Disgruntled town takes to the road

Press, 25 July 1985, Page 1

Disgruntled town takes to the road

From

PETER COMER,

in

Greymouth

The policeman surveyed the growing crowd of demonstrators outside the West Coast Hospital Board’s headquarters in Greymouth yesterday and said cheerfully, “They’re all good people down there. There’ll be no trouble.”

He was right. There was no trouble, but for the 800 Hokitika people who drove to Greymouth to protest against the proposed closing of the Mandi geriatric ward at Westland Hospital in Hokitika, Greymouth might as well have been an aggressive foreign Power and the Hospital Board its evil rulers.

Their West Coast good nature gave way to anger when Mr Ross Overton, a leader of the Hokitika delegation, emerged from a

brief meeting with the board and announced, “I’m sorry. We did all we could. They don’t think we represent the true feelings of the people of Hokitika.” There were howls of protest.

More than 600 Hokitika people have taken part in a continuing “sit-in” at Westland Hospital since the decision to close the ward for the geriatric disabled was announced last month. The local people feel that if they lose the ward, they will lose the hospital. Yesterday they left their jobs, businesses, and homes at the stroke of noon to drive in a “funeral procession” of 280 vehicles the 40km up the coast road to Greymouth. Although Hokitika people see the Greymouth-based West Coast Hospital Board

as the villain of the piece, the issue has revived old parochialisms on the Coast. While Mr Overton rushed round his supermarket mak-

ing last-minute arrangements for the novel wheeled protest, Mrs Anne Graham was the first to turn up at the assembly point, the recreation ground in Hokitika’s Weld Street. Several car owners had offered to take her to Greymouth. She sat down on an old ponga fern stump, lit a cigarette, and said, “I’ll be 85 next April. I’ve lived in Hokitika all my life, except for 39 years when I was down at Franz (Josef), and Greymouth has always been against us.” “They were against us when I was at school. They had the port, but when we got the airport they were jealous.” Mrs Graham, who worked at Westland Hospital as a nurse aide during the 19141918 war, is convinced that

losing any part of it would be bad for the people of Hokitika and South Westland. “Some of those poor old souls have been up there for years. They’ll just fret if they move them to Grey Hospital. They won’t live long. If I still had a husband I wouldn’t want him away up there at Greymouth.” Like some other Hokitika people, Mrs Graham thinks it might be too late to save the Mandi Ward, but she was going up to Greymouth with the rest anyway. “I’ve always loved people, be they sky-blue, pink, or purple, but that Hospital Board should be squashed,” she said. Mr Gerald Bok, who came out from the Netherlands 30 years ago and loves the Coast, heard about the demonstration only yester-

day morning, but he was going. “My boy told me I should close my shop this afternoon,” he said, surrounded by stuffed birds and greenstone jewellery, which he makes. “It is a fantastic effort by the business people. Everyone will lose money, but we have to do something. That board doesn’t give a damn about us. We are too small a town.” Mr Bok thinks that Hokitika might have mobilised too late. “We should have done something years ago. We are putting the calf in the water and trying to bring him out alive,” he said. The whole Bok family joined the protest fleet. It rolled out of Hokitika behind a banner-draped truck driven by Mr Overton, past waiting television crews. Every driver had been issued with a list of safety instructions. Smoke hung above the chimneys of many houses in Hokitika, as it does on grey, sullen days on the Coast, but many of the town’s 3500 residents were not home. The organisers, the Save the Hospital Committee, had called it “Hokitika’s Day of Shame.” On the way north, a gaudy sign on a roadside timber mill said: “Save the mill. Car-park over here.” They parked in designated areas in Greymouth and marched on the Hospital Board’s headquarters, where the police were waiting beside vehicle barriers. They looked unlike the demonstrators commonly found elsewhere. There were the very elderly and the very young, burly bushmen in working clothes and alternative-lifestylers side by side. Mr Overton; the Mayor of Hokitika, Mr Henry Pierson; and a small delegation had been granted an audience with the board before its meeting. They were shown in. The chairman of the board, Mrs

Eileen Kelly, promptly told them that the decision to close Mandi Ward would stand. While the board admired the demonstrators for coming to Greymouth in such numbers, it was sorry that the people of Hokitika could not accept change. “What was suitable for and available to you in the past is not necessarily suitable in one year, 10 years, or 100 years,” said Mrs Kelly. In his plea to the board not to close the ward, Mr Pierson said that the issue was “rekindling parochialism of the worst kind between our two communities.” “Never in the history of our town have the people of Hokitika taken such an extreme decision” (as to march on Greymouth), said Mr Pierson. A number of board members then spoke, explaining that the ward had to be closed for sound economic and other reasons. The board was looking to the future. As Hokitika grew, its health care needs would continue to be provided for. The board was looking after the interests of the whole West Coast, not just Greymouth, they said. Outside, the famous Kokatahi Band was entertaining the demonstrators with rousing tunes, until the delegation emerged with the bad news. “I’m sorry,” said Mr Overton. Everybody might as well go back home to “the capital.” The sit-in at the hospital however, would continue, he said. There was a cheer. “Come down here!” shouted a demonstrator to the boardroom window above. A police sergeant who had been manning a vehicle barrier walked over to a reporter. “I’m a coaster myself,” he said. “They’re closing the place down all round us.” He walked back to the barrier.