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. 

Current Reading

One of the books left with me after the party last month was called "Power, Chaos and Consensus", and was written by a New Plymouth acquaintance, Ted Wells. Ted is a planner, and we have been running across each other at meetings and social events over many years.

Ted's big idea is that the world would be better if we were to improve the way our democracy works by insisting that all decision-making bodies used consensus as the decision-making process. Consensus is the system used for juries: everyone has to accept the conclusion, not necessarily to vote for it but at least to abstain.

I have also long felt that such a stipulation would produce more government decisions which everyone could buy into, and in particular that minorities would not feel they were being overruled every time a decision is made. This would produce greater harmony in all societies. Ted wants this to go all the way to the UN.

His book is very detailed. It lists all the major types of decisions that should fall into this category: economic, environmental, family, and so on. He provides suggested actions for each which would take us the first step along the way, and be the basis for ongoing discussion and consensus.

For anyone who is interested in politics, economics, the environment, ethical issues, and so on, it is worth having a look at.

My support for consensus decision-making comes from my experience as a member of the regional ethics committee a decade ago. The regulations for these committees included a provision for consensus decision-making; I felt it was one provision to help prevent a recurrence of the disaster at National Women's Hospital which has been dubbed "the Unfortunate Experiment" and which was the subject of the Cartwright Inquiry. It was one of three or four provisions which made the new Zealand ethical review system a level more robust than some others.

Anyway, find a copy of the book and see what you think!

Family History 1.717

 My great-grandfather Charles Gaze's shipboard diary (aged 27)

5th January 1860

Very fine hot and calmer sea but still progressIng the wind having remained in the same direction since the 27th Dec not requiring them to alter any of the sails Since Lat. 23-42 South.

Hot cake made of soaked biscuit and flour, very good for breakfast.

Passed and spoke the ship 'Vuneira' from Sydney for London. I heard our Captain telling the Doctor their colours signified they had been 55 days at sea and that the ship was one of the Durbars of the B1ackball Line, she was in full sail as us, passed very near t0 us, great cheering on both ships, very soon out of sight.

Sailors still busy about the rigging, don't appear to be in first rate condition, Very calm towards evening scarce a ripple on the sea.

6th   Alice made Hot Cake for breakfast and loaf.

Very fine and very hot and sea very calm. We are almost at a standstill. Lat 24-7S. A large number of Nautilus or what are more generally known by the name of Portuguese men of War, floating about, some caught, but they appear to be of no use on the contrary are not fit to be handled stinging when they are touched. A young fellow Woodward caught one and ran slinging it about  stung our little Alice on the arm and one of the German children on his face, the 1st mate told him of it pretty well

and so did I. The thing is a sort of fungi of various colours and sizes from the size of a nut to the size of your carat. Their sting causes to swell and is very painful I understand. Our Alice is not much hurt.

 

Stronger winds but much ahead of us tonight. About midnight the boom of the main gallant stunsail broke, through not being loose enough when they put the ship about, it came down across our hatchway and knocked off the top of the ventilator which rolled down the steps between decks but fortunately no one hurt, had it been day several might have been.

7th

Very fine and not so hot owing partly I think to there being more wind. Alice made cake flour and soak and biscuit for breakfast. Latitude 25-S. The first pig killed, quite an excitement to see it die, its weight about 7 stone.

Extra-curricular

Although I was never up to playing cricket or rugby, I used to listen regularly and carefully to the radio commentaries on major rugby matches and test cricket. In the fourth form I went with friends each Saturday to watch games played by the First Fifteen, usually at Alexandra Park. 

My father had been a radio and photography enthusiast in his youth, and he built me a crystal set, which I used to listen to in the evenings.  You could get about four local radio stations after a fashion. This was about the time I was studying Electricity and Magnetism for School Certificate, and learning about the workings of valves and capacitors and condensers. 

Also on the radio I would listen with my Dad to his favourite BBC programmes: first “ITMA”, with Tommy Handley, and then in the late forties, “Much Binding in the Marsh” with Richard Murdoch. I can still remember walking home from the train from school, and picking up our copy of the Listener from the newsagent in Papatoetoe, and reading the preview of this programme some months before it arrived on our radio in New Zealand. 

Later still we listened to “Take it from here”, with Dick Bentley, and still later I remember the Goons, who were the most popular of all the BBC comedies, with Peter Sellars and Harry Seccombe. Driving together to town in the car in the mornings gave us plenty of time to relive the previous night’s episode, and to discuss the radio news together. I missed this when we moved to Mt Eden and we each went our own way to work. 

