A special anniversary

This weekend marks ten years since we shifted in to this house

Here are some of the reasons why we think this is a good reason for celebration.

This is the kitchen we installed ten years ago, and have enjoyed working in.

This is the view over our neighbours' houses looking to the centre of New Plymouth, with the TSB head office ten minutes' walk away, Macca's just round the corner, and three supermarkets handy. We can walk easily to many of the places we need to visit, and to the movies, cafés, library, city shops and Pukekura Park.

We have several outdoor areas where we can relax or entertain friends in fine weather.

We have a smallish garden which supplies some veggies plus feijoas, lemons, mandarins, grapes and even a few apples. 

And we have good neighbours who we see regularly, and get together as a group several times a year.

Finally, for entertaining our friends or family we have what we call "the flat" which we enlarged for Margaret's mother towards the end of her life.

Sketching week 4

   

One of my exercises this week has been drawing faces, using David Rankin's suggestions.

Here are two of my efforts from early in the week, using photos from magazines or websites.

On the way home from Auckland in the bus I tried sketching people from life.

This lady was waiting at a bus stop, but moved away before I could finish.

At the meal stop, this fellow-passenger was reading while he drank his coffee, which meant I had more time.

At least his head is a better shape!

I have been reading a book by Alwyn Crawshaw on sketching, and ploughing slowly through Betty Edwards's book I mentioned last week.

Everything Pauses

This morning the news is that one of my heroes has died.

Pete Seegar, born 1919, was one of the movers and shakers of the Twentieth Century.

I met him once. In May 1968 I was acting as Chair of the Auckland Council on Vietnam, while the regular chair, Len Reid of the ASRS, the railwaymen's union, was on holiday.

There was a rally planned at St Matthew's Church in the city, and the key appearances were to be Pete Seegar and Hone Tuwhare. I met Pete a day or two deforhand and discussed the rally, and then on the night I drove Hone to the church.

At the rally, I introduced Pete and Hone in turn. Pete led singing, and Hone read his poems.

Pete was one of the mildest men I ever met, but when he got an instrument in his hands, his fingers played a few chords, and his reedy voice started up, he could shift crowds and influence powerful politicians. "We shall not be moved" and "Big Muddy" among others, became classics of the protest movements.

It is one of the enduring memories my life.

YESTERDAY, I joined my brother, Stuart, three of his sons, Andrew, Philip and Jonny, and Phillip's son Ben, at Auckland Grammar School, to celebrate the first time five members of one family from five successive generations had attended the school.

Great-great-grandfather Fred (1882), Great-grandfather Noel (1916), Grandfather Stuart (1953), Father Phillip (?) and now Ben. As well as Jonny, Andrew and myself, my grandson Rowan was also a student there recently, and in the early twentieth century (say around 1910), my aunt, Doris Kathleen Gaze, also attended AGS, when it was providing education for girls as well as boys. Prizes she won have the AGS logo and badge on them.

You will see the photo and article in the Herald.

TODAY, Julia, Andrew, and baby Sophie arrive in Auckland from London.

What a great day!

My First Real Job

Towards the end of 1955, I applied for two jobs, and the first to grab me was Hamilton Boys High School. At that time there were only two colleges training secondary teachers: Auckland and Canterbury. Don Duff and I were the only English majors in the Auckland course; both ended up at Hamilton Boys and Don spent his life working there until retirement. 

1956 was the first year after the co-ed High School was split into two single-sex schools, so it was virtually a new school; certainly the site and buildings were brand-new. The Principal was H D Tait, a man at the end of his career, with great mana. The school worked well, with a friendly staff, an active Secondary Teachers Association, later morphed into PPTA, and massive community support.  The gala day in 1956 made 3500 pounds, a huge amount for those days. 

My programme involved teaching English up to Seventh Form and Latin to a third form class. Looking back, I probably used the methods I had been taught by at AGS.

My English HOD, Hugh Morton, was a very experienced teacher with a good sense of humour and an easy manner. 

I became friendly with another first-year teacher, Bill Roche from Christchurch, and the three new chums in the English Department compared notes regularly. 



My form class in 1956

I helped with leadership of the Crusader Union, and in one of the holidays I was one of the leaders in a bike tour around the Waikato for our boys.  I also took one of my classes out for a tramp  one Saturday; we climbed Mt Pirongia after biking from Hamilton to the end of the approach road. Having helped manage Ponui Island holiday camps, and Bible Class Easter camps, as well as others at Carey Baptist Park, I was pretty au fait with outdoor activities like these. 

