The Autobiography of My Father Read online

  Which suggests there were …?

  Collaborators. Must have been.

  Tongan collaborators?

  Who knows? But I know it happened, I was on the exchange. We had a six – you know these telephone exchanges? We had six channels, they plug in, and the lines were cut, both times. I don’t know why. But they were cut. And we entertained the survivors of the American Liberty Ships. That was as close as we got to actually being involved, in Tonga.

  So you were never under fire?

  At Guadalcanal I was, yeah.

  How did you find that?

  Terrifying. I hid under a table. [LAUGHS]

  Did you fire a shot in anger?

  No. I didn’t. I was no hero.

  Did you do much flying?

  Only on Met. flights. They were flights to pick up weather information. [LONG PAUSE] At Espiritu Santo we used to go on Met. flights. Then I was shipped to Guadalcanal and there the Americans used to come down every day to our Met. Office and we’d do their forecast for them, they couldn’t forecast the Pacific, they knew nothing about it. Used to come down in a group and we would draw our maps and they’d have a look and take their notes and go away again. That was part of the job. Espiritu was also an interesting place, the Met. Office was on the airstrip but there was half a mile of jungle between the airstrip and the camp, through a track. It was a very, very spooky place. On your own. The other way was to get the jeep to go round, right around the forest place and up to the camp. And one day we had twenty-four inches of rain in two hours. It was a hurricane. And I was … it was too wet to walk, I was picked up in a jeep to go back after night shift and the airstrip was flooded, a tremendous river of water rushing down and we stopped, got half way through [LAUGHS] and the water began to flow through the jeep, completely, our legs were all wet, we had to get out, leave it where it was, stranded. That was Espiritu Santo. Guadalcanal, we had an office on the hill above the landing strip and that’s where we explained the forecast. And after a few months there I went to Halavo Bay, which was across the water, an island called Tulagi. And I was there, I was the only one there with an officer, Ron Jobson, who was a master at King’s College in Auckland. And there the flying was the Catalinas, the flying boats. We called them the Number Six Fish and Banana Squadron. F.B. Flying Boat, Fish and Banana. They were mostly doing surveys of the weather. It was from there I came home again.

  Where was it that you contracted malaria?

  At Espiritu Santo.

  Did you ever have any recurrence of that?

  Yeah. Twice. Twice. I haven’t had it for years. Whenever I got a bit of a cold it used to come back. But once you get back to a moderate climate it’s not very serious.

  Did you ever want to revisit those places?

  I’d like to go back to Tonga. But, you know, it wouldn’t have been the same.

  Do you ever think you might still go back?

  Not now. I did for a long time. In fact I applied for a job there once when we were in Ohakune. Didn’t get it. Probably just as well, it was no place for kids. White kids.

  Why not?

  Well, the absence of milk and butter and cheese and things like that, they are all imported.

  All the things that give you heart disease.

  [LAUGHS] Not in those days. I wouldn’t have minded going back to see some of the people, I had some good friends there. I wouldn’t have minded going back, just to see them again. There was one boy called … Horlika. Ever heard of Horlicks? [LAUGHS] Horlika. Night starvation. Horlicks was for night starvation. The old ad. Well, he was called Horlika. But the caption in New Zealand was, ‘Cure Night Starvation With Horlicks’. He was a nice guy. He wrote me a letter, after I got home. Said he’d applied to be a teacher and they told him his illness was called Physical Unfit.

  They were the people who when asked their occupation said …?

  We go walkabout. We just walk around. And they did, too. But Tonga was the best of the places, because you knew the people. In the other islands the people were very remote from the camps. In the Solomons you hardly saw anybody. Solomon Islanders. Nor in the New Hebrides. There was just no contact between the natives and the services. But there was in Fiji and there was in Tonga. Mind you, they were more civilised places than the other two.

  You were telling me before about your romantic involvement with a girl in Tonga?

