Floods, snow, and ice — life is never dull for ‘postie’ Bill Tini

Press, 29 July 1978, Page 15

Floods, snow, and ice — life is never dull for ‘postie’ Bill Tini

Story by

FRANCES LOWE

Photographs by

JOHN DYMOND

The mail must get through ... It may sound corny, but Little River’s mobile ‘"postie,” Bill Tini, believes in the maxim of the old pony express riders. He even gave up playing rugby in case an injury kept him away from his job . . .

Trudging up a hill kneedeep in snow to deliver someone’s mail might well be a definition of dedication.

Especially when the recipient of all that effort says you needn’t have bothered because he wasn’t coming out in this weather to pick up the mail anyway. Little River’s “postman,” Bill Tini, laughs and shakes his head when he tells the story, but somehow you know he would have delivered the mail even had he known it was not going to be picked up. Bill is the rural mail contractor at Little River on Banks Peninsula and, in the true tradition of the pony express, believes that the mail must get through. In fact, Bill’s family has been "getting the mail through” tor as long as most people at Little River can remember.

Members of his family have been in the mail delivery business since the Second World War. Bill inherited the job in 1969. His great uncle, Tory Robinson, started the family connection with the mail delivery business. He used a horse and cart to deliver the mail, newspapers, and groceries, and handed the transport and the job over to Bill’s grandfather in 1946. Like Tory Robinson, who had been an All Black, Theodore Percival Robinson, or “Tom” as everyone called him, was also a wellknown rugby player. He was a Maori All Black, before he became Little River’s “postman.” Bill himself has given up rugby for the sake of other peoples’ mail. It must go through, and if he hurt himself playing rugby there would be noone to do the run.

No-one, that is, except Zelma, his wife. And when Bill plays competition tennis every second Saturday, she does the flat part of the run for him. She refuses to tackle the hilly Te Oku run. Zelma also works for the Little River Post

Office for about three months of the year as a relieving switchboard operator.

Bill’s grandfather, Tom, held the mail contract for 21 years, until 1967 when his daughter took over. Bill remembers being allowed to ride with his grand-dad on the mail cart when the load was not too heavy for the horse. Those were good days. On the Te Oku run the horse would stop twice on the way up for water and a rest. Bill’s Grand-dad read the paper, knowing the horse would stop at every mail box on the way. It was a leisurely pace, and in his Granddad’s day mail delivery was only twice a week. But it is not like that today.

"You never go to sleep on this run,” Bill says. "You have to drive for yourself and the other fel-

low as well. You just make sure there’s plenty of room on the other side when you go round corners.”

Bill also recalls the time the horse bolted, leaving a trail of letters and groceries sprayed up the main street of Little River. An over enthusiastic train driver pulled his whistle while Tom was loading up the cart. Bill laughs when he tells how he and all the other kids raced after the lollies that spilled out of the grocery bags.

With the introduction of a more regular service to Te Oku, and the takeover of the postie’s round by the rural mail contractor in the late 19505, Tom Robinson updated his transport.

A Harley Davidson motor-cycle with a sidecar proved rather hairy at times, and was succeeded by a 1938 Chevrolet. After this came a pick-up truck which doubled as a hearse for the local Maori funerals.

Tom’s daughter. Percina Tini, officially took over the run in 1967. She had been helping her father for a few years before this when he was attending Maori Affairs meetings. Percina drove a Ford F 100 truck for two years while she carried mail bags and supplies to Little River inhabitants.

Bill’s day begins at 9.30 a.m. when the bus carrying the mail arrives from Christchurch. He loads up his Kingswood ute at the Post Office and then drives across the road and picks up bread and groceries from the store. He knows everyone in Little River and could tell you who lives where, how long the big house on the rise has been there, and that it used to be a hospital.

We set off around the flat town area and up the Puaha Valley. Most of the

people around here either work for the council or run a farm. Bill has his window wound down to toss out newspapers. His straight tennis eye makes sure most of them land in the right spot. Although Bill does admit to once throwing a loaf of bread in a puddle. It hit the side of the letter box instead of going in the opening. Not that Bill usually throws the bread.

