CHANGED SCENE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 201, 3 June 1940, Page 4

CHANGED SCENE.

THE COACHING DAYS RECALLED, a. MR WALKER LIKES STALE BREAD The changes that have taken place in Ashburton over the years since he lived in the County were brought home to 'Mr J. Dundas Walker, of Christchurch, yesterday, when he stood in the Radiant Hall and watched the building of the stage and the putting up of the scenery for the Repertory Society’s play, “The Last Hour,” which is to bo produced this week and in which he takes the principal part. When last he sipod in that building it was a stables, the chief depot in Ashburton for the receipt of parcels to be sent to country districts by coach. He told a “Guardian reporter that he had vivid memoriees of the old stables and of the coaches which plied from it.

Mr Walker is a son of the late Hon. W. C. Walker, who was the first chairman of the Ashburton County Council, in 1877, and he has had a wide experience of stage work, having been a member of companies that have travelled in many countries. He once’ played in a musical comedy which a touring company presented at the Oddfellows’ Hall, Wills Street, later the Majestic Theatre. That was many years ago. “Talking of tho old times, I must tell you that I still like stale bread,” said Mr Walker. “When we were at Mount Possession we had difficulty in getting cooks and our bread had to be brought from Ashburton once a week. Naturally, the last of the loaves were very stale by the time they were eaten. Then, if there happened to be a big load on the coach, the loaves were flattened by the time we got them.”

On the subject of bread, Mr Walker stated that when his family lived at Greenstreet they had a cook who made most excellent bread, but some members of the family were shocked to discover that tho secret of it was that the cook put dough in her warm bed during the time it was rising! At this station, there was a long avenue of peach trees leading up to the house and many times he had assisted in carting barrow loads of windfall peaches to the pigs.

Mr Walker said that his mother made many journeys over tho. Rakaia River in a ferry, but she always hated the experience. She had a little Skye terrier that an employee on her father’s estate brought out with him and which she greatly prized, and on one trip to Christchurch tho terrier was lost, somewhere north of the Rakaia River. Three weeks later, the terrier returned to the station, an awful rag of its former self, as Mr "Walker put it. It had swum the Rakaia River and all the creeks and dragged itself many miles back home.

Mr Walker referred to the arrival of his mother’s family in New Zealand in the Isabella Horens, the fifth ship to reach Canterbury. Her father was Archdeacon Wilson, who brought with him a hut in section ready to be bolted together. This was landed on tho banks of the Heathcote River and all that was lost was a keg of nails, which was dropped into the river. Later they had a large house and the newel post of the stairs was originally a broken boom from the Isabella Hercus. When the house was demolished many years afterwards, the post was acquired by the British Museum, and it is still there. Mr Walker’s grandfather was “a shrewd old chap.” He brought draught horses from overseas, probably from. Australia, and used them to haul stono from the quarries to the building sites in Christchurch. Mr Walker takes a very active interest in theatre work and his talents are frequently availed of by organisations in Christchurch. He is at present staying in Ashburton, rehearsing with other members of .tho cast of the play which tho Repertory Society is presenting for patriotic purposes.