2 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 22 viii 84)ketetasman.peoplesnetworknz.info/documents/0000/0000/0642/Pug… · He used to come all the way from Brightwater orKOm n i~ ' sJ Wakefield, I can't remember

Interview with Mrs Mona Pugh, 22 viii 84. Mrs Pugh and her husband relate some experiences of their early days in and around Richmond, of people and events they remember. Mrs Pugh's maiden name is Holland. Interview conducted by Lisa Van Wessel for the Richmond Borough Council and typed by Louise Charters.

"Well I can remember when I was about five years old, we lived in Gladstone Road, number 25.The road wasn't tar-sealed.

There used to be a farm across the road where we have the existing Y.M.C.A. and big sports area [\/! C f\and a man around in Oxford Street used to have a cow and some sheep there. It used to amuse us children because every morning he'd call out 'Gip, Qip,<5*ip, ' and the cow would come running to be milked.Times were very hard then and he went away golddigging and when he came back his wife didn't recognise him. She ran around to my mother and said,'T.J.there's a strange man in my house!' So mum went around with her and found it was her husband whohad returned!

2 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 22 viii 84)

He had all whiskers and dirt on his face and was quite unrecognisable. There was quite a large family of the Fowler's and that was Mr Fowler.

There was a big ditch in front of our place in Gladstone Road and once we all went swimming in it and got diphtheria - all except my sister and my baby brother. We had to go to the public hospital in Nelson which was quite traumatic for my mother in those days with no transport. I can't remember how long I was there, but I used to get out at night and get into bed with my big sister and they'd come and haul me out. And they'd wake me up every morning, 'Wake up Mony,' they'd say 'and let nursey take your temperature,' and every morning without fail I bit that thermometer in half, but she still did it. However we got over that episode - I was too little to go swimming but I drank my brothers soup while they were putting him in the ambulance and I got it you see.

I remember when I was in hospital, I got thescissors and chopped my hair off and my sister had to


cut it all off. They used to call me "Tommy" Holland."I was rebellious I suppose - I was only four. It was quite frightening being away.

We were all very protected when we were young.I think mother was very protective towards us - I remember I wanted to be a nurse because you had to live away from home. My mother was a very kind woman.

MfWe would never believe in saying 'no' to her. Once I said 'I don't want to,' and she just looked so hurt.It's incredible isn't it?!'

We did live with our grandfather Holland whohli> lLPi .lived up on the corner of Queen Street and Salisbury Road, where they've got Rodgers garage now. And he had a big old house there and he had one of the first cars in Richmond, it was called a Saxon. It was only a two-seater and we had to sit on a little box when we went for a ride in it. He was a great old man my grandfather - he had been a sawmiller.

C O •My father worked at a flourmill which had>ufrr**been in Queen Street - Croucher's. The baker used to I *


come around to see what bread you wanted, he used to call at the houses, he had a big wicker basket with a handle on it and you'd select your bread. And seeing as my father worked at the flourmill we were the proud owners of one of these baskets which was something to have I And the butcher used to come.He used to come all the way from Brightwater orKOm n i~ ' sJ

Wakefield, I can't remember which. He was a very nice man and we always called him the cleanest butcher in the area. He would be known to stoop down and wash his hands in a puddle before he'd serve you meat. But he had beautiful meat. Really, but it used to make us children laught at him, you know, watching him wash his hands and wiping them on the apron. I don't remember his name unfortunately.

We had a friend, a Mr Wilkes, who lived in Edward Street (that's the father of Edna Wilkes - she might be Mrs Hart in Croucher Street now, I'm not sure) and he had a little pony and a trap - for a treat he used to come around and give us children a little ride around the block; that was a great highlight. It was invariably when we were in our nighties


and our slippers and ran would be horrified but away we’d go.