However, one morning a month in my first University year I worked for my father writing up his ledger accounts at his office in Queen Street. It was here I got to know Gordon Jones, who at that stage was working as his law clerk, and later became a valued colleague in India. 

During my University years my father subscribed to TIME magazine and we would have regular post-mortems after reading each copy, which we both read from cover to cover. We were interested in the news and the commentaries of course, but also in the writing style, which in those days was well-known as novel, concise and powerful.  

I continued to learn the piano while at secondary school, advancing to Grade 8 in the Roytal Schools exams. During my university years I widened my interest in music. I started pipe organ lessons with Bill Edgar, who was the organist at St Barnabas’ Church in Mt Eden Road. I practised regularly there and at the Presbyterian Church in Union Street in the City, later demolished to make way for motorways. 

I also tried my hand at the double bass but gave up after a few lessons; some things are just too cumbersome to be worth the effort! I joined the University Music Club in my second year, and took part in a concert singing the Mass in B Minor. This was fun, enlarged my musical knowledge, and introduced me to the excitement of making music with a large group of people. 

Of course during those years I became interested in a few girls. Specifically about five or six, all for very short periods. I can’t now remember much about most of them, a couple of names, a face or two, and one or two dates or other incidents. Most memorable was one lady who I escorted to her tram stop after lectures about three times. On the third occasion she had been shopping and asked me what I thought of her new jumper. Foolishly I told the truth. I never met her again after lectures; she just disappeared. Moral of the story, if a girl asks “What do you think of my new (article of clothing)?” the rule is: lie, lie, lie! 

None of them, whether in Auckland, Australia or Dunedin, seemed to me to have the energy and vitality and drive of a young lady who was part of our church youth group, and with whom I became very friendly later on: Audrey. 

During University years I joined the Baptist Harrier Club, and used to run round the block early each morning to get fit, but I never succeeded in winning any races. Similarly a local tennis club associated with the Baptist Churches in Mt Eden met at the Training College courts.  I played regularly, especially after Audrey came on the scene, but never made much progress up the ladder there either. However both these activities provided plenty of social contact, and lots of friends.

Holiday Jobs

For several weeks in early 1951 I worked as a labourer with the Mt Eden Borough Council. When they found I was too young and undeveloped to shovel road metal they sent me up Mt Eden to work with the gardeners there. 

The garden department was on the slope of the mountain, just below the Kiosk.

There were two permanent workers, an older gardener and a younger man who was deaf and dumb. I soon learned how to communicate with him by signs; in those days there was no formal sign language. 

My job in the mornings was to wander over the slopes of Mt Eden with a grubber in my hand and grub out thistle plants. I eventually covered just about the whole reserve area but by that time there were plenty of little plants waiting for my attention. 

In the afternoons I helped the other two in the nursery, but I don’t remember much work being done.  It was a pretty easy job really. 

In the early weeks of 1952 I joined the outdoor staff of the Auckland City Council, and was allocated to a road gang, which toured the suburb of Epsom chipping and spraying weeds from the kerbs, gutters and footpaths as we went. 

One of the other members of the gang was also a student, Warwick Elley, who later became a prominent educational researcher, and Director of the Council for Educational Research. 

There was not much variety in our work, but it was fun being with a group of men, all working together and sharing smokos and lunch breaks, especially the friendship with Warwick. 

This period of work was interrupted in February when King George VI had a heart attack and died suddenly, and we were given a couple of days off work to mark his death and the accession of Queen Elizabeth II. 

In November of 1951, on my eighteenth birthday, I took the test for a heavy traffic driving licence, after a brief course of instruction from the local driving school. 

So I applied to the Public Service Garage, which ran all the vehicles for the main Government Departments, in Stanley Street. I was not successful in getting a truck driving job, but was allocated to a Ford Prefect which was working out o0f the Ellerslie Post Office, delivering telegrams. 

So, for several weeks up until Christmas I drove around the wider Ellerslie area, including Panmure, Mt Wellington and bits of Penrose and Remuera, delivering telegrams, which came thick and fast as Christmas approached. 

The areas close to the Post Office were still delivered by schoolboys on bikes, but the car was used for the more distant parts of the suburb. 

I managed to keep up with the flow, until the last morning. On Christmas Eve I got a puncture as I was delivering just about the last telegram. Being Christmas Eve it took hours for the garage guys to send a repairman to change the tyre and enable me to limp back to the garage.  

