Travel

My parents, and their parents, did not stick at home – they travelled regularly. From before I can remember we would go on holiday as a family, in early times with Dad’s folk in their car. 

During primary school years we spent a week with relatives on a farm at Matawai, in the hills behind Gisborne.  Another time we spent a similar time with Mum’s Uncle and Aunt at Pukehuia in Northland.  And I remember a school holiday stay in Rotorua, visiting the tourist places like Whakarewarewa. And in 1944 we all had a tenting holiday at Mullet Point on a farm belonging to friends of my parents. I caught my first fish (a gurnard) and went for my first sail during that holiday. There was no development in that area at that stage; it was long before the Harbour Bridge was built, which opened up all that area eventually. 
 

Our regular holiday place was the bach at Milford, owned by our Gaze grandparents.  It had originally been built in partnership with the Batts family, but Grandpa Gaze had bought them out later and the two adjoining units were made into one large house. This house had no electricity – it was lit and powered by gas, gas stove, gas water heating, gas iron, and so on. Downstairs, where our bedrooms were, we used candles. 

My host absorbing holiday activity at Milford was to find a piece of driftwood, usually dressed, and therefore straight, which I converted into a tram. I then proceeded to mark on the sand a complete map of the tramways system for Auckland, and spent many happy hours running my tram along the different routes. If the weather was wet, I would use string wound around the legs of tables and chairs in my grandparents’ lounge to do the same job.  Grandpa even built a model tram for me, complete with trolley-pole. 

This was all before the Harbour Bridge was built, so we came and went by ferry via Devonport, or by bus and ferry via Bayswater.  As the traffic grew and the queues waiting for the ferry increased in length, we tried a few times going via Birkenhead or Northcote. But eventually it became quicker to travel by the main north route, through Henderson, and Riverhead to Albany and then south to Milford. 

The ferries were always fun, and the buses were exciting too, because they were fluid-drive Daimlers. But the most exciting everyday travel in those days was by tram.  From the time I was very small I enjoyed sitting right in front of the tram and watching what the motorman did with his controls, and how the points changed when we came to a junction. In fact one morning in my third year, Mum found the front gate had been left open, and I was on the way down the track to Mt Albert Road and the tram terminus to watch the crew turning it around. She hurried down after me and found the crew looking after me! 

Later we graduated to steam trains, such as the expresses to Rotorua or Whangarei, and during the war, to our biggest adventure, a trip to the South Island just before our cousin Barbara was born.

We caught the express to Wellington, the Rangatira to Lyttelton, where we were met by our Uncle Doug in his big car and driven down the main road to Ashburton, where he was teaching at the High School.