Family Lives In Hurricane Area

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30977, 5 February 1966, Page 2

Family Lives In Hurricane Area

Concern for the safety of her family living near one of the areas most affected by the hurricane in Western Samoa has been the only unhappy aspect of Miss Louisa Crawley’s first week in Christchurch.

“I am terribly worried because I wrote only this week telling them my address, and I have heard no news so far,” she said yesterday. “But we have relatives in Wellington who would have had any bad news by now, I am sure.” Hurricanes were accepted as part of life in Samoa, but were certainly very frightening. Furniture and roofs were roped down during a storm, but there was really very little could be done to protect oneself, Miss Crawley said. Miss Crawley is a home science teacher and she has just begun the new year at Cashmere High School. She has been teaching for over three years in Australia, latterly at Canberra. “I was on my way home and at the last minute decided to

come to New Zealand again,” she said. New Zealand is almost like a second home to Miss Crawley’s family. After training at Auckland, she taught for a year in Wellington. Her sister has just returned home after completing a secretarial course in Wellington and both her brothers were trained here. Had To Catch Up Home science teaching was not on the horizon for Miss Crawley when she sat School Certificate, but shortly after a home science centre was established in Western Samoa. A New Zealand girl was in charge of the centre, and a Samoan was required to be trained to work with her. Miss Crawley was asked to go to training school and spent her first year working “desperately hard” to catch up with students who already had three years in the subject at school. “I had never managed a stove, let alone a sewing machine, and as for being asked to draw a percolator— I had never seen one,” she said with a laugh. But she has no regrets, and considers it good experience for students to come to New Zealand for their training. She considers Western Samoa very well provided for by New Zealand with scholarships for higher education. After her three years in New Zealand Miss Crawley returned to Western Samoa and taught at the centre which caters for all students from Government high schools and missionary schools, and intermediate classes. “There is a great mixture of faces, and it is all very interesting,” she said. Stone Collector

Lapidary is Miss Crawley’s favourite hobby, and she hopes to continue the collecting and processing of stones she began in Canberra. “It’s a good way of getting to know a place, and the jewellery you can make is so lovely and much cheaper than pieces sold in shops,’ she said. At the moment the only problem about life in Christchurch is finding a suitable flat. However, although she has “walked all over town,” she is undaunted. “I will find something soon,” she said cheerfully, “but it is difficult in a strange town, and landlords don’t seem to like single people, or teachers.”

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