So I was hours late for the family celebrations, and arrived home tired, hungry and not a little frustrated! 

The next year I applied earlier and at last was allocated to truck driving. 

For the first few weeks until Christmas, I was put in charge of an old Ford V8 truck, with a very old gearbox, nothing so modern as synchro-mesh! I had to drive to the wharf, pick up a load of parcels of “Christmas Puddings” – mail from the UK – and toss them off at the back of the CPO (where Britomart now is) on to the conveyor belt which took them upstairs to the sorters. A total distance of about half a mile return. 

However, after Christmas, when some of the regular drivers were on their annual leave, I was allocated to a new Bedford, which toured the outer suburbs twice a day picking up and dropping bags of parcel mail from the suburban Post Offices. I also did a couple of runs around the inner city to places like Ponsonby and Symonds Street, but the big run each time went to Remuera, Onehunga, Avondale and Post Offices in between. 

As it was holiday season there was not a great deal of mail and I had time to chat to the PO staffs at the places I visited, and to read several of my textbooks for the next year’s study.

Family History 1.716

My great-grandfather Charles Gaze's shipboard diary

2nd January 1860

 

Latitude 14-30 South

Very fine and favourable wind again. Foretop Stunsail broke away but soon rectified, no one hurt.

A Mr Snow (saloon passenger) has a class of children on the poop every morning, also Bible Class on Sunday afternoons. Our Charles attends the former. He also attends a class on Sunday after­noons conducted by a Lady (wife of 2nd Cabin Captain Krippner, a German) she can talk good English but her husband, 5 children also his brother and 5 servants (the latter in our cabin) can scare talk a word of English but they are picking up our phrases fast so are many others their language.

1 of the servants has an infant about 2 mths old there are 2 married couples and 1 single woman. They all appear very sociable, I heard Capt. Krippner say he had a letter of introduction from the Princess FredK Wm of Prussia, our Princess Royal. Capt. K appears so be study­ing English very^. much. I made some toffee after tea.

3rd

Very fine, hot and gOOd winds still, Hot cake for breakfast, my     wife made a loaf, She often makes soda cakes and very good only frequently a difficulty in getting them baked as the oven is small. Many persons have had cakes stolen from the oven when the cook has been away for a short time.

Latitude 19S Long 28W.

7 p.m. sighted the island of Trineda somewhat to the surprise of most persons, passed it about mid­night but a long distance about 5 miles west of it.

I saw ^.tonight for the first time the Southern Crass being five stars forming a cross.

A bird called the booby seen hovering about the mizzen mast but not caught,

4th

Very fine and hot, fast winds, still, sea somewhat calm. 

Hot cake for breakfast. 

Lost sight of the island about 7 a.m. Latitude 21-48 Long. 29-11

9 p.m. Two single men endeavoured to play off a joke, but were caught in that they devised for others, viz. They dressed as prize fighters and had a sham fight to attract persons to the spot while they had engaged one of the sailors to go aloft with 2 buckets of water. They intended to fall and roll together under the carpenters bench but to their surprise and amusement of most persons the sailor threw ^-water down before they had arranged for him to do so and they and their attendants got the most of it. It was a good joke, I and Alice got some of it. Some were drenched to the skin but there were none but what seemed highly amused.

(My note: Capt Krippner was on his way to the settlement at Puhoi.)

Post No 100

LIFE life BEGINS begins AT at FORTY forty

And it's true! So what is it that begins at eighty?

Not only is this the one hundredth post, today is also the first of a brand new year. And this year is the centenary of a very significant event: the start of the Great War.

As I have mentioned before, when I was studying history, 1914 was the end. It was as if, in that middle part of the century, no-one had come to terms with that war, or its aftermath, let alone the facts of a second war of even greater size.

And if life begins at forty, then 2014 is the start of my third age.

So what is new?

Well, this blog for a start. It is a new challenge. I am still learning about the program that enables me to communicate with you each day. And mastery will take a few months yet. Your suggestions are welcome; just accept the challenge of learning how to post a comment!

And as you have read I have started to learn to sketch. There is so much to learn! The range of media and equipment available for a start; the variety of styles and the limitations of a beginner's skills!

Even more fun is having a new baby in the family. What makes Sophie unique is that she is the first child of a daughter, and that is different from getting to know the children of a son.

2014 is going to be a great year!