Then I went to school - I went to Richmond School which is quite different to what it is now - they built this one later, the old one's been pulled down, most of it except for one infant room. And we didn’t have a swirmdng pool or anything there. Sometimes they used to go to Ngawhatu swimming pool when we were training for school sports. Otherwise we used to have to bike out to the Appleby River right out to the Appleby Bridge. The schoolteacher would go with us, you know, and I swam a mile across that river, backwards and forwards when I was going to school.

Afterwards my father worked at the freezing works, in the freezing chambers. And he used to go to work at about 4 a.m., so mother used to cook a meal at lunchtime and she'd wrap it in these great big damask napkins. She used to tiea knot in that and I'd hold that in one hand and get on the

r i- -bike and rode my bike down to the freezing works and get there with it still hot. It used to take me about 4 or 5 minutes.My elder brother and sister used to do it before it came to my turn, and my little brother vho was about two years old,they used to tie a stick across it and he used to stand on


the stick and hold onto the handle bars and he'd go along to the freezing works just for the ride.

We used to have to bike everywhere. We wanted to go to the pictures in Nelson once and you had to reserve your seats in those days and I biked into Nelson during the day just to get the tickets. There was a bus at night time.

When I went to college I had to go on the train. Seeing as we lived in Gladstone Road we'd hear the train coming. It would start to slow down - you'd be able to look out and see it. And we'd dash out the gate and get down to the station just as it pulled in. They were great old trips on the train. Going up Bishopdale Hill the boys would be in one part of the train and girls in the other and they'd rock the train and it would nearly stop. We used to get out at Gloucester Street. That's where the station was, and form a big 'crocodile' and march all the way up to Nelson Girls' College. We had lots of fun doing that sort of thing. The boys had to run the gauntlet as part of their initiation ceremony and


the girls had to sing a song or something. I can't remember what we had to do.

There was this great big college girl. Everybody was frightened of her, they called her Leather- belly and you were terrified before you had to go - it took only a couple of days and you realised she was just another normal nice person really. She was just so big. I wasn't too badly off because my sister was a prefect when I started. I remember the Hart girls. They lived further up. They'd all be older than me you see. And I remember the Hill girls.

My elder sister played hockey and I played basketball. It was quite a bold sport in those days, hockey.

I have two sons and one daughter. My daughter lives in Croucher Street in Richmond - she's got two children. One son is married with two children - that's Trevor. He was a really good swimmer at school but never did anything to carry it on after he left. I guess I wasn't too bad at swimming at


school either,

I met my husband when he came back from the war. I was 18 then. I was working at Cock & Co.

C I KA ({/, f 'then - a sort of travel agency in Nelson. I used to go on the bus from Richmond - my sister and I. She worked at State Advances - that's Olive Hall. She

(i'VC 'now owns the Juicy Fruit stall out at Hope. She went to college just before she turned 11 and was a prefect.My youngest brother works for the Ministry of Works.He was To wn Planner. I don't know what his position is now. He supervised them putting the lights in down at the corner down here in Gladstone Road.

My older brother Charlie left school when he (jJAKUt was about thirteen (he's dead now) and he went to work at the freezing works as a slaughterman. At 13 years old I As soon as he got enough money he bought a bike and I remember him riding along the long passageway in our house. Then later on he bought a Model T Ford. I used to have to sit on a box in that too - being the littlest one. We used to go on picnics altogether. Dad loved driving it

9 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 23 viii 841

and we'd go around corners and lean with the car 1

My sister gave me a smack once when we were out at a picnic at Appleby River - I don't know what for - I probably ran over a record or something and so I started to walk home and I walked and I walked and I walked. And I thought well I'm never going to get home so I turned around and went back but they'd missed me somehow on the way and there was a terrible to-do. I walked all the way back to the Appleby Bridge again and they'd gone. Anyway somebody picked me up and took me home!

Well here's my husband Bob. He'll probably be able to tell you things about Richmond, but he comes from Hope. He's 70 years old.

