moved to Hastings a bit later on … soon after that. And I think he hurt his leg … yeah, broke his hip on the day before they were going to go to Passchendaele in the First World War, and so he didn’t get to go there. After he recuperated they kept him here for doing dental work, because he’d been trained as a jeweller in Australia where he came from, before the 1920s; ‘cause his father was a jeweller and he came out from England to Australia … to Melbourne … as a jeweller. He was ….

Colin: So which one made the mace?

Carol: He was Henry Simkin.

Colin: Who made the Australian mace?

Carol: He helped make the mace. He helped make the first mace for Victoria in Australia, so that was interesting.

Colin: But you must finish the story about your grandad not going to the First World War …

Carol: Oh, he didn’t go to the First World War ‘cause he broke his hip … mm …

Colin: And all his mates never came home.

Carol: No, his mates didn’t come home.

Colin: The whole troop of them didn’t come home.

Carol: Yeah. So he was always lame from that because it didn’t get fixed properly. Yeah. So he lived until [a] good old age, but he lived on his own; and he just lived a wee bit rough. He liked living in [a] caravan, or … he had a little bach.

Colin: That’s something the boys set up, isn’t it? Or Jim set up?

Carol: Yeah, they did. But he was just Horrie … just did what he wanted.

Colin: Well I can still see him …

Carol: Lived natural …

Colin: … down Stortford Street …

Carol: … and then he came …

Colin: Living in that little hut there.

Carol: When he got old and forgetful he lived at our place when we were kids, for quite a long time. We had a nice little playhouse that Dad had made; he made it into a nice little room for Grandad.

Colin: Still remember him …

Carol: That was good; yeah.

Colin: … when I was coming to see you …

Carol: Lovely memories.

So he was Horace too …

He was Horace.

… and Jim was named after him obviously?

Yes. Horace Alfred Willoughby he was. And his father was Henry. I’m trying to find some info about his father before he came out to Australia.

Colin: Your Dad put a couple of flats on the back of the Stortford Street house, and your grandmother and grandfather moved in. They looked after them for years, didn’t they?

Carol: They had other people living there for a few years, and then when Nana and Pop moved out of the big house at Stortford Lodge and then the furniture went all upstairs; they had extended the furniture shop to upstairs as well. So Nana and Pop lived at our place in the flats.

Colin: The Moorens were over the road … the pickled onion people. And of course you’ve got the old fish and chip shop on the corner – they’ve been there forever.

Carol: The Boulierises?

Now I’ve been asked whether I’m going to interview her, because they’re the oldest family fish and chip shop left in town.

Colin: They’ve got to be.

Carol: They were there when I was really young, because I can remember having to go and get the fish and chips on a wet day one day, because we’d have them … say, once a week. That was our fish for the week. And I put the fish and chips under my coat so they wouldn’t get wet, and by the time I got home my chest had got so warm that I felt sick [chuckle] and I couldn’t have them. They were Boulierises.

And the Queen Mary opposite …

Colin: Oh, I’ve got a story to tell there – the Queen Mary, and the George family. He came into the shop one day and he asked for Dad, and he had some coloured blank paper in his hand, a ream of it, you know? And he said, “Noel”, he said, “I had some boys come in with this, wanting to sell it to me for wrapping … fish and chip wrapping … an hour or so ago.” He said, “I think they’ve been into your storeroom down the alley next door to the Opera House there.”

Carol: Municipal Theatre.

Colin: We used to leave the back door of that open, and they’d climbed in the paper store, grabbed the paper and took it round to George at the Queen Mary. The George family … yeah.

Carol: Now the George family didn’t have the Queen Mary; they had the print shop next door.

Colin: No, no – it was George had the fish and chip shop.

Carol: George who?

George Stavid.

Colin: George Stavid.

Carol: Oh, okay.

