Years ago I realised that everyone in Britain learns to ride a bike. Most people in New Zealand in my childhood did but neither I nor my sister Margaret did. My other sister is a keen cyclist and says we did not learn because our mother was afraid of accidents. This is not how I remember it. Bicycles were expensive n NZ after the War and I thought that was the reason we never had them. Hastings was a completely flat town but when we moved to Wellington it was so hilly that there was no particular pressure to ride a bike. Some/most of my Wellington friends had acquired them at some point but there were really used for playing in back yards and not for serious cycling. The fact that neither Margaret nor I could ride one did not seem that strange but when I got to England I found absolutely everyone could ride one. I think the fact that people here could not afford cars but could afford bikes was one factor. Certainly it was in my husband's family. Having got one he was expected to ride it to secondary school even though it was on the other side of town. His grandfather even died from a heart attack while riding his bike.
The boy next door to us in Hastings had a bike but he was a year younger than me and I remember his mother told me I would break it so I was never allowed on it. I must have been about six then. I cannot even remember our having a tricycle. I think that as all these toys had to be imported from England they were considered too expensive. And I have no idea why my parents did not look for something secondhand.
In New Zealand I always thought that swimming was the equivalent of cycling as absolutely everyone could swim and most people had taken their Bronze Medal for lifesaving although not me. I was very late at learning to swim and have no memories of ever visiting a swimming pool in Hastings. We often went 'wild swimming' in rivers and the sea and we were taught to respect the water. I have vague memories of my grandfather encouraging us to swim but I do not think my parents were very keen. When I was about six I got 'glue ear' and had three abcesses in my ears over a period of a couple of years. I was therefore taught never to put my head under water and I think this is one reason why I was such a slow starter. I remember that our school in Hastings had a small pool but I think it was really for the boarders and I do not remember ever swimming in it. And of course, once we started going to Taupo, swimming became very important as there was no proper water supply in the house and you swam to get clean. My grandmother used to take a cake of soap down to the lake and wash herself as she was, we thought, too old to go swimming. (She must have been in her late sixties.)
So my memories of swimming lessons start at the age of nine. The Karori baths were just across the road from the school and we used to be taken there every week. I remember nearly sinking in the learners' pool. I know I was ten before I swam the width of the baths which was considered one milestone, and I must have been about twelve before I completed a length. By that age a lot of my classmates were already going to school at 8 am to train for their Bronze medallions. I never entered the swimming sports or learnt how to dive but as an adult I became quite a keen recreational swimmer as it was a fairly painless way of taking exercise.
I taught myself different strokes by reading books and I soon decided that I preferred breast stroke to front crawl. The crawl was the basic stroke in NZ. I also managed to learn backstroke but I would never say I was a strong swimmer. We had plenty of opportunities to observe swimmers as our route to school took us right past the baths. We had boarders at our school and we day girls thought they were very brazen as they used to strip right off in the changing rooms. As I remember it there were no showers at the 'baths' but it did not worry us because we had a bath every day.
I also have memories of some wild swimming incidents. We used to have House picnics at school. On one occasion we went to Butterfly Creek which was a river over the hills on the eastern side of Wellington Harbour. Although it was December it was almost raining. We all took our 'togs' but the boarders were told they could not swim by the matron. That did not deter one of my classmates who came armed with her swimsuit and got in the water. It was freezing cold, as was often the case with river swimming, and she was soon approached by the teacher in charge. Too late. She had no choice but to cower under the bank of the river, submerged.
When I picked tobacco the year I left school we used to go swimming in a water hole in the river when we had finished work. This was a potentially dangerous river so we took great care but there were one or two swimming 'holes' so it was great after a day working in the tobacco field. We used to float down the river reciting Ophelia's death speech from Hamlet which we had studied at school in the year that had just finished.
reensstitcher
Friday, 10 August 2018
Tuesday, 24 July 2018
My Wellington grandparents' house
My grandparents lived in Kelburn which was an established
area of mainly large houses. Their house
was a late Victorian two-storeyed building.