  Willy was the cook for our … by this time the Signals guys were there, there were about eight of us, and he was the cook for us. And he was very worried that I didn’t have a girlfriend. [LAUGHS] So he offered to take me out to a village and introduce me to one. And he took me out there, one night. Introduced me to this girl. She was about sixteen. Very kittenish. And they left us in a fale, which is a native hut … together. And I was too scared to do anything much but I felt worried, because her folks lived in the village too and I thought they wouldn’t think much of me if I did anything to her. And I got very worried. And Willy didn’t come back for about two hours and I was getting in quite a state. I didn’t have any strong desire to have any sex with her. And then the old folk turned up and said what were my intentions. Was I going to marry her or what? I was pretty scared. I said, oh, yeah, I’ll think about getting married. Which was a lie. But I wanted to get home, I’d had enough. At any rate, we settled it finally. I went home, I brought her a pair – I remember I wrote to my mother – sent her a pair of shoes which she badly wanted. They were most unusual for Tongans, mostly they went barefooted. I gave her some shoes.

  Did you see her again?

  Only to give her the shoes.

  Were you a virgin at that stage? You hadn’t known any other …?

  I never have. Except Lauris. We were brought up in the old-fashioned way.

  And when did you meet Lauris?

  Well, that was a long story. When I was at Training College, there was a friend called Bob Boyd from Napier. He’s dead now. And he asked me to come and stay with him in Napier. And that’s where Lauris … well, she was in Greenmeadows, which is just out of Napier.

  She was still a schoolgirl?

  Yes, she was Seventh Form, 6A. And Bob took me to a dance. And Clive – you’ve met Clive – I knew Clive a bit, he was a friend of Bob Boyd’s, they were both from Napier.

  Clive …?

  Clive Scott. I’d already met him. He was a first-year when I was a second-year. And he said … Bob took me to this dance, it was somewhere just out of Napier. And Clive was there … with his sister. Her first dance. We were introduced. I don’t remember much about that, but then …

  So you had a dance with Lauris and … what? Did you think she was nice?

  Yeah, I did. She was intelligent. But very nervous. It was her first dance. But I can’t remember all the details now but … I went to the war. For some reason I wrote to her. She used to send me biscuits, you know, the old wartime business of sending … not many letters. When I came back, she was touring with Ngaio Marsh … remember Ngaio Marsh, the Shakespeare Centre in Christchurch? She was touring with Hamlet and Othello‚ she had a small part. And I can’t, I’m a bit vague, I used to go and watch these performances, and see her. It just grew from that.

  So this is about 1940 …?

  After the war, 1946, ’46/’47.

  When was it you came back from the Islands?

  ’45.

  So you were there ’43 to ’45?

  Yeah. When I got back I was posted to Kelburn, to the Met. Office, as a sergeant in charge of a shift, but when the war stopped … [PAUSE] … another guy and I, a guy called Bill Wilson, who was killed in the air, about … beyond the Solomons, we were very good friends. And … I’ve lost my track. To Kelburn. And … no, it wasn’t, I’m sorry, it’s not right, Bill Marwick, Bill Marwick and I …

  Bill Wilson was already dead?

  He was dead. Bill Marwick and I, when the Labour Party got in in England … do you remember this, when Churchill dipped out and the Labour Party got in in England? We … [LAUGHS] painted in the off
ices a sign saying ‘A New Day Is Dawning’. And we were very unpopular. And then the war stopped. Got us out quickly.

  That’s right, ’cos you got out much more quickly than most people did …

  That’s right. We did.

  So it sounds like you were often in trouble with authority …

  I was …

  … in the war and you didn’t really take kindly to the discipline …

  I didn’t …

  … and the constraints …

  I hated them.

  It also sounds as if you lost some very close friends in the war.

  I lost Traff Nichol and Bill Wilson, who were two of my closest friends. And Pat Metekingi, who was another friend of mine. He was a Maori boy from Wanganui. Killed in Cassino. His wife I know quite well. She’s since remarried.

  So looking back on the war, what do you think about it now?

  A waste of time. A complete waste of time and money.

  And do you feel as if your youth was lost?