Colin: Thank God … [chuckle]

Carol: That’s it. Talking of the George print shop – after Alfie George died, I knew he did a family history and I discovered that I was in his history. So my great grandmother was maiden name George. So I’m still trying to get the … I’ve done a fair bit on the George family, but I can’t find the fit in. So now, I just had a bright idea this morning that it might be from his mother, or his … somebody.

The links are there; the place wasn’t that big those days, and all the business was conducted within smaller, closer communities …

Colin: Well, it’s doing what our native birds are doing at the moment – did you hear it on the news this morning? They’re all interbreeding, and it’s a real worry.

Carol: No, they’re not all interbreeding, just some of them.

Colin: Lot of them are.

But hey – getting back to the Cliff Press side of it – when we went into Hastings Street, we ran out of space there very, very quickly; so over the road which through Chas Bone, the plumbers, had a couple of little shops there. So that’s where Photolithics and Hart Printing House started up the small offset, and that was the first venture of both Cliff Press and Hart Printing into offset. And there was a guy called Dick Poulster; he was an Englishman we brought in, and he knew all about offsets, and he run [ran] the show. And when Cliff Press outgrew the new building and they bought Dalgety’s in …

Carol: Avenue Road.

Colin: … in Avenue Road, down the road from the NZR [New Zealand Railways] bus terminal, there was [were] two buildings there; one was a grain store for Dalgety’s and the other one was their tractor sales outlet. And so we bought the two buildings there; came out of Hastings Street; Guildford’s Furnishers, an upholsterers’ shop from Havelock – they went in there, and we put the Photolithics in the other half. Photolithics didn’t need the whole factory, so they moved over from Chas Bone’s to that building. And that went on for several years until New World bought the block …

Carol: You’ve got it a wee bit wrong – New World bought the block off you and then we moved to the Progressive Enterprises building.

Colin: No, for a number of years the Hastings factory carried on. Photolithics was brought over from Chas Bone’s …

Carol: Oh, yes, that’s right … mm hm. [Speaking together]

Colin: … they took up half of it, and the back half …

Carol: Guildford’s at the back.

Colin: … was Guildford’s in the back half.

Carol: Yeah.

Colin: And then for quite a while that whole factory was full of wool, because they started poking wool into spare factories all round New Zealand for some reason.

Carol: And then that property turned into …

Colin: Well Magnus Motors was next door; Magnus Motors was next door on the corner of Queen Street and Hastings Street. And we had Cooks, the electricians, in the old stables on the other side; on the Heretaunga Street/Hastings Street corner. That whole block was bought by New World and demolished. Photolithics come [came] round to Avenue Road; was put into what was the old …

Carol: That was in 1966.

Colin: So they joined us on site in Avenue Road. And then of course the K Mart came in and bought that block, so we ended up having to move. 1973 we bought Paddy Donovan, and Dad bought out …

Carol: They were in there several years, though.

Colin: Paddy Donovan and Dad bought out the Pictorial Publications from Lloyd Wilson, who was no relation to our Wilson family. So we moved into one of the Usherwood buildings next door to Pictorial Publications in Karamu Road. So there’s two Usherwood buildings there; one Usherwood’s built for Pictorial Publications who come [came] out of Heretaunga Street, next door to Hawke’s Bay Seafoods. That was their first … Pictorial Publications’ first building … in Heretaunga Street; then they moved down there when Usherwood’s built them a … Usherwood’s built an almost identical factory next door to that one, and that was the dyeing company, wasn’t it? What was the name of it? And then they closed down and they put a [an] indoor cricket arena in there, and that was being run by one of the Hawke’s Bay players – can’t remember his name now … little half-back. So when we turned up we got $1million for the site … K Mart … which was a lot of money in those days. And so we ended up having to buy out the cricket pavilion people; and then from the dyeing company, we had to buy the factory off them, and by the time we’d set that up on site with a cover in between the two buildings, we’d spent $1.1million …

Carol: I can’t remember what the dyeing company was.

Colin: … setting up the new place.

Carol: Can you remember what the dyeing company was?