Bob - All down Croucher Street, all in behind (jQ.OuCHti- there was dairy farm - Fauchelles. They owned most of it. It was right until late 30's, early 40's that they really started cutting it up and selling it. Down here where the college is now used to be Washbourn's dairy farm. Then Smallbones had it after

A \ Q oil

10 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 23 yiii 84)

that and near Warren Kelly Street was all Suttons dairy farm. I was chaff-cutting up around Wilkes Street, all up there was farmland - along to Griffin

R/5 vBrothers, Churchill Avenue and all that area. Martin Benseman had a piece in there too.

I was born in the old shop in Upper Moutere.I was 9 in 1921 when we moved to Hope. We used to come down to Richmond and spoke to practically everybody because I think there were only about 480 people living here then. What's there now? Maybe 6,000?

I suppose somebody told' you about the hotel that used to be in Gladstone Road, the White Hart.The Red Horse Inn was along the Appleby straight, just past the Annabrook. I don't remember the Plough Inn, but I remember Warring's used to have a garage there.

I knew Fred Fowler. He was another one who went deer stalking. I never went deerstalking with him though. I went with Mona's father fishing and deerstalking and rabbit shooting. Do you know where


the Rainbow skifield is? Well I’ve been in there and the deer were that thick you couldn't count them, you just got confused because of so much movement.

I used to go shooting on Bob Fellows Island. B>06 f 1 -It's called Bells Island now. The name was changed forj i C

% 1 &■when they bought it for the sewerage. I think it probably was originally Bells Island but as far as being called Bests Island, everybody reckoned that Bests Island was only the piece on this end where the houses and baches and things are. Bill Hardy was a local policeman here. He owned the other part of the island.

Mona - When we used to go on picnics later on; there was no bridge over to Rabbit Island. We had to all go over on a tractor. We'd have to go with the tide cos you could only get through when the tide was low.

Bob - I remember Croucher's flourmill in' K.Richmond and Wilkes used to be undertakers as well


as doing the timber and that in Richmond. For years they had an old 1928 truck - I've driven that around the yard a few times. I also used to be on the Power Boards It was a 1918. The wassolid. It had been all solid tyres with pneumatics on the front and then they used it for carting poles. You used to have to reach out - outside the cab to change gears. It was all heavy armour plating on the front. It had been built up for WWI. Called pDi a Demmisk. Made in England. I drove this thing with great power poles on the back. I worked for them for three years before I went overseas, as a linesman and if the driver of the Truck took sick I used to have to go along and hold it up.

About carbide lamps. We used to use them on pushbikes and for flounder spearing. Bike ones were about long, and you had a container on the bottom that you unscrewed and you put the carbide in that and screwed it on and the top was ice cold with water and you just turned it on a bit and thesides would drip and the gas would come off and aVd+W. Sxe cr\ cQkviclitte steam come out and there was a burner and


you just used that.

WLFor getting trout they used to get the old bottles of lemonade and they had a sort of flattened neck and then there was a marble in the neck, a glass marble and a rubber cap underneath, and the gas started to come up and push the marble up. We'd tie a stone on the neck, put the carbide in it and tip your powder in it, you'd put a bit of water in it and then chuck it in quick and the gas would build up and it was very heavy glass and 'BOOMF!'We'd throw those in the river where we knew there were some trout.

Mona - "We used to go wheeling down to the river and once we got this great big eel and had it on a spear sticking out the boot of the car - goodness knows how long it was and people'd say,'There goes those Holland kids with another stinking eel!' We'd take the eels home and mum would boil them up for the fowls; we had a fowl pen - she kept fowls. Dad used to breed dogs, Spaniels, Cocker Spaniels.He got a golden one once and the Troups took that


and we must've had two because they bred from that and they got a pedigree. Jim Troup took them in and he was able to sell it for quite a price. They're a gun dog, for rabbits, quail and ducks. Mum would be worried about what we were going to have for tea so my brother would go away out down across the paddocks and back he'd come with a rabbit. Mum'd say,__'How on earth did you get that?' 'Oh I just hid behind a bush and got it with a stick.' My little brother was very quick.

Bob - "We've done away with our heritage if you think of what Richmond used to be like. And now - we never used to have to go far to shoot rabbits. You could shoot deer and that's gone! But actually there's not a great deal for young ones to do these days.

