Chapter 22 - The End of an Era 1928
“The pigs won’t like it, but I will.” said Fred. Esther looked up inquiringly. The most hated job on the farm had always been killing the unwanted calves and cooking them up for the pigs. Now, following Taranaki’s lead, Horotiu was offering to slaughter ‘bobby calves’ they would even collect them from pens on the main road. They did not pay much, and for several years the bobby calf money was the perk of the farmer’s wives- until the Government decided that the money received would have to be accounted for, for Tax purposes.
(The name ‘Bobby’ came from being paid 1 shilling, which was called a ‘Bob’ hence “Bobby calves”.)
“A whole pound,” exclaimed Maggie, who helped in the house, in delight, as she was given her wages at the end of the first fortnight. (Feb 1928) “I’ve never had any money of my own before. I’m going to buy myself a pair of fancy shoes, or perhaps I’ll get a hat- one of those big floppy straw ones with roses on it that Pollock & Milne are selling for 19/6d.” “You can only estimate the value of money by what you can get for it,” Esther told her. “We’re only getting a little over £1 for our fat pigs, and butterfat is down to one shilling and five pence.” “But,” Fred interrupted, “This year we’ll surely get electricity.” The lines had come through Gordonton in 1922, but only those adjacent to the road were connected. New generating plants had been installed at Horahora; the Public Works had taken over Arapuni and soon the Electric Power Boards would be constituted. “At last they have promised that if we erect our poles and guarantee to use a certain amount of electricity, they will connect us,” Fred said. “With milking plant, water pump, shearing shed and two houses, we’ll use enough. We’ll have a refrigerator and a washing machine. We won’t need an electric range until there is no more wood on the farm.” The poles went up, but the men did not come to connect the power until August 3rd. That was the day of funeral of Alexander Watt Williamson.
“It’s the end of an era,” said the family, gathered at Okoropong as they remembered back over their Father’s 79 years. He was born Brandon, Ruby, Warwickshire in England, and was three years old when he arrived in New Zealand in the ship ‘William Hyde’ in 1852. They went to live in Wanganui, where an older brother, Francis, had already established an orchard and farm. There were times of trouble when they had to leave Brandon and take refuge in the fortified redoubt in Wanganui because of fighting with the Maori. “Dad always wanted to learn,” observed Nell. “His Father would have liked him to take over the farm, but he went to University instead.” “He was a great walker,” Sam remembered, and kept his love of walking almost to the end.” “I guess that very first university was a bit different from these days,” Sam said, “There were only a few students, and Dad said the only events they met each other socially was in Professor Black’s geological tramps where they explored various places of geological interest in the neighborhood of Dunedin.” “Guess he was a clever sort of bloke,” Fred said proudly. “It took three years to graduate BA, the first (and only) diploma presented before the Otago University was incorporated into the University of New Zealand. They then gave him another one. I think he must be the only person to get two diplomas for one set of exams. “He took all the subjects available at the University,” remarked Isa. “Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Geology, Mental Science, Law and the three languages; Greek, Latin and English. No wonder he thought he worked hard.”
“I wish he had been able to go to the Jubilee of the University,” observed Charlie. “As one of the original batch of students who entered their names at the Otago University on the inaugural day in June 1871, he’d have been amazed at the difference 50 years had made. They did not even have a ceremony to start it off. He wrote for the Jubilee, “We just paid our fees to Mr Hislop, the secretary, then went to the several professors’ rooms and entered our names for the lectures and began work straight away. There were two ladies in that first group, a Mrs and Miss Barton. They attended the classes of Professor Sale, who took the three languages. “I wonder what they did afterwards,” said Isa. “Dad was Headmaster at Turakina School when his first wife died,” Amy said. “So many women died in childbirth,” Gay remarked, “But I don’t know how Jeanne should have contracted T.B. I tried so hard to guard against it. Thank God none of you got it.’ “Pompei …” began Isa. “You know it was pneumonia that killed Pompei,” her mother said quickly. “He’d been chasing goats in the hills behind Lower Hutt all day and lost his coat. The day turned very wet and bitterly cold, and it was late when he got home thoroughly chilled. The doctor could do nothing. Oh, it hurt to stand helplessly and watch a son die.” (Penicillin would have probably saved him but we did not have it in those days. Fred said, “Dad was headmaster at Patea for 11 years, and then at Taita and Epuni before he retired. Do you remember how he used to make the stories of the bible come alive in our Sunday school classes? He was a grand story-teller, and all the Williamson clan had a favorite tale to remember.