Every so often he leaps out to get another bag of mail from the back or because he cannot reach the letter box from inside the ute. Deep tyre tracks beside each box mark where Bill pulls up every day. Farmers are renowned for receiving large amounts of mail and Bill relies on them to drag out their tractors and fill in the ruts before he gets stuck. Most of them, he says, are pretty good.

The morning run is easy on the ute; its town and country tyres have not yet had much to bite into. Over the years most of

the road has changed from shingle to tarseal. But Bill speaks ominously of the afternoon run as we head back to town for lunch. He takes his own mail and bread home with him. It is 12 o’clock and the afternoon delivery starts about 1.00 p.m. After lunch Bill loads up again with mail and groceries for the Te Oku run. The road up to the mailboxes at the top is pretty steep and winding. In wet weather the untarsealed surface is a hazardous combination of ruts and loose shingle. It was not even too smooth in the dry. Bill said it needed grading. For 11 years before he began delivering mail, Bill was the grader driver for the council.

We looked back down into mist as we climbed up to 762.5 metres at a sedate pace. Bill says he gets kidded by farmers on

the route that he only hurries when there is a rugby test in Christchurch.

Our first stop is at a tin shed that looks suspiciously like an out-house perched on the side of the road. Inside it are three letter boxes and a posting box. The post box was put there in 1913. The shed looks as old. The boxes belong to farmers living about Bkms away. Bill deposits a bag or two of groceries, and some letters, and a large parcel. There are three sheds at the top and Bill says that before they were erected a lot of mail used to get blown away or tom out of the posties’ hands by the wind. . .

We carry on and Bill stops to point out where the woman went over the cliff. It happened only a couple of months ago; she was doing the run for him as a favour while he attended a funeral. Bill’s ute was the hearse. The woman’s Holden station waggon overheated

on the climb up, so after topping up the radiator she turned the engine off and cruised down. It was not until she came to a corner that she realised the steering was locked. She ended up 7.5 metres below a pile of rocks. Three metres on either side and it would have been fatal. The battered and bruised stand-in postie was finally picked up by a very grateful woman who had lost her way. Just who was more pleased is not clear. Others who have had a run on the winding road are Heatway rally drivers. The day they tested their skills was one Of the few days the mail was delivered late. The road was closed to ordinary traffic shortly after Bill passed the starting point on his way up the hill. The rally cars and the crowds watching ensured that Bill was stuck up the top until it was all over. He did not finish delivering the mail until 7.30 p.m. But, as he says, “At least it got through.” The mail doesn’t always get through. Snow and floods cause their share of hold-ups as Little River comes in for the extremes of hot and cold weather. For the last four or five years Little River township has been under flood during part of winter. Sou-westers and an overflowing Lake Forsythe have regularly raised the water level up the second step of the Post Office. The water only drops when a cut is bulldozed from the lake through to the sea. However, Bill Kini usually manages to drive his ute through the water; except for the time of the Wahine disaster. The whole western valley was underwater because a tree had been blown over into the river and blocked it. The mail did not get through for two days. Bill says he always carries a rope and a shovel. He often has to dig himself out. Like the time a cow decided to trot up in front of him. The beast

went slower and slower until Bill had to stop nine metres from the top of a rise. It was, of course, snowing at the time. Needless to say Bill had to get busy with the shovel and roll the ute back down the hill. He even admits to "borrowing” a farmer’s strainer post to winch his ute out of a rut.

Bill says the snow and ice are okay if you get cracking and race up the steep bits. There can be a fair bit of back tracking though if the snow is slushy. Bill has to go back and come up another way. Tramping around in the cold and ploughing through snow can’t exactly be enjoyable but Bill loves his job. “You’d need a fair size crowbar to get me out of this one — I think.”

After the Te Oku run Bill heads out to Birdlings Flat and the fishermen’s huts. Then it is on to the remainder of the rural delivery number three run: Kaituna. By about 3 p.m. it is all over for the day. He heads home to his eight hectares, and his sheep and cattle.

Bill Kini also runs a few horses for hL kids to ride. Bill and Zelma have two daughters and two sons. Ten-year-old TeOne intends taking over the run when his father finally tosses it in. Bill’s not too sure about that, but it looks like being a long wait for TeOne, whatever happens.