We used to go off down the river eeling and that, then with the export market there's hardly any eels now and then you used to go fishing and you never came home empty handed, you go out after snapper or you go down spearing flounder - the last


three trips Ted Biddle and I, we got five flounder in fcSi three trips - they were only just big enough to take and that was all. This was down between the islands (j < ■ and the channels. Between Rabbit Island and Bells and down along Rough Island, on this side of Rough Island. It's just not worth going now.

Mona - It's like the whitebait. Dad used to have a big flat net with a stick on each side and he used to roll it up and tie it onto his bicycle and bike all the way out to the river and then he'd open it out flat and hope to catch whitebait. He always used to get them! My father was expert at it. Once he borrowed the nightsoil mans horse and cart to go out to the river to get wood. He thought he was King Kong getting the loan of this cart. But it stopped at every gate on the way and every gate on the way back!I

aI remember that man who used to live in upper Queen Street. He was a very clever man but he had tno ambition. He was always called Harry although. When the war was on and petrol was hard to get and he was


down at our place once and he didn't have any petrol and he said to Bob 'Have you got any kerosene?1 This is in later years I suppose and Dad gave him the kerosene and he had that car going and he went all the way home in it. He was so clever he could do all sorts of things. Finally he had to be put away but he was very clever and he ended up being a school teacher up there. Teaching the residents - the doctors children at Ngawhatu. He deteriorated. Nr~

Bob - He had an old car that he used to tour around in - an old Plymouth.

His father had a carrying business - used to collect apples from the country and when Harry drove he'd tip half a load of apples off it at the corner of Queen Street.

Mona - I remember there was a grocery shop on the corner of Queen Street - opposite the Railway Hotel. A man called Billy May used to own it and when the war was on they wanted us to collect Ergot - something - a disease on grass - black stuff. They used it in some medicine and he used to pay us a penny

17 tMr & Mrs Pugh., 23 viii 84)

for so much of it. We used to scout all around. It comes from cocksfoot and ryegrass.

They used to pay us for collecting birds eggs too - threepence a dozen eggs or fourpence a dozen for heads but we never got any. But we used to take the eggs, take them down to a place and an old bloke used to come out and we1d tip them out and count them. They'd be left for the fowls. So two would go in with the eggs just down behind the shed and there'd be three or four who'd go down behind the hedge, and as soon as he tipped them out and counted them and head off back down for them to pay - then these others would come out and pick up all the unbroken ones and come around and sell them again.The council paid us. The birds were doing a lot of damage to the crops - they were pretty thick. The sparrows ate oaks-. There'd be a strip right around the outside of the paddock where all the oat seeds had gone.

Mona - They did that in China a few years ago.They got all the birds and the crops failed so they


had to reintroduce the birds.

Bob - In Scotland they breed grouse and pheasants and that and sell the shooting rights. They got their game-keepers and they put a price on ferrets and weasels and stoats and hawks. And then they found out that the birds were getting a lot of deformities.

Bob - There were two original grocer shops.One on the corner by the lights (Mays), then there used to be one on the corner of Queen Street and Salisbury Road - Greens. Now they're both secondhand shops.

Mona - We used to wait and wait for Christmas to come and in this top store, I think Muntz's had it then. They used to have a lovely monkey that they put in the window and it used to nod its head. When we saw this monkey we knew that Christmas was coming. We'd get ready for the presents.

The circus used to come to Richmond. It used to be put in Jubilee Park often and we used to go over


there - we lived across the road from there. The donkey once came and ate all the clothes off the line. Bob - Every year the circus used to come through just after the war. It was 'Worths' from overseas. But they'd only bring so much of it from Australia and then only part of it would come to Nelson, after Wellington, Christchurch and the main centres and that and then the rest, they used to use the old clowns. We used to think they were great. Someone would set fire to a packet of crackers in a clowns hip pocket and sneak up behind him and light the end of the string and he'd be leaping and jumping around with crackers going all about. As kids we loved it. Pony rides and all that.