As the two years developed, I also took on producing a one-act play for a students’ drama competition, and supervising (I won’t say coaching) one of the school soccer teams. Fortunately the pupils in both activities knew enough to cope without any expert input from me; at that stage I had none to give on either score! 

One of my most vivid memories from those two years was of the morning Britain and Israel jointly attacked Egypt to punish the Egyptians for having nationalised the Suez Canal. The announced song in assembly that day was "Land of Hope and Glory"; I nearly walked out in protest. That was, to me, the beginning of the "Sixties" period of protest and rebellion.

Another memory is of a skiffle band made up by some of the music students at the school, with the bass part played by a tea chest with a hinged piece of wood sticking up from one side with one string on which all the notes were played. The tune was "When the saints go marching in".

At the end of 1957 I left Hamilton, having been accepted by the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society as a missionary teacher to be sent to the school run by the mission at Agartala, Tripura, India.

Family History 1.724

(The shipboard diary of my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27)

 

28th January 1860

Very fine, cold and high sea, strong wind most sails reefed, 1 p.m. topsails unreefed. 2 p.m. main royal also and lower stud sails up,

S Lat 41-4 E Long 17-25.

8 p.m. when pumping tonight the ship rolled more than ever, the sea washing over the deck and down the hatchway even heavy chests were thrown out of their places in addition to many things falling off shelves and between decks a great deal of screaming and laughing while it lasted.

Several albatross etc, larger than have been seen before.

A sheep killed tonight.

29th Sunday

Very fine and a good N.W.breeze    Half p 10 a.m. Church Prayers on the poop but very few attended on account of not being allowed on the poop in the week as before,

E Long 21-30.

3 p.m. Bible Class in the Steerage as before (3 Ch John).

8 p.m. Dissenters Service and address from Acts 16, Ch 14-40v in our part of the ship, well attended by most persons, 1st class included.

Strong breeze all night.

30th

Fine and strong NW breeze untill about 10 a.m. when it began to rain and wind changes to W.S.W. and continues to rain till about 2 p.m. when it cleared off and was very fine the rest of the day, wind stronger towards night.

A large number of small birds seen this afternoon swimming on the sea and afterwards flew away all together. Said to be whale birds, I estimate their number to be about a thousand. Some persons thought more.

31st

Very fine, and strong breeze and cold. 
Lat. 42-2 E.

Family History 1.723

(The shipboard diary of my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27)

25th January 1860

Rather dull and showery not so rough sea but the ship still rolls.

The calf removed from the cowhouse and put into the long boat with the sheep,the cow having fell on it and hurt it, it died soon after, poor bony animal, the butcher skinned it (the skin used in the rigging, also the sheep's, to keep the ropes from chafing) its legs were given to the pigs and the body thrown overboard when about a dozen birds different kinds flew round it,and an albatross was seen swimming along-side of it, for some time astern of us. I heard a sailor say that very likely the albatross would swim and eat untill he would be scarce able to fly out of the water again, unless a shark or any other should come and take it from.

A whale seen very soon after this.

Lat. 40-26S Long. 3.30 E.

Slack topsails this evening. Sea not so rough, much cooler.

An association named The Burleigh Homestead Association formed to combine to have their land together in one lot.

Mr Wilkes, Chairman, Mr Green, Sec.

26th

Fine, cold untill about 2 p.m. when it began to rain and continued till near sunset about 7 p.m. when it cleared off, and a most beautiful sky appeared, remarked by many persons to be such as they had never seen, Gold, Green, Purple, Blue and many other colours in streaks as the clouds cleared away.

S. Lat. 40-50 E. Long 7-42.

27th

Very fine, very cold and heavy sea.

S Lat.41 - E. Long 12-33.

Sketching Week 3

Human Bodies and Faces

Here are two of my first attempts at this week's project: the human body in action.

 

As you can see, I have been looking at the shots of this week's sporting events taken by the STUFF photographers for their website and newspapers.

Later in the week I have been tackling portraits of human faces, and that is another story again.

I have also been reading several very good books about sketching.

One of them is David Rankin's Fast Sketching Techniques, which I found very helpful for the sketches of heads and faces. Now I have got hold of Betty Edwards's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain  which I am looking forward to reading.

