MY MEMORIES OF WAITOA’S PAST YEARS.
By JIM FITZTHUM.
My family arrived to Waitoa from the northern town of Waiwera in 1940 , we had spent two year on a farm at Tauhei near Morrinsville first before father managed a job in the Waitoa factory. There was Father, Mother my brother Maurice and myself Jim. Father bought a small cottage in Farmer Road which had only the basic home comforts. Just a coal range for cooking and heating, no hot water, no flush toilet. Bath night meant heating the copper in the outside wash-house and bringing the hot water inside to the bath by bucket, the clothes washing was also done in the copper and the usual washing-board to clean the clothes. Our toilet was a small corrugated affair tucked in behind the wash-house, just a four gallon tin which had to be emptied often, a hole was dug and carefully staked out across the vegetable garden , this was one of my allocated jobs for many years. There was only tank water and had to be spared over the hot, dry summers of the 40’s-50’s.
My sister Nancy was born soon after we moved there in 1940 and my second sister Noeline was born in 1946. My schooling started first in the Waitoa school for six months and then as a seven year old started at the Te Aroha Catholic school where we all went to , there was a free bus run by the church to pick us up each day which was a great service for those days
Waitoa was just starting to grow to a lively little township , the Dairy Factory being the centre of why people came here, was an old corrugated iron building , I can recall the milk powder dryers creating a lot of heat and was quite frightening as a young kid to sneak in and explore , usually someone dared you to do. The butter factory connected to the main factory burnt down and was rebuilt around the mid-fifties, I can remember the extreme heat and spectacular display of flames and explosions from tins of milk powder store close by. Slowly the old factory disappeared as new concrete sections were built and modernised, there always seem to be a new addition being built.
The little township consisted of the essential shops. There was Wallace supplies grocery store managed by the Mc Carthy family, G.E. Clarke farm and produce , a Post office and exchange, ( the old number please style) I can still remember our number was 51S. Two Butcher shops supplied meat for the town and surrounding farming area, two garages and petrol stations . The railway station was a very busy place with trains passing through to Te Aroha/Thames. Farmers Trading had a department store near the factory and was always popular with locals able to buy their clothing and household goods on hire purchase. Campbell’s Store arrived around 1950, this was the first time we could buy an ice cream and milk shake, also get fresh bread on a Saturday morning, I used to work for Fred Campbell in the shop on Saturdays, it was a very busy store, bread 7 1/2d a loaf and milk 4d a pint, we had to weigh the biscuits , sugar and flour. I think it was about 1944 that I started the first paper delivery for the New Zealand Herald, just a ten year old and I had to control a grocery bike with a small front wheel and huge cane basket, full of papers it was top heavy and quite often in the dark hours I would collide with a big rock and get tossed over the handle bars, papers flying everywhere. A very welcome morning treat in the winter was calling on the Taylor family in their small transit hut they were allotted till a factory house came available, Mrs. Taylor would greet me with a mug of hot cocoa and a round wine biscuit, kindness one never forgets.
During the fifties saw a big progress with the dairy factory and larger concrete buildings began to appear along with probably fifty plus very comfortable houses for the staff, there was a huge wooden hostel that housed the single workers, this of course made the little township prosper, the building project seemed to go on for many years until today it would be one of the top largest Dairy Factories around the world, very modern and automated which sadly the work force was to suffer and the town loosing all it’s housing and shops.
At the end of Farmer road was Wallace’s Boiling Down Works which took care of all the dead cattle from the district and turned them into fertiliser etc., this gave the area around us a nasty smell if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, the Works are still going but of course up to health standard now.
The local Hall in Farmer Rd. was always the centre point of our small community, I can remember some of the farewells for local armed forces leaving for the second world war and the return welcome home for the lucky ones after the war, living just three houses from the hall, mother and father would take us to these gatherings and a lot of us kids would search the drains on either side of the road for empty beer bottles, this gave us some well needed pocket money, 1d per bottle. There was also a monthly movie night at the hall, we were allowed to go sometimes, I can remember the breakdowns , usually partway through an interesting part, plus seeing the overseas news on screen was a novelty. In the early fifties with indoor basketball becoming popular Waitoa was able to muster together quite a few teams, we played twice a week in the hall and were soon travelling to other centres for competition matches, this was very enjoyable, also there was the social side with dances quite often. Some of the fellow players names I can recall are Oz. Cooper, Paddy Curtin, Des Cooper, Marge Cooper, Joe Marsden, Elaine and Ivy Phillips, The Oates brothers, Colin Martin, Kath Webster, Betty Dunkley, Ted Mc Carthy and many more.
My older brother Maurice left Waitoa to do a cabinet makers apprentership in Hamilton early 1950 and this left me with added chores like going to the factory each night to collect our billy of milk, in the days of trucks arriving with cans of milk picked up from the farms and the milk being tipped into large holding vats, I had to wait till the staff who tipped the milk found a good grade of milk and then filled our billy, this was left to settle on the bench at home till the cream could be scooped off and made into butter, maybe on a special Sunday I was sent to the cream factory for a jar-full for steam pudding or apple pie. I think the milk was free but the cream would cost us about 1 shilling. There was also the lawns to be cut with a hand mower. During the summer months the male kids of factory workers were allowed to use the factory staff showers when we were short of tank water, this was a real luxury, not having had showers before and we used to stay in them much longer than needed. The deep drains along Farmer Road got piped and filled in around the 1970’s and done away with all those horrible bridges to the houses.
