This is the life story of an early New Zealand man
who grew up in the early 20th Century in the Northland
region of New Zealand, fortunately recorded by his
daughter Lynda.
Without these records we
would never know how our farming land was cleared &
developed to become very productive for future
generations to move forward to become a proud nation.
Some photographs will be
coming soon to illustrate those early times.
Without people like Gordon
Austin, who was just one of many hundreds of people who
worked from dawn to dusk under most difficult
conditions, then having it recorded by people like
Lynda, who took the opportunity to listen to her father,
write them down & let us all share Gordon's story,
we would forget just how New Zealand became such a great
country, standing in a way, isolated from most of the
world, but an integral part of the world's food chain,
with an enviable reputation of cleanliness, fresh air,
scenic beauty & friendly people.
Thankyou Gordon for all
your hard work, survival under extreme conditions &
allowing Lynda to share your life with us.
Nothing to do with
motorcycling you might say, but a story of admiration.
Tim
The story of a New
Zealand pioneer
Gordon Austin
Memoirs
1917 - 2012
One of many
thousands, who with their families knew how to
survive hardships to clear, develop & make
productive land from
bush.
Read this story,
admire them & be thankful for their
contribution.

Gordon Aged 94, reflects on
early life in Northland, NZ
The shortened left finger is
related in the
story. |

This is the general area of New Zealand
where Gordon lived.
The Austin daughter who compiled
this story about her father - now Lynda Blair on
a then near new 1968 Yamaha YDS-6 250cc twin quite a few
years ago, about 1972 .
I was born on3 March 1917 in the Hokianga, the fourth son of
William and Ella Austin.
I had always thought that I was born at Rawene,
although my birth certificate puts the place of birth as
"Hokianga". Keith
tells me that I was born at home in the house on the
Nixon Farm.
The Nixon Farm
My parents rented a house on
this farm while they started to develop a bush section
of standing native bush.
The section of about 520 acres was about three
miles further down the Utakura Valley, then up a side
valley called Waikerikeri.
Probably my first memories here
were of a soldier in uniform walking down the hill to
the house. I
cannot remember any more of him. I had three uncles
away in the First World War, so it would have been one
of them returning in 1919. Keith tells me that it
was my Uncle Alex.
Another memory was Mother
meeting the fish cart across the river. She decided to scale
the fish she'd bought on a shingle bank, I saw a big eel
swim out from the opposite bank to get the
cleanings. Then
the old dog Sailor chasing hawks trying to catch
them. I can
remember these things but have no recollection of Ward
my older brother by two years of cutting my finger off
(the first joint of my ring finger on my left
hand). They tell
me I was putting apples on the wood block and Ward was
cutting the apples smaller with an axe so the ducks
could eat them, he must have missed and got my
finger. The ducks
probably were carnivores and ate it. I would have been
about two years old at the
time.
At one time I was feeding some
cats when a big tortoiseshell cat scratched me. Dad grabbed him by the
tail and swung him around and let him fly through the
air.
I remember when Dad was riding
down to the Utakura farm he had to cross the river. He would go along the
side of a bank and Sailor the dog would jump on the back
of the horse behind Dad, and when they got to the other
side he would jump off.
Sailor didn't like getting
his feet wet.
The Utakura Farm
Our parents had about a dozen
ducks, which they took to the Utakura farm. This farm was higher
than the Nixon farm.
The day after they were let out they took off and
flew all the way back (about two miles). They were brought back
again and had one wing cut so they could not fly. They were determined
to get back to the old home, so they started to walk
back and got as far as the mill at the bottom of the
right-of-way when a chap at the mill saw them and drove
them back home.
They must have been locked up after that because
we had them for several years.
It must have been late 1919 or
early 1920, as my parents were milking cows in the
spring of 1920.
The shed was a two-bale one which was called a Back Out
shed. The cow put
her head through an opening (very much like a dehorning
bail). When she
had her head through you pulled a rope to let a trip
lock go and the cow was held fast by the neck. When she was finished
being milked (by hand) you released the trip and she
backed out. The
milk was carted about a chain to the separator room and
you turned and separated by hand to get the cream.
All the shed consisted of was
four poles in the ground, no sides on, and just a
shingle roof made of split timber. The floor of the shed
was made of square planks cut by axe. They were about 4"
thick, 9" wide and 8 ft long. The yard consisted of
logs pulled in and pushed together side by side to keep
the cows out of the mud.
There was no such thing as running water for
washing the cow's udders, it was carried by hand in
four-gallon tins from a creek five chains away, and the
shed floor never got washed at
all.
By November 1921 another cowshed
was built and a four cow milking machine (a Fletcher)
driven by a stationary Anderson engine was put in. The bails of the shed
only had an earth floor for the rest of the season. The cream was taken by
horse and sledge to the road over ½ a mile away. It was always the
previous morning and night's cream as the cream wagon
went too early, about 8
o'clock.
There was one old cow called
Roany who only had two good quarters, so we could not
put the cups on her.
My brother Ward had to milk her for house milk in
the old cowshed.
One night he forgot to let her out so Roany
stopped with her head locked in the bail all night. No SPCA
then.
It was in 1920 my parents would
set the alarm clock to get up. One morning after they
had gone out to milk I got the alarm clock and gave it a
wash in a basin of water. I well remember the
face of the clock turning brown, of course the clock
never went again.
There was never another alarm clock in the house
until after I left home in
1934.
I remember the big display of
the Aurora Australis in 1922. It was a terrific
display. I have
never seen one so brilliant
since.
Probably in the autumn/winter of
1922 the new cow shed was concreted. The river shingle was
shovelled into bags then put on a sledge and hauled by
bullocks up to the cowshed at least three-quarters of a
mile. The sand
was emptied and the bags taken back for another
load. The actual
mixing of the concrete was all done by hand. A Maori chap from down
the Valley helped Dad.
He used to ride up each morning riding an old
cream horse. He
and the horse were always dressed in full cowboy
regalia.

Gordon & the bullock team about 1936. Tough
going, look at the cleared land, still covered with logs
& stumps.
Before the road was put through
to our place, people called Culham who lived opposite
the Nixon farm also had another farm (with no house on
it) adjoining our farm, just opposite our cowshed (see
the map drawn by me).
To get to their land they had to use our
right-of-way, come past our house, then through a
gateway by our cowshed.
Whenever they came down to look at the stock,
which was usually twice a week, it was nearly always the
boy who Mr Culham had working for him that came. We always knew when
they were coming as our dogs would start barking. This particular day
Ward and I decided to play a prank on the boy. The gateway was not a
swing job, but had four rails held onto the strainers by
loops of No 8 fencing wire. Ward got some small
sticks and jammed them between the rails and the wire
loops.
Consequently the rails would not slide open. Ward and I then went
and hid, to watch the fun. But who should come
that day to check on the stock but Mr Culham's daughter
Alice. She got
off her horse and tried to open the rails but with no
luck. Of course
Ward and I were laughing our heads off. Alice then decided to
go back to our house to get help. Mother was there, and
Alice told Mum what someone had done. She called for Ward
and me, told us about Alice's predicament, and asked if
we had done it.
We owned up and two sheepish boys went and undid
the rails. Once
was enough, we never dared do it
again.
About this time Dad and Mum went
out for the day so got a local girl Jessie Webb to look
after us.
Malcolm, my brother, would have been 10 or 11
years old and Jessie about 16. Malcolm got the
chamber pot and chased her around the house and put it
on her head.
Guess Jessie was not very
thrilled.
At home we had two black handled
table knives. How they
were acquired I do not really know, but we called
them curry knives.
None of us boys liked having to use them. One day Ward and I
were having a bit of an argument about these
knives. He
reckoned they were blunt and I said they weren't. So I said "you put
your arm out and I will show you". I got the knife and
sort of scored across the back of his hand until I drew
blood. Guess I
won the argument.
When feed got short for the cows
in February in the years 1928-29-30 Dad would lease some
Maori farms each year, which had a lot of grass, mostly
paspalum, about five miles from home. We would take the cows
there and milk them by hand. The first year the
farm had no shed or place to sleep. We made a yard and
some bales to milk the cows in and the separator was out
in the open. For
accommodation we built a hut in a clearing in the middle
of a clump of ti-tree.
The hut had an iron roof but the sides were only
made of sacks. At
night we could hear the wetas feeding - there were
hundreds of them.
Cooking was done on an open fire outside. Malcolm, Keith and
Ward milked during the week and I gave a hand at
weekends.
Next years farm was an
improvement on the first. It had an old whare to
live in and an old cowshed. As this farm and the
next years place were close to the Maraeroa Native
School at which I was attending (see Schooling further
on), I had to help with the milking night and morning,
and went to school, while Stan and Selwyn went to school
from home without having to do the
milking.