Missionary Call

Part of the church experience of childhood was the awareness that people who were in many ways regarded as superheroes had left their homes in New Zealand and gone overseas to found the church in benighted countries. 

My family had friends among these wonderful souls, especially among the handful who worked with the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society, which was the overseas mission arm of the Baptist Union of New Zealand. 

One of the support organisations for this work was the Baptist Womens Missionary Union, of which my aunt was Treasurer, and on which my grandmother had taken a leading role. My mother’s distant cousin and my father’s friend, Royston Brown, had been a missionary before the war. 

The NZBMS had been allocated two districts in Bengal, Brahmanbaria and Chandpur, in which to establish mission stations. They were a few miles apart, with another district, Comilla, in between, where the Australian Baptists worked. The NZBMS also had a station at Agartala, the capital of the neighbouring Native State of Tripura, ruled over by a maharaja at the pleasure of the British-controlled Government of India. 

While Brahmanbaria and Chandpur had been mission stations for half a century, Tripura had only just allowed Christian missionaries to live and work there since just before the war, thanks to the efforts of NZBMS staff in establishing cordial relationships with the Tripura Royal Family. 

Missionary work of this kind was always regarded in my family and, so far as I could understand, in the Baptist church as a whole as the most important job a Christian could take up, standing above the work of the ministry in New Zealand, and above the most highly regarded professional jobs of service industries like medicine and education. 

So for young people growing up in this religious atmosphere, there was always the challenge of training for the pastorate in a New Zealand congregation, or, even more difficult and meritorious, of training to be a missionary overseas. The difficulty was compounded by the problems of working in a foreign language, and lurid stories from earlier times of tropical diseases, and high death-rates among missionaries in some parts of the world. 

Of course, much of this was exaggerated, as we came to realise years later, but there was a large element of truth in it before 1945. (In practice, I was the first missionary of the NZBMS not to suffer from malaria) 

In 1951, I went to see my distant relative Royston Brown, to ask him what I should do to make sure I would be ready to work in the missionary situation for the NZBMS. He was then Chairman of the mission’s Council. He suggested I get a good master’s degree and training as a teacher, and a couple of years’ experience in a New Zealand school, and then apply to the NZBMS to be sent as a missionary.  

He explained that the mission school in Agartala would need a trained teacher at its head to lift the level of education provided from primary to secondary. 

So I proceeded  to follow his advice, and eventually in 1957 left Auckland by ship with Audrey, and Janet, who was going to marry Rev Stuart Avery, for Bombay and Calcutta. (Photo at left: Budding missionaries, 1957: Brian Smith, FG, Muriel Ormrod, Edward Mills; in front: Audrey, Janet Avery)

In the meantime I had continued to be involved in the Church at Epsom, and then later in Hamilton, teaching Bible Class, running with the Harrier Club, and editing the national Bible Class Magazine, "Contact", in 1955 and 1956. While at Epsom I continued to play the organ. In 1956 and 1957 I studied extra-murally for papers for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity from Melbourne University, but although I passed most of the subjects for those preliminary years I never completed the course. 

So again my religious practice was largely social and intellectual, although I am sure I believed my emotions and my deeper personal life was 100% committed and involved in the Christian way of life.

Training College (1955)

After a discussion with Royston Brown, my mother's cousin and a friend of both my parents, who had been a missionary before the war, I had set my course for a teaching career to prepare to offer my services to the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society for work at St Paul's School in Agartala, where the current Principal, Eileen Arnold was nearing retirement age.

So I applied for Training College (Auckland Secondary) at Epsom, and was accepted for the course. English graduates were rare in those days; there were only two of us in our year, although there were several with some English in their degrees.

English and Foreign Language graduates were in the same class, with Peter Wells, an inspiring teacher originally from Wales, with experience in Australia and New Zealand, as our tutor. Our classes also included Social Studies, and some educational theory, although not much. We were to have three stints of teaching practice during the year.

At the same time, I enrolled for three papers at the university to start the course for the Diploma in Education: Education Stage I and a research paper.

We started the year with a visit to an intermediate school, to get an idea of the levels achieved by Form 2 pupils. My visit was to Kowhai Intermediate, the first intermediate school in the country to be opened, about 1922. There has been a lot of criticism of the intermediate schools, but they were originally intended to be junior high schools, providing four years (up to Year 10) of education for less academic pupils, and a good grounding for the ones who would progress to Senior High School and University. The second part of the idea was never bought into by the general public.

