Hard times in Rangataua recalled

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 12, Issue 582, 18 April 1995, Page 10

Hard times in Rangataua recalled

After 50 years of wandering it never ceases to amaze me the clarity with which I am able to recall memories of my childhood days in Ohakune. My father and mother on their arrival from an easy lifestyle in England, purchased a 120 acre dairy farm on the Rangataua Road. This farm was completely covered in logs and stumps. My father being inexperienced in the ways of nurturing the land and unaware that it was to prove to be an uneconomic unit, slaved his heart out for a period of approximately 30 years for very httle financial reward. By the present day's high standard of living we were very poor indeed, my mother often having to * go without to satisfy her brood of seven hungry children. During the depressions of the late 1930's when I was a child, it was a continual struggle for our parents to feed and clothe us. We had insufficient clothes to keep us warm at night. I can well remember my mother tucking us in by candlelight, putting an old coat over us to try and keep the cold out. Poor people like we were, were able to buy stale bread from the bakehouse in Ohakune for one shilling a sack. Toasted in front of the open fire on a shrewdly shaped piece of number eight fencing wire covered with beef dripping filled many a hungry child' s stomach. Although being so hardup, I can' t remember ever feeling insecure and feel

only as my own life unfolded was I able to understand how insecure my parents must have felt, particularly without the back-stop of social security which we have in this golden day and age. We boys learnt at a very tender age to assist my father on the farm, chopping wood for the wood range, which we were completely dependent on for cooking and heating and also for the open fire. We milked cows from the age of seven, when we could only milk one cow in half-an-hour, and as time went by gradually became eapable of eight to ten cows per hour . My mother frequently remarked on the lovely soft skin of our hands. It was one of my jobs to get the cows to the shed each moming to be milked. My father got them for afternoon milking while we were on the way home from school. My father called me each morning on the dot of 5am wet or fine, seven days per week, with one word — "Gero" (an abbreviation of my name which is Gerald), and I was out of bed, and clothed in hand-me-downs and with bare feet, away I went. The farm had a stream at the front near the house and cow bail and as our bridge was often washed away in floods we more often than not had to go barefoot through this icy cold moun-

tain stream. It was and still is beautifully clean and fresh, not very wide, and if you got a good run you could cross with only four steps in the water, then down to the night paddock to race around to gather the cows. Cows which have been lying down immediately on standing drop a cow-pat! What joy it was to stand in these and warm the bare feet. My father in the meantime roused my two brothers who had their tea and slice of bread and butter at the house, mine being brought over to the shed, and milking began. My younger brother Tony would start separating the milk with a hand driven Alfal Laval separator which had a warning bell that rang loudly if he got below the correct speed. Lights out was at 8pm, my mother and father on special occasions staying up until 8.30pm. It was an impossibility for them to wait up for the 9 o'clock news on the radio. I can well remember my mother and four sisters doing dishes after dinner at night, (we milkers being exempt). We had no sink in those days, so all water was heated on the stove and the dishes done in a basin. Then we all came together to sit around the fire-

side . We talked and often said the rosary together. Poor mother could never stay awake until 8pm and with the warmth of the open fire would doze off in the middle of a family discussion. I learned many years later my grandmother had shouted for the power to be installed in our home when I was about 10-years-old. As we got away from the depression days of 1930-1936, clothes and gumboots, blankets etc became more readily available. Oh, the luxury of gumboots to walk across that creek! We were not the only poor family of that time — practically every family was in the same boat. The creek played a large part in our young lives. My father erected a log high above the creek for us to walk over in our school boots. My brother Tony, who purchased the home farm from my father, still uses a similar method to cross today. As children in summer, we continually played in or at this creek, making dams, paddling, digging caves in the banks, catching trout etc. A huge Maori man, a Mr Jimmy Coffin who lived nearby, taught us how to tickle trout and how to eat raw birds' eggs by making a hole in each end on the spike of a barbed wire fence, and then gi ving them a hearty suck ! We often filled a frypan with these eggs, you would be surprised how many you can break into a frypan. Continued next week