The third farm was much better
still, the cowshed was real good for sheds in that
era. The house
seemed like a palace after the last two
accommodations.
Certainly it only consisted of one big room - we
had sleeping at one end, and eating at the other. At one end was a wide
chimneyed fireplace, but no stove. The cooking pots etc
were placed on two iron bars with the fire
underneath. There
was a hole down between the chimney and the hearth,
which would allow rats or mice to get inside. One night when we were
cooking tea we saw two rats sneak up this hole and
scuttle to the far end of the room. We smartly blocked the
hole up and started to catch the rats. We chased them around
and they went straight for the hole in the
fireplace. Of course
they could not get out, but they knew where to
go. We reckoned
in a confined space we would finish them off. The next thing we or
the rats had moved the iron bars and - whoosh!! - the
vegetables, the pudding (a saucepan of sago) and the
kettle of water for making tea went overboard and put
the fire out. It
was a real mess everywhere. Our tea was gone! I don't think we
cooked another tea that night, but we eventually got the
rats. This was
the last of the leasing land to save the cows from going
dry.
Us kids, we were suckers - we
had to really rough it over the years Dad leased these
farms, as we had to do all the work really only for our
tucker. Hopefully
when we brought the cows back home there might be some
grass grown by then.
If there was still no grass the cows would be
turned out into the bush to fend for themselves. There was never any
manure put on the home farm in my
time.
Schooling
I started school in 1923. The old school was
really the district hall but used as a school. It was built in 1891,
my mother attended it I think in 1894 but what age she
was then I don't know, although she did attend the Upper
Waihou school as well.
The old Hall is now in the Kaikohe Pioneer
Village. The
school was only a half time school, the teacher taught
at Utakura school Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, and at
another school Tuesday Thursday and Saturday. This is why I have no
brains - I did not get taught properly. This went on until
mid-1924.
All school children in those
days went barefeet to school. A bit of a difference
to the kids of today!

About 1923, the Upper Waihou
School photo, Gordon is in shorts in the front row. This
school is now located in the Kaikohe Pioneer Village.
The new teacher we had used to
play football on Wednesday afternoons. He would leave the big
boys in charge while he went to football. But as soon as he was
out of sight we would buzz off from school, but always
got home at the usual time. The teacher would
think nothing of rolling up at 10 o'clock in the
morning. Then
come lunch-time he used to go across the road from the
school courting a woman.
It was nothing to have two hours for lunch-time -
we thought it was the cat's
pyjamas.
It was in 1927/28 when "Sidey
Time", as it was known then, was introduced and the
clocks were put forward one hour. We call it daylight
saving time now.
Dad objected to us boys going to school an hour
earlier. In those
days our school never started until 9.30am. After a bit of
haggling Dad and the teacher agreed that school would
start at 10.20am. My understanding of
the reason for that arrangement was that if we had have
started at 10.30am, the school would have
been credited with only a half day attendance. From memory this Sidey
Time only lasted two years, and then was started up
again during the Second World War. Thomas Sidey was the
Member of Parliament for Dunedin. He had several goes at
getting his Bill (about putting the clocks forward)
through Parliament, hence it was known as Sidey
Time.
The total area of the school
grounds would not have been ½ an acre, including the
school and the two toilets, plus quite often it had to
graze a horse which one of the kids used to ride on to
and from school.
At times we would go over the paling fence into
the paddock next door.
One wet day while the teacher had his extended
dinner hour, we got a big branch of titree and dragged
it around and around in a big circle. It made a terrific
mess! When the
farmer saw the mess we were banned from playing in his
paddock for months, until a new teacher came and told
the farmer we would respect his
paddock.
As I mentioned, sometimes a
pupil would ride a horse to school. One of these pupils
was John Johnston.
He had to help milk and lived a long way from the
school. His
parents had emigrated from England not long before. On this particular day
Ward and John were having an argument. John's horse was
dozing (standing up) under the willow tree in the corner
of the playground.
Ward got hold of John and pushed him into the
horses back legs, saying "get home, you pommie
convict"! Luckily
the horse never kicked out, but just got a
fright.
On this occasion in 1923 we had
a woman teacher.
We always had a morning talk on different
subjects. When it
came to Ward's turn, as sober as a judge he said "Please
Miss, on the way to school I saw a big bull riding a
little cow"!!
Must have been springtime.
Then there was the time when we
were assembled in school after lunch, when Jim Lewis
noticed that one of the teacher's fly buttons was
undone. So up
goes Jim's hand.
The teacher said "What is it Jim?". Jim replied "Your fly
button is undone Sir".
The teacher looked down and verified the fact,
and said "come out here and touch your toes" and he gave
Jim a couple of strokes with the cane. The teacher then goes
out into the porch and does up the offending
button!
On another time Stan, Selwyn and
I were late for school.
Of course, thanks to me, there was no alarm clock
to wake the family up to get the jobs all done on
time. The teacher
wanted to know the reason, so we told him that we had
work to finish.
"Alright, come out front, put your hands out" he
said and we got one cut on each hand. The next morning we
left home on time but really dawdled until the school
came into sight, just over a quarter of a mile
away. Then we ran
flat out and when we got to school we were puffing like
an old billy goat.
Of course we were late but it was on
purpose. The
teacher asked us what our excuse was, I said we had to do
extra work at home.
"That's no excuse" said the teacher. I very
cheekily said "you've told us before that any excuse is
better than none".
"Hold your hands out" said the teacher - I got
two cuts with the cane on both hands. Stan and Selwyn got
one on each hand.
Then in 1926 there was a big
outbreak of infantile paralysis and there was no school
from the December to after the May holidays. From then we had a new
teacher and did he straighten us up. We wondered what had
struck us. At
this stage there were six Austins, five Lewises and
about five others.
We had a change to a woman teacher in
1927-28.
When at Utakura school we would
sometimes rob orchards on the way home. We would sometimes go
well into the bush to get Titoki berries and Tawhra
which grew on a low plant about 3ft high, and sometimes
they would grow up trees. Actually they were the
flower of the plant, there was the male and female. The female was the
best to eat but ripened about August. If the male was not
eaten seed parts would ripen in April/May. Rats loved them. There were many other
native berries that we used to eat when ripe - these
were Taraire, Miro, Tawa, Totara, Kahikatea, Fuschia,
Puwfera, Wfera berries and the heart of the Nikau
tree.
Another job we had to do on the
way home was take a short cut across a swing bridge
spanning the Utakura river. To cross this river we
had to go down a right-of-way - some how there was
always a horse in it, so he just kept going ahead of
us. Then when we
were out of sight of the owners house we went to work on
old Neddy. We
would chase him up the side of the river - he could not
get away as there was a high bank that he could not
climb up. When he
came to a block across the track, which was actually the boundary
where Neddy only had one option, and that was to take to
the water which was about 10 ft deep at this point and
swim to the other side.
He would eventually cross back in the shallows
further downstream, in his own time. This performance would
go on for weeks if Neddy happened to be in the
right-of-way. The
owners never caught us at this little
pastime.
On one occasion when the Austins
and the Lewises were coming home from school we stopped
to have a talk by the Waikerikeri bridge. Shortly after a Maori
woman comes riding across the bridge. Just as she got across
I made a hissing noise and gave the horse a fright. I tore across the
bridge and down the bank. The woman (I could not
call her a lady!!) turned and came back after me. When she saw me down
the bank she threw a stick she was carrying at me and
missed, but the string of unprintable words she called
me didn't - I can still recall them to this
day!!
On another occasion on the
Waikerikeri Bridge coming home from school it must have
been my unlucky day. We used to take
umbrellas with us to school if it looked as if it might
be showery weather.
This night I had the umbrella and walking across
the bridge I started to poke the point of the umbrella
down between the gap in the planks. The further down it
went the further I pushed it down, when all of a sudden
it went too far down and the tips opened up so I
couldn't pull it back.
As there was a big knob for a handle, it was too
big to go down between the planks to retrieve from the
underneath of the bridge. We were in
trouble. Malcolm
had a jack knife (like a big pocket knife). The bridge planks were
only three inches thick so he decided to cut a hole big
enough for the umbrella to fall through. Before the hole was
half finished, a mob of about 2,000 sheep came along so
we had to knock off while they went past, which took a
long while. After
they had gone we got to work again. Eventually we got the
hole big enough and the umbrella fell down on to the
bank, luckily not into the water. We were sure late home
that night!