I had only been at Training College for about three days, when a message came to say that one of the young teachers at Kaitaia College had had to go away for a fortnight's military training course and could I go and relieve for him? So I was booked on the DC3 for Kaitaia on the Saturday, and reached Kaitaia late in the weekend, because the weather was bad and we had to travel by bus.

This was my first introduction to the Far North and I enjoyed the experience. The students didn't have time to get to know me well enough to cause problems, the people at the College were friendly, and the rural lifestyle relaxed. When I got back to Training College I didn't seem to have missed much.

One of the features of that year was learning about new technology. Reel-to-reel tape recorders were just coming on to the market. A few weeks in to the year, the College took delivery of one of the new machines and we were able to record our own voices and play them back, to help us improve our classroom speaking, and to enable us to learn how to use the new gadgets for teaching English oral skills, and pronunciation of foreign languages.

My first school "section" was at Auckland Grammar, where I was introduced to the protocols and some of the politics of secondary school staffrooms: which chair you could sit in at morning tea, and so on. Even though I had been a student fairly recently, it was nowhere near as friendly as Kaitaia, though some of my old teachers were helpful.

Later I went for three weeks to Morrinsville College. I had cousins who lived out of town on their farm, where we had stayed for holidays a couple of times, and that was pleasant, as was the country school.

My final section was at Takapuna Grammar School, large and a bit more impersonal. The Deputy Head was a distant cousin of my mother's, who was very welcoming, and his daughter was also a teacher there so I did not feel strange for too long. But I remember sitting in on French lessons taken by the senior languages teacher, who later became an Inspector. His text-book (for sixth-form French) was annotated with the dates he reached a particular page each year, and where he inserted his jokes. He had obviously taught the same way for many years!

In early October we had to apply for jobs for the next year. I applied for two; Papakura High School, and the newly-built Hamilton Boys. The Hamilton school application was successful. I was ready for my first year of teaching, or so I thought.

Family History 1.722

(The shipboard diary of my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27)

 

21st January 1860

Very fine, cold, and favourable winds.

Sighted a vessel East of us and signalled but not near enough to understand one another sighted the Islands of Tristan and Becona.

Lat. 37-59 Long 11-45.

A pig killed tonight.

I roasted and ground our weeks coffee as usual.

Wife iron'd 2 of my shirts.

22nd

Sunday very fine, cold and favourable winds 

 

Half past 10 a.m. Church Prayers on the Poop

Lat 38-20 Long 8-40 3 p.m.

I proposed and had a bible class of about 14 men in the single mens cabin began and ended by prayer and

2 Ch. John.

 

Half past 4 Dissenters Service on the poop and address from Job 37-21v.

 

Ordered by the Captain that in future only first and second Cabin passengers allowed on the poop, in consequence of so much noise caused by persons (especially some of the Scotchmen who wear heavy boots) walking about over the saloon.

23rd

Very fine, cold and heavy sea.

I helped my wife wash and hung out some clothes.

Lat. 38-56S Long 4-49W.

Carpenter fastening the Hatches expecting rough weather. Very rough all night the ship rolling more than it has done before a great noise with things falling off the shelves.

24th

Very fine, but rough Sea Ship still rolling very much a large number of things rolling off the tables at Breakfast time, several broken.

Lat 39-41S Long. 0-46W.

Single reef'd topsails in the evening.

Living in Hamilton

I lived at home in Grange Road through university and Training College, and only left to do my CMT at Taieri, and finally when I went to work in Hamilton. 

I obtained board in Hamilton with a couple who lived close to the shopping centre at Beerescourt, so near the Fairfield Bridge, which gave quick access by bike to school at Hamilton East. 

Mrs Norman was the mother of a girl I had known vaguely at university, and was a motherly soul. Mr Norman worked for the railways and was away a lot in his accommodation carriage. The meals my landlady cooked were good, wholesome fare. 

Unfortunately this arrangement came to an end later in the year when Mrs Norman learned that her husband had been having lady friends to stay in his moveable accommodation! 

So in the second year I looked for board again. I started with a Dutch couple, closer to the school, but had to share a room with another guy, older than me, just back from the war in Korea, where he claimed to have made lots of money in various rorts of the army systems for buying food. I still have no idea whether this was just bravado! 