  Yes. Interrupted for four years. You just mark time. Four years. There was no sense to it. Mind you I think probably, the Nazis and as it was in Japan, we had no choice, but it was a very wasteful time for me. I mean I’d have finished my degree years earlier if I hadn’t been to the war.

  So when you came back and got your quick discharge from the Met. Office and the services, what did you do then?

  It took two weeks. [PAUSE] The worst thing about it was [LAUGHS] they pulled out one of my teeth. You had to get a clearance from the Air Force to leave and one of the things was to go to the dentist. And he pulled out one of my teeth. I was not expecting it, I was very angry about it. I lost the complete tooth. He was in a hurry. However, we were discharged and that was that. Filled in the records. I went back to University for three months and sat Education II. Passed it. And I applied for … I’d been granted a third year physical education. Before the war. To teach physical education. And they offered it to me again. So I took it. And Lauris and I got married and we went to Dunedin for a year. I did this course and she taught … speech therapy. And I finished my BA there, did my final papers while I was at Teachers’ College. Then I got this rehab, bursary at Victoria. To do an MA.

  Where were you living?

  A friend of ours had gone to study in Auckland and he had a house in Salek Street, which is not far from Rongotai College, and we leased the house for a year.

  Up until then, had you been living at home?

  Yeah. Oh, except in Dunedin.

  What was Lauris doing during the war?

  She was at Training College. And then went to this third-year speech therapy at Christchurch. And then she was teaching at Hutt Valley. In the speech clinic.

  And where did you get married?

  Tau … [COUGHS] Tauranga. It was a week after VJ Day.

  In the photographs you’re still in your uniform.

  I was for a further three months. And we got this house in Salek Street for a year and Lauris taught at Worser Bay, at Miramar South school. And then she had Virginia. And from there we went to Ohakune. I applied for jobs in the country, didn’t want to live in town. And we got this one, Ohakune District High School. Teaching English and physical education.

  Where did you live?

  In a house in Miro Street. A school house.

  And what was it like going to a little town like Ohakune?

  I wanted it. After the war, I didn’t want to live in a city. I wanted to get out of it. Go to this country place.

  ’Cos you stayed there for …?

  Thirteen years.

  And all the rest of your family was born there.

  That’s right.

  Tell me about the time you got into trouble for saying something political at the Ohakune Fire Station.

  Oh. Yeah. Well, they were talking politics, I happened to be passing and I knew some of the guys, they were talking about the government … [PAUSE] National … yeah, National. 1950s. And I just fed them the Labour Party and they, the policeman gave me a couple of days and said, look, we’ve heard about you, we know you’ve been a Communist, you’d better keep your mouth shut. Otherwise there’ll be trouble with Wellington.

  How did you take that?

  Bloody well frightened … oh, yeah. I mean, I was a teacher, I wanted to keep my job.

  And you felt as if you might lose it?

  Well, that’s right.

  This would be early fifties?

  About ’51, ’52. About the time of the waterfront strike. Which was ’51. You weren’t around for that, were you?

  I was not born.

  No, well that was then. It was at the time of that big strike when they had the country on about the waterside workers. Yeah, that was the warning I got. That was my second warning. The first I told you about, Kelburn and the Air Force. I left that literature lying about.

  The first thing I remember is I think at the farm house …

  At the Junction. That’d be about right.

  I remember it had a long drive.

  That’s right, a hell of a long drive.

  And there was a cottage down at the bottom.

  That’s right.

  And there was a bull there called Sookie.

  That’s right. [LAUGHS] You’ve got a good memory.

  Well, that’s what I remember. Walking down the path.

  It was a long path from the gate, wasn’t it? When I went to put out the milk bottles.

  How long were we in that house for?

  [PAUSE] About three years. Then we bought the house in Burns Street. About three. It was owned by the headmaster. McCullough. Head of the District High School. He owned the farm. Some terrible land on it too. Lean as hell. And then when, while we were there he retired and he sold the farm and the house to somebody and we had to move. That’s when we went to Burns Street.

  And the house in Burns Street, who did you buy that off?