Colin: Fabric Weavers.

Carol: Fabric Weavers …

Colin: And Keith Hulena put a roof between the two factories; and the only reason we were allowed to do that was, we had a covenant with the Council on it that it would never be sold until the two had been separated. [They] could be sold together because of the covered way, so consequently later on when we sold out to Jeff Craig … Durham Enterprises was the name of the trust he set up to buy that … he only wanted to buy the Pictorial Publications building. And I said, “No – it’s under covenants while we’ve got that roof on there.” And he said, “Righto.” So we dropped the price of the factories and he bought both of them. And then he later took that roofing off with the idea of selling them on separate titles. And I see it only just sold the other day to Kia. They’re actually putting in a car yard there, and somebody told me they’d taken over both blocks, but I can’t imagine that. They’ve come from a fairly small site in Heretaunga Street, but anyway, Kia are going into the old site.

So consequently we moved down alongside Pictorial Publications. At one stage there, 1973, Paddy Donovan and Dad found a way of buying that – it was mainly Paddy’s enterprise – and we built the company up to seventy-five employees at one stage there. We were printing calendars all over New Zealand; we were doing BP, Shell, Europa; we were doing all the real estate main companies’ calendars; we were doing lots and lots of postcards of course – three million, four million postcards a year; we were doing Wrightson NMA; we were doing all those calendars for them. Year after year old Happy’s tractor would go away, right up until he retired when he was in his early seventies.

Carol: What was his proper name?

Colin: Hector. Hector Stratton. He was … [you’d] almost think he was an English gentleman, but he was a New Zealander all the way through. He was always had a pipe in his mouth; silver-headed; grey trousers; reefer jacket; lovely man … really lovely man.

Carol: We went south one time; we never knew what he’d done before …

Colin: He’d died.

Carol: … went to the South Island to the Warbirds On Wanaka, and here’s all written up on the wall – he was an ace pilot, and we never knew that. And he’d never sort of spoke of it.

Those people didn’t.

Colin: I went in there – I mean Happy’d been dead for a couple of years; I went to his funeral in St Luke’s and his son-in-law got up and spoke. He was into Jags [Jaguars] too, and he sold his old gold Series 3 Jag, and he bought … I think he bought Dudley [?Nimon’s?] silver Series 3 – it was his pride and joy, anyway. When he finally retired his son-in-law said that he used to go out and sit in the car in the garage in Duart Road.

Just enjoy it.

And he used to sit there all day listening to the radio. And the son-in-law used to come in every Friday he used to sit there all day listening to the radio …

Carol: You mean everyday, not all day.

Colin: His son-in-law used to come in every Friday; take the battery out, put the new battery in for the next week; take it away for charging.

Oh, of course – he’d run it flat.

Yes. But as I say we turned up at Wanaka in this camper van, and the first question I asked at the museum … “Why was it that you folk” … and they still do … “buy only Pictorial Publications’ postcards?” “Oh, Mr Happy Stratton.” And I said, “Oh, yes – Happy used to call on you?” “Yes. But oh, you must see what we’ve got in the museum on Mr Stratton.” So we went out there and here’s a big picture of Happy up there. He had eight kills; he flew a Hurricane; he was an ace. He never ever talked about it.

Yes. I’ve interviewed John Caulton; and there’s one over in Napier …

Yeah, Max Collett – he’s still going.

They’re in their nineties.

But Max is still going.

Yeah, he is.

He could tell you some stories.

The Vintage Aviation group are just putting all our interviews and their interviews together; they’ve got a garage full of stuff that’s never been documented or catalogued. By the time its all done it’ll be wonderful.

Colin: Quite a bit of our stuff from Cliff Press ended up in the technical museum in Napier. What’s the name of the mayor that’s running ..?

Prebensen?

He runs that technical … we sent an 1845 proof press; I can remember as a boy proofing the type as it …

That’s pretty old.

