Gordonton

1946.....
Don Harrison and his wife looked at the list of Rehab. farms included in the schedule of the latest ballot.
"It's time I got one, "Don said, "I want to get started on my own farm."
"Yes dear, " agreed Beth absently, kissing the soft cheek of the baby she held in her arms. Madeline chuckled and reached out her little hand grab the paper that was interesting her parents so greatly. Her father shifted the paper out of her reach saying, "There are 65 farms in this ballot, surely one will do for us."

"The hay will be ready to cut soon," said Fred one evening as he picked up the paper after tea. "It will be the thirtieth time we have made hay on Okoropong."
"This should have been the year we went home to England," observed his wife, her needles clicking on the balaclava she was making to send in the parcel the Gordonton women were preparing for the navy.

"Smoky Hollow", Puketaha R.D.
Hamilton.
27/J/36.

"I hate rushes," muttered Bill as he sat down to tea.  "Their roots are so tough.  And if you make a hard jab and get through them, the dirty water splashes all over you or the swamp seems to suck the shovel down and you fall on your face."
"I know," said Fred sympathetically.  "But there doesn't seem to be any way of getting rid of rushes except digging them up and stacking them to dry. Next summer we'll be able to burn them."
"It would be much easier to help milk the cows." said Bill.

"I hear Jim Sharp's likely to loose a leg," commented Fulton Cunningham. 
"Whatever will he do? I've read of a one-legged sailor, but a one legged farmer, oh no." said another man.
"You'd never be able to get down and under with only one leg" laughed Fred, referring to the fact that although most farmers in the district had already installed milking machines by that 1928 season, they all stripped their cows by hand after the cups were removed - sometimes twice.
But although they joked the men talking on that first Sunday after Christmas were seriously concerned.

It was the first Saturday of the August holidays. "Can we go for a picnic to Lake Tunawakapeke Mum?" asked Mary at breakfast. "It's going to be a lovely day."
"Yes, when the butter is made," replied mother. "Even if it's holidays, that has to be done every Saturday." So while the two younger children washed the dishes and then brought in the wood; their father had cut the wood for the stove, Mary tipped the cream into the wooden churn, and started to turn the handle. Swish, swish went the cream, and it was still swishing when the dishes were finished.

A group of Gordonton farmers were working on the road on the marshy ground by Grahams Road at the foot of Tommy Martin's Hill. Fred Williamson and his brother Sam had brought their horse and dray, and so had Edgar McMullan. When Denby Sainsbury arrived in his dray driving his smart new mare, everyone stopped work to admire her. Denby always had good horses and this one really was a beauty. Jim Sharp, who had never liked horses at all said, "There won't be need of horses soon. Everyone will be using trucks."

As the congregation came out of the little Presbyterian church at Gordonton, they seemed to be met by a blast from a furnace.
"Oh dear it is hot," sighed Esther, "the smell of peat fires seems to penetrate everything."
It wasn't only the peat fires that made the sky grey with smoke. A careless fire had swept the old pa in the village destroying everything there and leaving nothing but blackened stumps on the timber reserves opposite the school grounds. For anxious days the school and hall were threatened, and Mr Hopa feared for his home.

Miss Gledhill frowned at the letter she was reading. "There will be changes in the school next term," she told her assistant. "They are sending a man here."
Irene Anderson looked up. She was busy preparing her work for tomorrow, but she wasn't quite sure what to say to the older woman.

"Five hundred eighty four owners hold ten million acres of land; one thousand six hundred hold eighteen million acres," stormed John McKenzie, Minister of Lands in Dick Seddon's Government. "It just will not do. Unless we take steps to curb their greed, this country will be as bad as Britain with its big landholders and "subsistent tenants.'' John McKenzie knew at first hand the misery caused when owners "enclosed" land and disposed tenants where their families had lived for generations. Several acts and regulationswere passed.