Another Waikerikeri episode was
the night on the way home from school the six Austins
and the four Lewises decided to rob Mummy Kaipo's (as we
called her, she was an old Maori woman) grape vine. It grew on the banks
of the stream, about four chains above the bridge. We sneaked up to where
the vine grew in a big ti-tree, a lot of the vine was
below bank level and a lot above. Malcolm and I climbed
up the tree and were well above the bank. We were all having a
good feed of grapes when Mummy Kaipo looks over the bank
and told the others in no uncertain terms to get
out. She never
spotted Malcolm and I up the top of the tree. We had to wait up
there for about ten minutes before she went back to her
house before we got down.
On another occasion coming home
from school the Utakura River was in full flood. What possessed us to
go down and have a look at it I don't know. We were right on the
bank when Ward grabbed Donald Lewis's hat and threw it
into the river.
Donald immediately pushed Ward in, Ward was swept
several chains downstream before he managed to get to
the bank and get out.
After Ward got out Malcolm went further
downstream and found the hat caught up in some
rubbish. I can
tell you Donald got a big fright. When we got home Ward
went straight and got changed, probably for the first
and last time without being told. He took his wet
clothes away past the cowshed and spread them out on a
rock to dry.
Luckily there was no more rain and it was in
February. His
clothes dried well enough over the weekend for him to
wear to school on the Monday. We never told our
parents about this little
episode.
It was a common thing for the
big boys at school to hide the teacher's strap or cane
when he was having his (two hour) lunch. Of course when any of
us misbehaved (which of course we never did!!) he had
nothing to belt us with, so he would write our names
down in a book with the number of cuts (or strokes) we
were going to get.
After a few days the list was growing fairly
fast. One morning
he gave Bill Herbert his pocket knife and told him to go
to a clump of bush half a mile away and across the
Utakura River, and get two supplejacks for him. It was just on
11 o'clock when Bill got back, which was just
about morning playtime.
In those days the primer kids were let out about
five minutes before the standards. Harry Culham and I
crawled under the school so we could hear the boys who
were eligible getting the cuts. We thought it was great
fun hearing but the unfortunate boys didn't enjoy
it.
When we were going to school
there weren't many cars about. Every time we heard a
car coming we would stand up in our seats and look out
the windows. Of
course this used to annoy the teacher. In desperation one day
he promised us he would send us out to try and catch a
car. This stopped
us looking out for a while. This next episode
actually happened a week or so after my brothers and I
were taken away from the Utakura school and sent to the
Maraeroa Native School. About ten days later the kids at
the school heard a car coming, and one boy, Alf
Harrison, gets up and looks out of the window. This must have really
upset the teacher, in desperation he bellows "Alf, get
out and catch that car".
Alf flies out the door and up the road. He kept going and went
on home. Next
morning when Alf comes to school the teacher asked why
he didn't come back to school. Alf replies "I chased
it till 4 o'clock then I gave up". The teacher couldn't
say anything as Alf had merely obeyed his
instructions. I
guess that cured the kids from looking out the window
for a while!!
Then in 1929 we got a man
teacher who liked to teach with the cane. In the finish when
there was only Stan Selwyn and me left Dad took us away
from the Utakura school and we finished our schooling at
the Maraeroa Native school. We all got our
Proficiency there which was equal to School
Certificate.
There were only five European kids and 80
Maori. At this
school we had football and sports with other schools
which was never heard of in the Utakura
school.
When we played football at the
Maraeroa Native School we would come home with our
shirts ripped, and the next day we would get another one
ripped. In the finish Dad said if
we wanted to play football we either played without
shirts or wore sugar bags.
In those days sugar used to come in 70lb
bags. These were made out of a
closely woven sacking. We cut a hole in the centre
of the bottom and cut a slit about 4" down the front for
our heads to go through, and a hole on each side for our
arms. They were a tight fit and
it was very difficult for an opposing player to grab
hold of. It was not long before all
who were playing football came to be wearing sugar
bags. When we were playing other
schools we were known as the Sugar Bag Team - certainly
there were no more ripped shirts!
One afternoon in the winter of the
early 1930's Dad and Mother went by horse and gig to see
Mr Hulme who was my teacher at the Maraeroa Native
School. They tied the horse who was
still in the gig to the road fence.
Time went on and they were asked to stay for
tea. When they came to go home
it would have been well after dark.
They found the horse had got away.
Mr Hulme, who had an old Tin Lizzie (Ford motor
car) said he would drive them home, thinking they would
catch up to the runaway. They got to the bottom of
our unmetalled road and still no sign.
Mum and Dad had to walk the last ½ mile up the
muddy road without even a light.
Just below the house they could hear the noise of
the gig wheels hitting the stones which were plentiful
in this part of the paddock.
Luckily there was no damage to the gig and the
horse knew where home was, as he could have gone any one
of four ways. If it had been one of us
boys we would never have heard the last of it.
When the Automobile Association was
signposting the roads in our district in 1927/28 the way
they did it was to put the post in the ground with the
sign on, and they would then paint the posts.
When we were coming home from school one day
there was a new sign at the Mangataraire/Horeke
junction. The paint was just starting
to harden when we came along.
What should we do - Ward, Stan, Selwyn and I
decided to put our names in the soft paint.
We made a damn good job of it, putting our full
names on the post. We reckoned that people
would know that the Austins lived around here, and it
would be a good few years before the post would be
painted again. Little did we know that our
names would only last a week.
Dad happened to see our names on the post!
When he arrived home he really hit the roof, what
us boys weren't going to turn into was everything
imaginable. The result was that we all
had to get some paint and brushes and go down and paint
our names off that post. Having to right the wrong
we'd done must have meant something to me and my
brothers, as none of us ever got on the wrong side of
the law. Despite all the mischief
and pranks us boys got up to, there was nothing that was
really bad - we were just high spirited
boys.
This next episode would have
happened about 1923-1924. Granddad Alexander used to
come over to our place periodically to stay for a few
days. He was a heavy pipe
smoker. He used to buy his tobacco,
Havelock Dark Flake, by the pound tin.
Mum and Dad went out for the day, I don't
remember where to, or where Malcolm, Keith and Selwyn or
Granddad were. Ward, Stan and I were to go
to dinner at Aunt Charlotte's at the end of the
right-of-way for lunch. Before we went Ward sneaked
into Granddad's room and grabbed a handful of his
tobacco, a page of the Auckland Weekly News (as we had
no cigarette papers) and some matches.
The three of us went over by the cowshed and
rolled a cigarette each and started smoking.
The taste of the newspaper and the tobacco was
vile, and after a lot of coughing and spluttering Stan
and I gave up. Ward carried on with
his. We then started on our way
to Aunty's. By the time we got there
Ward had smoked another two cigarettes, and was
beginning to look a bit pale.
We had dinner - I remember we had corned
beef. Shortly after Ward went
white as a ghost, and soon became as sick as a dog.
Aunty got a bit worried, then when Mum and Dad
came back he was still crook.
He blamed the corned beef for his condition.
It was the smoking that made him sick, but it
never stopped him from smoking - he was a smoker all his
life.
We were kind-hearted boys, Stan,
Selwyn and me, as you will appreciate when you read the
next few deeds we did. We were told to kill three
old hens to eat (there was no such thing as a hen house
or runs - they could roam over the smaller paddock - 50
acres). We eventually caught them,
then had to kill them. We thought of a novel
way. One of us would get a chook
and go behind a big rock and poke the chook's head above
it.
Then the other two of us would fire at its head
with shanghais. We must have been pretty
accurate shots because we had chooks for tea that
night. Then there was the big
black Orpington rooster. We chased him all around
the paddock until we caught him.
He would be pretty hot by this time so we would
cool him off in a basin of cold water.
Then we would let him go and repeat the
performance all over again.
We did this three times, and he never died. I
probably would have been no more than nine.
One day a dog strayed onto our
place - we actually knew who owned him.
We caught him and tied him up, he had no collar
so we took our belts off and put them through a link in
the chain and around his neck.
We reckoned he would never get away with our
three belts on as dog collars.
Next morning he had gone, and our three belts as
well. After that he was always
referred to as Beltsy. As he never slipped his
head out of the belts we think that Dad must have let
him go and put the belts somewhere and forgot about
them.
One day Dad had been out in the
bush at the back of the farm.
He managed to catch two kiwis, he brought them
home and put them under a box.
Next morning they had gone.
Us kids got the blame for letting them out during
the night, which we never did.
We reckoned Dad let them go in a clump of bush,
about five acres in size, which was about four chains
from the house. They stayed there for
several years. We would hear them
regularly calling to each other at 9
o'clock at night.
For several years two native pigeons nested in
this clump of bush.
When the cows were being milked by
machine the old Anderson engine used to get quite warm
and the water tank would give off steam.
This morning I thought that it might need some
more water in the tank. I had a look and decided
that it needed some. I got a billy of water and
went to put it in the tank - the next thing I knew I was
in the corner of the engine room with no pants on.
Evidently as I went past the engine my short
pants got caught on the crankshaft and tore my pants off
me.
