At The Road Opening 'In Spirit’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30900, 5 November 1965, Page 2

At The Road Opening 'In Spirit’

“When the HaastParinga road is officially opened on Saturday I’ll be there in spirit but not; in person,” Miss D.’ M. Pearce, the first Plunket nurse to visit Haast, said in Christchurch yesterday.

How many of the babies under her care in the 19405, she wonders, will be adults taking part in the ceremony? Miss Pearce, who was a Plunket nurse on the West Coast from 1940 to 1948, made her first trip to Haast in a two-seater aircraft with another passenger.

“We were just the extras in with the weekly provisions,” she said. “All around us were piles of newspapers for delivery, bread, meat and other things the people could not buy at Haast and Okuru." The small aircraft landed on Okuru beach and Miss Pearce met the mothers in the district who wanted Plunket services for their babies. One of the mothers paid for Miss Pearce’s return flight from Greymouth, and another put her up for the night. In the evening a group of residents held a social to raise the nucleus of a Plunket fund, in the hope of getting a regular service.

“I shall never forget that first get-together to raise funds,” she said. “It was held in a tumbledown hall, open at one end and with a blazing fire at the other.”

A Plunket committee eventually was established and between Miss Pearce’s twomonthly visits young mothers would write or telephone her in Greymouth for advice. “They had great difficulties in making contact with medical people in those days if anything went wrong with their babies,” she said. “But they were a healthy lot. None of the babies ever got eczema, for instance.” When relieving on the West Coast about eight years ago, Miss Pearce made a special visit to see the Haast children.

“It was really heart-warm-ing the welcome I received from the mothers I had helped all those years before,” she said.

Miss Pearce, now retired, hopes to return through the new road for a holiday visit.