Almost all the houses in Hastings were one storeyed so having stairs was
very exciting. It was a large house
which my grandparents had been forced to buy over something more modern,
because my grandmother’s father came to live with them. My great-grandmother had died just before my
mother’s parents moved to Wellington from Wanganui in 1929. My grandmother was the sole surviving
daughter so they had to have enough bedrooms to accommodate members of her
family when they came to stay. My
great-grandfather died in 1941 before I was born but he had had his own sitting
room, called ‘The United Party Room’ which at the time I am writing about was
used as a dining room and study. We used to sit there in the evenings. When we were little my grandfather used to sit us on his knee and pretend we were in a horse race. When I was older he taught me to play Chinese chequers.
Next to
it was an identical room that was only used for best. It was the Drawing Room and was famous for
the window panes blowing out if there was a bad southerly. I can remember occasions when we could not
go in there because the window panes were missing. My grandmother used this room for her tea
parties. It also contained the family
gramophone. This had to be wound up to
play a record. It was in a cabinet that
served as a china cabinet and had two drawers which were full of my
grandfather’s collection of photos from the First World War. When we were a little older we would frighten
ourselves by looking at photos of dead horses.
The records were 78 rpms. There
were Sousa marches and ‘Oh, For the Wings of a Dove’ sung by a famous boy
soprano. You spent a lot of time winding
up the gramophone as otherwise it went flat and stopped playing.
At the back of the house was a room called ‘The Meal Room’
where we ate most of our meals. The
piano was in there and also a bookcase containing my grandmother’s Victorian
novels. Next to the Meal Room was a
large kitchen. The identical house next
door had three narrow rooms including a scullery but my grandparents had
knocked them all in together. There was
a sink in one corner with an Ascot water heater over it. It made a nasty explosive noise when it was
switched on. Along the wall beside it were two clothes tubs for doing the
washing. They were covered with wooden
boards but on Mondays Craigie came to do the washing. This was a major exercise with a
wringer(mangle) put on the edge between the two tubs for wringing out the
sheets. I cannot really remember how the
water was heated but assumed there was also a copper. We certainly had a copper in Havelock North. On Mondays there was always macaroni cheese
for lunch. Criaige worked until early
afternoon and washed the hard floors as well as doing the washing. I think she also cleaned the bathroom. She was Irish and I think spoke with an Irish
accent.
Along the back wall of the kitchen there was a large gas
cooker and what I now know was a gas fridge.
We did not have gas in Hastings.
There was a table in the centre of the kitchen where we children would
sometimes have tea of boiled eggs. My
grandfather bought the eggs direct from a farmer who supplied his office each
Friday so they came in a brown paper bag and you had to be very careful not to
break any of the eggs. My grandmother’s old slate from school was used for
writing shopping lists. The kitchen
opened onto a narrow passage known as the conservatory (but it wasn’t). All the garden tools were kept there and it
was very untidy, not to mention smelly.
I expect it was damp.
Upstairs there were five bedrooms and one bathroom plus a
walk-in linen cupboard which smelt peculiar. The bathroom had a red tiled floor and a nasty
water stain below the taps on the bath.
When we moved to Wellington in 1953 the house was big enough to
accommodate all five of us. My
grandparents slept in the room above the United Party room while the one above
the drawing room was called the lumber room. It had been my great-grandfather’s bedroom and
was totally full of junk. I later learnt
that this was partly because my great-grandfather had died during the War and
there had been on-one to clean it out, but when we were a bit older and living
in Wellington we used to go into it sometimes.
It was a treasure trove of old things, ranging from my
great-grandfather’s masonic regalia to army uniform and a couple of guns and my
mother’s school reports. Soon after we moved
to Wellington I discovered her roller skates.
They were not adjustable but fitted me at the age of nine so I learnt to
use them for a few months until my feet grew too large for them. I used to go
round and round the bus turning area at the top of the cable car but of course
I was not destined to be a skater and I soon outgrew them.
North Terrace had two single bedrooms and a large room
called ‘the nursery’ which I think had been extended over the back part of the
house at some point. We children
generally slept there. I liked lying in
bed and seeing the last plane of the day coming along Tinakori hill on its way to land at
Rongotai (now Wellington) airport. The
features of this room that I remember, apart from it having room for two beds
and a cot, were the maidenhair fern on the chest of drawers, a toy train set
which my parents had bought for my grandfather after a court case involving
trains which he was involved in, and the Singer sewing machine that later
became my mother’s. I do not remember my
grandmother ever using it. Both my grandmothers
were knitters rather than dressmakers.