However a couple from our church had a spare room and I spent the next six months with them, until my marriage to Audrey in the August holidays. 

We spent our first term of marriage in a caravan parked on the section of Audrey’s landlady, who lived just round the corner from the church, and not too far from the schools we both taught at. This was a good temporary arrangement while we waited for our departure for India. 

It was while we were living there that the Russians put the first Sputnik into orbit; we sat outside in the evenings watching the faint twinkling light cross the darkening sky.

 

Hamilton was a compact city in those days and pleasant enough to live in, because the staff at the school, and our friends in the church were great, hospitable and welcoming. I was extremely busy with work, study, negotiating with the mission, to say nothing of courting!

 

But the winters were cold; frosts fourteen mornings in a row one year, and fog to ride through lots of winter mornings. So we were not unhappy when the two years were up and we were on our way for our great adventure.

University Assessed

In those days, university study meant lectures, reading, a few assignments and exams. There was very little in our courses which you could describe as tutorials or discussions. Even at the post-grad level, we did not seem to be encouraged to think for ourselves, or to branch out into new ideas.

The quality of the lecturing was nothing exciting from my point of view. My guess is that there were so many students coming through immediately after the war, with the rise in birth-rate and men returning from the war, and so little development to cope with the numbers, that the staff were run off their feet.

Best of our English lecturers was J C Reid, who had been a teacher at AGS, and eventually built a reputation as a very solid academic. Along with him were two men whose poetry I later came to admire, although as lecturers I found them dull: M K Joseph and Allan Curnow. The professor, Musgrove, had made one contribution to scholarship by disagreeing with C S Lewis over Paradise Lost, but so far as I could see had done little to add to that.

In French we had reasonable tutors, and the German lecturer, Asher, was energetic, and set high standards.

The Latin professor was on sabbatical leave, so Henry Cooper came in from Grammar to teach us. It was like being back at school. The class was full of budding lawyers all trying to complete their compulsory Latin paper. No-one was interested in anything from an academic point of view, and full-time students were just about ignored. I sailed through the course with high marks because we had already studied the set book of Virgil at school the year before.

For History, where classes were again huge, there were Keith Sinclair and Bob Tizard. I remember their lectures as competent, but I had already covered the course twice in the last two years at AGS, so it was pretty boring. I don't remember any of them saying anything new!

In the English language papers we had a little mousy lady, Annie Shepherd. She knew her stuff, and as there were never more than a handful of us, we soaked up all she had to give us, but she seemed about to faint, or fall ill, the whole time, or else was extremely nervous of clumsy young people at her advanced age (she must have been at least 40), and we never felt we knew her at all.

I have the impression that the quality of University education has improved markedly since then; certainly the courses my grandchildren are doing seem much more exciting than anything I remember from the fifties!

Sketching Week 2

In 1982 a book of new Zealand photos was published, containing shots by a cousin of Margaret's, Martin Barriball, now sadly out of print.

One of the photos was of an old cottage in Central Otago, which I used as the basis of this sketch.

It was interesting because of the project which Terry and Karen are doing, to restore a similar cottage at Arrowtown. While theirs is stone and this one is apparently cobb, the similarity attracted me immediately.

Also interesting was the light and shade on the building.

I am picking up some good ideas from a book by David Rankin, published in 2000, called "Fast Sketching Techniques", and this was an opportunity to practise some of them.



Anyway, here is Martin's photo for you to compare.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily News

Sir,

 

I am just coming down to earth after what was for me the highlight of the Summer Festival concerts last night: the guitar Summer School tutors and students performing at the Hatchery Lawn. 

An ensemble of fifteen advanced guitar students under the baton of John Couch, the school's Director, played one of Brahms's Hungarian Dances in a fantastic arrangement which blew the socks off an enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience. And that was just one item from a two-hour concert featuring tutors from the world circuit, and students rapidly approaching a similar master standard. 

But, our enjoyment was dampened by the inadequate sound quality provided for these beautiful acoustic instruments. 

I am a great admirer of the Festival's contribution to our enjoyment of summers here in New Plymouth; the sound quality at electronic concerts is usually first-class. But I cannot understand why it seems beyond the wit and resources of the Festival management to provide the same standard of sound reproduction for acoustic music. One fifteen-instrument ensemble sounded like a couple of primary school children tinkering with ukeleles. And year after year it has been the same: inadequate equipment or advice for acoustic music. 

