BUILDING A FENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 279, 24 November 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

BUILDING A FENCE.

WOMEN IN THE WILDS.

A RECORD OF COURAGE,

(By "MARGUERITE.")

There is one fence which no man can build so well as a woman can; and now, from much contact with the builders of that fence, I am going to tell you something of how it is done and the work it entails on a body of our sisters who do a great deal and say very little. There's to be nothing in this sketch that will deal with city life. I want you to come with me right out into the back blocks, where roads often' consist of "three feet of mud and a prayjr," where labour is unceasing, where much of life is just a form of imprisonment, where fences are among the things most needed if success is 'to be attained. The first of my women builders I want you to know is a particularly noble soul, who loves her work, and sacrifices much personal freedom for it. She is best known as /'the Plunket Nurse," but those of us who love her—and they are legion—call her just "Nurse." In a certain district there is a private railway line that reaches a terminus some miles from a way-back settlement in ;ome terribly rough country. This place is part of Nurse's "district," and on icrtain prescribed days she is allowed ;o proceed to it by riding with the logs m the "train," or, as a special dispensaion in bad weather, in the tiny cab with he engineer. It is quite on the cards : hat she may be bumped off down a cliff ace, or. squeezed in a log jam, but this loes not seem to daunt her! At the nd of the line she takes a horse and ; ides to the settlement, or if no horse is 1 raiting for her —as often happens —she ] imply walks there to do her bit to help the mothers and save the babies." I To woman but a Plunket nurse would t o it as a matter of duty. ;

In another district my fence builder covers a very scattered field.! Appeals for her advice are widespread, and, if humanly possible, are always responded to. -I wish you could have seen her on the occasion I have in mind—bumped and tossed about in the cab of a heavy motor lorry, on an execrable road far inland, till she was sore and bruised to the verge of tears. At one part of the route a huge hole blocked the vehicle's progress, and the driver with his hard hands and strong arms, and nurse with her women's tender hands and softlymuscled arms, laboured together in the pelting rain till they had made the danger small enough to pass over. Then, tired enough, to drop, the bravp little woman went on her way to carry out her mission of love—to put a few more palings securely on the fence.

Instances suc-h as these could be multiplied many times, but the foregoing will suffice, and will point their own moral. The Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children has this for one of its slogans: "It is wiser to build a fence at the top of the cliff, than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom!"

Verily the Plunket nurses uv.the back blocks are doing a worthy part to build that fence well and truly, though their •work is often soul-scaring in its discouragements and exactions. Their work is a true record of courage.