The house faced south which is the wrong way to face in the
southern hemisphere. It explains why the
window panes used to blow out because the storms were always southerlies. The house was detached but only by about three
feet. A path ran up the side with the
front door halfway along the side wall.
The house next door was identical. There was a small garden along the front of
the house with a couple of hydrangea bushes, a daphne odorata and some cat mint
plants. The garden at the back of the
house was the ‘main’ garden. It was not
very large but my grandfather was a keen gardener and grew flowers there. I do not remember any vegetable plants
although there were herbs. There was a
square lawn, in the middle of which my grandfather had sunk a tin can so that
he could practise his putting. As the
house was very close to the botanical gardens there were a lot of birds which
would visit and I can remember learning the names of them. They tended to be British birds such as
sparrow and thrushes rather than native birds.
In the botanical gardens there were plenty of native species.
The journey from Hastings to Wellington in the 1950s
I cannot remember going on holiday from Havelock North and
think we probably did not as we were too small.
Instead our Wellington grandparents would visit us. When we moved to Hastings we started going to
Wellington. I understand my mother hated
the Hawkes Bay climate so much she used to take us down to Wellington for about
a month when we were pre-schoolers although once I started school the pattern
must have changed. Sometimes we went to Wellington by
train and on other occasions we went by car.
The journey took the inside of a day and there were certain rituals
associated with it.
As my mother did not drive we must have gone by car either
with my maternal grandparents or with my father.
Our first stop was in Dannevirke ‘to see a man about a dog’, i.e. for a
comfort stop at the loos. The main stop
was for lunch in Palmerston North. Then
we drove through the Manawatu Gorge, a narrow road with the railway running
alongside it. This road has now (2017)
had to be closed long-term because of a dreadful ‘slip’ (landslide). I can remember there were often slips which
sometimes closed the railway and the road although I cannot remember the road
ever being closed when we wanted to go through it.
Palmerston North was the main town on the other side of the
Gorge. It had a central square with
gardens and, very important for mothers with small children, the Plunket
Rooms. This was a building in the middle
of the gardens with loos and somewhere to change babies. There was angle parking around the outside of
the square. As there were park benches
in the gardens we would sit there to eat our packed lunch. Packed lunches were the norm and it would
never have occurred to anyone to buy food.
I have one outstanding memory of these Palmerston North stops. It was in January 1952. My younger sister was born in November 1951
and my mother had great difficulty breast-feeding her. I think this was partly because of the heat
and it probably did not help that I spent a fortnight in hospital in December
1951, being discharged on Christmas Eve so that I could have Christmas at home.
When my sister was six weeks old my parents decided to wean her. I distinctly remember the whole process because the baby screamed a lot. She would take a bottle from my father but not my mother and after a couple of weeks of this we went on our annual holiday to Wellington. The idea was to feed her in the Plunket rooms in Palmerston North. Men were not allowed in the Plunket rooms so Mum took the three of us in there and my father hovered outside. But it was no use. The baby had to be fed by him so he had to come in. I can remember a well-built middle-aged Plunket nurse coming and berating my parents for this. She was probably appalled at the idea of a father feeding a baby as well as the fact that we were breaking the rules
When my sister was six weeks old my parents decided to wean her. I distinctly remember the whole process because the baby screamed a lot. She would take a bottle from my father but not my mother and after a couple of weeks of this we went on our annual holiday to Wellington. The idea was to feed her in the Plunket rooms in Palmerston North. Men were not allowed in the Plunket rooms so Mum took the three of us in there and my father hovered outside. But it was no use. The baby had to be fed by him so he had to come in. I can remember a well-built middle-aged Plunket nurse coming and berating my parents for this. She was probably appalled at the idea of a father feeding a baby as well as the fact that we were breaking the rules
.