  A bloke called Davis. He was a retired farmer, he was a … do you remember the Fetzers? Well, he was the father of Wardie Fetzer’s wife and … Ron Frew’s mother, they were two daughters of his who married … Frew and Fetzer. And that’s why they were there. But they wanted to shift. They went to Taihape and they sold the place. It cost me £1900. The rehab. loan was £1800 and I borrowed a hundred off my father. To buy the place. It was an acre and two roods. Tremendous section.

  Lots of fruit trees.

  That’s right. And [PAUSE] … it took me ages to sell it, it was on my mind for years, we couldn’t get rid of it, nobody wanted it. Ohakune wasn’t booming in those days like it is now. And, oh, it took me … oh, we let it several times, but it was very unsatisfactory, tenants did all sorts of terrible things to it, I wasn’t there to watch them.

  And next door lived … Mrs Aubrey.

  Aubrey. That’s it, Aubrey. There was Alfie, the two girls …

  Tut and Pet.

  That’s right.

  And Denise.

  Yeah, she was a grandchild actually … the daughter of one of Mrs Aubrey’s kids. Illegitimate one. You’ve got a good memory.

  I remember some things … and there was Charlie Herkt.

  He lived with them. Herkt-tractor.

  Tell me about Charlie Herkt.

  Charlie. He was an original. He was a bushman, he had quite a good education but he preferred the mountain and the bush. And he had a place further down Burns Street but he teamed up with Mrs Aubrey. He was very fond of her and he lived there with them. And after we left he got a state house on the way to the Junction, with her. But when he died, it was about ’76 that he died, and she lost the house. I don’t know what happened to her. Went to see her a couple of times when I was up there. She was a good person. She had a pretty hard life. Alfie got into trouble, he went to Reform School. The two girls went to – one of them was, Pet was a psychiatric nurse, did quite well.

  And Tut?

  Don’t know what happened to her. They were good neighbours.

  And what did Charlie Herkt
used to do?

  He was a guide on the mountain. Ruapehu. Guiding parties of people. For which he was paid. He also had the job … remember the tractor he parked in our shed? He did the grounds at the College.

  Was he German?

  Yeah. He drove the tractor and cut the … he was groundsman really, at school. Used to a lot of babysitting. Remember?

  Yes, I do. And then over the road was Miss Seth-Smith.

  [LAUGHS] She was an original.

  What about her?

  She was mad on puppies. Left four at our gate one morning.

  She had a lot of dogs, I remember.

  Hell of a lot. About seventeen. And she used to dump them at people’s gates and hope they’d look after them. And we had four dumped at our front gate. I took them back. Interesting neighbourhood.

  What was Miss Seth-Smith’s story?

  Her father had been a remittance man, from England … you know what they are? Sent out to get rid of them.

  Paid to stay here.

  Paid, that’s right. And she was his daughter. And he had that big old house, apparently a very flash house when it was first built, but, you know, it deteriorated. And she was left with the property. And couldn’t cope. She was an educated woman. But, you know, she was quite round the bend.

  She used to go away, didn’t she? Presumably that was into some institution?

  I would think so. Do you remember the night she came with a carving knife to the back door?

  Well, I don’t remember it but I have been told about it.

  [LAUGHS] God, she gave me a fright. This bull of hers had got into our property and was eating all the garden. So I rang the police. And Gary Hansen came down and shot the bloody thing and left it there. And she came down [LAUGHS] and wanted to carve some meat off it, for herself. I opened the door and she had this big bloody knife, said could she please carve up some meat. [LAUGHS] Gave me a hell of a fright. She did carve it up, some of it.

  Was that for her or for the dogs or for both?

  I think it might have been for the dogs. Anyway, I made a fuss and they came and towed it away next day. The Borough Council towed it off. Amazing place, Ohakune. Both the cops were … buyable.

  ’Cos it was a dry area, wasn’t it?

  In theory. Three droppers. A dropper is a person who sells sly grog. They were called droppers up there. I went once. When Frances was born. I wanted to shout for some guys. And I went down to Johnny Nation’s … remember? His old man was a – Laurie was a dropper. Gave me a dozen in a sack.