1845, and it’s still over there; it’s black now. It was silver when we had it. When Herald-Tribune went to the computerised setting and that, we actually bought their proof presses … quite a bit of their stuff.

Well, at this stage we’d better come back to you now, if you can tell us about your children?

Carol: Oh, our children; Caroline Marie, she worked at Cliff Press; she did an apprenticeship. Hers was called compositor too, wasn’t it? She got into the early typesetting machine. She had to go to Auckland too, to train, just for five weeks a year, wasn’t it? Five or six. So she did that until she married, um Dave King. He’s got a garage in town, King’s Autos.

He’s married to your daughter?

Yes. Caroline’s our daughter.

Colin: And that’s our grandson, Fergus – the latest apprentice to come …

Carol: Now their son is working there as an apprentice. He’s very much like Dave. And Dave’s father ran King’s Autos before that – Rowan. And we’ve got … Bevan did an apprenticeship. He was on the machine … you or me?

Colin: You. [Chuckle]

Carol: Bevan did machinery [?], and then he married; he lived in Hastings quite a while and then he moved to Motueka, where he stayed down there. His wife’s parents live down there.

What’s their family name?

He’s Bevan Wilson, and they were … Greg …

Colin: One of the original settlers in Nelson.

Carol: Drummond …

Colin: The Drummond family.

Carol: … the name was. Yeah, she was from the Drummond family. And then we had Helen, born in 1973, and Helen was a hairdresser; she left school at sixteen and became a hairdresser. And when she was eighteen she had a motorbike accident which killed her partner, and she suffered a lot of injuries. And she’s come out of it with [a] very positive attitude, and she’s got one son called Jarrod, and he’s at Lindisfarne at the moment. She married Stuart Blackbourne; the marriage only lasted a short time, ‘cause Helen’s got brain injury, and a few injuries … quite a lot of injuries. But she’s very bright and able to do a lot of things. So that’s worked out very well, and Jarrod’s doing well.

And then we had Linda. Linda left school at sixteen as well, and she started selling stationery and things like that; so then she was transferred to Napier and then Palmerston. And now she works for New Zealand Uniforms. She’s a bright business person … doing very well. She kept her maiden name; she married David Jensen, and he was from near Palmerston. And then she’s got two children, Max and Holly.

That’s the family?

That’s the family. So we’ve got now, seven grandsons and one granddaughter. And my mum and dad had ten granddaughters and one grandson. [Chuckle]

Colin: So we squared it up a bit.

Carol: It [chuckle] changed the balance

And they’re all well settled now? It’s sad to hear about your daughter and the motorcycle crash.

Colin: 1992 – it was the year after Dad died in 1991 …

Carol: No, he died just over six weeks before.

Colin: Very lucky, really. He would’ve been devastated, wouldn’t he?

Carol: Oh, they were all devastated.

Colin: Certainly Les was.

Carol: We supported Helen for a long time. It’s twenty-five years now; and because of that we got involved with Brain Injury … there was not much known about brain injury those days. And we went to Auckland one time and we met up with the people there who’d started a Head Injury Society, and we became very good friends with a lot of those people, and still good friends with them. And then they changed it to Brain Injury Association, and started up a Stewart Centre in Auckland. So we looked at all that information and then we brought it back here, and got Harley Pope to come down here and help us start up a Brain Injury Association in Hastings. So its worked well. So we’ve been volunteers for them for many years …

Colin: Twenty-odd years.

Carol: And now we’ve retired.

Colin: Carol was made life member of the Brain Injury Association. She’s had two or three years off since she’s left the Board; and I resigned a fortnight ago, so we’re free of the Brain Injury Association now.

But after that of course, the San … the Sanitorium Hill, Waipukurau … the government closed down the operations there, and Carol had the idea that it was a shame for all those staff to disperse, and she brought the Auckland Brain Injury Association and Harley Pope and a couple of the others down here. And Harley made contact with EIT [Eastern Institute of Technology] over here; what was his name? The guy at EIT?

