Beach stays ‘happiest times of my life’
Knowledge Bank Hawke’s Bay interviewer Caroline Lowry spoke with Margaret Pepper in 2020. Here is part of her transcripted story (abridged), recently added to the Knowledge Bank’s archives
Igrew up in Elsthorpe but I was born in Dannevirke, because my grandparents lived there and Mum went there to have me. My mother’s name was Margaret Gracie Hunter until she married Dad, who was Leslie Thomas Haycock. They got married in 1932 and I was born in 1934. My father and his father, my grandfather, milled the timber for our house.
Dad had a carrying business taking stock, hay, goods and the mail. He’d pick up the mail bags and supplies and take them out to the farmers.
The road up to Elsthorpe was shingle and windy and it was a very slow trip from there to Havelock and Hastings. But Dad would do that run three times a week.
He had two trucks, an International and a Bedford, with sheep crates, and his own bowser for petrol.
Dad did the Middle Rd run and our neighbour, McAuley did the Boundary Rd run.
I went to Elsthorpe school. There was only one teacher. I can remember playing rounders.
At the time we left the district in 1944 the roll was down to 20.
Quite a few of the men went to war, as did our teacher. Miss Corrie Johnson took his place.
We lived in the village so I was able to walk to school, but nearly all the other children came by horse. Some of them had quite a distance to go. No electricity in those days either. There was one store. It was started by my paternal great-grandfather with his wife. They had quite a big house up on the hill; and down near the flat they built a general store, which sold everything.
By the time I came along the store was owned by Jim McAuley, who was a cousin. He used to spoil me a bit, I always remember him slicing up bacon, and the smell of it.
The womenfolk had a Country Women’s Institute day once a month. They used to take baking along to be judged, and flowers. We thought it was great that we could call on the way home from school and they would give us baking.
They used to hold a fancy dress ball once a year in the hall, and we used to all dress up. Another thing we all looked forward to was the school picnic where we all went down to Kairā kau Beach. The McAuley truck had sides on it and they put forms on the back of the truck, and we sat on those and were taken to the beach on the back of the truck. We had a great time having sack races, and egg and spoon races, and swimming.
There were baches right along the seafront. Dad had a section that he leased, with a double shed on it, and we used to stay there every Christmas for the six weeks.
It was fantastic. It was really one of the happiest times of my life down there. We used to go round the rocks and look for crabs and cockabullies, and we’d go to the end of the beach and then through a paddock or two and come to a waterfall.
You could swim in it . . . we didn’t have any adults with us, but we never seemed to get into any trouble
Some people by the name of Scrimgeours from Otane, Waipawa way — they used to take a couple of cows down and they would supply all the people that were there for the holidays with milk. It was usually my job to go down with the billy and get milk from them. We were one end of the beach and they were down the other end.
Dad used to get quite a few crayfish; he’d come home with a kerosene tin full.
It was a very windy road to get to the beach, and of course all shingle. We wouldn’t have travelled faster than 20 or 30km/h all the way down. In fact there was one bend that was so steep that some of the bigger trucks would have two goes at getting around it.
When I was 10 we moved to Haumoana, and the school had about a hundred pupils. I would go up to the store at Haumoana and I’d have to take the ration book up for sugar, and I think butter, and for clothing.
We used to grow peas for Wattie’s, but they were all hand-picked; didn’t have the machinery like today.
I left school at 15, and went to Westermans, then to Rawlings Wool Shop, then worked at a children’s home for a while; and then they asked me if I’d like to go back to Westermans, so I . . . worked there until I was having my first child.
Things were so different. The haberdashery department had a big long counter with the odd high chair, and old E A Westerman would fuss over the customers, put a chair under them to sit down.
I worked there all told about 20 years. After the children were born my husband and I split up and I got asked if I would like to go back and help with a sale; and I did, and stayed about another 14 years.
In my younger days I worked very hard, because there was no help for single people with children in those days. I was lucky to have my parents help me in some ways, I had land from my parents and I cropped . . . I got quite good at putting up fences and things. After I’d been cropping for a year or so, my sister and her husband came in with me and we cropped the whole property; planted potatoes and pumpkins and kamo kamo and lettuce, just about every vege you can think of. Anything to keep your head above water.
You can read or listen to more from Margaret at www. knowledgebank.org.nz or visit the Knowledge Bank Hawke’s Bay on Facebook.