Raetihi memories

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 15, Issue 691, 17 June 1997, Page 12

Raetihi memories

The following is an extract from the memoirs of Maurice Friedlander, a former resident of the Waimarino from 1930 to the late 1940'swhenhe left to become secretary of the National Party in Hamilton. This and other stories about local 'characters' then living in the Waimarino were found in Maurice Friedlander' s diaries after his death. Raetihi incidents When I arrived in Raetihi in 1930, the district was in the transition stage between a bush-felling town and a farming area but some of the conditions, particularly in the backcountry, were still very primitive indeed. In one district, about 40 odd miles back from Raetihi, a valley of the Mangapurua, there was a soldiers' settlement. Returned servicemen from the First World War (40 of them) were sent into this valley to carve out their homes from the native bush. Most of them had no previous . experience of farming, much less breaking in virgin country and the hardships and trials they underwent were almost unbelievable. Among these settlers in there - and it must be remembered that they all rallied around and helped each other - was one Gerry Quinn. He was a single man, as most of them were, and living in a slab whare under extremely primitive conditions. Gerry had practically no furniture; a table, one or two boxes which served as chairs, and he had a very good kapok mattress but, instead of sleeping on top of the mattress, he slit the end of it and was in the habit of crawling in among the kapok to sleep. His whare had a clay floor which had become very uneven over a period and the outside door would not shut. At one stage two of his neighbours, Pat Mowat and Hughie McDonald, had arranged to come down and help Gerry with his mustering or shearing. On the appointed

day Pat and Hughie arrived just at the break of day, each accompanied by several dogs. When — they neared Gerry 's whare, Gerry' s dogs also started to bark and the resulting pandemoniumwokeGerryup.lt must be remembered that in his whare he had little in the way of furniture, light primitive shelves and the bulk of his heavy stores, flour, sugar, salt, tea etc were just stacked under the table on the floor. As these two neighbours . arrived with all the dogs barking, Gerry woke up and promptly crawled out from the kapok in his long woollen underpants with the ka Turn to Page 14

Raetihi memories

FROMPAGE12 pok (a silky fibre resembling fleece) sticking to his hairy chest. But during the night, one of his ewes (remember most stock will go anywhere looking for salt) had come into his whare and was licking the salt bag under the table. Gerry proceeded to shoo the ewe out of the door. So there was the situation: The two neighbours, both natural born humourists, with Gerry shooing the ewe out of the door and kapok sticking to his hairy chest. Hughie McDonald was a Northern Ireland man and his usual speech was interspersed with the word "like". When he saw Gerry coming out of the door, with the ewe before him, he called out "That's all right, Gerry, me boy, like, like,

we won' t tell anyone." Y ou can just imagine the scene!