Carol: Noel Kinnear.

Colin: And so we ended up starting the Stewart Centre. Stewart Centre – named after one of the Irish guys still alive up in Ruawai area … Alec Stewart. And it was set up in what we know as the Durney Building, or it was the insurance building – a multi-storey building – on the first floor there; and that’s where the Stewart Centre started, and then of course it moved on to EIT in Taradale.

Carol: Yeah, so it was good that we got that sorted. And the staff from the original centre in Waipukurau – the staff moved down here and set it up here, which is good.

Colin: And I just stood down as a trustee of that trust last week, so I’m off the hook there, too.

Now coming back to Cliff Press – at some stage your father passed away, and you and I assume your sisters, were involved then with the on-going …

Colin: Yeah, and ‘course Barry Webber.

Carol: Employed Barry Webber about …

Colin: It’s in the book, Carol; they’ve got the book. Got heaps of the books.

Carol: … as managing … no, he wasn’t a Director; it was …

Colin: [Speaking together] 1968 it was. It was when Bob Boston went back to Martin Printing Company in Napier, 1968. This guy who’d just come out of his apprenticeship with Swailes Hurst popped in, and …

Carol: Colin Stanton.

Colin: … we’d been looking at all sorts of high falutin’ people who wanted to take on the job after Bob Boston went back to Martins. And we like the cut of this guy on a Saturday morning, and we gave him the stuff; had a good talk. I said, “We’re going to give that guy a go.” And it was the best thing since sliced bread. Yes – he did very, very well over the years for us.

Carol: And he retired, and Colin’s Dad died about then too. And the printing changed so much, didn’t it? The machinery changed to the computerisation, so … that was …

Colin: You could do things with photocopy machines that we were doing with full factories.

Carol: It was just not worth us to start repairing machinery and buying new machinery, because it was another huge technique that we weren’t …

Colin: We were very lucky …

Carol: … able to do.

Colin: … it was about twelve months before all that machinery was scrap metal … $60 a ton; [inaudible].

Carol: But the machinery went to a lot of different people. A lot of different companies from over New Zealand bought that machinery.

Colin: Yes. [?Allens?] took the five-colour machine and one or two of the other binding machines.

Carol: Because those old Heidelbergs all had a special purpose, didn’t they?

Colin: they did.

Carol: Like numbering or …

Colin: Creasing, or perforating …

But you know, that’s the winds of change, isn’t it?

But you know, we’ve got an information technology now. When I left … when we closed up, Carol said, “What are you going to do in retirement?” I said, “Well I’d like to get into the technology side of it.” So we’ve got quite a few computers here. Carol’s into it too, with her own computer, and we’re all on the phones like you folk are, and so forth. But don’t you find this day [these days], Frank, that even though we’re still getting our publications and getting our paper every morning and so forth, you only browse through it now. It’s like your emails – you browse down, you open the ones you want …. the important ones; a lot of them are unimportant. So when this technology or information is so quick to get hold of, yet we’re not really taking it all in. It’s too complicated.

But we’re all policemen these days, Frank … all policemen. We get this information on an hourly basis; everybody’s watching everybody. Anything that’s said that’s wrong in the world comes out; so we’re all policemen really, so in some ways it’s really good that things aren’t hidden any more. We know straight away if somebody falls out of line, and straight away the whole world says to them, “Stop that, or else you’ll be in trouble.” So in some ways it’s good. There’s a lot of false reporting going on, too.

So then you’ve obviously had other interests?

That’s right – Brain Injury Association. Lions, of course. Dad, back in 1961, was one of the inaugural members of Lions.

When I first met you, you were a schoolboy shooting small bore rifles. And that’s a hundred years ago … [Laughter]

Carol: Not far off …

You know, your family have rung the changes in the town; you’ve seen the growth …

Yeah, but I feel now that the children have missed out on so much because we had history when there was hardly a car around … not many cars. I mean the children get dropped off at the school gate with their mum, now.