After lunch we would continue the journey down through the
Manawatu. There were several large
rivers and on the banks of one was a tea-shop which I can remember visiting. I can also remember proudly
reading out the writing on the road signs the year I learnt to read. My triumph was apparently to announce that we
were on the ‘main rout’ rather than ‘route’ and I was not allowed to forget this
for years. I also remember large sign
boards advertising different agricultural tools including one for ‘Gough, Gough
and Hamer’ which had a large tractor on it.
I pronounced ‘Hamer’ as ‘hammer’ of course. There were a lot of market gardens as we got
nearer to Wellington and then the road ran alongside the foot of the hills
beside the sea before turning inland and approaching Wellington via the
Ngauranga Gorge. Before reaching the
gorge, you passed through an area which is now built up but then was known
mainly as the site of Porirua Hospital, the lunatic asylum where we knew one of
my grandmother’s brothers was a patient.
Near to that was Arohata Borstal, the women’s prison.
The train journey to Wellington was also a major event. If it was just my mother taking us on
holiday, that is how we travelled. Again it took
the inside of a day with, I think, half an hour’s stop at Palmerston North station
where we ate our sandwiches for lunch. Other passengers would go into the station buffet and buy sandwiches, which always seemed to be ham, and meat pies which are a famous NZ snack.
The best thing about the train journey was that at Paekakariki, about
thirty miles up the line from Wellington, there was another stop for them to
change the engine. My mother would walk
us along the platform to witness this. The line from Wellington to Paekak (as
it was always called) had been converted for diesel trains so the steam engine
was removed and the diesel attached. The
reverse happened on the journey north. I
can also remember things about the journey back to Hastings, particularly that
we used to stand at the carriage window as we approached Hastings and look out
at the buildings at the edge of town.
These included the boys’ high school.
I also remember the doplar effect from the noise of the level crossing
signals and the distinctive sound of the train’s hooter. New Zealand had trains that were more like
American ones than British so the ‘hooter’ sounded like something from an
American movie.
The carriages were not
divided into compartments but had seats arranged in pairs down a long
aisle. We always travelled first class
and there are incidents from these journeys that I still remember. On one occasion a man in our carriage taught
Margaret how to wink. When I was a bit
older (seven and eight) I made this journey on my own. My parents would eye up a likely looking mature
woman and ask her to keep an eye on me and off I would go to visit my grandparents. I think I went in 1952 and I certainly went
in the May school holidays in 1953 and was staying with them for the Coronation
and the conquest of Everest.
Saturday, 21 July 2018
Childhood gardening
Gardening was quite important in my childhood although it is
my younger sister who is the real gardener.
My mother was quite enthusiastic when we were children although I do not
think she was very expert and I remember her buying plants and seeds and not
ever propagating anything. Her father
was a keen gardener although his garden was small with no room for
vegetables. All New Zealand houses
traditionally had a patch of land and everyone used to grow their own
vegetables. I suspect vegetable
gardening was seen as men’s work. That
was certainly the case in our household. My father and his father before him,
hated gardening. My father used to say
that his father used to tell him that he would have to weed the roses in the
afterlife! My paternal grandmother was a
keen gardener and that trait was passed down to both my uncle and aunt and then
to my younger sister.
In Hastings my father did garden but once we got to
Wellington he gave up. He grew
vegetables in Hastings although never potatoes. I also have a faint ‘memory of
a memory’ about Havelock North in which I am standing at the front door and
looking out on a sea of lumps. I know my
parents planted potatoes to break up the ground before sowing a lawn but I can
only have been about eighteen months old so have probably not got a true memory. In Hastings the vegetable garden was divided
from the flower garden by a trellis up which grew the runner beans. I do not remember even knowing that there
were other kinds of bean. My father grew
carrots which I imagine loved the sandy soil and peas plus salad items such as
lettuce and spring onions. Hastings was
built on a river plain and the soil was very good. The main problem was drought in the summer
and we did have heavy frosts. I think
one or two of the shrubs had sacking put round them for winter protection.