I could easily have been flung around and
killed. For some reason Ward was
wearing two pair of shorts that morning and so he gave
me one of his pair. We never told our
parents. I would have been about
nine.
We now come to another episode with
horses. For which Ward, Stan,
Selwyn and I were involved.
This happened during the Christmas school
holidays. We would catch our own
horses and tell our parents that there were some of the
neighbours sheep in our place out at the back of the
farm (was only an excuse).
There were three Maori horses that occasionally
would get in our place. We would catch them and
reckoned we would train them for the Races.
About the only flat area that there was, was on a
ridge which had been a hauling track for getting timber
out which went further into the bush we would gallop the
Neddies up and down for a long time.
Sometimes the horses would duck off the track
into the bush and we would get pulled off by low
branches. This went on for several
days. One day Ward got a sharp
kitchen knife and took it with us.
After our horse training we cut their manes as
short as we could with the knife.
Then one horse we cut every bit of hair off it's
tail. Toward the end of the
holidays Ward and I got some gelignite and
detonators. The contractors who had
been working on the road had left them behind in an old
shed after the road had been completed.
We went out and caught the short-tailed horse and
went about another mile into a steep gulley.
At the bottom of the gulley there was a dead
hollow tree. We tied Neddy with a very
light piece of rope to it.
We put the charge of jelly with the detonator and
a long piece of fuse which we lit inside the tree, and
got to hell away and waited.
(We actually had no proper fuse - we rolled plugs
of jelly to the thickness of No 8 wire between our hands
to make the fuse. We had to do this very
carefully, and how we didn't "go up" is a wonder.
We made this "fuse" probably about 6-8 feet long,
and we wrapped it round and round the trunk of the dead
tree.) The "fuse" hissed and
fizzled, and the suspense of waiting for the charge to
go off was terrific. Then there was an almighty
bang, and Neddy broke the sound barrier getting out of
the gulley. When we got home Dad asked
us did we see or hear anybody shooting.
We told him it was some Maoris shooting
pigeons.
About a fortnight later Nika
Anderson, the Maori who owned this horse with the
trimmed tail, was riding it down the road.
Ward and another Maori chap were talking when
Nika rides past. This horse always held his
tail straight out behind when it was being ridden.
The Maori chap said to Ward "Doesn't old Nika
look trim".
One Sunday Keith, who thought he
knew the Waikerikeri Basin (about 1,000 acres totally
covered in bush), said he would take Selwyn and I
through it. We tramped for several
hours when we came to a trig station, and Keith realised
that he was completely lost, and didn't know which way
to go to get out. Luckily I had been up to
this trig station about six months before from a
different angle, with my brother Malcolm. I
was able to tell Keith the right way out, but it took a
lot of convincing him that I was right, otherwise we
would have been out in the bush all night.
When I was around nine or ten years
old, Stan, Selwyn and I were at the spring one day.
(The spring was where the house water came
from.) We decided to have a
drinking competition. We had a dipper with us
(probably about a litre in volume), and being the eldest
I had to go first. I drank a dipper of water,
then Stan and Selwyn did likewise. I
had another go, as did they. I
braced myself and drank a third dipper, but the other
two chickened out. I guess I won, but I was
like a bloated pup for quite a while afterwards!
The original farm at Utakura
consisted of 92 acres freehold and 360 acres of Maori
lease. The access to the farm was
a right-of-way from the road one chain wide.
It went straight up an incline for about a
quarter of a mile with several steep pinches with the
last five chains very steep for horses and wagons.
Dad swapped half the width of the right-of-way up
to the last five chains so he could come around an
easier grade (refer to plan). I
don't think it was ever legalised, just verbal.
The deal was made with a Maori owner, and it
seemed to work although the Maori shifted the boundary
pegs on the other end and gained a bit extra land (see
map).
The bush on the section of millable
timber was mainly Rimu, Kahikatea, Matai and Puriri, and
odd Kauri. The totara which was
suitable had all been worked many years previously,
mostly used for bridge piles and cut up for telephone
poles. When the bush was felled it
was just burnt, a terrific waste.
This is not the Austin Homestead
but typical of those in the area, copied from
Google

Of this block about 250 acres was
felled and grassed. The house paddock was fifty
acres, another of 60 acres, another of 70 acres.
The two paddocks were only fenced on three sides,
the other side was open bush country and scrub land of
about 10,000 acres. There was another paddock
of 65 acres which was fenced on the two sides only, and
open to the bush. The water supply was
non-existent as you know. There was one major creek
through the farm which did not dry up over summer and
several smaller ones but they always dried up in
summer. We milked 40 cows, and used
to rear all calves.
When they were weaned in
February/March they were turned out into
the bush as were the cows when they
went dry usually March/April.
Sometimes the cows would have calves two weeks
old when we found them. The house that was built
first was not big, all the timber was pitsawn.
Later on Dad had a small mill driven by a water
wheel, and cut the timber to make additions to the
house. There was no electric power
until 1938. In 1928 a road was made (by
the County) up to our place.
This was a big improvement, although it was not
metalled for another five years.
It was alright in summer but in winter was
awful. The front portion of the
farm was covered with scattered rock of various
sizes. In the winter of 1932 a
County gang broke the rock up into pieces that could be
handled, and put it into heaps.
In the summer of 1933 a portable crusher came in
and crushed this rock to metal the road.
Dad got the contract to cart the heaps of rock to
the crusher, at a shilling per yard of crushed
metal. As Stan, Selwyn and I had
broken four pair of young bullocks (and got told off
when we started breaking them in the previous year) they
were used with a draught horse.
Stan and I used the bullocks and Selwyn the
horse. We loaded the spawled metal
onto a sledge by hand and dragged it to the crusher then
unloaded it again by hand.
This job took us 2½ months.
We also had to milk about 35 cows night and
morning as well. In all we carted 850
yards. In all there were 850 yards
@ 1/- = £43-0-0 and we never saw a brass razoo for our
work.
We always had a pack of dogs for
hunting the cattle. We would send them into the
bush, and they would go off at full cry, and we would
follow them. About a chain into the bush
we would always find one old dog sitting behind a tree
frightened to go any further.
If there was stock in that particular part the
dogs would find them and bring them to us.
In the early days most families
kept a pig or two for bacon.
The pigs would be killed at home and the bacon
home cured. It was a long process, it
took about three weeks. Our pig was a fair size,
probably would have weighed 140-150lbs dressed (meaning
edible meat). Us boys were instructed to
get the two coppers going to get the water boiling for
scalding the pig. When we had the water ready
we went and got the pig from the sty.
This took a lot of doing - we got a rope on one
front leg and after a lot of pushing and shoving we got
him up to the coppers. Dad comes over to kill the
pig and do the scalding. He took one look at the pig
and decided it wasn't big enough.
He told us to take it back to the sty, and he
would look at it in six month's time.
Us kids were not very thrilled doing all that
work for nothing. It turned out to be nearer
nine months before the pig was killed, and boy was that
pig a size when we killed it, just like a big old
sow.
There were a lot of wild horses on
the 10,000 acres the stock used to roam.
We used to try to catch them by putting up rope
snares where they had to go through scrub.
We never had much luck, they were too
cunning. There was one prized horse
amongst the mob. Other people used to try to
catch it as well as us. One day Ward set the snare and
chased the mob through to where the snare was set.
The prize horse was caught by the back leg.
Ward left it there overnight.
We went back the next day and brought it
home. Ward only had it about six
weeks when another horse kicked it and broke it's leg -
Ward was very disappointed.
On a bush contract well out of
Kaikohe the supplies for the camp cookhouse were pretty
erratic at getting through.
Probably the worst occasion was when there was no
meat for tea. The men did a bit of a
growl, but put up with it.
The next night no meat again.
The poor old cook got it in the neck.
Next day when it came time to get the tea ready
no meat had arrived. The poor cook was
desperate, and when the men arrived back for tea they
were really ready to get stuck into him.
Poor old cook was ready for them.
He told them that the meat had not arrived but he
had managed to get a big buck rabbit and made up a nice
rabbit stew. This was welcomed by the
men. But alas the cook's cat
went missing and never turned up again.
Your guess is as good as mine as to what happened
to the cat.........
The Utakura
Valley
The Utakura Valley
The Okaihau tableland from the
settlement to the top of the Utakura Hill on the way to
Horeke consisted of a narrow belt of flat volcanic land
which dropped sharply on both sides into the Utakura
Valley in the south and the Waihou Valley in the
north. From the top of the Utakura
Hill you can see part of the Hokianga Harbour.
At night you can see the lighthouse flashing at
The Narrows, which is a narrow piece of water between
Rawene and Kohukohu.
