Our people
Papers Past ( https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers ) is an incredibly useful resource for researching people, places and many other interesting stories that happened in New Zealand in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Puketaha in Papers Past:
Over the next few months I will be loading as much loca
Dan Barry
Regardless of their hard work and enterprise, the big landowners faced bankruptcy by the 1890s. Their huge loans, the cost of development, coupled with low returns for their produce, saw the Bank of New Zealand foreclose on hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land which lay in various stages of development. By 1898 an amendment to the Lands for Settlement Act had been passed to break up the large estates of the Waikato into smaller blocks.
There are people who are ready to retire at 50, and there are others who are never going to get round to it. One such is Harold Woolford of Newstead Orchard, who recently turned 80, still works a 7 day week, and enjoys life to the full. When he resat his drivers licence just after his birthday, we danced a jig in the packing room when he passed first try.
Who is this man who ne’er retires
For whom this decade fled so fast
A small man but persistent, ninety now
And yet the fruit doth flow and flow
And Harold sees it come and go.
A decade since I wrote a piece
Recalling fifty years of fruit
In two great orchards based round here
The joys, the progress and the woes
Bags, crates and boxes changing go.
But Harold soldiers nobly on
While many funerals he has seen
Now Tuesdays off and Sundays too
And snoozes in the afternoon
But otherwise it’s still all go.
