Supplies
For many years Mother made the bread for the family. The water the potatoes were boiled in was saved and a small amount of yeast was added to it and left overnight to be used the next day. Mother made lovely bread and scones, but sometimes it didn’t want to rise so she was quite relieved when one day a young man rode up to the door and told her that in future he would come, one day for an order and the next to deliver it from the Five Cross Roads Store. It was probably delivered to the door in a horse and buggy but when cars were used a half tank was made into a shed and out at the top of our road and it had to be collected from there. Sometimes the sparrows got in and had a feed, and occasionally, if a loaf had been broken, the white, fluffy bread was just too much temptation for little fingers.
The journey to town was an hour-long trip in the gig so was not undertaken very often. Later on coal, lime, super and guano were brought by the railway truckload that came to Claudelands Station and it was necessary to bag it ourselves and cart it home. At first I went to help bag it, but later on I was entrusted to drive the horses in the wagon - and how proud I felt doing so!
In 1930 the road we called the Goat Track, from the house at the top of our road through to Boyd’s and also the Lake Drain Road were made. Mr. Gooseman had a number of big draught horses in our paddock. The work went on for some months and it was interesting to watch it progress, but it was many years before it was sealed. I think it must have been about that time that the road was made to the front of our house. Before that, at first, we had a gate opposite Edgar McMullen’s house, and then down the hill, the gate being by the manure shed. I guess that was when we started carting our own manure, etc. The shed was built at that time too but we had a road (of sorts) from the shed and below the trees, where the tanker track is today.
We took the cream down to the main road at first twice a week, but as production increased it went more often. I don’t know how it went at first, but as far back as I can remember it went in the dray, unless the wagon was to be used later in the day. The last time I took the cream down in the wagon the horses were strangely restless and didn’t want to wait for me to get the cans on to the stand. They did get back to the shed – just - and then first one and then the other, dropped dead. Horses had been brought back from the war with strangles and had been put into quarantine to recover, but some school ponies had been in contact with them and unfortunately ours nearly all succumbed. I had sold Frosty a little while before and somehow Jean didn’t get it, but thereafter motor power did most of the farm work.
In 1929 I had gone with Daddy to look at a tractor - a Fordson with steel wheels, and he had bought it and soon learned what made it tick. It aved the horses some of the heavy work but he still came in from work with his face black, and just his eyes recognisable, and growling about the flying ants inside his shirt and biting all the way round.
The phone was perhaps the first invention that made such a difference to the life and work of the farmer and his wife. They were no longer so isolated from each other, and instead of having to ride perhaps miles to contact another, it was easy to ring. In those days there were up to 10 on a line and you had to wait until another had finished using it before you could do so. Each household was alerted by a different ring from the Morse code D - a long and two shorts, S - three shorts etc, and it was very frustrating if you wanted the line in a hurry and someone would not stop talking, or when they did, didn’t ring off (just a short ring) to let you know. To get someone on another line you had to ring central (one long ring) and give the number you wanted and they pulled and shifted plugs so that you were connected. When Diana started work she coordinated the installation of automatic phones to replace the last manual exchange in the Bay of Plenty. Of course, there is no need for any of this now and many homes have several phones and can use them in the garden or the car, and to anywhere in the world. When we were coming home from school we often stopped at the telephone pole and pretended to ring Mother and have a conversation with her. Little did we realise that in years to come folk would be able to do just that, without poles, or wires or anything but a phone.
Electricity came to Gordonton in 1922 but because we were some distance from the main road we had to supply our own poles and guarantee to use a certain amount of power before it could be joined in, so it was not till 1928 that we had electric light. In the first weeks we had to learn (or remember) that we no longer had to protect the light from every moth that entered the room. The benzine lamp had mantles and if a moth flew into one it disintegrated and the light was gone. It was a relief not having to use candles anymore, though we never had to make them, as Mother did before her marriage.
At the winter show that year we looked at refrigerators and brought the little discs, which were the principal on which the Westinghouse one worked. When we rubbed the disc till it was warm, it jumped, thus turning on the power until it was cold again. Daddy bought one of those, and also a washing machine, which spun the water out of the clothes thus making them lighter to lift out. Daddy made a trolley affair, which one man could pull and the machine was shared between the two households for many years. Several salesmen tried to sell us a wireless, but at that time there was so much static and interference that it was many years before one was purchased.
The electric motors in the shed and for the water pumps were much easier than the benzine ones, but it was some years before the electricity could be relied on at all time. For the men folk, a great relief was no longer having to dig or clean drains by hand, for the mechanical digger and scoop took the hard work out of so many jobs. My father had often wished that the concrete for his job could have been brought ready mixed, and when laying water pipes across the farm, that they made ones that could go around corners.
Even dishes could be washed by machine and my parents kindly gave me one in 1954, which did many years service and saved the children many hours of work. Truly so much has been invented in my lifetime that I cannot imagine what more can be thought of. The computer is being added to until one wonders if there is anything it cannot do.
Planes, which in 1932, made history by crossing the Atlantic and flew at 60 miles per hour now do so many times a day, and at 500 miles per hour and at great heights. My father bought his first car in 1924 and at that time they were restricted to 25 miles per hour and now exceed 100 and are so prolific that the roads are congested. The roads themselves have been improved so much, even the country ones that were scarcely passable for horse traffic (they used to say that on the hill the horse took one step forward and slid back two). In many places a creek or river had to be forded, and horses were even washed away at times. When alter metal was added to the road it was not unusual for a car to skid, even right off the road.