The original road from the top of
the hill into the Utakura Valley was practically
straight down. Some stretches had a grade
of 1 in 7. There was only one stretch
of about three chains that was reasonably flat.
This road was never metalled, although there was
quite a lot of natural scoria on it.
It was only used as a coach road - no motor cars
in those days. On one trip down the coach
tipped over and one of the passengers was killed.
When this road was put in I don't know, probably
around 1870. The present road down was
made before my time, it was twice as long but not as
steep. The old road was then used
as a short cut up the hill for horse riding or droving
stock traffic.
The top half of the Utakura Valley
had only an area of flat land of a few chain on either
side of the Utakura River which was fed mainly from Lake
Omapere. There are two smaller
valleys further down, the Mangataraire and the
Waikerikeri and then also the Okaka valley, which is
further north-west. The bottom half of the
Valley consisted of much more flat land and was
tidal. The river entered the
Hokianga Harbour about three miles north of Horeke.
The north side of the Valley was very steep and
rocky although it had all been felled of bush and
grassed much earlier than Dad's block.
The south side of the river and the Mangataraire
Valley was much easier country and more fertile and
shows to this day (1994).
With the
help of Google these are much later photos & details
of the places mentioned in the
text

The Hokianga Harbour and tidal
rivers were really the main road through the Hokianga
County. Around 1915 there used to
be 250 launches, plus hundreds of rowing boats on the
harbour. The road from Okaihau
through the Utakura Valley to Horeke was the mail
connection from the railhead and the harbour.
All mail used to come to Okaihau by train three
days per week arriving at Okaihau any time from
6.30-7.30pm.
All the mail for the settlements on the harbour
would be delivered by trucks to Horeke and then by
launch. Each small settlement would
have a Post Office in those days.
The reverse would happen next morning for the
out-going mail.
In 1927 they started the rail line
again down the Waihou Valley which is north of the
Utakura. The line was completed for
five miles to a place called Puketi although the trains
never used it. The earthworks were
finished another five miles to Rangiahua.
When the big depression started in 1929 all work
was stopped, and has never been started again.
To this day (1994) two concrete platforms for the
railway station still stand - the road goes through the
middle of the two platforms where the railway lines
would have gone.
When the railway was being put
through from Kaikohe to Mangamuka before 1920 there was
talk of coming down the Mangataraire Valley into the
Utakura Valley and skirting the Hokianga Harbour and
around to Rangiahua or Lower Waihou.
What changed their minds I don't know.
If this plan had have been followed, the railway
station at the Mangataraire Valley would have been ½-¾
of a mile from the farm house.
The line was put through to Okaihau by 1920.
When the railway line was being put through from
Kaikohe to Okaihau it skirted close to Lake Omapere,
consequently the ground was very swampy.
They lowered the lake about six feet (they
drained it by digging channels about 15' wide), and I
can remember seeing kauri stumps sticking above the
water for many years after.
Before the lease expired on the
original block the timber was worked off it the brothers
had put in a mill to cut the timber this was after the
Second World War. Then the lease was made
freehold but the rest of the bush was never felled and
put into grass.
In 1931 Dad got another 600 acres
of bush and scrubland at the back of the original
section, it was Crown lease.
Dad, Malcolm, Keith and Ward chopped 200 acres of
the bush the first year. Now the environmentalists
will not even let them work the millable timber.
In 1932 we built a cowshed with a wooden floor
like the original "back-out" cowshed, and hauled the
milking plant with bullocks and milked by machine.
We brought the cream by packhorse uphill and
downhill through bush for about two miles to the
road. In those early days the
Dairy Company gave a differential payment for farmers
who had to bring their cream a long way to the
road. Dad enquired about the
differential but when they told him it was only going to
be 1/8 of a penny per pound of butterfat Dad thought it
was too lousy so did not apply for it.
Us kids could have used it.
Mind you butterfat was only 6 pence per
pound. There was not a fence on
this new 200 acres that we milked on.
As I mentioned previously the cattle could roam
over 10,000 acres, so we were constantly riding over
this area to keep the stock closer to home.
There was much loss of stock - some got pinched,
some shot for meat, others got into creeks and
drowned. One time we found two cows
about thirty miles away at a Maori farm at Waima.
Many a time when we were way out looking for
stock it would be dark before we got home.
From memory we only slept out once under the
stars and got home later the next day.
Up until the mid 1920's all the
groceries etc would come from the Farmers Trading
Company in Auckland. Usually the order would be
for a fortnight or a month.
It would be put on the boats at Onehunga and
shipped up and into the Hokianga Harbour discharging at
Opononi, Rawene, Kohukohu and Horeke, which was where
our groceries were unloaded then the boat would take on
various things back to Auckland.
There was a general store at Horeke and another
at Okaihau. There was a small store and
Post Office attached to a house opposite the school
until about 1925 when the shop closed but the Post
Office was still going in 1938, perhaps longer.
In about 1928 when the road was put up through to
our place we dealt with the store at Okaihau.
They used to deliver by an old truck once a
week. There was no general
telephone system until possibly 1930.
If we wanted to get messages out there was a
phone at the Post Office.
Up until 1925 there was no doctor
closer than the Kawakawa Hospital (possibly 30-odd miles
away), or the Hospital at Rawene, which had to be
reached from Horeke by launch.
Many a time when a bushman was seriously hurt in
the bush around the Hokianga Harbour old Dr Smith would
take the launch as far as he could and pad the hoof
sometimes several miles into the bush to help the
injured. I remember in 1927 my
mother was critically ill.
Dr Smith was called from the Post Office.
He came by launch to Horeke, got a car ride up to
the start of the right-of-way to the farm and walked the
rest of the way. I think he did this
twice. Then after a few days Mum
was taken to the Rawene Hospital.
The only way to get her there was a home-made
stretcher made out of 4x2 wood and chaff sacks.
Then this was carried by Dad and three other men
to the road, put on an old Chevrolet truck and taken to
Horeke, then taken by launch to Rawene Hospital, where
Mother was for several weeks.
(Can you imagine this in the
1990's?)
Most of the farms in the Utakura
Valley milked a few cows, ran probably 200 sheep and a
few dry stock. They virtually existed,
never made a fortune.
The Valley was started to be
settled about 1870 when it was all standing bush.
Most would have been felled and burnt.
There was a mill at the end of our entrance to
the farm from about 1916 until 1925 when it shifted to
Horeke. As the timber was all
milled the mill then got their timber from around the
harbour, the timber was floated down the rivers and
rafted to the mill. There would still be to
this day logs that had broken adrift from the rafts and
ended up in the mangroves around the harbour.
The timber for this mill at the end of our road
was hauled by bullock team or carted on bullock
wagons. The owners were McSweeny
and Alexander, who was my uncle Gower.
Mrs McSweeny was a real old tyrant (or so us boys
thought). We all used to call her
Biddy Mac. She knew we referred to her
as Biddy Mac, they used to live in a house alongside the
mill. One night coming home from
school we stopped and sat on the bullock wagon.
The old girl yelled at the top of her voice "get
off Mr Biddy Mac's bullock wagon".
At the time I lived in the district
there was not a lot of social activity.
From the time I started school in 1923, until the
time the mill closed in 1925, there were only three
dances and one wedding reception in the
hall/school. One teacher put on an
evening for her pupils on the occasion of her 21st
birthday. A church service was also
held in the hall/school I think once a month.
Whenever there was a general election the
hall/school was used as a Polling Booth.
Elections in those days were held on week days,
so we got the day off school.
In 1924 there was a combined Christmas party with
our school and two Okaihau schools, which we
attended. Some years there would be a
picnic by the river which most residents attended. I
do not know who organised these events.
On mail nights someone from most households would
go to the Post Office and wait until the mail arrived
and was sorted. It was a sort of focal
meeting place.
Lake Omapere was a great home for
eels. When the eels used to
migrate out to sea (to breed) in March each year the
Maoris would make a V-race and put it in some
rapids. The water would only be
about a foot deep there. At the end of the race they
would attach their hinake.
They would then go up-stream perhaps half a mile
and with home-made flares drive the eels
down-stream. In one night alone they
caught 500 eels of various sizes.
There was a lot of puriri around
Okaihau/Waihou/Utakura. This is a native tree, very
tough and long-lasting in or on the ground.
This timber was in great demand for railway
sleepers. There were thousands split
and squared with a broad axe.
On one block a mill was put in just for cutting
sleepers.
The Hokianga bar was very dangerous
for shipping. Quite a few ships were lost
on it. When there was a storm no
ship would even think of crossing it.
In a major storm we could hear the roar of the
bar at Utakura, some 25 miles away as the crow
flies. The seagulls and other sea
birds would come into the upper reaches of the harbour
in their tens of thousands, and stop until the storm
abated.