Mother’s father, Charles Parkinson, with his wife Jane and sister, Emma, had arrived in New Zealand on the sailing ship ‘Rajah’ and landed at Port Chalmers on the 5th October 1853. It had been a rough trip, and they had to wait there while the ship was repaired, then travelled on to Wellington. They then travelled to Turakina where they purchased 156 acres not far from the township. In June 1864, Charles paid £150 for ‘Ben Nevis’ as he called his farm on the Bonny Glen Road. In 1878 the Rangitiki Advocate of September advertised his farm as ‘fenced and divided into convenient paddocks with a good house and an orchard’. He sold it, less land taken for the railway and road, for £1283/10s.
Charles was a printer by trade and for many years was a reporter for the Wanganui Chronicle. He was the publisher during 1859.
His daughter Topsy (real name Emma, which she hadn’t realized until she saw it on her marriage certificate) married Alexander Watt Williamson at the family home in June of 1875. After the sale of Ben Nevis, the family shifted to Wanganui. The stomach cancer that killed Charles must have been already troubling him, as his wife took in boarders.
“Gay, did you get any frights when you were little?” one of the grandchildren asked?
“The two worst times happened when my father was away,” the old woman reminisced. “He spoke Maori very well but my mother did not. One day we were down at the creek doing the washing. The baby was asleep in the house about 200 yards up the slope. Suddenly we were surrounded by about a dozen warriors. They had come so silently that we did not hear them until they were there. Their tattooed faces made them look very frightening, and we were alarmed to see they were waving a couple of English axes. They all seemed to be talking loudly. Mother whispered to me, “Try to sneak up to the house and take the baby to our hidey-hole in the bush, while I keep them talking.
I think they were exasperated that we could not understand them. Anyway, after a time they went off to a big tawa tree and cut it down so they could take the honey from the bees that was it it.
The other time was in the evening. My brother had just finished milking, and I went down to help him bring up the milk. There was a terrific noise and a band of Maori men came down the valley. Soon there was a smell of burning. They had lit the bushes and flax along the river bed. Mother decided it was no good going into the bush in case they set that on fire also, so she told us to hide and keep on praying. After a long time my brother and I peeped out. It looked like a picture in the bible of hell. The flaming trees and shrubs, hundreds of strange black shapes dancing and shrieking (you’ve seen how a flame can distort a shadow!) and darkness round it all.
My father was angry with us for being frightened, Gay remembered. He said we should have realized they were only catching eels. “There are bad men in every race,” she said on another occasion. “The man who killed my brother Arthur did not do it because he was Maori, but because he was a violent man.”
In 1934, Fred & Esther made a hurried trip to Esther’s Mother’s funeral. Mrs Priest was buried in Mangatainoka where her husband had been laid to rest 20yrs before.
“Mother came out to New Zealand on the maiden voyage of the Doric in 1883.” Esther told her children. “She was eighteen when she was married in New Brunswick in Canada. (She had been born in Banchory, Aberdeen, Scotland. It was 4yrs later that they arrived in Napier, New Zealand. I can remember our home on Priest Road near Woodville. We had a market garden, but Dad was away a lot of the time building bridges and surveying roads. In 1893 he bought ‘Waima’, in the Ngaturi district of Pahiatua. The place was nearly all standing bush. We did not have much in the way comforts, and my father worked very hard. After he died, just before I got married, I think my brothers and sisters worked harder than ever.” “It is the end of an era when the folk who came out in the sailing ships have passed on,” Fred said, but it is the beginning of a new era for us now we have electricity.” No one could have predicted the impact the coming of electricity would have. Changes in fertilizers, grew more grass, but stock numbers were governed by the amount of water available in the autumn. Now the pumps could keep going whether the wind blew or not. There was water in the troughs. It did not happen all at once though. Something was faulty in the design of Arapuni, and they had to get experts from overseas to help. It was not until after 1932 that the benzene stand-by engines at the sheds and wells were pensioned off.
One September evening in 1929 the Okoropong family were having tea. A moth blundered into the room. Instantly several of the family stood up to protect the mantle of the light. How they all laughed. Electric lights do not have a mantle. Moths can do no harm.
After tea, Mary said, “I’ve got to have my revenge at draughts, Dad. You beat me last time.” So while Mary and her father battled it out on the draughts board, Esther and the younger girls played Snakes & Ladders. The clock chimed ‘bed time’. “Please let’s have a sing-song before bed” pleaded Edith. So, they gathered round the harmonium.