When I was about four my mother picked out a small section
of the flower garden and said that Margaret and I could have it as ours. I remember growing mustard and cress and love-in-a-mist
but that is about all. I also remember having children’s packets of mixed
seeds. I remember the ‘bulbs’ my mother
grew for spring which were narcissi of various kinds, especially the ones with
little flowers. More memorable were the
hyancinths because they had such a lovely scent. Our garden in Hastings was very nice. My parents planted roses all along one
boundary – alternately Paul Scarlet and other varieties. At the corner between the flower garden and
the vegetable patch they planted a silver birch so that was the first variety of
tree I knew. The other boundary (we
lived on a corner) was very shady but we had a lemon tree there and some
shrubs. We never played on that side. We only ever used ‘blood and bone’ as a
fertilizer but that seemed to be enough.
I have memories of making ‘fairy gardens’. After my father had mowed the lawn (it was a
job always done by men) we were allowed to have some of the clippings. We used to pile these up on the ground and
decorate them with flowers. Of course
they always disappeared overnight or as soon as it rained but it was a form of
entertainment for us. I am sure my
paternal grandmother must have helped my father with his vegetable garden. In theory it did not matter if you did not
grow vegetables in Hastings as the town was surrounded by market gardens and
orchards. We used to go to one to buy
tomatoes and the scent of tomatoes still reminds me of that place.
When we moved to Wellington the gardening situation was
completely different. Wellington is
built on clay and things did not grow as they did in Hastings. At one point my parents had a rotary clothes
line installed. The soil that we removed
from the planting hole was just like the clay we modelled at school so we made
things from it. I think our garden might have been especially
damp as there was a creek (tiny stream) running along the bottom boundary
between us and the neighbours in the street that ran at right angles to
ours. People often say that Karori (the
suburb where we lived) is very damp and full of streams. As it is built on land that mostly consists
of hillsides with the main road running down the central valley, this all makes
sense.
My mother’s father retired soon after we moved to Wellington and he
used to come and do the gardening. He
planted Jerusalem artichokes (again I never knew there was another kind) and
they grew despite the poor soil. Our
flower garden had hydrangeas along the bed against the house. They did not mind the acid soil. There was a
small patch of garden in a corner where I think my mother grew a variety of
things and then there was garden all along the boundary fence. We had stylosis (miniature irises) growing
there. Here is a photo of my sister and
me sitting on the fence.
You can see the
hydrangea bushes in the background but I have no idea of the name of the large bush
growing outside the fence. I see we also had window boxes. I think they must
have been planted with bright red pelargoniums (although we called them
geraniums) as again, that was the only kind we knew. In New Zealand at that
time the flower garden was always in front of the house and the vegetable
garden behind it. That was just the way
it was and when I came to England I was surprised to find most people had their
main garden behind the house. My
mother’s generation of women were mostly full-time housewives and mothers. Gardening and dressmaking were activities you
did in the afternoon after having spent the morning cleaning the house. You had to do them and only a few women opted
out.
Because everyone was a gardener the usual way of propagating
plants was from cuttings and ‘slips’ given to you by friends. It was not common to buy plants and there
were certainly no garden centres. I do
not know how many children gardened. My
younger sister was always very enthusiastic but Margaret and I soon grew out of
it as too many other things impinged on our lives. When we were older and moved to another house further up the same street I used to do a little vegetable gardening but what I remember from that house is my younger sister being very keen and growing lots of different vegetables.
When I went on my last trip to New Zealand in 2008 a friend and I visited the Hastings house. The people who were renting it were about to go out and gave us permission to walk round the outside. This is what we saw:
This is the patch of garden that Margaret and I were allowed to use.
And this is the Queen Street frontage. The fence has been replaced for obvious reasons (ours was just wire) and the we knew the silver birch had been removed not long after we left. I see there is a tree fern where it used to be. The climbers up the verandah were not there when we lived there.
My other sister has visited the house more recently and said it had changed hands and had a lot of improvements made to it. I was quite surprised that people in NZ did not mind former residents of a house walking around it and on the same holiday I was given a guided tour of the house in the first photo. It had also been improved and extended but some parts were the same.
Wednesday, 4 July 2018
Brownies and Girl Guides
I come from a family with a tradition of involvement in the
Scouting movement. This began with my
father who was as bad at sport as the rest of us! He went to the New Zealand equivalent of a
public school and joined the school scout troop in order to avoid sport. He continued to be involved with scouting
until he reached the age of forty when he abandoned it in favour of church
activities. My childhood memories are
full of the scouts, however, even before I was old enough to join the Brownies. When I was small my father ran the Rover
group. This was for slightly older
boys. They used to go camping a lot and
I can remember my father going to the Scout Association property at Rissington
which was into the ranges (hills) near Napier.