In 1931/32/33 Dad was on the
Hokianga County, and along with the other County members
he went to meet Lord Bledisloe, who at that time was the
Governor-General. Lord Bledisloe was taken to
the Waipoua Forest, and he asked to see Tane Mahuta (the
giant kauri tree). Because of the shallow root
system that kauri trees have, no-one was supposed to go
right up to the trunk of Tane Mahuta.
Lord Bledisloe however wanted a photo taken with
someone right at the trunk, so he asked Dad and George
King (a bushman/mill owner) to stand right at the base
of the trunk so he could take a photo. I
have seen the photo but I do not know it's whereabouts
now - it is probably with Keith.
To earn a bit of pocket money,
Malcolm Keith and Ward would go scouring around the
kauri trees for kauri gum.
Almost all the mature kauri had been bled. (This
consisted of chopping some of the bark on the trunk
which would what we called bleeding.
After twelve months the gum would have hardened
then it could be chopped off and another fresh cut was
made and the process repeated itself).
It was not good to the tree as it let the Kauri
Beetle get into the trunk and over the years it rotted
much of the tree. Another source of a few bob
was to collect fungus. This grew on some softwood
species of native trees after the bush was fallen and
burnt. This grew on the rotting
timber during the wet months from about May to
October. It contained a lot of
water, and was sold dried.
From memory say 50lbs of wet fungus would dry out
to probably 5lbs. It was a delicacy for the
Chinese people. I don't remember how much
per pound they got for it.
There was not much chance of
teenagers getting jobs like picking up hay, cleaning
drains etc as the young ones of today can get.
Although I have mentioned odd jobs were few and
far between, there was an occasion when a Mr Bob Flood
asked Dad if Selwyn would like a job helping milk a few
cows (by hand) and I suppose odd jobs around the
farm. Certainly the pay would
have only been five shillings per week.
At that time the average pay would have been
around ten shillings per week.
But Dad said to Mr Flood that he had told us boys
that if we wanted to go out to work we could, but we
said that we would stay at home.
That didn't go down very well with us
boys.
Then Charlie Wells, who had a farm
of 150 acres in Okaihau (sheep and cattle only) and
another farm in Utakura of about 1,500 acres up the
Mangataraire, asked Dad if I could work for him.
It would have been a very good job and pay would
have been ten shillings a week, as Mr Wells was not hard
up for a crust, and he treated his employees well.
Dad told Charlie Wells he would let him know if I
wanted the job or not, but Dad never asked me about
it.
This sort of thing made us kids hopping mad.
Shortly after Mr Wells had asked Dad he employed
a Maori boy. This boy was only there for
nine months when he broke his neck playing
football. That job was no good to me
then as I had left home and was working at
Mangamuka.
When I flew the nest (of which I
have no regrets) I had £1.0.0 in a Post Office savings
account (how the blazes it got there I don't know) and
7/6 in my pocket. Half of that I borrowed
from my brother Selwyn, we'd earned it scrounging for
bottles around the old bush camps, and selling
them. Not worth much more then
than I am today.
I never saw active service overseas
during the Second World War. I
was classified as Grade 2, which meant that I would only
be called up for service in New Zealand. I
appealed against being called up for six months, as
Olwyn had to go in for a major operation after Roger was
born, and I was needed to help out at home.
Roger was actually put back into the nursing home
for a month while Olwyn was recuperating. I
came up for a re-hearing of the appeal again but was
told I had to stay in agriculture at that stage and
would not be called up for the army in New Zealand.
(By this stage of the war the tide had turned, as
the Americans had turned the Japanese back away from New
Zealand.) The first appeal was
granted for "Undue Hardship", but the re-appeal was
granted for "Public Interest" (keeping the farm
going). So the only army training I
did was in the Home Guard from 1940 to the end of the
war in 1945.
After I left home I had several
jobs on farms. When I was working as a
farmhand on Rowe's farm in Blucks Road at Otorohanga I
met Olwyn Fairbrother. On 24 June 1939 we were married at
the Methodist Church in Otorohanga.
We worked on farms as a married couple.
These were at Te Kawa (Burton's), Fencourt,
Cambridge (Norman Robert's), and Waitoa (Bob
Malcolm's). In 1950 we started 50/50
sharemilking first at Fencourt, Cambridge (Hoyles) for
six years, then at Te Aroha West (Hogans) for eight
years.
In 1964 we bought a farm at
Hoe-o-Tainui, 17 miles north-west of Morrinsville.
After a lot of hard work we knocked it into shape
and stayed for 29 years, selling it in June 1993.
We then retired into
Morrinsville.
We had a family of three girls and
two boys - Olwyn Marianne (called Marianne), Roger
Gordon, Lawrence Selwyn, Beverly Edith and Lynda
Dawn. Sadly we lost Beverly when
she was 11 years old - she had a kidney disease nowadays
called nephritis, but then called Bright's Disease.
It was a terrible loss to us all.
Now that Olwyn and I have reached
old age our children and their spouses are a big help to
us.
Footnote (added by Lynda December
2005):
Sadly, Olwyn passed away on the
3rd of October 1997,
just a couple of years short of our Diamond wedding
anniversary
Austin Family (in order
of age):
Malcolm (23.11.12), Keith
(12.11.13), Ward (3.4.15), Gordon (3.3.17), Stan
(15.6.18), Selwyn (15.9.19), Neil (12.12.24), Alan
(29.4.26)
My Uncles/Aunts on Dad's
side:
Born
Died Marriage Details etc
Alex 1882
1956 wife Flora
Mary (Polly)
1883 1951
husband Rod McKenzie
George
1885 1982
wife Hazel
Ella 1887
1971 never married
William
1889 1978
wife Ella Alexander (my parents)
Donald
1892 1943
Frances
Malcolm
1894 1924
never married - was killed in Kauri bush in
Thames in 1924 - was in First World War
Lena 1896
1923 husband George Daniels
Annie 1898
1988 never married
Rita 1900
1994 husband Frank Shaw
Oliver
1903 1988/89?
wife Arley
Claude
1904 1904
Ward 1907
1914
My Uncles/Aunts on Mums
side (Alexander):
Born
Died Marriage Details etc
Ken half brother, lived in
Hamilton
Annie 1874
1875
Bartrum Gower
1874 1876
Harry 1876
1957 wife Hannah
William
1877 1955
wife Charlotte, Maori woman
Winnie
1881 1948
husband Arthur Graham
Clara 1882
1918
Joseph Gower
1884 1943
wife Irene
Ella 1886
1953 husband William Austin (my
parents)
Margaret
1891 1983
husband George Ferguson
I do not know much of the Aunts and
Uncles on Dads side of the family.
Some I had never seen probably because they lived
further away, whereas Mother's family lived nearer to
us, or as I was a black sheep and left home early.
My parents are buried in the
Anglican Church Cemetery at Okaihau.
My grandparents on the Alexander side (Alfred
Ambrose and Annie Alexander) are buried in the Anglican
Church Cemetery at Waimate North.
My grandparents on the Austin side (Edward and
Henrietta Austin) are buried at the Purua Cemetery,
which is out of Whangarei.
I have been involved in the
following organisations and services:
Federated
Farmers I joined Federated
Farmers Bruntwood Branch in 1953, and transferred to the
Manawaru Branch in 1956. I became Sharemilkers
Delegate from the Te Aroha Sub-Province in 1958 to the
Waikato Province, then a Waikato Delegate to
Wellington. I transferred to the
Tahuna/Hoe-o-Tainui Branch in 1964, and was Chairman of
that branch from 1982 for four years. I
resigned from Federated Farmers in 1993 when I retired
from farming.
NZ Co-op Dairy
Company from 1969 to 1993 as a
Committeeman
Livestock Improvement
Committee for fifteen years,
ending in the late 1970's
Bobby Calf
Committee from 1977 to 1993,
including approximately 12 years as Chairman of the
Tahuna Bobby Calf Pool
Farm Discussion
Group from 1964 to 1993,
including 21 years of being Convenor of the Group at
Hoe-o-Tainui
Hoe-o-Tainui Hall
Committee from 1965 to 1993,
including approximately 13 years as Chairman
Hoe-o-Tainui Social Club
Committee from 1964 to 1993,
including approximately four years as Chairman
Hoe-o-Tainui Primary
School Committee from 1965 to 1967
(which was when Lynda left the school)
Hoe-o-Tainui School Calf
Club - involved for
twenty-odd years with fund-raising events on the annual
Calf Club day
Justice of the
Peace since 1978
I have found that being involved in
these organisations and services has been very
rewarding. It has given me a good
appreciation of how such organisations work.
The following pages contain copies
of photographs, documents, photos etc which relate to my
life to date.
ADDENDUM TO
MEMOIRS: MARCH 1995
My earliest recollection of the
cattle tick would have been in the early 1920's.