Mona - I don't think there was much entertainment for children in Richmond. It was very difficult when we got a bit older. When the dances were on a whole lot of us used to hire the taxi and go out to Landsdowne Hall to the dance. We always used to go out together - a whole crowd of us. But there wasn'tmuch else in the way of entertainment - still isn't.


Bob - There used to be the old pictures once a week. That was around in Oxford Street. There used to be the hall there, where the dentist is - was the Catholic church until recently. Mrs Straw- bridge used to go around and play the piano for the silent movies. Half the time you'd probably get the middle part first, then the first part, then the end. Used to cost sixpence down below and ninepence on the stage.

I remember one night Noel Berkett, the horse trainer who used to live here, decided he wanted to see where the light was coming from in the hole in the wall and all you could see on the screen was a great big head. Oh there were all sorts of rude remarks flying around. He was a character but he's not here anymore.

The races first started here - you used to have to take your milk to the factory. Then there was the bakers carts and the butchers and grocery carts and it was all those horses. This was around 1912. It was just a picnic meeting you know. And


•4 L t

that's how they eventuated. And then of course in later years it developed into a business. And then the trotting club; they went broke and like the jockey club broke last year, and Dad and Tommy Lewis

£ • y • viwho had a drapery shop in Nelson. He took Dad around and they went around all the farfllers because the farmers have got their guarantors,'- for the stakes.You see the trainers wouldn't bring the horses unless the stakes were guaranteed. So they got theguarantoors and away they went. They didn't have/to draw or call on them and she's thrived ever since.

Later when they started the token things, Leo Lfo Berkett, that’s Noels son, he used to live in Hope and train 'Wairabelle.' One of them paid one thousand and thirty pounds for a derby.

Bob - My father used to have race horses. He fnr\j r twas a vet. Jim O'Connor out at Appleby, he was a

JVr oYo rOvet, worked too. Dad used to go to Murchison and over to Motueka and Riwaka and all around - they'd call him out in the middle of the night.


"P>. - r •I bred one race-horse before I went overseas. ^53<^4^ I'd just broken her in and started training her and well I sold her while I was away. See both my parents died while I was away and I'd picked Mona up and left town, and was coming down Arapiki Road, there's a paddock there coming down along there and I looked and I said to her 'Gosh that's my old horse,' and she said, 'oh, don't be a fool,' and I said to her,'I bet you it is,' and I stopped and went over to the fence. She was over the other side of the paddock and I called out 'Sally.' And she looked up and I yelled out, 'Goifte on Sally.' And she took off straight down the paddock and put her chin on my shoulder and rubbed the soft part of her nose on my cheek. She hadn't forgotten me in six years.That was the end of my racing career. I've always found something else to spend my money on. I still like going. Oh, I sometimes put $10 in my pocket and once it's gone, it's gone. It can become a disease.

Casino's - they're wanting to start them in N.Z. you know, like the ones they have in America and they've got them in Australia now too. It's

23 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 23. viii 84)

big money for those that are running it, but I think about the ones that stand there at those poker machines and that, just getting - ah - the familys paying for it, the kids are paying for it, the wages are going into that.

Mona^ - What was that big old truck that Mr Coleman used to have - wasn't that called Crit(?) .

iBob - Yeah, that was Crit, that was the make of it#Mona - He used to go around delivering meat with it.Gosh it was a funny thing. Oh, and they had a sausage machine next door to our house.

Bob - It's all gone now - there are flats there now in Gladstone Road. Just before you get to Church Street. Mona - halfway between Church and ffOicAA; Oxford Street. Our house is as old as I am. The original one got burnt down. I don11 know what caused the fire but there was a man who lived up the road and he rushed and saved a jerry and ran around the back instead of saving something else.Oh well, he was a bit of a wag.

24 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 23 viii 84}

Bob - Oh, it might have been worth two or three hundred dollars today, because they're worth a lot of money these old jerries now.