Sydney Guitar Trio

Please let's have an improvement in this one area; let's hear acoustic music as it sounds when played in local churches or the Fourth Wall Theatre! 

Frank Gaze

Family History 1.721

(The shipboard diary of my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27)

17th January 1860

A shower between 6 and 7 a.m. but cleared off soon after. Much cooler. Fair wind still.

Several Cape Birds, Albatross and others seen today. A single man in the steerage fired a double barrel gun, but missed. An attempt also to catch them by a fish hook baited with a piece of pork made to float on the surface.

Lat 36-23S Long. 19-26W.

I went on the forecastle and was invited by some of the Single men (Scotchmen) to join with them in singing some tunes and comparing them with some I started at the services on Sundays. They have several tunes like ours but sing so much slower than I like them.

Helped my wife wash 4 of my shirts.

19th

Showery morning, heavy rain nearly all day, much calmer, a heavy swell though that makes the ship roll very much but not sailing at all fast.

Several Cape birds, still flying about our stern. An Albatross shot by a 2nd cabin passenger, which was thought by many persons to be a pity, as they are no use, if they were even caught; and to shoot them was only to see them fall and float it may be in agony, for a long while on the waters, but we soon lost sight of the one shot. The Captain did not approve it and gave orders for no one to be allowed to fire again.

A gale driving us E at night. Most sails reefed.

20th

Very dull and cold and showery. Head wind, still sailing east.

Lat 37-40 Longitude 14-15.

Several Capebirds flying about us very amusing to see them alight on the sea and take the bait (Pieces of pork) but none caught, the Captain won't allow it any more

fine eve. Daylight till past 8.

Three more movies

The book thief

We saw this film on Sunday afternoon at the multiplex; we had both read the book a couple of years ago, and that was a good recommendation.

The movie is not as good as the book; there are gaps in the story which leave some ends dangling at the end. Max's story after his departure is very sketchy, as is Hans's story while away in the army.

But the acting is fine, the photography is good and the direction likewise.

You cannot help comparing the film with "The Reader" which I wrote about last week. Both concern events during World War II in Germany, both involve reading and lack of literacy, both are about female protagonists. But "the book thief" does not come near "the Reader" in the moral issues it tackles.

Although "the Reader" sets up a choice between black and white, and then settles for pale grey, "the book thief" does not even touch the black and white: its greys are all pale.

Anyway, it's worth watching to see what you think!

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Maori TV dusted this one off for Sunday evening.  The version of Thomas Hardy's famous novel about a village girl who is "led astray" (as the nineteenth century would put it) by an upper class "bounder" and rescued, sort of, by a middle class, barely effectual, "hero"; but really too late to be any use.

The sets, costumes, photography and acting have lasted very well.

Hardy's story was not especially out of the ordinary; Margie's great-great-grandmother had a similar experience.  But in her case the baby was brought up by its grandparents, and the girl was married off to the nearest willing suitor, and she went on to have thirteen more children, so had no time to get herself into psychological knots.

Still an enjoyable reminder of one of the significant novels of the late nineteenth century.

The King's Speech

Wednesday night we watched this again, with its masterful performance by Colin Firth, ably assisted by Geoffrey Rush.

I was struck even more forcefully by the terrible life those princes had as children. Why anyone would want to put human beings through such a life-style, and force them to fit a strait-jacket of royal behaviour I cannot understand.

If anyone who has seen this film still persists in supporting the institution of the monarchy, against all the rational and humane arguments, and the emotional impact of this story, I find it a mystery.

Travel really began in 1953

1953 was the year I really started to travel. As I have said, I spent the first three months or so in Dunedin doing my Compulsory Military Service at Taieri. At Queen’s Birthday Weekend I travelled to Wellington with the Harrier Club for the annual exchange visit with the Wellington Club. That year the Tuesday was also a holiday for the Queen’s Coronation, so we stayed over in Wellington until the Monday night to see the Coronation Parade and heard by a crowd whisper that Hillary had succeeded in climbing Mt Everest.  We were standing at the bottom of Boulcott Street watching the parade at the time. 

