WOMEN ALONG THE ROAD Liked Living At Haast, But Ready To Go

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30883, 16 October 1965, Page 2

WOMEN ALONG THE ROAD Liked Living At Haast, But Ready To Go

-BY-

Tui Thomas

To a stranger, the cluster of about 20 neat little homes at tiie bleak Haast settlement looks as if it has intruded on the rugged landscape, uncertain of its tenure. This feeling of imper* manence comes into Conversation with most of the transients there.

Women talk about a future somewhere else. Haast is home till the job is done, the completion of the last stretch in the OtagoWestland highway. Then they will be off again to wherever their husbands’ jobs lead them, perhaps to be transients again.

Few have any wish to put down roots in this green-grey bush dealtag with its mighty backdrop of mountains, its rough coastline and wide river .The scenic allure of South Westland they will leave to the tourists and the contented settlers, who an past of the place. But Haast housewives are not disgruntled. They laugh about early battles with fuel stoves and wet wood; talk about their summer picnics to Jacksons Bay, their whitebait catches and the “roaring contest” at the deerstalkers’ ball, as bright spots to remember.

Women from big cities have found it a satisfying life, setting their own tempo. No-one bustles. Even the “Haast Jog” they joke about is no more than a leisurely trot through the rain to the shelter of a doorway. Some have stayed longer than they intended, enjoying the freedom from metropolitan pressures.

The Thompson family came

from West Hartlepool, England, for a six months' visit and have stayed eight and a half yean. "We came to see our son, who was then surveying in the district; I’ve met some

very nice people here, but I’m ready to leave,” said Mrs Lillian Thompson, who rubs a food store and accommodation house for 12.

More than 2000 guests, temporary workers in the area and tourists, have stayed with the Thompsons since they opened their house less than seven years ago. Visitors can come back for a stopover three years later and “Lil” remembers if they take milk in their tea. Looking through her kitchen window towards the dunes, beyond which rolls the Tasman Sea, Mrs Thompson said: “That ocean can sound like the continual roar of unseen trains when it's angry.” A woman called one day and asked the way to the station. She could not be convinced there was no railway in Haast. “She insisted that she could hear trains and would not believe it was the sea. As she argued with me I began to wonder if I had been here too long,” Mrs Thompson said. Family Business George Thompson, her husband, has a service station

next door. Their 16-year-old daughter, Olwen, serves in the shop and takes mail to and from the airstrip for the post office.

The store they built has a wide variety of frozen foods, groceries and paper-backs, a choice of breads, cake mixes, fresh vegetables and fruit on Fridays. “I started the store and guest house to give myself something to do. Now I have more business than I can handle,” Mrs Thompson said, peeling a mound of potatoes. The store bell buzzed, the kettle boiled for morning tea, a visitor came to the door. “You see what I mean?” Lil Thompson asked, drying her hands. “I’ve had enough of all this.”

The third of a series of articles by the women’s editor of “The Press” who spent a week in South Westland recently meeting women in the Paringa-Haast area, where the last link of the West-land-Otago highway was being completed.