Greymouth When I was young, we lived in a pink house with blue window sills at 9 Eva Street, Greymouth. I remember a pussy willow tree in the front garden, with funny little fluffy white seed heads. I fell off a chair when I was two and a half, and caught my chin on a bookcase. I had to have three stitches, and still carry a small scar. I didn't like Greymouth very much, particularly when the earthquakes came. We would cower in the doorway until the shaking stopped and ask our Mum when we could move away from there. I attended Grey Main School for two years. A Scotsman came to stay with the family for three days, and ended up staying for three years! He was a drum major for a Scottish pipe band, and he wore a red jacket and a kilt and a big black fluffy hat. We loved to watch him throw his mace high into the air and catch it again.

My father knew a man in Wellington who worked for the State Advances Corporation. This man wrote to ask if his son could come and stay with the family to photograph steam engines. The young man stayed with us in Greymouth several times, and often came to stay even after we left Greymouth and moved to Levin. The family moved away from Greymouth at Easter in 1965. It was my seventh birthday on Good Friday, and we stayed at a hotel in Picton. I remember lots of Easter eggs for my birthday!

Levin
We moved into a house at 15 C.D. Farm Road, Levin. My father was now working as an Assistant Housemaster at Kohitere Training School, a residential Social Welfare home for boys between the ages of 13 and 16. The part of C.D. Farm Road where we were living was a small community of predominantly staff families. I was a fairly solitary child. I had some friends at school but they all lived in town and we were two miles out. I didn't play with dolls very much, preferring to play with toy animals, in farms or zoos. My favourite toy was a little red dog that had a tape measure that came out of its mouth.

I was very fond of books and reading. There were many times when my mother would get frustrated when I was asked to do something and did not hear her because I had my nose in a book. When I was engrossed in a book, I would switch off to everything around me and would not become part of my surroundings again until the book was finished or I was forced to put it down. My mother would come and turn out the light for me to go to sleep, and I would hide under the bedclothes with a torch on and continue reading! I also used to sneak through the kitchen into the back of the lounge and hide behind a chair to watch "The Fugitive" series on TV, but I often got caught and sent back to bed.

My favourite books were about animals - Lassie Come Home; Lad a Dog - another book about collies; Black Tiger - about a black horse; Palomino - about a palomino horse; Half Angel - about a siamese cat. I also enjoyed Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, and the Pollyanna and Anne of Green Gables books. There was another book called Shipwrecked Schoolship, which I also remember. My sister, my brother and I, each had a lamb to raise for the annual lamb and calf show. The lambs were brought in from the farm and raised in the back yard. We had to bottle feed them and brush their coats and teach them to walk on a lead. I got first prize one year with my lamb. Another year, a dog got into the yard and killed the pet lambs.

I went to elocution classes with Mrs Parrington for six years, passing grades I and II in speech with honours, and grades III, IV and V in speech and drama with merit. I had to recite a poem and read a passage of text, with increasing degree of difficulty and complexity. Even today, I can still recite "The Ballad of Dick Turpin". I met the Stewart children, Donald, Vicki and Douglas through these classes.

I was a member of the Levin Amateur Athletic and Cycling Club, which met at the athletic ground on Bath Street. The Levin Swimming Pool was next to the ground, and the college was just at the end of the street. I loved running and was a good sprinter, as well as a high jumper, long jumper and hurdler. My brother was a good runner too, although my sister wasn't very keen on running. My parents were involved in the coaching and running of the Children's Championships at the athletic club, and I still have a sizeable sheaf of certificates from these years. There was a very big lady called Molly Dorne who was also involved with the athletic club. There were a few girls of my age that I was always competing with - Cheryl Miller, Gabrielle Nixon, Kaye Poletti and Alison Thompson. My favourite event was the 4 x 100m relay. I liked to run the curve and loved being part of a team. I always ran well in the relay. I also enjoyed the novelty races - sack race and egg and spoon race, but my favourite was the three legged race. The boys from my class that were good runners were Roy Bensemann and Tony Waldrom, and Brian McLeod from another school.

I can recall an accident at a camp or picnic somewhere. I was climbing over a fence, when one of the girls decided to give me a helping hand. The result was a fall onto my right shoulder. My arm hurt and I protected it by keeping the arm across my chest. My parents tried to get me to bike to school the next day, but my arm hurt too much. Eventually, an x-ray showed up a hairline fracture. I didn't need to have my arm in plaster because the fracture was already knitting properly, so I only needed a sling for a while. I used to belong to the Red Shield Brownie Pack, which met at a hall next to Playford Park . My Pack Leader was Mrs Swain. I was a member of the Gnomes and when I was ready to move up to Girl Guides, I had the most individual badges of anyone in my pack. I still have all my badges sewn onto a blanket, and have kept all my Brownie certificates in an album.

My father's parents lived separately in the Hutt Valley - my grandmother in Naenae with Uncle Doug, and my grandfather in Petone with Aunt Betty. I loved travelling down to Wellington in the holidays to stay with my grandmother, and enjoyed travelling on the commuter trains between Wellington and the Hutt Valley.

My mother's parents lived on a small farm at the top of the hill in The Avenue, Levin. They lived here until my grandfather died. The farm had a white wooden house at the front, with a long drive going down the back to the farm. There were two small sheds beside the house, and a grass tennis court, and a long jump pit. There was also a patch of bush. At the end of the drive was a big long garage, and a small milking shed. Through the gate was a henhouse and a hayshed, and a lovely big pond. I loved collecting the eggs from the henhouse and looking for eggs in the hayshed.

