In war and on the farm, gender was never a barrier
Ngaire Gibbons war veteran, farmer b October 1, 1921 d December 16, 2019
In a man’s world, Ngaire Gibbons never sat quietly in the background. Nor could she. Widowed by 30, she had the family farm and three young daughters to take care of.
She was a farmer and proud of it. It even helped her off a speeding ticket when a traffic cop recorded her occupation as ‘‘farmer’s wife’’. She complained about incorrect information and had the ticket scrubbed.
Her husband Jim was held as a prisoner of war for most of World War II, and news he was missing made it to Ngaire as she was enlisting with the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps as a 20-year-old in 1942, forming part of the home front. ‘‘That was the final bit that made me sign the dotted line,’’ she told historian Megan Hutching in Last Line of Defence: New Zealanders remember the war at home.
She was keen to sign up to avoid service with the land army – labouring on farms. She was based in Miramar, Wellington, as a driver, using all her experience behind the wheel, which began when she drove a car around a paddock of her parents’ Sanson farm from age 10.
Until the vehicle reception depot, where she worked, was disbanded in 1944 she drove trucks, often in convoys, around the lower North Island. A convoy once guided a truck that lost its brakes coming down the Nga¯ u¯ ranga Gorge safely back to base without a scratch on any vehicle.
At one stage she applied to go overseas, but because her mother was ill had to stay in New Zealand.
Meantime, Jim was held first by the Italians and then the Germans after he was captured at Ruweisat Ridge, in western Egypt. Six weeks after Ngaire signed up she heard Jim was OK and in Italy.
‘‘Then the Italians threw in the sponge. I remember him saying that Italian guards locked their barracks one night and it was the Germans who unlocked them the next morning,’’ she told Hutching.
Jim and his fellow prisoners were shoved into cattle trucks and taken to Stalag 8B in Germany. Ngaire, meanwhile, caught the train at Feilding to begin her time in uniform and a life in the wooden huts of Miramar. ‘‘We were a happy bunch there.’’
The women, often sitting on fruit boxes, would take partly completed vehicles to body builders, driving between factories in Wellington, before delivering the completed vehicles to a depot. Jeeps were a particular favourite, as the women would race them along Hutt Rd. ‘‘Oh boy, we used to have some fun in them. They could go, all right.’’
Later in her time with the corps, trucks needed driving over the Remutaka Hill. The women would compete to be fastest to the racecourse at Tauherenikau, where vehicles were stored. The army speed limit was 30 miles an hour, but the women could get them to 40mph on the unsealed road.
She enjoyed the army life, saying her time at boarding school – Solway College in Masterton – meant she was used to discipline.
She didn’t appear to mind the basic conditions in which they lived at Miramar, such as the concrete-floored ablution areas. ‘‘They were chilly in winter, but we survived. We had hot showers.’’ After that, she and other women from the corps were housed in the then-new Dixon St flats, and later in Woburn, Lower Hutt.
After the disbanding of the vehicle registration depot, Gibbons spent a short, boring time in the transport office at army headquarters before she headed home to look after her ill mother.
She was at home when the war in Europe ended in 1945, but was unable to join the celebrations in town.
She was discharged from the army as a corporal in May 1945 and she and Jim married the following year. He had been at a POW camp in Poland before he and other prisoners were marched to Czechoslovakia, where they were liberated by US troops. He returned home via England, having spent three-quarters of the war as a prisoner.
The couple bought a farm at Tangimoana from Jim’s uncle, using a rehabilitation loan.
Jim’s death, aged 33, thrust Ngaire into the role of farmer, rather than farmer’s wife, while looking after young daughters Robyn, Margaret and Susanne.
‘‘It didn’t give me time to worry about myself,’’ she told Hutching. ‘‘I employed single labour and built a bach where the worker lived . . . I had some awfully nice guys working on the place over the years.’’
For the first decade she hired managers, before taking control of the operation and displaying innovative and forward thinking. She was the first farmer in the area to introduce suffolk sheep; knew lean, heavy lambs were desirable for overseas markets such as Japan 20 years before most; and used selenium drench on sheep.
Later, she established a beef herd, exported milk veal, sold the sheep for dairy grazing and in the early 1990s converted to dairying.
About that time, in 1993, she received a Royal Agricultural Society Suffrage Centennial Award, one of 25 nationwide. ‘‘That was her absolute pride and joy,’’ says daughter Robyn Evans. ‘‘She knew what she was talking about and she knew farming.’’
A article on the achievement also gave insight into her deep links with the community: ‘‘She became a member of Federated Farmers in 1952, when it was a male preserve,’’ it records. She was also part of Plunket, the Secondary Schools Parents’ Association and the Rongotea RSA, was involved for more than 60 years in the Solway College Old Girls’ Association, as well as being active in politics – for National – and she was a keen reader and gardener.
Ngaire Joyce Gibbons (nee Lawrence) was born in Feilding in 1921. She and her younger brother Jack lived with parents Boyne and Vera Lawrence on their Sanson farm.
Ngaire attended Mt Biggs School. After her time at Solway College, which her daughters would also attend, she returned home to help on the farm and volunteered for St John, for which she drove a truck used as an ambulance.
She regularly attended Anzac Day services in Rongotea, having joined the RSA after the war. The organisation suggested she join the women’s division. ‘‘No way,’’ she declared – she had earned her place as a full member.
She is survived by her daughters, five grandchildren, one of whom predeceased her, and 14 great-grandchildren, for whom she was the family matriarch. For all she did, ‘‘her main achievement was her family’’, Robyn says.
She died on her farm, and was farewelled at the Beauchamp Funeral Home in Palmerston North. –