There were not very many boys and girls around my age in the neighbourhood , we amused ourselves in Spring/Summer by bird nesting, hut making and swimming in the Waitoa River along with lots of fat eels which fed from the waist pipes from the factory. Some of the locals that used to hang out together were Roy and Alan Oates, Graham Murray, Merle Forbes, the Workman sisters, Colin Martin, sometimes I was allowed to join elder brothers friends fishing or swimming, I felt important on these occasions.
After my primary School education I was able to follow my brother to Hamilton Technical College in Hamilton, this meant a train trip that started at 7.30 am and got to Hamilton sometime after 9am if you were lucky and how much shunting the train did along the way, This was free travel until what was going to be my third year there and father told me I had to leave as he couldn’t afford to pay the 16 shillings fare that was about to start per term, I was very angry with him for having to stop my education and it wasn’t till many years after he died that I discovered just how much money he earned to support a family and pay off a house. Father had already found me a job at Magills Draper store in Te Aroha, a job that I found not very exciting, I moved on to a similar shop called Hetheringtons where I stayed a further eight years before moving to Te Awamutu dairy Factory to earned some better money.
Father died in 1957 , my youngest sister was still at school made a lot of hardship for mother as it took nearly twelve months before she was paid out the small superanuation which was put to good use updating the home with building on a wash-house, flush toilet, hot water system which made life a lot easier, mother had an electric stove a few years earlier so all was more comfortable now and I was able to leave home for greener pastures.
Our Farmer Road made up our futures with Nancy marrying Mick Hill who lived next to the hall, I got engaged to his sister Tup but we called it off, I finally married Bernice Baine from Te Aroha, sister Noeline became friendly with Kevin Campbell next door, ( the son of Fred Campbell who had the local Dairy ) I can remember the well worn pathway between the two houses, they married and now live in Paeroa. Brother Maurice had moved to Napier where he married a local and started his boat building and fishing trawlers.
The family home in Farmer road sure had a lot of hardships but was always filled with love and warmth, some of the “ take it for granted things of today” were an education to me, for example switching the electric light switch on and off amazed me , having never had electricity at the old homestead in Waiwera, travelling by bus and train was another novelty, the many trips to the big selection of beaches reasonably close by and in later years our family holidays to Mt. Manganui towards the end of summer when the factory workload tapered off, somehow father managed to buy some decent cars after the war which gave his family the pleasures that we had missed out earlier.
Our home had a ¼ acre of section , rich peat soil which always produced a wonderful variety of vegetables and fruit and mother prided herself with a brilliant flower garden, father somehow always managed to plant a few long rows of potatoes on a dairy farm and harvesting was quite a family chore, digging , drying off and bagging many sacks full to keep us over the long winters. In those early days there were weeks of very hard frosts which didn’t thaw out for days after, now of course the pattern has changed in our weather, thank goodness the old coal range was kept along with the electric stove, this always made our house a home.
Our dear mother lived in her little home for a total of over 57 years and was not very mobile for the latter few years having arthritis in both legs and hands, she managed with family help until she had a bad fall in the garden and broke her pelvis and had her first taste of hospital except for having her children, much to our relief she decided herself to become a resident of Kenwyn retirement home in Te Aroha and enjoyed a couple more years under the special care of the most caring staff anyone would wish for. All of her children were able to spend a whole month with her before she passed away, I think she was trying to unite us closer and I’m sure this has worked even though we all live long distances, ( my brother and sister Nancy live in Australia ) we are a very close family thanks to a very good teacher in mother but unfortunately father was called far too early and had to miss out on seeing the next generation grow up. To our delight an old family friend Neil Foster from Morrinsville bought mothers home and renovated it to the standard that would make any of us proud to call home, he rents it now to some folk that treat it in the way it deserves to be treated.
A summary of looking at Waitoa today , sadly I can pass through my old home town with not even seeing a familiar face , the same goes with the many young families who lived in the factory houses and enjoyed the pleasant standard of living to raise their offspring, the houses have all gone to other towns hopefully to repeat the purpose they were put there for, also looking at some of the older homes in Farmer Road and recalling the many close family friends and neighbours who have either passed on or moved to other places. Now there is just one store left there which used to be the very busy Wallace Supplies, no Post Office, not even a Railway Station anymore , the train whistles and shaky ground from the peat base are still with me though and the memories of those many concerts in the Waitoa Hall put together by local singers and bands along with short plays and story tellers.
Hopefully my few words of memory will help others to appreciate a happy upbringing in a small country town that only our thoughts can keep it alive now, I have gathered a few cherished photos of the past so as to remind you what was ours to enjoy, add your own to these so they can be passed on to future generations, I know that little WAITOA should be thought about in bold letters.
CHEERS
JIM FITZTHUM