As I understand it ticks were introduced into New
Zealand in 1902 when the troops returning with their
horses after the Boer War brought the ticks back with
them on the horses. However, according to "Ectoparasites of Sheep in New
Zealand and Their Control", published by the NZ
Veterinary Association Sheep and Beef Cattle Society,
the first ticks were collected near Kaitaia in 1911,
although they were almost certainly present before this
and probably reached the country via Japan and
Australia. The ticks were very bad in
the North Auckland area. They were practically
dormant in the winter, and hibernated.
Their breeding cycle was in late spring to late
autumn. The tick's host was the
bovine animal. When the beast lay down the
tick crawled onto the beast from the grass and attached
itself. Horses were only affected
to a small degree, and sheep were free from them, I
think on account of their greasy skin.
Mature ticks were about the size of a green
pea. They attached themselves
mainly to the ears, under the belly, and up the back of
the udder and tail, where the animal could not rub
itself against objects to get rid of the tick. I
can remember that one Christmas morning, it would have
been around 1928, we removed 400 ticks off 30 cows!
Another time I recall Dad getting a chisel and
scraping it down the backs of the cows to remove the
many ticks that were there.
In the area north of Whangarei all sale yards had
a cattle dip and before stock could be sold they had to
be dipped. In the Utakura Valley there
was a commercial dip which some of the farmers used
regularly. I understand that a group
of local farmers raised the money to build this
dip. There used to be large
flocks of starlings which helped keep the tick in
check. I don't think the tick was
such a problem in the South Auckland area.
At one
stage it was an offence to move cattle beyond the Puniu
River just south of Te Awamutu without a permit from
MAF.
The early settlers of the district
had a hard time getting their holdings into
production. I have been told that some
would not have been able to get started had it not been
for the generosity of the Maoris supplying kumara,
vegetables etc.
In my time I can recall some
families who saved wooden grocery boxes, placing perhaps
four or five together on their side and hanging a
curtain on the front to make cupboards.
Benzine (petrol) used to come in four gallon
tins, and these tins were packed in wooden cases
containing two tins. Although there were many
different brands of benzine, the wooden cases were all
the same size, and were very useful for making cupboards
as well.
The flour for cooking used to come
in calico bags of 25-50-100lbs.
After the flour was used, the bags were opened
out and sewed together to make sheets, tea towels,
singlets, pillowslips etc.
Sugar came in 70lb bags made of a closely woven
type of jute. These were made into
aprons, oven cloths etc. Even the chaff sacks were
sometimes used as mats.
The lower half of the Utakura
Valley was predominantly occupied by Maori
families. They all had their
individual blocks of land, ranging from perhaps 10-20
acres to 50-100 acres, with a few up to 150 acres.
In the earlier years prior to my time the menfolk
would work in the timber industry - bush felling,
fencing etc. Some worked on forming new
roads. I can remember two Maori
men had bullock teams and hauled timber logs to the
mill.
Towards the middle of the 1920's
and mid-1930's, many milked 10-15 cows by hand, with one
particular one who milked about 60 cows by machine.
There were three Dairy Companies collecting cream
through the Utakura Valley, namely the Bay of Islands
Dairy Co at Moerewa, the Kaikohe Dairy Co at Kaikohe,
and the Hokianga Dairy Co at Motukaraka, which was on
the opposite side of the harbour from the other two, and
the cream was taken from the Wairiri bridge by
punt. The cream cans were lowered
over the side of the bridge onto the punt, using
ropes. One particular supplier
used 20-gallon milk cans for his cream.
These were very heavy and hard to handle.
The factory kept asking this supplier to use the
smaller cream cans, but he wouldn't.
One day the 20-gallon cans simply didn't return
from the factory - rumour has it that they ended up in
the Hokianga Harbour! Two of these cream runs
were done by two local Maoris for a time.
Another Maori had a truck and had
the contract for carting the new un-assembled butter
boxes from Horeke to the railhead at Okaihau.
These boxes were made at a timber mill at
Kohukohu from kahikatea (called "white pine"), which did
not taint the butter. From memory the logs would
be about four feet long, called peeler logs.
They would be placed in a type of lathe and a
thin layer about one-eighth of an inch thick peeled off
as it revolved. This was then cut into the
size of the four sides of the box and stapled onto two
strands of wire - the two ends were made
separately. They were kept flat like
this for ease of cartage. The flat unassembled boxes
were loaded onto a punt at the mill, as it was right on
the harbour, and they were taken to Horeke.
They were then loaded onto the truck, then taken
to the railhead, and unloaded again.
This was all done by hand.
From memory each load would have consisted of one
thousand boxes. The boxes would be
assembled at the various factories where the butter was
made. Each box held one single
block of 56lb of butter. Once the butter was put on
the box the sides were tied with the wire to form the
box, and the ends put on separately.
All the Maori families had good
gardens, with all small varieties of vegetables, plus
enough kumara, potatoes, pumpkins and corn to last all
year until the new crops were ready.
The Maoris used to tie cobs of corn onto long
poles to dry. The way they were arranged
the outside leaves shed the water.
ADDITION TO GORDON AUSTINs
MEMOIRS: OCTOBER 1996
Another thing on the Utakura farm
was that Dad could not get finest grade for the
cream. One of the reasons was that
Dad only sent the morning and night cream instead of
night and morning. The Dairy Inspector talked
Dad into trying a cream cooler which Dad decided to try
on trial. Of course there was no
running water at the cow shed.
Dad used a four gallon kerosene tin with the top
cut out as a reservoir and a wooden tap to regulate the
supply through the cooler.
This was alright for the first day and then the
wood swelled and you could not turn the tap on but Dad
managed to get finest for the cream.
Dad kept the cooler for about two weeks although
it was not working but got finest grade cream all the
time. When he sent it back and
told the Factory about the tap was no good.
Immediately the grade dropped like a hot potato
to first again. I can’t recall whether we
ever got First grade again.
*
*
* *
* *
As mentioned before the first part
of the original house was only small.
The timber was all cut with a pit saw, all the
timber was totara. Wherever a tree was growing
it would be felled and a pit made.
Actually there was no pit dug as we think of a
pit. Generally on a slope four
posts would be put in the ground.
Sometimes two trees close together would be used
then two long poles about eighteen feet long and about
six inches thick would be put on the posts or held up on
the trees with forked props on.
When the two long poles were in place about six
feet apart four cross poles about seven feet long would
be placed across the two long poles.
These were short poles would be square on one
side to stop them from rolling.
There would be one at each end which were in a
more permanent position while the other two which were
called transoms then another two poles about twelve feet
long would be placed at right angles on the long pole on
the high side of the pit. These two poles or
sometimes called skids were used to roll the logs up
onto the transoms. The whole structure would
have to be strong enough to hold the weight of a log
probably twelve to sixteen feet long and anything from
two to four feet in diameter.
When the log was firmly secured on the transom
which would be about ten feet apart for a sixteen foot
log then the small end of the log would be marked so as
to get the biggest square of timber from the log.
Then this same sized square would be marked on
the big end. Then a line of heavy string
which would have been soaking in a tin with an ounce bag
of Reckitt and Colemans Blue (which was used by the
housewives when they washed the linen etc to make it
whiter). Then with a man holding the
string at each end of the square on the log and pulled
tight then one would pull the line up in the air and let
it snap back suddenly and you would have a straight blue
line along the log. This would be repeated on
all four corners of the square.
The log would have to be rolled to get the bottom
corner of the square. The blue line was a guide
for the pit saw to follow.
The same procedure would be repeated for marking
for the different sizes of timber to be cut: 4
x 2; 6 x 1; 4
x 3; 9 x 1
and so on. The actual cutting would
start at the end of the log with one man on top of the
log holding the tiller (as the top handle was called)
and the man underneath would use the box (as the bottom
handle was called). The sawing would start
along the top of the blue lines.
The man on the top controlled the pit saw on the
top line and the man below would control the saw on the
bottom line. They would then saw up to
the first transom then shift to the other side of the
log and again cut up to the transom.
Then the saw was removed then with a log pole
levering off in cantilever fashion (and sometimes timber
jacks were used) the back cross member to lift the log
sufficiently to move the transom toward the cut end of
the log so the saw could be put in one of the existing
cuts and sawn up to the next transom.
When both cuts finished this procedure of
shifting the transom forward would be repeated.
The cut timber would then be sledged by a horse
to the house site anything up to a half a mile.
Dad only used totara timber for
building, the reason it was so far from the house site
was that the easy totara had been worked as I mentioned
previously.
*
* *
* *
*
Dad’s mill as mentioned
previously was water driven.
He made a dam on the Waikerikeri creek.
The mill was about ten chains from the dam.
