SALE IN THE RAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 372, 9 August 1946, Page 10

SALE IN THE RAIN

(Written for "The Listener" by "FOUR-by-FOUR") OT so _ long ago, on the top of a high hill overlooking Cook Strait, two large buildings and several small ones housed a hush-hush section of. Wellington’s defences, To-day the sheep are in Possession again. But they are not, as everybody expected would be the case for 20 or 30 years, standing in the cookhouse door when the wind blows from the sea There is no cookhouse

any tonger, or abdlution shed, or storeroom, or privy. Necessity get those buildings up the hill in the first place, and necessity got them down again, board, frame, and bolt, and transported them 30 miles, and threw them at the feet of the house-hungry in Hutt Valley last week. But on the morning of the day in which that act of necessity should have made 150 people happy, the weather turned as nasty as it had been almost a hundred years earlier when, on almost the same spot an even more bedraggled company of homeseekers wondered if Wellington was fit to live in (and while they are still wondering found the earth begin to heave, and rock in one of New Zealand’s worst earthquakes). * * * ELL, he’s a good auctioneer who can beat a Wellington bluster in July; but odds were even at Petone on Wednesday. It rained and blew, and blew and rained almost without a break, but the auctioneer stood his ground. Water ran down his neck. It collected at his feet. It dripped from nose and chin on to his book. It ran up his sleeves and made pulp of his account sheets. But the sale went ‘on. * % Bs ORE strangely still, perhaps, the bidding went on. There were no bargains. Though it was difficult to judge who the bidders were, most of them looked like workmen who had sacrificed their wages for a day in the hope of getting some timber. If they expect cheap timber they were disappointed. Undressed 4 x 2 and 5 x 2 brought up to 40/- for -an estimated 100 running feet. Everything was estimated, sometimes no doubt a little generously, and sometimes the other way. But the buyers didn’t quail. They wanted cheap timber if they could get it; but most of all they wanted timber, and some of them were prepared to take it at almost any price. % * * ‘THEY also- wanted the other things that make a house-tanks, piping, hot-water cylinders, lavatory fittings, lining and roofing material. Some well-used galvanised iron brought 11/- a sheet. Galvanised tanks brought £10. A collection of wash-house tubs, concrete, but without stands or piping, brought £3. Doors and windows, many of them odd sizes, and nearly all a gamble for those

who had not brought. exact measurements with ‘them, brought about twothirds of new cost; once or twice a good deal more. A privy without a door, openair army variety without accessories, brought £3 \(after providing the auctioneer with one of his brief periods of shelter), * * OME buyers had come from the country, farmers or contractors, and these introduced the only touch of caution. Two farm-gates, for example, with hardwood straining posts about 7ft. long, went rather slowly to 42/6, and were then, it seemed, passed in. Some totara piles, second-hand but sound, brought 5/6 each, but there was difficulty in getting 5/- for what were described as jarrah posts, but which looked more like sleepers or power-pole cross-arms of 4ft. to 5ft. in length. The tempo of the sale was a little too fast for farmers, who like time to celculate and ponder, and some chance at least of looking uninterested. Time for those luxuries could of course not -be allowed in a storm that had already made the yard a quagmire and was rapidly making it a pond. | * * * ES the auctioneer was remarkable, the bidding was remarkable, but quite as astonishing was the quantity of money everybody seemed to hgve. You may or may not think there is inflation in New Zealand now, but when you see pound notes coming out of pockets that once held small change only, and workmen parting with fifty pounds as carelessly as if it were fifty shillings, you are dull if you don’t see where prices would go if controls suddenly disappeared. * * * NE advantage of a sdle in the rain is that the loiterers and exhibitionists fade out. Left to themselves auctioneers are usually interesting; but very few of them are really witty enough to keep back-chat on a high level of entertainment, and when the sky is dropping cats and dogs they don’t have to try. There were a few jokes of the kind that require alcohol to sustain them, and one or two that had referen to alcohol. But the alcoholics were j not there. If they came they did not (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) stay, and if they stayed the lack of an audience would soon have silenced them. For such a day the crowd remained surprisingly large; but it contained no loiterers and very few onlookers. * we * DON’T know whether to credit the rain or the auctioneer with another interesting development at this sale but

the buyers were surprisingly communicative. Everybody who wanted something said so — said how much he wanted it and how far he was pfepared to go to get it. Buyers in the building trade occasionally warned the innocents-as far as I could judge disinterestedly, In any case there were no poker faces, and I should think very few poker moves. It was something like the breakdown of reticences in an all-night queue.