Australia 1953 

Then in the August University Vacation I went to Australia to a Baptist Youth Conference at Maloolooba in Queensland. I travelled to Sydney on the Tasman Empire Airways flying boat: an eight-hour trip. We took off from Auckland Harbour in the converted Sunderland machine, no pressurisation, no lining, no airconditioning, four engines roaring all the way, at 8000 feet, through storm, fronts, clouds and clear skies. We landed on Sydney Harbour, and I travelled to the Baptist Youth Hostel for a couple of days while I explored the city. 

Then I met up with a couple of guys from Sydney who were also travelling north to the Conference in a ute, sleeping in the back. We drove to Newcastle, and then turned west up the Hunter Valley and eventually to Armidale, Tamworth and on to Brisbane. I remember it was cool at nights, but the main memory is of kookaburras calling in the mornings in the bush. In Brisbane we visited a small zoo that had snakes and koala bears, and had our photos taken with both. 

Then we travelled north to Mooloolaba, which was an empty beach in those days. The Baptist Church had a campsite there where the Conference was held.  I don’t remember much about the programme, but the people were friendly, one of the girls in particular. 

After the Conference we travelled to Tambourine Mountain and trekked south through the rainforest to the edge of the escarpment where we looked down into New South Wales and the caldera around Mt Warning. 

After this my memory is a blank, but we drove back to Sydney, fixing punctures at the side of the road when necessary, down the Princes Highway. Then I caught the return flying boat at midnight, arriving in Auckland at 6 am. 

Regularly during that year I rode my bike, with a little auxiliary motor on it, to Mangere on Saturday mornings to continue flying lessons for the Air Force at the Aero Club hangar and the grass runway – this was before the present International Airport was built. 

In December I had to return to Dunedin for a fortnight’s refresher with the Air Force. Our return trip on the express from Wellington to Auckland was a couple of days just before the Tangiwai disaster on Christmas Eve.

POEM at PUNIHO TRACK

(If you look at a map of Taranaki, you will see the roads radiating from Mt Taranaki like spokes of a wheel. One of the straightest is Puniho Road, near Okato. It runs from the coast straight to the peak. When it reaches the National Park boundary, it becomes a track, still heading directly for the top of the mountain for several kilometres until it comes to a place where a torrent washed away some of the bush a few years ago.

A group from New Plymouth U3A walked up there one day two years ago and on the way back I composed this poem.

Note: Jacky =tiaki was the nickname for British soldiers.)

POEM at PUNIHO TRACK

 

 

Why do they cut their straight lines through our bush,

These pale Britishers

With their hairy bodies

And their obsession with clothes and tiny mechanical toys? 

They set up their theodolites

And open out their chains. 

Then before you can say Taihoa!

There is a straight road from Ngamotu to Waitara. 

                   *********** 

Britishers are taught at school

That the shortest distance between two places is

A straight line. 

My journeys need landmarks:

The spring where you stop to drink,

The curve round the first hillside,

The welcoming grove of puriri,

A newly-fallen tree across an old stream,

An ancient battlefield,

The boundary of our tribal lands,

A resting-place for ancestors. 

Each milestone points me to the next,

And the last to journey’s end. 

The land does not set them out in

A straight row. 

                   *********** 

The Britishers’ chief is a man called Carrington. 

I asked him the meaning of their straight roads. 

“When I was young,

My boss was a great warrior,

He fought in the greatest battle in the world,

At a battlefield called Waterloo.” 

British roads are straight

So Jacky can march. 

                   *********** 

But I know better. 

When I was a young man

I worked in the North for Jacky,

Fighting against the Ngapuhi. 

We dragged the seige-guns

Up the long hill from Taumarere to Ruapekapeka,

By the winding Pakaru Road. 

Jacky said when we reached Ruapekapeka,

The guns were pakarued by the twisting road. 

We spent days mending the wagons

And the guns. 

British roads are straight

So the cannon can be moved. 

There was no straight road

From Ruapekapeka to Waitara in those days 

And you still can’t walk a straight line

Between those two,

Or any other pair in the world. 

--24 January 2012

(Notes: Photo of New Plymouth from Ngamotu to Waitara, Airview online;

Impression of Ruapekapeka Pa, Bay of Islands, DOC image;

Frederic Carrington was the surveyor who planned the New Plymouth settlement and city. He had formerly worked for the Survey Department in England; the Minister-in-charge was Sir Hussey Vivian, who had been a general on Wellington's staff at Waterloo.)