the oldest blogger

As soon as I turned five, I was off to school.But I missed the first term because I didn’t turn five until April. This meant that I was three months behind in learning and had a disadvantage to the other kids. However the next year I caught up and carried on as usual.

The school we attended was three miles away along a muddy track which served as a road. To get to school I sat between my two older brothers on our horse. Because I was so small I had to hang onto my brother in front to stop me from falling off. He left school that year, and the next year my brother who sat at the back now took over the pilots reins, with me clinging fast, with arms around his waist. All went well until one morning, as we were riding to school past the millhouses, a ginger tomcat lept out from under a bush right under the horses nose. I stood on my head in the middle of the road and was knocked out. I still have the bump on my forehead to show for it. Apparently it was a suspected cracked skull, but as there were no hospitals near, nor telephones either, the doctor wasn’t called till the next day, by which time I was awake, nursing a hell of a sore head.

There were about 40-50 kids at school from primers to standard six. The prims in one room and the standards in another, with only two teachers. About forty percent of the schoolkids were maori, from the pa across the river. (macranui?) Despite all the hardships we all enjoyed our schooldays and stayed there until proficiency year before proceeding onto high school at Ohakune.

When we first started the primers used slates with slate pencils, which broke easily. As we acquired a little proficiency in writing we progressed to copy books with pencil, and had to repeat the word above in the space provided. The system must of been successful because we all progressed to become resonable writers. We learnt the ABCs by reciting it every morning when we went into school, and did likewise with our times tables, which required good memories to keep up to scratch. From these simple beginnings we progressed to learning to read, write and do sums.

The years at high school were probably the best years of my life, where we made good friends and enjoyed the social life provided along with our maths, french and english. We had thirteen subjects when we first went to school. Four lots of maths; algebra, arithmetic, geometry and later trigonometry. French, english grammer and literature, history  and geography. Those that didn’t take that section took book-keeping, the girls took  typing, shorthand and cooking classes. While the boys took agriculture science, dairy science and woodwork.

Some confusion arose at the end of the second year when only those who had taken the professional course were allowed to sit for public service exams, enabling them to gain entry to university, if they were successful in passing the matriculation exam at the end of the third year.

This is when the depression hit. The onset of the depression in the thrities upset the careers of many of the students as there was no work of any sort to be obtained.

My conception of the learning of kids at that stage was that it was far superior to many of the present age because all were capable of reading and writing well, and able to put their thoughts down in a presentable way, including good spelling, dictation and layout of work; as compared with so many arriving in university unable to read or write comprehensively.

Seeing as I am nearly ninety seven; and before I lose all my marbles, I have been poked, prodded and pushed into recording my memories of my earlier life. I was born in 1913 in a shack at Ohakune, New Zealand, the last of a family of seven. Six boys and one girl. My earliest recollections are when I was about four or five, the first being I think, of my mother fainting in the kitchen on the receipt of a telegram from the local postmaster advising her of the death of her brother Fred at Pachendale in WW1. It shouldn’t of been a real shock because she was of Cornish blood and they say some of them were a little fey. In other words, some of them could foretell the future. Mum had already told us that she knew Uncle Fred was dead because a couple of nights earlier she had seen him appear in her room.

The next recollections I have are of the Raetahi fire. I recall my brother and I waking about six in the morning to a howling wind and the noise of several people in the kitchen. The place was full of smoke, and we learned that there was a large bushfire surrounding the area.Our house caught fire twice but was put out twice by Alf, who was sitting on the roof with a bucket of water and a wet sack, hiding behind the chimney to keep out of the wind. Fortunately the house did not burn down, and heavy rain began at about four o’clock aleviating the danger of fire. All we lost was a sheet of iron from the roof, which was found a month later wrapped around a tall Matai tree about 400 yards downt he road.

My next recollection is the 1918 flu which fortunately, although all the family was ill apart from me, we all survived. Our neighbours across the road lost a child of about five years old; I can remember her ill mother crawling up our front steps to see if we needed any help. The spirit of the pioneers.

Looking back now I can only marvel at the courage of my mother who reared a family of seven under such primitive conditions. Our four bedroomed shackon our few acres was basic, with no modern conviences what so ever. Meals for the family were prepared in camp ovens over an open fire, with the usual corrugated iron chimney, which could often catch fire on the framework outside. Our house was in a small clearing with native bush all around, the house was typical of the early homes. It consisted of a kitchen living area, a bedroom for mum and dad, another bedroom for the boys and a main living room with an open fire. As time went on the kitchen recieved a stove, brick chimney and one of the greatest boons, a hot water cylinder on the side. Despite these limitations we were well fed, and we all survived to adulthood.

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