Family History 1.112

Gaze History: NSG Memoir

Childhood and Education

 

Noel was born on 30 August 1902 and lived all his life in Auckland.  Being the younger child, and quite a bit younger than his older sister, Doris, he could have been a spoilt child.  In addition, his congenital condition, cleft lip and palate, claimed the whole-hearted attention of his parents from the time he was born. 

Feeding a baby with such a condition is even now a time-consuming and difficult task; a hundred years ago it must have taken all the patience and care his parents were capable of.  Nowadays such a baby has operations at a few months of age to correct first the lip and later the hole in the hard palate.  But in those days operations were performed much later and did not turn out so well.  All his life Noel spoke with a nasal intonation which some people found difficult to understand, especially when he was emotionally upset or had a cold. 

Nevertheless, children who have fought hard to overcome such a handicap often turn out to have qualities of determination and reliability.  So it was in Noel’s case.  Add to that a good level of academic and general intelligence, and a pleasant, positive personality inherited from or moulded on that of his father, and there are the makings of a leader. 

Noel grew up in a home where there was constant contact with members of his extended family in and around Auckland. There were regular visits on Sundays to the home of his grandparents, Charles and Alice Gaze, and their two unmarried daughters, Millie and Lizzie, in Franklin Road. Noel and his family attended the same Church as the Franklin Road household.  The family was used to walking and the journeys from Bellevue Road to the Tabernacle on Sunday mornings for Sunday School and Church, and then to Franklin Road and back would have been on foot, at least until Fred bought a car in the late 1920s. 

At Franklin Road they met often with aunts and uncles and cousins like the Stringers from Otahuhu and the Porters.

And of course there were visits to Julia’s parents, Robert and Frances Goodwin, in Newton. There he would hear the family stories about the trip out from England, and about the Mt Tarawera eruption, when the walls of the house moved, and from where the family climbed Mt Eden in the evening to see the reflection of the eruption on the clouds to the south. 

Sometimes they would meet there with Julia’s sister Kitty and her husband George Crocombe and their three children.  There was Dolph, Leone and Frank.  Frank and Noel were closest in age, and they became great friends throughout their boyhood. 

Within easy walking distance from Bellevue Road was the Mt Eden District School, growing rapidly as the suburb filled up with young families.  For seven years Noel trudged up the road each day to Mt Eden School for the obligatory education.  One of Noel’s fellow-students at primary school was Douglas Robb.