Grandad had a potato patch in the field by the drive, and he used to take us for a ride on his cultivator. We loved to help with the haymaking in the paddock behind the pond. The cutter would come along and cut the hay, then the baler would come and make it into bales. Then they would drive a trailer along and load all the bales onto the back.

One event I remember on my grandparents' farm involved my Uncle Robin's motor bike. I can remember getting twelve people on the bike while it was in the drive at the farm. Grandad had a black and white farm dog called Jess. Aunt Janice had a grey horse called Laddie at the farm, which she used to lead us around on. My aunt also had a white Maltese terrier called Tessa, but the little dog was run over on the main road, which ran right in front of the house.

The Sinclairs lived across the road from my grandparents' place, in a lovely old house with big verandas, next to the Oswald's farm. The Hannan's lived on one side of my grandparents' farm and the Hetherington's lived on the other side.

In 1967, our family went on a trip to New Caledonia and Fiji. Most of my memories of this trip have been reinforced by stories, photos and film. There was a large sweeping beach at Noumea and a tall hotel (Le Nouvata) with a swimming pool. My brother pushed a little girl into the pool, but she was wearing arm floats and was fine. Later, she pushed him in while he had a towel around his neck. A man dived in from the other end of the pool and pulled him out. We went sightseeing in little blue autobuses, and the drivers only had two speeds - flat out and dead stop. My mother managed to make herself understood in Noumea using her schoolgirl French. In Fiji, I remember staying at the Outrigger Motel in Suva, where the Fijian motel workers wore red and white floral shirts and black skirts. My Uncle Robin tried a feed of crab on the beach in Suva. He also pulled a piece of sugar cane off a cane train. We went on a tour of the island of Viti Levu, staying at various motels on the way. One of these was the Beachcomber Motel. We also went on a cruise and my sister handled a seasnake on the boat.

The family had a procession of cars over the years. The first one that I remember was a dark blue and cream volkswagon combi. This was the car we had in Greymouth and when we first moved to Levin. Then followed a pale blue Simca, a gold Cortina station wagon, and a silver-grey Mark I Jaguar. I remember going for a test ride in a citroen but my father didn't buy it. There was also a little white mini with a blue roof that my parents bought in Christchurch. I suffered from car sickness, bright sunlight and reading in the car tended to make me headachy. So I would go to sleep while travelling as a self defence mechanism.

My parents and grandparents were involved with the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society and we children also became members. We went on many trips and camps in various parts of New Zealand, from Collingwood and Farewell Spit, to Whangaparoa Peninsula and Little Barrier Island. I became friends with Barry Crump's son, Martin, on the camp at Collingwood. We also went on a boat trip out to Kapiti Island, stayed at the lodge on Mt Ruapehu, and the family went to Rotorua thermal area and saw the Buried Village and a hedge maze.

Our family regularly went on picnics at the various rivers in the area around Levin. There was one river that had a small patch of shallow rapids with a deeper pool at the bottom. My sister and I used to love sliding down these rapids on our bottoms, bumping over the smooth rocks on the way down. My little brother had been pestering us to take him down these rapids, as he wasn't a good swimmer and couldn't go on his own. I decided to take him with me, but when we reached the pool at the bottom I was unable to keep us both afloat. He was holding me round the neck and almost drowning me. I managed to get to the side somehow and we scrambled up the bank. We were all too scared to tell anyone what had happened for fear of being told off.

My grandmother's family, on my mother's side, had a farm at Rawhitiroa, near Eltham in Taranaki. There was a beautiful old homestead built in 1900, with four huge bedrooms and even a ballroom. It was one of those lovely old houses with verandas all around the sides and long windows that could be climbed in and out of easily. There was a very long tree-lined drive to the house, and possum hunts were often enacted in the trees with torchlights used to spot the possums. The farm was a dairy farm, with Friesian cows, and we loved to help out at the cowshed during milking time. My grandmother's sister and her husband were living in the homestead and working the farm. They had a beautiful N.Z. Collie called Jill, and a litter of part-Persian kittens. It was here that we got our apricot cat, Muffin, from.

A child was murdered in our town and the body was found under the hedge that ran around Weraroa Park, on the corner of Oxford Street and Makomako Road. This was the park that I played hockey on, and where my father played cricket matches. It was a shock to the small town.

There were several beaches in the area. Hokio Beach was not really a swimming beach, but had some good sandhills. Waitarere Beach was a swimming beach with a Surf Patrol and an old wreck, (the Hydrabad) and where they had a Big Dig annually. One year we came second in a sandcastle competition in a "sand boat". Foxton Beach was where some of the "street" families had baches; and Himitangi Beach was where my grandparents had an A-frame bach. We spent many summer holidays at the bach. There was a track to the beach over the back fence, running alongside a small stream. At the beach there were some trampolines. We loved the trampolines - I could do seat drops and twists, and back drops and stomach drops. There was also a hall where we played housie.

During my seventh form year, my parents shifted to Christchurch, but I stayed in Levin. I lived in a caravan beside my grandparents' house - my way of exerting my independence. My father was appointed Principal of Ferry Road Girls' Home, and my mother, father and brother moved into the staff house in Moorehouse Avenue. I spent one or two Christmas holidays there, and was amazed to see snow at Christmas one year. The Girls' Home was later closed down and became a refuge for street kids. There was a fire in the home one day that claimed the lives of some of these kids.

Later, my father was transferred across to Kingslea Girls' Home and they had a house in Irene Street. I only had one Christmas in this house, the year that I was doing my Territorial training at Burnham Camp. My brother had most of his secondary schooling in Christchurch and only spent the beginning of his third form year at Horowhenua College. My sister went to Horowhenua College and was a year ahead of me. One of my classmates married my sister, and it was funny to think of him as her boyfriend, and later my brother-in-law.