They’re totally cocooned.

It is. And I remember having to walk to school with gumboots, and we’d take a peg to put our gumboots together at school. And the kids now, if it’s a wet day, they don’t ever have gumboots or a raincoat because Mum‘d drop them off at the gate.

You shouldn’t’ve needed gumboots at Stortford Lodge because it was the highest part of Hastings.

We did have gumboots, and we’d walk along the gutters to school and kick the ice … there was ice in the gutters.

[Speaking together] There you are, so they had gumboots so they could get in and kick the ice?

Yeah.

Colin: Well, don’t you forget the ice coming under the taps? Used to have to break off a stick as you went. We used to jump into the puddles all the way to school to break the ice, and that doesn’t happen any more.

Carol: We don’t have the ice the same; no, and that must be the global warming thing.

Colin: Must be.

Carol: As children, in the morning in the winter, we’d have to go down to the chook house, ‘cause we had a big area with chooks and fruit trees in the back of our yard; and a lovely playhouse, and a lovely swing. But we used to have to break the water for the chooks in the morning.

I know, I know. So now that you’ve retired in this lovely park-like property, do you still do any fishing?

Colin: No, no – I go down to the fish shop now, and I say …

You buy it already bagged?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah … “I’ll have some of those, and some of those”, and you don’t get caught for undersized fish.

So do you belong to any clubs?

Yeah, well Hastings Host Lions Clubs.

And that’s still going well?

Still going well, yeah. Alan Harvey and Maurice Elliott – all the old boys are still there.

Carol: 1917 … old book from 1917 … [shows book]

Colin: Did you enjoy that real estate?

Oh yes, it was wonderful.

Are you still the National Party ..? You were sort of involved with that …

We had a knock on the back door about three Saturdays ago now; Lawrence [Yule] was standing there. He’s lovely … came in and gave us a good old talk about what was going on, and cleared up some of the things we were worried about.

Carol: This little file’ll be very interesting for you; I hadn’t even read it before. Alfie George, I think, must’ve given me this.

Colin: Alfie left us a lot of stuff in his garage … a lot of his glass negatives out there.

Carol: I’ve got them there, I think.

Colin: Yeah, but I took it down to Harvey Normans; and the fellow there was very good and he made a DVD of it all and he sent it off to Napier; sent some to the City Council here. So he spread ‘em round, all the old plates.

I think we just need to finalise this recording we’ve got going. You’ve obviously travelled ..?

Oh, right from 1973 through to eighteen months, two years ago. We did a trip with Barry and Marion O’Neill. He was President of New Zealand Plumbers for three years; good mate of mine; in our Lions Club. And we went from here to Fremantle on one of the new Dreamliners, and then we met up with the Queen Mary II and we did sixteen days over to Cape Town; and Barry and Marion came home and we went off to England for eight weeks, so we’ve had a lot of getting around.

One thing we haven’t covered is when you moved to Flaxmere Avenue, and lived in that lovely big home on the corner …

Carol: Yes … we bought that in …

Colin: That was the fifteenth house built in Flaxmere, and we had Hughie Little and Effie round the corner there. It would’ve been one of the first houses there.

Carol: They were the first house on that block, and then we were the second house. There was no York Road then; York Road finished, so it wasn’t joined up. So we were on Wilson Road, and then there was corn all behind us … all corn fields; crops …

Colin: We were involved with a lot of the setting up of the kindergartens, and you know, going doing bottle drives and this sort of carry-on. Barry O’Neill’s mother-in-law was … the kindergarten out there.

Carol: It’s named after her.

Colin: She’s a hundred and three now.

Carol: Ellen Stevenson.

Colin: Ellen Stevenson.

Is she still alive?

She’s still going.

Carol: Yes. Ellen Stevenson Kindergarten.

What’s her memory like, do you know?

She’s not too bad. She’s Marion’s mother. Maybe Marion could take you to talk to her mum, ‘cause I think her memory comes back for some things. I think she’s a hundred and four, Col.