The dam was at the side of about a twelve foot
waterfall. From the front of the dam
the outlet was taken in pipes although it was always
referred to as boxing for several chains then crossed
over the stream on staging.
It would have been at least twenty feet above the
stream. At this place where the
main Waikerikeri waterfall was situated, the stream was
full of big rocks - some of them up to 12 feet
high. After crossing the boxing
turned a bend and carried on downhill until it reached
the mill site.
The boxing was made from 9 x 1
totara boards which Dad had got the loan of from his
neighbour Jim Culham who had them cut at the old mill at
the bottom of our road. The arrangement was that
Dad would cut some logs for Jim Culham in repayment.
These 9 x 1 boards about fifteen
feet long it took four to make each section.
These were nailed together to make approximately
an eight inch square. The ends of each section
were staggered by about twelve inches so it could be
joined to the next section and so on until it reached
its destination. When each section was
nailed together Dad cut 2 inch x 1 inch x 1
foot approximately all done by
hand from 9 x 1 puriri boards.
Then he drilled three-eights of an inch holes in
each end. These were put one on top
and one on the bottom of the boxing.
These two would then be bolted together.
Had it only been nailed together the pressure of
the water would have dislodged the nails.
These bolted straps of timber would have been
about three feet apart. In all there was
seventy-five feet of fall from the dam to the mill.
The last two sections of boxing was
made of heavier timber 9 x 1 inches which reduced
it in size then a three inch pipe was fitted to the end
of the boxing - this gave more pressure to drive the
water wheel. The water wheel was an old
fly wheel from a steam engine.
It was six feet in diameter and about four inches
wide. This wheel was lying in a
paddock two miles away. There had been a mill there
in the early 1900s but it had gone bankrupt (or so the
story goes). Dad got the fork of a
puriri tree much like a V.
This had grown naturally.
The runners would have been 8 inches in
diameter. We always called it a
koinaki. Dad loaded the wheel on the
koinaki and dragged it home with the bullock team.
The cups which the force of the water hit were
made of blocks of wood bolted onto the big fly wheel
then boxed all the way around to stop the water from
going sideways from the cups.
The breast bench and pulleys, rollers, trolleys
and rails Dad got from a disused mill at Rawene.
For belting Dad cut tyres in half and joined
these together with post and rail fasteners.
The logs for cutting would be hauled for anything
up to a mile with bullocks.
The logs would be cut in half with the pit saw as
there was no breakdown to cut them down to make them
easier to handle. There was only enough water
in the creek during the winter or very heavy rains to
drive the water wheel. The wooden boxing squirted
water out in many places. Every now and again they
would take a couple of kerosene tins full of sawdust and
put it in the dam. This would be sucked into
the boxing and would get wedged in any places where the
water was escaping. It used to help block it
up.
*
* *
* *
*
This episode happened before I got
married. I used to bike about five
miles into Otorohanga on a Friday night.
Then when 9 o clock came and the shops shut I put
my bike on Olwyns fathers ½ ton truck and would go to
where Olwyn lived with her family, about one mile in the
opposite direction from where I worked. I
would bike home again quite late.
This particular night was pitch black, a bit
foggy, and I had a torch which I shone sometimes.
Of course there was no tarsealed road then, only
gravel. Of course with the cars and
trucks there were two small tracks with no loose metal
on them which were of a lightish colour which made it a
bit easier to see, although you had to concentrate.
About half way home on a flat straight and
probably I was going a little bit faster, when I sort of
looked up a bit and here was a horses backside right in
the wheel tracks. I had no option but to go
right between his back legs. I
do not know who got the biggest fright, me or the horse
who was asleep with a young man on his back (also
asleep). He had been to the pictures
and he and the horse had gone to sleep.
Luckily I was not hurt nor the bike damaged. I
told my boss the next morning about it.
He said that was common for them and he thought
the rider was a few bob short of a quid. A
few days later the rider was talking to my boss and said
some Maori bastard had run into him.
*
* *
* *
*
They called North Auckland the
Winterless North. I can recall when we were
going to the Utakura School we would have frosts for
several days on end. As all the roads were
metalled it was the usual thing to have potholes.
They would fill with water and when we had frosts
there would be quite thick ice.
All the children had bare feet in those days, and
as all children we liked breaking the ice.
On one occasion come the first of
May which was the start of the shooting season,
irrespective of what day of the week it was, not like it
is now, the first weekend.
We had a mob of about 40 turkeys so that they did
not stray into the neighbours it would be a job for us
boys to drive them across to what was termed the big
hill well away
from the neighbours farm.
This particular first of May was a heavy
frost. I remember coming across a
Tasmanian wasps nest attached to a strainer stay about
18cm about the ground level, and the wasps were frozen
to the stay. Incidentally we were
barefeet. There were times when we
would find where a turkey had been shot and plucked so
it would not take up so much room in his haversack.
*
* *
* *
*
I can well remember the first
aeroplane that I saw. I know it was a January but
not quite what year - it was in the 1920s but Iam not
sure if it was 1928 or 1929.
We were milking the cows, it would have been
about 5.30pm or 6.00pm when Mother came over to
the cowshed and told us. It was straight above us
but we watched it until it went out of sight.
*
* *
* *
*
Most years around March we would do
what we called Robbing Wild Bees for honey.
Their hives would quite often be in a puriri
tree, sometimes in an uprooted rata which would be
hollow for a few feet in the middle.
We would place a small fire at the entrance to
the hive and put green bracken on it to make a smoke
which seemed to quieten the bees.
We would then chop into the side of the log until
we came to the honeycomb. We would take it home in
kerosene tins opened at the top.
The comb would be put in a muslin bag and hung
over a rail and would be squeezed and let drip into a
large bowl. This would take several
days but it used to attract other bees by the
hundred. You had to keep the shed
door shut but some bees always seemed too get in.
Some hives would have a lot of honey, others very
little. It was very rare for the
bees to stop in the old hive, they would go into another
tree somewhere. Sometimes we would get more
stings especially if we had to fell the tree first.
* *
* *
* *
Kaikohe
Okaihau Rangihau
Utakura Horeke
Mangamuka Victoria Valley
Broadwood Herekino
Kohukohu Rawene
Opononi Donnellys Crossing -
all professional.
DESCRIPTION OF A PIT
SAW
The pit saw
Wherever a tree was growing it
would be felled and a pit made.
Actually there was no pit dug as we think of a
pit. Generally on a slope four
posts would be put in the ground.
Sometimes two trees close together would be used
then two long poles about eighteen feet long and about
six inches thick would be put on the posts or held up on
the trees with forked props on.
When the two long poles were in place about six
feet apart four cross poles about seven feet long would
be placed across the two long poles.
These were short poles would be square on one
side to stop them from rolling.
There would be one at each end which were in a
more permanent position while the other two which were
called transoms then another two poles about twelve feet
long would be placed at right angles on the long pole on
the high side of the pit. These two poles or
sometimes called skids were used to roll the logs up
onto the transoms. The whole structure would
have to be strong enough to hold the weight of a log
probably twelve to sixteen feet long and anything from
two to four feet in diameter.
When the log was firmly secured on the transom
which would be about ten feet apart for a sixteen foot
log then the small end of the log would be marked so as
to get the biggest square of timber from the log.
Then this same sized square would be marked on
the big end. Then a line of heavy string
which would have been soaking in a tin with an ounce bag
of Reckitt and Coleman’s Blue (which was used by the
housewives when they washed the linen etc to make it
whiter). Then with a man holding the
string at each end of the square on the log and pulled
tight then one would pull the line up in the air and let
it snap back suddenly and you would have a straight blue
line along the log. This would be repeated on
all four corners of the square.
The log would have to be rolled to get the bottom
corner of the square. The blue line was a guide
for the pit saw to follow.
The same procedure would be repeated for marking
for the different sizes of timber to be cut: 4
x 2; 6 x 1; 4
x 3; 9 x 1
and so on. The actual cutting would
start at the end of the log with one man on top of the
log holding the tiller (as the top handle was called)
and the man underneath would use the box (as the bottom
handle was called). The sawing would start
along the top of the blue lines.
The man on the top controlled the pit saw on the
top line and the man below would control the saw on the
bottom line. They would then saw up to
the first transom then shift to the other side of the
log and again cut up to the transom.
Then the saw was removed then with a log pole
levering off in cantilever fashion (and sometimes timber
jacks were used) the back cross member to lift the log
sufficiently to move the transom toward the cut end of
the log so the saw could be put in one of the existing
cuts and sawn up to the next transom.
When both cuts finished this procedure of
shifting the transom forward would be repeated.
The cut timber would then be sledged by a horse
to wherever it was needed.

About 1940. Gordon
& Olwyn with
Marianne |