I particularly remember this because he used to go in mid-winter when it
was very cold and frosty.
There were also other occasions in Hastings when this
interest impinged on the life of the whole family. I learnt the term ‘bottle drive’ very
early. This appeared to be their main
method of fund-raising: collecting empty bottles and getting the money back on
them. I can remember going to the scout
hut where they met on several occasions although I am not sure why. And of course I was brought up knowing I
could become a Brownie. My mother had
been both a Brownie and a girl guide and there were one or two badges lying
around the house.
I joined the Brownies at the first opportunity when I was
seven and a half and still living in Hastings.
I only have hazy memories of this although I do remember being in a
‘fairy circle’ and I know I was properly enrolled and wore the uniform. The pack met in the church hall and I suspect
it was a church group. However, my life
in this pack was short as after six months we moved to Wellington. Joining a pack there was top of the list of
things to do so I joined the Karori brownies, even though we were still living
n Kelburn with my grandparents. I seem
to remember we met after school in the church hall. My main memory is of the day the bus driver
did not see me and I missed the bus home.
I think the Brownies were a very important part of my life,
not least because it was a proper community group and I met girls who went to
the ordinary state school, not just people at our school. I am still close friends with one or two of
these people.
Because I joined at a
young age, to start with there were not many people I knew but gradually most
people from my class joined. I was a
pretty successful brownie and gained my Golden Bar and Golden Hand as well as
several proficiency badges. I
particularly remember doing my ‘housewife’ badge. This meant going to the examiner’s house and
cooking a meal. By this time my second
cousin had also joined and she was taking the badge too. She was a very intelligent child so when told
to cook rhubarb she did it with salt rather than sugar.
The atmosphere was greatly influenced by early twentieth
century military life although as Brownies we did not go camping. I know that the sixes in Hastings were named
after Maori fairies but the Karori ones were traditional English fairies and I
was a sprite. Meetings began with us
holding hands with other people in our six and dancing in a circle (I think). I became a sixer and this provided my
grandfather with plenty of opportunities to work on my leadership skills. He had an army background and he saw my life
in the Brownies as a chance to develop these! My parents had a number of friends who had
leadership roles in the scouting movement.
I remember someone called Ruth Herrick who was near the top of the
hierarchy, and a man in Hastings who we lost touch with when we moved to
Wellington. I learnt recently that Ruth
Herrick was the daughter of my father’s childhood next door neighbours.
I was a much better Brownie than I was a Guide. I ‘went up’ to the local guide company
shortly before my eleventh birthday but I only survived there for a couple of
years. There were several reasons for
this, some of them related to me rather than the guides. For example, my father always insisted in
walking up to the hall to collect me (we met in the evening and did not own a
car) which I found embarrassing. Very
different from today when no-one would let eleven year olds walk half a mile in
the dark! By then I had entered the ‘Upper School’ and was wearing
stockings to school. My mother would not
let me change into ankle socks for the guide meetings which I found even more
embarrassing than being collected. But
above all, guides required some athletic ability and I had absolutely
none. Running a mile at ‘scouts’ pace’
which was one of the tests for the Second Class badge, nearly killed me. I only managed to pass a few of the tests but
I do remember we did a St John’s ambulance badge in first aid and that was
fine. There was a theory test which we
did writing on the seats of the wooden chairs in the church hall, although it
was open to cheating and there was a practical test which involved tying a
sling.
We used to go on hikes on the hills around Wellington. Fine.
And I learnt to cook sausages ‘inside out’ over a campfire although my
father did not approve of this practice.
I remember learning to make a fire using pieces of dried gorse to get it
started. The highlight of my brief time
in the guides was that I actually got to go to a camp!
This was held at the A and P showgrounds at Upper Hutt. I do not know how a group of us newbies came
to be selected, especially as the camp appeared to be for several companies so
we were not just with people from our company.