Colin: Well she [?] this relly of ours, on the Curtis side. And he was my Bible teacher on the Curtis side of it.

So are you related to Lloyd Curtis?

Carol: Not sure. We’ve got the Curtis family history there, but I haven’t worked it into mine.

That’s another story!

I know – it’s another whole lifetime to do.

Colin: But getting back to … did you ever do anything with Peter Single?

No.

Peter was a councillor at the time. We were twelve years out in Flaxmere. And we sold for $53,000 to come and buy the big house in York Street here from Simon Sherratt. I always remember, he put the story on the front page of the Herald-Tribune: First House in Flaxmere to Sell Over $50,000. Peter Single did that.

Carol: I’ve got the accounts here for building that house. We bought the section for $1200 [$12,000] and then we built the house for $1600 [$16,000]. It’s a big house; I’ve got the accounts …

Colin: What’s the total thousands for house and section … total thousands?

Carol: Sixteen. It’s multiplied by …

Colin: As my father would say, you need a sugar bag to carry it around.

Carol: We moved from there into the big house there, and that had the whole acre. And we bought that for $83,000 … an acre of land on York Street, with that big white house on it.

Colin: I used to go home for lunch – used to take an hour and a half. So Carol said, “Well, it’s that time to move to town.” So I said, “Well you do the jacking up.” So she went to Uncle Jim; she said, “Jim, what’ve you got?” And he brought us down here to have a look at Aunty’s house here. Fenton Kelly’s aunty’s house; we always call it Aunty’s house. So there’s a whole acre here. So we went through that, and as we come [came] away from that Jim got in the car and drove away up the street, and Carol said, “God – it’s going to cost a lot of money to do that up.” And she said, “What about this house next door?”

Carol: It wasn’t on the market.

Colin: Wasn’t on the market. And we walked up the long drive and knocked on the door. And Simon Sherratt opened the door, and he said, “How can I help you?” And I said, “Oh, we’ve just been next door with Jim Simkin, having a look at the Harvey’s house and we think its going to take a lot of doing up. You wouldn’t be in a position where you wanted to sell?” He said, “You must be psychic.” He said, “Myself and Rachel were just out in the back kitchen here, talking about putting this on the market and I was going to go down and do the job. Come on in and talk.”

So we sat down in the Snug, And he said, “Charlie Pask wants to buy the place.” He said, “Have a look at this.” And so he opened up the plans; and Charlie wanted to put two flats out here, and two flats out the front. And he said, “Rachel and myself don’t want that. What would you do with it, Mr and Mrs Wilson?” I said, “Well we’ve got four kids; we want to come to town, and we’ll guarantee we’ll stay in here as a family home for at least ten years.” [He] said, “That’s what I wanted to hear.” He said, “Charlie was going to offer me a $112,000 for the place – what would you buy it for?” He said, “As a family I’m prepared to bring it down in price.” He said, “What about $91 [thousand]?” I said, “How about $83 [thousand]?” He said, “You’re a tough bugger, but okay.” And he pulled out the whisky bottle from the Snug over there, and we had a whisky on it. He said, “I’ll give you a fortnight to sell in Flaxmere.” So we sold … just over a week.

Carol: We went home. We had to change the carpet ‘cause it was a bit worn out; so we pulled up the carpet; put it on the market, and then while the carpet was up the first person came and looked, and they bought it.” Bault. [Spells]

Colin: [Speaking together] Owns a motorbike shop in Napier.

Carol: They came and bought it while the carpet was lifted, so we sold that, bought this and moved into there within ten days.

It was meant to be wasn’t it?

It was.

Colin: Simon and me [I] turned up at Peter Dennehy’s; Peter was next door, of course. And we turned up and said, “We want to put through this sale.” He said, “Where’s the agreement?” I said, “Agreement, buggery”, I said, “Simon’s an Englishman,” I said. “We had a whisky on it and shook hands”; and he went, “Oh no! Not another one of those!” [Laughter]

Simon bought the Raupare House … Raupare Road there.