A double and two single iron beds with brass knobs on the top - brass rings in the end - they're worth one thousand dollars today and I dumped them on the riverbed.

When we left school we used to have to go to compulsory training for the military. Cadets - (_/\ "OFthat was down at the showgrounds. Where they had the caged bird shows at Birch Hall. We used to have to bike down there and they used to March us around the race-course. Sgt. Major Hunt was our charge 0 fand he used to march us, usually three times around. Several of us used to drop out at the bottom end.It was all rush bushes and we'd bob down and have a smoke and pick them up again mext time around.Anyway one night he only went twice around and that left us out in the cold a bit. I would have been 15 then. I think it was 15 when you had to go. The first night we went there a cobber pinched a bottle


of his uncles cherry brandy - home-made, and then somebody else produced some cigars. We had a few snorts of cherry brandy, had a cigar, then we were out on parade and he said, 'Stand tall!' So I stood tall and whoops - I lost my cherry brandy!

Mona - Didn't there used to be a hospital up{<0in Gladstone Road, apart from Hillcrest - between

Wensley and Waverley Street. My father never believed in my mother going to the hospital to have her babies because he was always frightened he'd get the wrong child.

When X was 15 I got very ill with acute appendicitis. We had to get the doctor all the way out from Nelson because we didn't have a doctor here.They tried to get me into Hillcrest but they said there was no room and that we'd have to go to Nelson. Well my father - because he was a very hardworking man, worked at four o'clock in the morning and didn't get back until 7 o'clock at night sometimes - said 'I'll be back in 10 minutes,' and he went out thedoor and said, 'It's alright, they're going to take


her up there,' and we went straight up to the hospital. He didn't see why they couldn't take his daughter.I suppose he talked to the Kidd sisters. They were running it then - they were sweet. Our eldest son was born at Hillcrest , so it was still going then.

Bob - Mona's mother thought it was the quickest birth she'd ever heard of because I took her up and phoned her up and gosh, I hadn't been back down for more than five minutes and then the phone went and it was one of the nurses phoning up to see if I'd come and undo the suitcase for them because I'd knelt on it and did it up and they couldn't get it undone.

I cut my finger off - well nearly off, on a circular saw, and went up to Hillcrest to have it sewn back on; and when I paid -£,5.00 - Sister Kidd gave me the wrong receipt - one for delivering a baby (

I've an idea that might have been a nursinghome in Gladstone Road.

27 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 23 viii 84)* A

Mona - I can’t remember .that really. I remember we used to have the big ditch outside our place and we'd lie on the bridge and fish and see if we could catch anything, and I fell and pulled my sister in, and she broke her poor little arm. A man who was grading Gladstone Road heard me crying and came over to see and I was lying at the bottom of the ditch; and there's my sister crawling out of the ditch all by herself with her poor little broken arm.

Then the doctor came around and wouldn't allow mum in the room, she had to go out. And the next thing she heard a saw going, and oh, she was horrified. She thought he was actually sawing her arm off! But he was making the splints out of something. We didn't have much to do with doctors and things.Bob - you only went to the doctor if you were almost dying.

Mona - We used to use! herbal remedies a bit. py Mrs Alport used to come around and shut us in the f' jfVftviFi* laundry and then she'd blow sulphur down our throats.I don't know what that was for - tfif^heria I think


and sore throats.

Bob - Mum used to cut lemons up, just slice them, then put them in water and put Epsom salts in and I tell you what - we always had clear skins. If every so often you saw a blemish coming, a pimple or something, then every morning you'd have a drink of this for 2 or 3 days. After that it would be gone. She'd boil flax roots and we'd have to drink the juice of that. Ooh, it was horrible. That was for boils. They're good these old remedies and they're gradually coming back too.

Documents

2 (Mr & Mrs Pugh, 22 viii 84)ketetasman.peoplesnetworknz.info/documents/0000/0000/0642/Pug… · He used to come all the way from Brightwater orKOm n i~ ' sJ Wakefield, I can't remember