We slept four to a tent and every night we sat round the campfire and
sang songs such as ‘Ging, gang, goolie, goolie’ (that’s what I remember as its
name but it probably wasn’t). During the
day we undertook a variety of activities that I think were aimed at developing our
bush skills as well as enabling some people to pass tests for their badges. My chief memory, however, is of the
meals. Someone wrote the menus down in a
strange language which we then had to interpret. I particularly remember ‘cackleberries on charcoal’.
This proved to be scrambled eggs on
toast.
Like many people I drifted away form the guides as other interests such as learning the piano began to be more important. A couple of my close friends continued until we were in the fourth form but even in the 1950s there were too many competing interests for most of us.
Monday, 25 June 2018
The royal tour 1954
As part of the celebrations for her new reign the Queen and
Prince Philip undertook a long tour of Commonwealth countries after the
coronation. It so happened that the tour
reached Wellington soon after we moved there.
We were still living with our grandparents. As my grandparents were members of ‘the Establishment’
and lived at the top of the Cable Car very near town this meant we were able
to participate in things quite easily. I
always remember that when I moved to Australia fifteen years later I was very
surprised to find some of the people I was working with had never seen a member
of the royal family. It was quite a
common occurrence for us and I do know that the royal couple were in Wellington
for a week and we saw them every day but one.
They arrived on a Saturday afternoon. This meant crowds of people lining Lambton
Quay and I assume most of the other main streets, to see them drive to
Government House where they were to stay for the week. Our whole family went as it was only a short
cable car ride from our grandparents’ house into town. My outstanding memory of this day is not of
the royal couple but of a very drunk man who made several attempts to get onto
the outside seats of the cable car. He
kept falling off and as an eight year old I was very glad we had our father
with us. I do not think I had seen a
really drunk person before. I remember
it held the cable car up but we got down to town and took up our positions on
the pavement outside my grandfather’s office.
Margaret and I were both clutching our flags. All children appeared to have these and I
assume they were New Zealand flags rather than Union Jacks. The queen was in an open-top car and it was
the practice throughout the week to push the children to the front. This was great in terms of getting a good
view although later in the week the crowd surged so that I ended up within
touching distance of the queen and could not really see her face!
Just a brief glimpse of the royal couple that day but the
next day was Sunday and they attended church at St Pauls Cathedral. My grandparents were parishioners and my
grandfather was on the vestry so they ‘had’ a pew. This meant they had a right to sit in the
second pew on the right hand side of the centre aisle unless it was wanted by
the people from Government House. This happened regularly when they attended
church and we would have to sit elsewhere.
The bench seats were upholstered in a very coarse red fabric so for
little girls in their short skirts it was pretty uncomfortable. On this occasion we were, I think, seated in
the south transept. We wore our school
uniform. On important occasions we
always had to wear school uniform which I think says something about how people
assumed you dressed for important occasions as well as about how few clothes we
had apart from our (expensive) uniform.
Obviously the church was full and we just went where we were told to
go. I do not remember anything about the
service but I am sure we were there.
We had no plans to see the royal couple on the Monday. However my father was on holiday and he
appeared during the morning and told Margaret and me that we would go for a
walk through the botanical gardens.
These stretched from the vicinity of the top of the cable car right down
the hill to the Cenotaph at the junction of Lambton Quay and Bowen Street. The area by the cenotaph was nicely
landscaped so people always stood there when there was any procession. When my father told us of the planned walk,
Margaret and I immediately worked out what his plan was so we found our flags,
rushed into the loo and pushed them up our knicker legs. (Our knickers were made of cotton with
elastic in the bottom of the legs. They
were very substantial by today’s standards.)
As it turned out, we were too nervous to extract the flags in public so
we just wore them all day.
Tuesday we definitely did not see the royal couple although this may
have been the day of the royal garden party which my grandparents and parents attended. My grandparents were presented to the Queen which
was considered a great honour. I remember going to Kirkcaldie and Stains to buy some bright pink shoes for my mother to wear to the garden party. They were made by Norvic of Norwich and were very expensive.
Wednesday was important for children as this was the day the
Queen and Prince Philip visited Athletic Park, the main rugby ground, and
‘inspected' the city’s children. As Margaret
was only six, she had to sit in the stands with our parents but the rest of us
were dressed in our school uniforms even though it was the summer holidays and
lined up in square blocks. Then the
Queen drove up and down between the squares in an open-topped car.