Carol: We were over there for twenty-one years. Our kids were all married from there. We bought this piece of land … this quarter acre from a chap McLaughlan that [who] lived in there at the time, after the Jelicichs[?] had sold it. And then they sold it to the developer who built the two houses in the front, which spoilt the street, I think. And then we bought this off him; he said, “How much do you want of it?” And so we had fair go with this; so it’s quarter of an acre and we also got the drive which allowed us to use … that section owns the drive. So we were very lucky that he worked in with us.

Wonderful.

And it was very good, ‘cause he was …

Colin: Terry was married to a …

Carol: McLaughlan … an opera singer.

Colin: … she was an opera singer. She was always away. Well, they split up and he went home to Island Bay. But he said to us, “Come and and set it up as you want it.” Really good.

Carol: So it was really good, because that allowed that section to be useful. So we put the fence across and then sold the whole front bit to Trent Petherick, who told us a lie … he’s a lawyer that told us a lie. He had seven children and he wanted it for their family, so we sold it how we bought it; cheaply to them. And we went on holiday; by the time we came home from our holiday there was [were] two houses on the front.

Colin: O’Neills came in here in 1912, and they got …

Carol: [Speaking together] We’ve got a photo of it …

Colin: … William Rush …

Carol: … in 1912.

Colin: … William Rush was assigned to build that for them. Now O’Neills came from Takapau Plain, and it was fashionable to come to Hastings so a lot of these families came and built these one-acre blocks here. They only stayed here for six months. They came in during the winter, and of course Chapman-Taylor used an Indian plan to build that place. And the O’Neills only had one daughter so they built the bedrooms upstairs and the lounge upstairs, because you know in India they have snakes. And they had sleeping verandahs.

Carol: [Speaking together] The staff stayed in the …

Colin: So each of the … they had the lounge in the middle, which ended up being our main bedroom. They had Mum and Dad’s room to one side with a sleeping verandah, and daughter on the other side with a bedroom and sleeping verandah. And they came in the heart of the Hawke’s Bay winter, and they froze! And they went home to the farm, and I think they sold it to the Mills family after that; and they built it in, the Mills family; made more bedrooms and so forth. And we subdivided the back third off, which we’ve got out in front of this house now; and we subdivided a section off the front to make certain that it wasn’t developed. And this Trent Petherick told a lie.

Carol: We made a nice little area so that the drive would stay like, a big circle and everything, and that would stop anybody buying it. But I weakened when he said he wanted the whole land …

Colin: He said, “I’m not going to …”

Carol: … and I trusted him.

Colin: “… buy the house unless you sell me the front section …” [Speaking together]

Carol: You trust people …

Colin: “… for my seven children to play in.”

Carol: … because we’re trustworthy. And [chuckle] we kept it for the twenty-one years. And then to see it done like that – we were very, very disappointed.

Colin: And he was so devious; midnight there was an almighty thump out there. The street …

Carol: We were away.

Colin: … but they tell us the whole street turned up with their torches at the gate; and he’d knocked that big palm tree down …

Carol: [Speaking together] In the middle of the night.

Colin: … and when it hit the ground it shook the whole street, and he did it at midnight.

Carol: I think we were in Australia, and Helen just rang, ‘cause she lives round the corner, our daughter, in a nice flat there; and she rang and she said, ”It sounded like an earthquake! Something banged!” And then she found in the morning that the tree had been chopped.

Okay. Well I think probably we have got enough now of the family, but thank you, Colin and Carol, for giving us this history because for Hawke’s Bay it’s important that families are noted. It’s quite unique to have the history being told about the family in the voices of the family.

Yes. And it’s great that we remember the old streets, and the Blossom Parades, and the old things that used to happen there.

Well whether we like it or not, we’ve become part of history.

Colin: [Chuckle] And at that point he’s going to turn it off.