I know one day the royal couple went to Lower Hutt so there
was nothing for us in Wellington that day and another day they attended the
races at Trentham racecourse. Finally it
was Saturday and they left. Again, we
were taken down to Lambton Quay to wave our flags. This was the occasion when I was almost
crushed into the queen’s shoulder so I did not really see anything.
It all feels very quaint and long ago now but you have to
remember that we did not have any media, other than radio and if you were lucky
enough to live in a town they were visiting you certainly took trouble to see
them if you could.
Tuesday, 19 June 2018
The 1953 Coronation
Needless to say, this was a highlight of our
childhood. I was lucky enough to be in
Wellington for the actual coronation but there were also activities in Hastings
that we were involved in. some of which related to the Royal Tour that was
going to happen in 1954 so it is difficult to remember dates. In particular I remember that the Brownies
were involved in the production of a jig-saw puzzle to be sent to
Prince Charles and Princess Anne. There
was a very large puzzle that had to be taken round the main employers. I think this was because something similar
had been done in 1937.
I remember that we went to the newspaper office where
we saw traditional print blocks being used and the letters being set into
blocks. Then we took the puzzle to
Tomoana freezing works. This was the
main meat processing plant on the edge of Hastings, a place famous for the
disgusting smell that emerged on Tuesdays and ‘perfumed’ the entire town. I seem to remember my mother saying that was
the day they made preserved tongues which were sold in tins. The jig-saw puzzle trip took place at the
weekend and there were not many people about but the idea was to carry the
puzzle through the factory and we all had a chance to handle it.
We received a number of souvenirs of the Coronation
although whether we had more than most children I cannot be sure. My mother and her mother were ardent
Royalists – groupies we would call them today – and we grew up with the ‘royal
books’. These were bound editions of the
Sphere and Illustrated London News covering all the major royal events from
King George V’s silver jubilee to the then present day. They had actually come from my father’s
family. Our souvenirs of the coronation
included coronation bibles, anointing spoons and coronation mugs. There was also a jig-saw puzzle of the queen
in her coronation robes which I remember buying from the little stationer in
Kelburn where my maternal grandparents lived.
The coronation was on 2 June 1953 but there had been a long build
up to it. Margaret and I were just the age to appreciate it. I
still cannot see photos of soldiers in full dress uniform, beefeaters and
Yeoman of the Guard without thinking of the coronation and the royal tour that
followed it. The coronation must have been in the May school holidays. I
think this was also the occasion when Mrs ‘Addy’, my grandmother’s next-door
neighbour, had her ‘English’ grandson staying. He was the same age as
me. It was certainly the holiday when I helped her to bake cakes.
My grandmother knew a lot of the women who worked in the
department stores and I remember one of them giving me an enamel brooch of a
crown that she was wearing. I had it for decades. The town
was obviously decorated with lots of flags and bunting.
Because of the time difference the coronation took place at night
in New Zealand. I listened to it from my grandparents’ bed. We were
very knowledgeable about everything royal and I still have the replica
anointing spoon that was one of my souvenirs. I can remember ‘Vivat,
Vivat Regina’ being sung. However, the most impressive thing was the
searchlights. These were relics from the War which were turned on and lit
up the whole sky. As my grandparents lived at the top of a hill the view
was amazing. The room faced away from the harbour but up to another
Wellington ridge called ‘Fitchetts’ Farm’ in an adjoining suburb and I can
remember how impressed I was at seeing the searchlights. There was
nothing like that in Hastings! I was allowed to stay up (in my pyjamas and
in my grandparents’ bed) until the queen adjourned for her sandwiches.
On Coronation Day it was announced that Mt Everest had been
conquered – by a New Zealander! Of course we were all very proud.
Our family had a different connection with the Everest exhibition. We
used to buy our peaches from Mrs Low, mother of George Low, who got as far as
the South Col. I mostly remember her
orchard because it had a cattle stop and, being such an unathletic child, I
dreaded having to cross it. With little
feet here was always a danger you would fall through the rungs! Whenever possible I used to walk along the
edge of cattle stops where there was generally a concrete strip.
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